Page 20 of Dead Man's List

Connor mimed zipping his mouth shut.

“I thought so,” Kit muttered. “The detectives that responded to the initial missing-person call put out a BOLO on the Ferrari but got nothing. They tried to trace the GPS, but again, they got nothing. It appears to have been disabled. The last location was the garage itself.”

Sam noted that. “So whoever took it knows cars. I wouldn’t know how to disable a GPS.”

“It’s not that hard,” Connor said. “I did it once or twice in my misguided youth when I didn’t want my folks knowing where I was. My dad figured it out and put another tracker on the undercarriage, and I was busted. But I was able to disconnect the GPS that came with the car.”

Kit shook her head. “Mom would have grounded me and taken away dessert for a month if I’d tried that.”

“I was grounded for two months and my allowance cut to just enough to buy lunch at school,” Connor said morosely. “Anyway, I think it’s interesting that Munro didn’t have an auxiliary tracker on his car. Or that his wife didn’t put one on. If he’d cheated on me, I’d want to know where his ass was at all times.”

“And if she did and hasn’t told the cops?” Kit mused. “Still not sure I bought her innocent act.”

“You notified her?” Sam asked.

“She already knew,” Connor said.

“Tamsin Fucking Kavanaugh,” Kit muttered.

Sam grimaced. “Not her again.”

Sam had been on the receiving end of Tamsin’s poisoned pen the spring before when someone he’d cared about had been murdered.

“Tamsin and Munro were bumping uglies,” Connor said.

Sam grimaced again. “Good God, man. First Munro’s dead face and now the image of him and Tamsin doing it? Now I’m wishing I hadn’t had dessert. Have you talked to her yet?”

“No,” Kit muttered. She wasn’t looking forward to that interview. Tamsin Kavanaugh would want some quid pro quo of her own, and Kit would rather eat her own foot than owe the woman anything. “But back to the Ferrari. If the wife is involved, she could have had the Ferrari towed somewhere.”

Sam jotted that on the whiteboard. “It also could have been a souvenir. Especially if his killer wanted some financial retribution.”

“Good point,” Connor said, filling his plate again. “Write that down.”

Sam did so and stared at the board. “Did you get the footage from the security cameras around Munro’s house?”

“We did,” Kit said, “but they’re pretty useless. You see someone in a hoodie and a face mask—like a Halloween hockey mask, not a medical mask, and then they spray-painted the camera lens.”

Sam studied the photo, frowning. “I don’t guess you can trace the mask.”

Kit shook her head. “The party store sells thousands of the things every year.”

“Spray-painting the camera lens is old-school,” Sam commented. “It would have been safer to disable the cameras, but the killer didn’t do that.”

“The weird thing,” Connor said, “is that the Ferrari doesn’t show up on any of the cameras around the neighborhood that day. I’m thinking that whoever took it had an enclosed trailer of some kind, like they use for transporting race cars. They could have driven the Ferrari in and closed the back door.”

“Does a trailer show up on the security cams?” Sam asked.

“Haven’t had a chance to look yet,” Kit said, pushing her empty plate away. “It’s also possible that there were two different doers. One stole his car and the other grabbed and stabbed him.”

Connor shrugged. “For now, let’s assume there’s just one or if there were two, they were working together. He could have gone there to steal the car and was interrupted by Munro. He stabs him, grabs him, then…what? Takes him to the desert to slit his throat?”

“That seems extreme,” Sam said. “The wounds on Munro’s torso indicate either rage or some kind of torture. Or both. The missing digits on his hands and his one shoeless foot seem to point to the latter.”

Connor’s expression was disgruntled. “True. So he goes there planning to steal both Munro and the car? He had to have planned ahead for the car. That sounds more like a revenge scenario. He kills Munro and keeps his car, like you said, Sam, as a souvenir.”

Kit checked her phone. “The video from the guard shack and three of the neighbors’ camera feeds have been uploaded to the department server by the detectives who took the missing-person report.” Who’d been more than delighted to hand their files over to Kit and Connor. Nobody wanted this case. “Let’s establish the existence of the trailer before we go off in that direction.” She eyed the list of suspects they’d assembled so far. “If we know for sure that there was a trailer, access to one is something else to check each suspect for.”

“I can check the feed,” Sam offered. “I’ve got nothing else planned tonight and I took Siggy home on the way to bring you your dinner. That would leave you free to continue strategizing how you’ll talk to all these people.”

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