“Was Gypsy an acting coach?” Laura asked. She’d hoped the casual question would have thrown the information up, but Joe was looking baffled.
“No, she worked in retail,” he said. “She’s a manager at a bookstore.”
“Okay,” Laura said, noting it down with a sinking feeling. She had been hoping – desperately – that he would come up with some link that contradicted what they had been told. “So,
can you think of anyone?”
“No,” Joe said, rubbing a hand back over his head. “No, there was no one. Maybe the odd difficult customer, but I wouldn’t know any of their names. And I don’t think a customer complaint would be grounds for murder – would it?”
“We’re hoping it would be a deeper connection than that, but anything is possible,” Laura said. “That’s why anything you can remember, no matter how small, will really help.”
“No,” Joe said, at length. “No, there’s nothing. I’m sorry. At most, I guess I would have pointed to myself. We broke up about five months ago. But, I mean, I had nothing to do with it.”
“What time did you get home tonight?” Laura asked, just in case.
“About six,” Joe said.
“And you were alone, or…?”
“With my wife,” Joe said, gesturing upstairs to the woman who had called out earlier.
Laura almost winced. His wife? After just five months? There must have been some overlap there. Or worse, he had been married for years. She didn’t ask. If both the husband and the wife were at home all evening, there was no way it could have been them.
Of course, both of them would have lied for the other. But even if they did, it didn’t give them much of a motive to kill the other two women.
“While we’re here,” Nate said. “Do you know of anyone by the name Suzanna Brice?”
“No,” Joe said. “Oh, wait – wasn’t that the woman who was killed yesterday? Hang on – are you saying – is this the same killer?”
Laura groaned inwardly. The press had the story, and it was spreading now, gaining momentum. Before long, every single person they spoke to would have heard of all of the victims. This was going to make it even more difficult to get to the bottom of any interrogations they needed to carry out.
The press was both a blessing and a curse when it came to cases. They could warn the public, tell them how to keep safe. But they could also give out information that made their fact-finding missions even more difficult.
“We can’t be sure just yet,” Laura hedged. “If you think of anything that could help us out, no matter how small, please do get in touch.”
“Yes, of course,” Joe said. “Will you… I mean. I know Gypsy didn’t have any family. Has anyone ID’d her body?”
“Yes, we’ve had a positive identification,” Laura confirmed, at which news Joe seemed to sag with relief.
“Great,” he said. “I mean, obviously, it’s not. It’s awful. I just… I would have done it, if you needed it.”
“We understand,” Laura said, giving him a brief smile. She actually did. There was no way it could be easy to have to see the dead body of a former lover, even if you’d moved on. “Thank you, Joe. We’ll let you get back to bed, now. But do call us at any time.”
“I will,” Joe promised. He ran a hand over his head with that same distracted motion as before. Laura got the impression he probably wasn’t going to get any sleep any time soon.
They walked out of the house, not speaking in the empty silence of the night until they were back inside the car. From the doorway of his home, Joe Barnes watched them for a moment, then turned to go to his wife.
“This ruins everything,” Laura muttered, sitting behind the wheel but not yet starting the engine. “It shatters everything we thought we knew. She’s not an acting coach. It was all just a coincidence that the first two were.”
“And it’s a dead end,” Nate sighed. “Yet again, no enemies, no one who comes up as suspicious. Except these two, and they were clearly in bed. They wouldn’t have had much time to get back here and genuinely look like they just woke up.”
“We only saw Joe,” Laura said thoughtfully. “Not his wife. Maybe we should keep her in mind.”
“If we can find any link between her and the others, I’ll put her in cuffs with pleasure,” Nate said. “But right now, we have nothing. Our only leads have all panned out into nothing. We’re back where we started when we got off the plane.”
“Except now, there’s another dead body,” Laura said grimly. “And if we don’t get a handle on this situation soon, there could be a fourth.”
“Sleep, first,” Nate said, stifling a yawn. “We’re no good to anyone exhausted. In the morning, we tackle this again. Maybe we’ll have some kind of divine inspiration while we sleep and figure it all out.”