Page 85 of Lost Cause
“No problem. Give me fifteen minutes, and it’ll be packaged and ready for you to sign out.” Sam pressed the tape over the dusted prints. “By the way, you left this morning before I could give you an update.”
“What do you have?” Burke asked.
“First, I got up early this morning and ran the prints from the boat and the Tylenol package. Bad news is, I searched AFIS but didn’t return a match for any of them.”
Bummer. Not what Abby wanted to hear. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System database managed by the FBI contained fingerprints from known criminals. No match, no suspect.
“So they’re all a dead end, then?” Abby asked.
“The ones for the boat, yes, until you have a suspect and I can compare their prints to the ones I lifted.”
“But what about the Tylenol?” Burke asked.
She smiled. “The prints were a match for Sylvia and Ugo.”
“Kinda skipped over the best part, didn’t you?” Burke grinned.
Abby wasn’t in the mood to laugh. She looked at him. “So Sylvia and Ugo were in the cellar at some point when they both lied and said they weren’t.”
Burke’s smile vanished. “They obviously need to be called on their lie.”
“While we meet with Victor, Gabe could interview them. He can also ask Ugo about Estelle’s and Victor’s financial records.” Abby looked at her watch. “But before we do anything, I’d like to get a quick status update from the team. They could’ve learned something to help determine our next priority.”
“Sounds like a plan, but we can’t lose sight of talking to Victor. He could very well know who the belt buckle belonged to.”
She nodded, excitement burning through her. Not long and they could know the murdered man’s name. Whether or not his identity had any bearing on locating the missing crown remained to be seen, but it could very well be the answer to Estelle’s disappearance.
Burke sat next to Abby in the dining room and waited for her team members to arrive in their conference room and connect to the call. He assumed they would be as surprised as he and Abby were about not only locating remains, but that they were for a man whose identity they didn’t have a clue about.
Gabe yawned and set aside the ferry logs Abby had received last night from Hayden.
“Thanks for monitoring the cameras we installed here last night,” Abby said. “Especially when there was nothing on them.”
“Not nothing. The deer who set off the French door camera was interesting to watch.” Gabe laughed and stood. “I’ll do the rest of these logs when I get back from Ugo’s and Sylvia’s interview.”
“Anything so far?” Burke asked.
“I’m compiling a log of swiped data for Dr Shore, Ugo, and Sylvia so you can compare them to their stories and decide if they told you the truth.”
“Looking forward to seeing that,” Abby said. “Hopefully it’ll give us the answers we need, and you won’t have to move on to other visitors.”
Gabe nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s a long shot when we can’t determine who a visitor came to the island to see. I’ll have to further investigate. It’s tedious work but far better than babysitting.”
He laughed and strode to the door, his usual confident posture in place. He had that macho man, law-enforcement-officer look and attitude at times, but Burke had discovered there was much more to him.
Gabe looked back at Abby. “Be sure to update me on the meeting highlights, and don’t talk too badly about me.” He grinned and left the dining room.
Burke shifted to face the laptop screen. “I really didn’t like Gabe when I first met him, but he’s grown on me.”
“A lot of people feel that way about him, but it usually doesn’t take long to see he has a heart of gold. Not that he would ever willingly admit it.”
Burke understood the guy. He didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve either, but he thought he had a far different reason than Gabe. Still, Gabe showed his affection for Abby, and Burkesuspected he wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding his feelings for her either.
The team’s individual photos appeared on screen, and Abby clicked to enter the meeting. “We’re pressed for time. Can we quickly go down to your follow-up items? Hayden, let’s start with you. What have you found on background information for the people we asked you to look into?”
He grabbed something from the table. “I’ll send you the official reports, but the short version is Sylvia and Ugo seem to be on the up and up. Sylvia has lived in the same house since working for Victor. Ugo lost his family in a car crash, but he still lives in the house he bought when he got married.”
“Oh, man.” Abby shook her head slowly, almost in disbelief. Recently having lost her mother, she probably could sympathize with him. “The poor guy. He didn’t mention it, but it’s probably too hard to talk about.”
