Deception with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Two) (7 page)

She folded her arms and leaned back against the table. “I swear you’re like a gossiping teenager,” she said, struggling to keep her uneasiness from showing. “Ben helped me move, so I owed him dinner. And yes, the steak was amazing.” She wasn’t lying. The steak had, in fact, been one of the best steaks she had ever had. The baked potato accompanying it had over two inches of toppings piled on, with a salted, crispy skin.

“So to say thank you, you picked the most romantic restaurant in Addison Valley?” She could hear the skepticism in his voice.

“I…” she stammered. “I didn’t pick the restaurant.” She knew it wasn’t a strong leg to stand on, but she didn’t know what else to say. The more she struggled to think of something, though, the hotter she felt her face growing.

“You do know there are no longer any ramifications from fraternization,” he said, raising a bemused eyebrow. “You don’t have to hide a relationship.”

“And I wouldn’t if I were in a relationship,” she said, putting a great deal on emphasis on if. “But I’m not. Ben and I are just friends, and that’s all we’ll ever be.”

He looked at her suspiciously before apparently giving up. “So where are we on the case?” The excitement that had been in his voice was now gone.

“We should be getting the results of the unknown substance in around noon today. I was also thinking we should try to have all of Villarreal’s calls over the last few months traced. If we could find out where he has been, we might have a better idea of where to start looking for his journal,” she explained.

“Good. Let me know if you get anything,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep Villarreal’s identity under wraps. We need to try to get this closed before it gets out.”

She nodded and followed him back into the office. Matthews walked in just as Rilynne sat down at her desk.

“We need to run a trace on all of Villarreal’s cell phone calls,” she told him.

“That should give us a list of locations he frequented,” Matthews replied. “That could lead us right to where he would have hidden his journal.”

One of the reasons Rilynne enjoyed working with Detective Matthews was that they seemed to always be on the same page. She never had to explain things to him, or try to make up stories about why they should follow her ‘hunches.’ He was also one of the few detectives she had worked with who did not scoff at the field of profiling.

“What happened to you?” he asked, motioning toward the scrape on her jaw. “Nothing,” she replied quickly. She had tried to cover it as best as she could before leaving the house, but had obviously not done the best job. “Just scraped it while running.”

“Yeah, I have heard that running is a very dangerous sport,” he joked. “That’s why I do my exercising in the couch. Switching between those sports channels really builds the muscles.” He flexed his arm a few times before leaning back and smiling.

Rilynne chuckled as she picked up the phone. “This is Detective Evans in homicide. I need a trace run on the phone that was logged into evidence. I need to know the location of all the calls that were made or received within the last two months.”

After hanging up, she turned back to Matthews.

“Did you hear back from the lab about the unknown substance that was on Villarreal’s hair and shirt?” he asked.

“No, I talked to Ben about it last night but he said that he wouldn’t have results until sometime today,” she explained. “All he knew so far was that it was tree sap with some kind of trace in it. That’s what left it looking black.”

An impish grin appeared on his face as he leaned even further back in his chair and crossed his arms. “So, I heard you and Ben had a nice, romantic dinner last night.”

“What, are we in high school?” she asked exasperatedly. “How on earth did you hear about it?”

He appeared to be downright giddy. “Well, Sherri Wilcome and my Katy have been friends for years, and meet every Thursday for a girls night out,” he explained cheerfully. “After their dinner last night, the ladies went out and Sherri told Katy how wonderful she thought it was that the department had changed the fraternization rules which allowed, let’s see, how did she put it,” he paused trying to recall. “Ah, ‘that sweetheart Ben to find such a quality young woman’. And, according to Sherri, you make a very cute couple.”

Rilynne felt her cheeks growing warm again and couldn’t seem to come up with a response.

“I thought we were partners, Evans,” he said sarcastically. “Partners share stuff like this. I’m pretty sure it’s in the partner rule book.”

“Ben and I are friends,” she said. “Just friends.” She couldn’t get anything else out, so instead just dropped her head down hard onto her desk.

“Personally, I never agreed with the no-fraternization rule,” he said more seriously. “It can be hard to find someone outside of this line of work who understands how demanding it is. The hours alone are enough to ruin a lot of relationships. And if you were to date anyone within the department, I couldn’t think of anyone better than Ben Davis. Despite some…” he trailed off trying to choose his words carefully.

“Youthful indiscretions,” Rilynne offered, looking back up at him.

“So he told you about that.” He sounded relieved. “Yes, despite his youthful indiscretions, he has grown into a very well rounded individual. And surprisingly modest given his circumstances.”

Rilynne looked at him quizzically, but when she opened her mouth to ask what he meant, he abruptly stood up. “But enough about that,” he said. He turned and hurried to the conference room, leaving Rilynne sitting at her desk, utterly befuddled.

“You look downright confused.” Ben walked in the door behind her and sat on the edge of her desk.

“I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t,” she said, peering up at him curiously.

“What did I do?” He looked almost scared as he stared down at her.

“I have no idea,” she said, only more curious then before. “What can I help you with?” she asked, changing the subject.

He gave her one last suspicious look before handing her a report. “The sap is from an American Smoketree,” he explained. “I’m still waiting for the results from the trace that was in it, but since the tree isn’t one of the most common in the area, I thought I would come tell you now instead of waiting. I can also tell you that the trace isn’t something that would be found in nature, so you’re looking for a tree within the city limits. With the amount of sap found, I would expect to see damage on the trunk.”

“Well that should make it easier to tie him to a scene when we find one,” she said, reading over the report. “This is great, thanks.”

“What happened to you?” he asked, sounding a little alarmed.

She reached up and pulled her hair back down over her jaw, only to find that his eyes were not focused on her face, but on her shoulder.

“Oh great,” she said, looking down to see a streak of red peeking through her pale blue shirt. She pulled the collar of her shirt aside to find her bandage had come un-taped. She quickly unbuttoning her shirt, slightly shocked that Ben didn’t even attempt to look away as she did so, and threw it in her bottom desk drawer. “It’s a good thing my undershirt is black,” she said, moving the strap to the side and pulling off the rest of the dislodged bandage. “I wouldn’t have been too happy to ruin two shirts at once.”

“So, are you going to explain that?” he asked not taking his eyes off of the four inch wide scrape running across her collar bone and down her arm. “It looks like someone took sandpaper to you. And you scraped your face.” He reached up and tucked the hair behind her ear before turning her chin to get a better look. He gently ran his thumb over the small scrap, sending a shiver through her.

“It’s just a running injury,” she said when he released her chin. She reached into the open drawer and pulled out a first aid kit and a clean shirt.

“What, did you run into something?” he asked, taking the first aid kit out of her hands and opening it. He grabbed a package of gauze and a roll of medical tape out before handing it back to her. “And do you often find yourself in need of a clean shirt at work?” He looked down into the open drawer to find two more clean shirts.

“What makes you think that I ran into something?” she said defensively. “I could have fallen, or something else not so embarrassing.”

“Did you?” he raised his eyebrow. He placed the gauze gently against her shoulder and taped it firmly in place.

“No, I ran into something. It was dark,” she admitted. “So it wasn’t really my fault.”

He looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to tease or lecture her.

“Well, that should teach you that you shouldn’t run in the dark. Tell me that someone was around with a camera,” he chuckled. “Or at least describe it in great detail.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said as she stood to put on her new shirt. “Am I going to be teased about everything today?”

“What else are you getting teased about?” he asked curiously.

Instead of answering, she shot him a ‘do you even need to ask’ gaze.

“Ah,” he said, catching on quickly. “I take it Detective Wilcome is giving you a hard time about our dinner last night?” He seemed almost pleased by the realization.

“And Matthews.”

“How does he know?” he asked.

“Well, apparently Sherri Wilcome and Katy Matthews are very good friends, and we were the topic of their girls night conversation last night,” she explained. She finished buttoning her shirt and sat back down.

He just smiled at her.

“And according to Matthews, Sherri Wilcome thinks that you’re a sweetheart,” she tried to redirect the conversation.

He sat up straight and flashed a prideful smile. “Well, that’s because I am.” After pushing himself off of her desk, he winked at her and walked toward the door. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out what the trace is,” he called back over his shoulder.

After he disappeared through the door, Rilynne’s mind drifted back to the comment that Matthews had made. “Modest given his circumstances,” she said under her breath. She sat pondering his meaning for several minutes before finally getting up and walking into the conference room.

“What did you mean modest given…” She trailed off when she realized he was not alone in the room.

“We just got the phone records in,” Matthews said, holding up the stack of papers in his hand. “Grab the map on the corner of my desk and we can get these charted.” Rilynne followed the tech out of the room, and picked up the folded city map off of the far corner of Matthews desk.

“So, what did you mean by modest given his circumstances?” she asked when she walked back into the conference room. He took the map and laid it down across the table.

“Here, you take these,” he said as he handed her half of the stack. “It doesn’t give us exact locations, but we’ll have the cell towers that the calls pinged off of. If we can find areas that he frequented, we might be able to narrow down our search area.”

“You’re going to completely ignore my question, aren’t you?” she asked.

“That was my plan,” he responded, not taking his eyes off of the map.

She opened her mouth to counter, but knew that no matter how she argued, chances were she wouldn’t get anything out of him. She gave him one last frustrated look before directing her attention to the papers at hand.

“Okay,” he said, placing stickers on the map. “These are the locations of all of the cell towers in the city. First lets find out which towers were hit and how often; then we can map out each service area and try to narrow down locations that he could have been.”

It took them only five minutes to mark down all of the phone calls made.

“Let’s start with the most frequently used towers first. This tower was used thirty-two times over the last two months. And-” he said, pulling out a compass and drawing a circle around the dot, “-it covers this area. What do we know that’s in this area?”

“That’s his undercover apartment,” she said, pointing to a cross street within the circle. “What do we have next?”

“This tower was hit eight times,” he said, drawing another circle. “And I think that’s the location where he was meeting the perpetrators to collect the stolen items and hand over the money. Next would be this one,” he said as he drew a third circle. “This one tower only covers a few residential neighborhoods on the edge of the woods,” he said. “And this house-” he pointed to a house within the radius, “-is the vacant house that Shane was found in.”