Page 97 of The Secrets We Hide
Jude had shape-shifted into another version of herself that Emmy hadn’t seen before. Cautious. Reserved. It made Emmy feel guilty, like she’d done something wrong. Maybe she had. Her sister had spent the last month and a half reaching out to Emmy, trying to smooth things over, making herself available, acting as a sounding board, calling on her vast understanding of psychology and criminal behavior and investigative experience and doing whatever it took to help Emmy.
And Emmy had been a prickly bitch.
She was saved more navel-gazing by her phone ringing. She tapped the screen. “Gregg, what is it?”
“You were right, boss. The motel manager’s been taking a cut of the trade running through the joint. I couldn’t get him to shake loose the CCTV, though. He says corporate’s got it on their servers. They’d know if he accessed it.”
Emmy couldn’t catch a break in this case. “Okay, thank—”
“Hold on, boss,” Gregg said. “I noticed there’s a key card entry to the guest parking lot. I asked the guy to look up Bill’s number. Get this, Bill left the motel two hours after the fight with Allison. He didn’t come back until ten the next morning.”
“Saturday morning,” Emmy said. The day of Allison’s murder. “What time did he leave?”
“Eleven-thirty. Then he carded back in at eight-twelve that night.”
Emmy glanced at Jude. They’d heard the gunshots at Allison’s around one in the afternoon.
“Good work, Gregg. Go home and get some rest. I need you back at the station by five.”
“Yes, boss.”
Emmy ended the call. “Bill told me he was at the motel until the baseball game started at two.”
Jude said, “You could use this new information to request an interview.”
“His lawyer won’t let me get within ten feet of him. I need phone records. Allison’s files from her laptop. Mandy’s records. Some kind of smoking gun to force his hand.” Emmy swiped through to Gregg’s number. “I’m going to put a tail on Bill. I don’t want him going near Mandy. God knows if Brett’s actually guarding her room.”
“Hold on,” Jude said. “Try to spread the work around. Gregg’s an attractive kid. You don’t want to start rumors.”
Emmy laughed. Gregg was only a few years older than Cole. “Would you say the same thing if he was an attractive woman?”
“Of course not. Everyone would assume you were giving her the work because she’s a woman.”
Emmy didn’t get a chance to respond. Sherry Robertson was calling. Emmy tapped her phone again. “Hey, Sherry. I’m with my sister. What’ve you got?”
“Allison’s fingerprints were on the tracker that was hidden inside the heel of Mandy’s shoe.”
Emmy sighed. Being right on this case never felt like it got them closer to a resolution.
“I’m guessing you’re not surprised,” Sherry said. “How about this? I took the three hundred grand from Allison’s attic to evidence lock-up, and one of our old-timers comes by and points out that the hundreds are all pre-2004 series.”
Emmy felt her brow furrow. “What does that mean?”
“The government periodically redesigns bills to prevent forgeries. All the hundreds in Allison’s attic were printed before October 2003.”
Emmy heard a car pulling alongside her. Cole was trying to wave her down. She pointed him up the road toward Millie’s.
Jude asked, “How long is the average hundred in circulation?”
“Eight to eleven years, but Allison’s money is crisp. Like brand new from the bank—never circulated. I talked to a contact of mine who’s a currency dealer. He told me to look on the backs for the name of the Secretary of Treasury. They’re all signed by Paul H. O’Neill. But get this, O’Neill didn’t serve a full term. Bush forced him to resign because he opposed the war in Iraq. O’Neill’s signature is predominantly on the 2001 series notes.”
Emmy shook her head like that might clear it. “Can you break that down into language an idiot can understand?”
“The money could’ve only been printed from late 2001 until early 2003. It was never circulated, so it must have been withdrawn from the bank during that window, then stored somewhere safe, like a sealed, blue plastic bin with a red top.”
Emmy looked at Jude. They were both doing the same math. “So it’s very likely Allison got the money some time in 2002.”
“I don’t know about the likelihood, but the timeframe works.”
