Page 85 of Night Watch
“I thought as much.”
“You did?” Her eyebrows shot up. “But I was so careful to hide my feelings.”
“Not quite careful enough to fool a former police officer.” He smiled. “What haven’t you told us?”
“First, about Wanda’s phone. I erased it.” She flashed up a hand. “And before you judge me, let me tell you why. She was seeing someone. Dash Gordon. She didn’t want Kennedy or Finley to know about him. So I had to do it. She would’ve wanted that. And I wasn’t interfering in a murder investigation then.”
Erik didn’t bother to lecture her. The damage was done. “Why didn’t she want her daughters to know?”
“Dash is only forty-five, and it was…well, it was just a fling. She’d been with their father since she was eighteen. One night when the two of us went out, we ran into Dash. He’s a sales rep for one of the pharmaceutical companies sponsoring her project. He came on to her, and she might’ve been a little bit drunk.”
“It’s odd that we didn’t find his prints in her bedroom, then.”
“He wasn’t invited over there. Finley had a habit of dropping in unexpectedly. And Wanda was worried someone would see them together and it would be construed as a conflict of interest, so Wanda always went to his place.” Nora twisted her hands together. “I also took her overnight bag so the girls didn’t ask why she had one at the lab. Plus, it had some suggestive lingerie in it.”
He was glad that Kennedy and Finley had been spared seeing that. “Did the bag have an extra denture in it?”
Nora’s eyes flashed open. “How did you know?”
“That’s what your intruder was trying to steal.”
“Seriously? Why would he want that?”
Erik hoped to find out the answer to that as soon as Detective Johnson called him back.
“Do you know Dash’s address?”
She shook her head. “Somewhere out in the country on the east side. He traveled a lot and liked to live in the woods but be close to the airport. But if you’re hoping to talk to him, he might be hard to find.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s on vacation. Took a full month off. That’s why Wanda had a bag packed. She was going to take a few days off and spend them with him.”
Erik nodded. “Is Dash his real name or a nickname?”
“Real.”
Then he should be easy to find. “Wanda had forty thousand dollars in cash in her safe. Any idea where that came from?”
Nora shook her head, her eyes wide. “Surely, nothing illegal.”
“Did she need money?”
“Yeah, for medical bills. She was recently diagnosed with a rare kind of lymphoma.” Nora’s voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “I don’t know the details, but she’d just started expensive treatments. She didn’t have insurance or enough money saved to pay for them.”
Wow.This news was big. Huge. And Wanda had kept it from Kennedy. How was she going to take this? He would have to find a way to break it to her gently.
Nora’s eyes glistened with tears. “She was worried about paying bills when they started rolling in.”
“She could’ve asked Kennedy for help.”
“No. Wanda didn’t want her girls to spend their money on it. That’s one of the reasons she wouldn’t tell them. She knew they’d insist on helping pay for her treatments. She was saving as much money as she could, pretty much only spending on her meals.”
“What about retirement savings?” Erik asked, glad to finally be getting some answers. “Didn’t she have that to use?”
Nora snorted. “Silas lost every penny of their savings in a risky investment. He was conned by a scammer.”
Sounded like justice, considering his past. Erik didn’t know how much of this he would mention to Kennedy. He would have to give it some thought because he didn’t want to hurt her or change how she thought about her mother. Before he made any decisions, he needed to talk to Wanda’s boyfriend.
