Page 53 of The Perfect Accomplice

“Okay, just give me a minute to pull them up.”

Jessie, Ryan, and Emilio Vega sat silently in the car, waiting. Finally, Vega spoke up hesitantly.

“Can I say something?”

Ryan looked annoyed, but Jessie figured the guy wouldn’t volunteer anything at this point unless it was important.

“Go ahead.”

“I remember that some guy walked her dog from time to time,” he said. “I wasn’t really paying close attention because I was working, but I think I assumed he was a boyfriend, because one day the dog was gone, and I never saw the guy after that. But I guess if the guy was a dog walker and the dog died, that would explain why he stopped coming around.”

“Can you describe him?” Jessie asked.

“Nah,” Vega said. “It was a long time ago. I mean, he was white, and I think he had dark hair, although he always wore a baseball cap. He was real friendly though, always said ‘hi’ and ‘how’s it going?’”

“I found something,” Nikki said over the speaker. “Up until five months ago, I see regular Venmo payments to something called Waggy Walks. There are dozens of them.”

“Is there a person’s name listed?” Jessie asked.

“I don’t see one.”

“Okay, thanks Nikki,” Jessie said. “We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”

She hung up and tried to search for Waggy Walks on her phone, but nothing would load.

“I can’t get an internet connection,” she muttered in frustration.

“Yeah, this area has terrible reception,” Vega said. “I have that problem all the time.”

Jessie gave up and called Jamil. “Hey,” she said urgently the second he answered. “I’m having connectivity issues with my phone. Can you look up a company called Waggy Walks and tell me who owns it?”

“I don’t need to look it up, Ms. Hunt,” Jamil replied, unfazed by the intensity of her request. “We’ve already done that. It belongs to Charlie Warner, the dog walker for the Ashes and the Henshalls.”

Jessie felt a surge of adrenaline course through her system.

“Yeah, well, it looks like he used to be Erin Podemski’s dog walker too, at least until five months ago," she told him. "Wasn't he supposed to come in for an interview this afternoon?”

“He did,” Sam Goodwin called out from what sounded like the other side of the room. “I talked to him for a half hour.”

“And?” Jessie demanded more forcefully than she’d intended.

“He was very forthcoming,” Goodwin answered, sounding suddenly uncertain. “He acknowledged walking dogs for the Ashes and Henshalls and gave us his alibis for each murder. We were going to follow up later, but for now, we didn’t see any reason to keep him here. We were prioritizing suspects who had yet to come in or get back to us.”

“Did he ever mention that he used to walk Erin Podemski’s dog?” Ryan asked.

“He did not,” Goodwin conceded.

“How long ago did he leave?” Jessie wanted to know.

“Maybe forty five minutes?” Goodwin said.

Jessie turned to Ryan. “Even in rush hour traffic, he could be back up in the hills by now.”

Ryan opened his mouth, but before he could reply, they both heard a loud gasp.

“What is it?” Jessie asked.

“This is Beth,” the junior researcher said. “As you all were talking, I went back to the Waggy Walks website. As you’d expect, there are lots of photos of Warner with dogs. But I noticed something else: in several of them, he’s holding what looks like a leather leash.”

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