Page 43 of The Perfect Prey

She looked man’s ID, which was sitting on the conference room table, then glanced over at Susannah.

“You want to start, or shall I?”

“Considering that I already gotwaymore up close and personal with him than I wanted, why don’t you have a go?”

“All right,” Jessie said, turning her attention to the man in front of her, “Gregory Lambert, is it?”

“Yes.Please, can I talk?”he pleaded.“If you would all just let me explain, then we can move beyond all this.”

“Go ahead,” Jessie said.She had her fair share of questions but anytime a person of interest was willing to talk of their own volition and without a lawyer present after having been read their rights, she was going to let it happen.

“I’m sorry that I ran out of the party like that, but I didn’t know you were with the police,” he said.“I thought that maybe you were private investigators hired by my wife.”

“Why would your wife hire investigators?”Jessie prodded.

“It’s possible that she got suspicious that I was having an affair or something,” he answered, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

“It sounds like she’d be right,” Jessie noted.“Do you honestly expect us to believe that the only reason you ran out of that party was because your wife might catch you cheating?”

“I mean, kind of, yes,” he said.“That place would be hard to explain to her, you know.It’s not regular run-of-the-mill cheating.It’s an underground sex club.And even though I prefer to watch rather than participate, she’d probably have a hard time with it.”

“I would imagine so,” Jessie agreed.

Lambert put his head in his hands for a moment before looking back up at her.

“Look, can I be straight with you?”

“That’s kind of the whole point of this endeavor, Mr.Lambert,” Jessie said coldly.

“Okay, sure,” he said.“Here’s the thing.I’m on the executive board at my church.I coach a little league team.I guess I just saw my life flash before my eyes, and I got scared that this would come out and ruin everything.”

“How much do you pay for your membership in this club, Mr.Lambert,” she wanted to know.

“$11,000 a month,” he said.

“What do you do that you can afford to shell out that kind of money on a regular basis?”

“I work for a hedge fund,” he said, “and it’s run by a man who is also a board member at my church.So you can see how messed up it would be if this came out.”

“Were you at the party on Saturday night?”Jessie asked.

“No,” he answered quickly.“I was at a fundraiser for the church.Why?”

“And after the fundraiser?”she pressed, ignoring his question.

“We went home because the babysitter could only stay until eleven.I was in bed asleep by midnight.Why are you asking me where I was like I need an alibi for something?”

“Because you might,” Susannah snapped.“Stop asking questions and answer ours, or we’ll call your wife and ask her to pick you up.Is that what you’d like?”

“No,” he said, immediately chastened.“What else do you want to know?”

“Where were you last night?”Jessie asked.

“I was at my office,” he said.“Because of the delayed date for tax filing—were you aware of that?”

“Keep going,” Jessie said, irked.This whole tax thing was really doing some heavy lifting for the alibis of the suspects in this case.

“Okay, well, we always have last-minute issues with clients about how to best appropriate their investments for tax purposes.We’re basically on call until the filing deadline.So I was there until about 1 A.M.”

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