Page 56 of The Perfect Poise

She hung up, feeling a small twinge of satisfaction, and returned her attention to the people in the room with her.

“We have to find this girl,” she said, knowing it wasn’t necessary. “No more victims today.”

She could only hope it wasn’t too late.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

When they left Lila Warwick’s house a half hour later, they were empty-handed.

Jessie had feared as much. If the killer was going to stab Lila right there in the house, what better way to do it than on a livestream? The fact that they’d let her live, rather than killing her right then and there, suggested that they had other, bigger plans.

As they stood on the porch, Ryan called Jamil and Beth.

“There was nothing there,” he told them. “I guess the good news is that we don’t have a dead body. The bad news is that we have no idea where they went.”

“Maybe not yet,” Jessie said, “but we could soon. Remember, Lila’s phone was gone when we went into the recording booth. That suggests someone took it with them.”

“Any luck on that court order giving us access to its geolocation, Jamil?” Ryan asked as they walked back to the car.

“Yes, Detective,” Jamil said. “We were able to get an emergency order quickly. Unfortunately, it’s not pinging, which suggests that it’s turned off. I wouldn’t be surprised if the killer put it in a Faraday bag or something to ensure that we couldn’t find it.”

“Dammit!” Ryan said. “We’re right back at square one.”

“Maybe not,” Jamil said. “While we were waiting for the court order to come in, I was able to do a little more digging into Chloe Baptiste’s finances and I found something really interesting.”

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Jessie said, hoping they might have finally caught a break.

“Okay,” he said. “She had multiple bank accounts before she married Laurent, both personal and business, along with several brokerage accounts and the standard retirement stuff. Most of them were folded into joint accounts after they got married.”

“Doesn’t that put her at financial risk if they get divorced?” Beth wondered.

“Truthfully, she would make so much in any divorce settlement that what she had before would seem like peanuts,” Jamil explained, “which is why I found what accounts she chose to keep odd.”

“Like what?” Jessie asked as she got in the passenger seat of Ryan’s car.

“One isn’t that big a deal,” Jamil said. “It’s an IRA with about $2.2 million in it. I could see her holding on to it. There’s no real disadvantage. She also maintained a standard checking account. It’s the same one she’s had since she was twenty-two and has $6,343 in it. It’s possible that she’s just keeping it out of nostalgia or simply forgot she still has it. But there’s another that’s more interesting.”

“Why?” Ryan asked as he got in the car too.

“Because it’s not a personal account held in her name,” Jamil said. “It’s a business account called Creative Holdings and seems at first to be related to sales and purchases of works of art.”

“And that’s odd because…?” Jessie said, waiting for the hammer to drop.

“Because it doesn’t make sense. She already has another business account—a much larger one, that she seems to do all of her art buying and selling through. Invariably, those deals involve hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time, if not millions. Compared to that, this account is small potatoes.”

“Like how small?” Jessie asked.

"Typically, the items go for between three and ten thousand dollars. Occasionally, they hit upwards of fifteen thousand. But it doesn't look like they're original pieces. It's a lot of prints of known works. And whether she's buying or selling—the latter of which is far more common—the prices are horribly inflated. In one instance, she paid $5000 for a print that would normally sell for about $800. I see another instance where she sold a piece for $7000 that was worth a grand at most."

“Maybe the frames are gold-plated?” Beth half-joked.

“I was always told that the value of a piece of art is what someone is willing to pay for it,” Ryan noted.

“Yeah, but who’s she even competing against?” Jessie wondered before addressing Jamil. “Has the IRS ever looked into this?”

“Not as far as I can find,” Jamil said, “but that doesn’t shock me. Considering the sums involved in her primary art deals, they wouldn’t have much reason to take notice of transactions this small.”

“But,” Jessie said, “you said she sold far more than she bought, right Jamil?”

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