Page 19 of The Perfect Accomplice

“How long does he think that will take?” Jessie asked.

“He was hoping to have results by the end of the day,” Cutter replied, “tomorrow at the latest.

“Okay, please stay on him,” Ryan asked. “We already have two dead women in less than 24 hours. By tomorrow, we might have another.”

***

They sat in the car outside the Ashe home, reviewing what they knew about her death one more time before getting out. The preliminary report from the detectives who had originally been assigned the case were useful, if not as comprehensive as Jessie might have liked.

“So we know Sydney Ashe was killed yesterday morning between ten and eleven-thirty, when the housekeeper was at the store and the nanny took the kids to the park,” Ryan double-checked.

"Right," Jessie confirmed. "The son is four, and the daughter just turned one. The park is a quarter mile west of here. The Hollywood detectives already verified the nanny's alibi with several other people at the park during that time."

“Okay, and the body was found on the main bedroom’s balcony, correct?”

“That’s what the report says,” Jessie said, handing over her phone to show the photos of the scene, which confirmed that fact.

“Let’s see if we can learn anything new that might not be in here,” Ryan said as he looked over the photos. “You ready to go in?”

Jessie nodded, and they got out of the car. As they approached the house, she noted that the Ashe home, while similar to Erin Podemski's, was much more ostentatious. It too was built into the side of the cliff, but unlike Erin's unassuming main floor, this house was already two stories high before it receded into the canyon. It was modernist in the extreme, all glass and steel.

They stopped at the front door and rang the bell. As they waited Jessie took note of the fact that the Ring camera was missing and that there were no other, obvious video cameras on the exterior of the house. She was surprised that the home of a such a successful Hollywood producer was so unprotected.

A pear-shaped, forty-something woman with a dour face answered the door.

“May I help you?” she asked in a vaguely eastern European accent.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ryan said, holding up his badge. “We’re with the police, doing some additional investigation into Sydney Ashe’s death. May we come in?”

The woman seemed briefly hesitant but then nodded and opened the door for them.

“If they’re around,” Ryan continued, “we were hoping to talk to Mr. Ashe and to the family’s nanny, Hayley.”

“Mr. Ashe is on a phone call right now and is not to be disturbed, but Hayley is in the back with the children. I will get her. Please follow me.”

“What’s your name?” Jessie asked.

“I am Marta,” she answered. “I’m the Ashe’s housekeeper.”

She led them through the foyer, past a large dining room that Jessie noted was closed off with child-proof gates, and into a sunken living room that was as large as a tennis court. Like Erin Podemski’s, it had floor-to-ceiling windows with expansive views of the city. In this case, because the room was over twice the size of Podemski’s, even more of Los Angeles was visible, from East L.A. all the way to Santa Monica and beyond it, the Pacific Ocean.

“What happened to the Ring camera at the front door?” Ryan wanted to know once they came to a stop.

"Oh, that," Marta replied. "The battery died the other day. I was recharging it but had not put it back in place yet. I guess I forgot about it with everything that happened."

“And there are no other security cameras on the property?” Ryan pressed.

“Mrs. Ashe wanted them, but Mr. Ashe said they were a waste of time and money; that no one could get into the house from the back and any good thief coming from the front would know how to get around them. They disagreed strongly.”

“I see,” Ryan said. “And just to reconfirm, the detectives’ report says that when ‘everything happened,’ you were at the grocery store, yes?”

“Yes,” Marta said. “I always do the grocery store run on Wednesday mornings. Mrs. Ashe likes—liked to have a full refrigerator for the end of the week and the weekend.”

There was a lull that Jessie felt an unexpected need to fill.

“How many stories tall is this house?” she wondered.

"Five," Marta told her. "This is the second from the top. Please wait here, and I will get Hayley for you."

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