Page 18 of The Perfect Prey

When he didn’t elaborate, Jessie pressed him.

“Who placed the order and what was it for?”she asked.

“I’d rather not say.”

“You don’t get to ‘rather not say,’” Susannah said sharply.

The man, despite her warning, still looked torn.

“Please understand, those masks together were worth nearly $20,000.The entire order they were a part of, which included eight other masks, was worth over $215,000.I’m reluctant to alienate such a lucrative client by sending the police to harass them.”

Jessie felt Susannah stiffen next to her and jumped in before her partner blew up entirely.

“Mr.DuBois,” she said, keeping her tone aggressively polite, “did our researcher tell you what this was all about?”

She knew the answer to that question but wanted to lead the man down her preferred path slowly.

“No,” he said, “she was unwilling to provide details.”

“There was a good reason for that,” Jessie said, “But I’m going to tell you now.Your masks were found on the faces of two dead bodies earlier today.”

He gasped.She pressed ahead, ignoring it.

“So you can see why we’re interested,” she said.“We deal with lots of dead bodies in our job, but very few of them are wearing expensive masquerade ball masks.Now, that could just be a coincidence, but I kind of doubt it.So we’re going to pursue this issue.Now, you can continue to be difficult, in which case we’ll have to get a court order to check your sales records.That may require us to shut down your shop for a while.And in the end, we’ll get the information we need and end up speaking to your client anyway.Or you can cooperate, avoid putting me and my partner in a worse mood than we are already, and perhaps we’ll take your help into account when we speak to them.With that in mind, would you care to share the identity of the client who ordered those masks?”

DuBois didn’t think about it for long.He grabbed a business card from his desk and scribbled on it.

“Her name is Valentina Russo,” he said, almost mournfully, as she handed over the card.“She’s an event planner for a company called Arresting Affairs.I don’t know what events the masks are for.I asked once and she wasn’t forthcoming, so I decided not to pursue it again.I was just happy for the business.”

“Does she purchase masks regularly?”Susannah asked, taking the card.

“This is her third order in the last eighteen months,” he said.“The previous one was for a dozen masks, but the first one was much larger, for twenty-five.As they’re all hand-crafted by artists, mostly in Europe, it took some time to secure them all.”

“And she never said a word about why she purchased almost fifty super-expensive masks?”Susannah reconfirmed.

“Not once,” DuBois said.“I found that quite notable.”

“How did she pay for them?”Jessie wondered, though she had an idea.

“Always with cash,” he answered.“She arrived in a big SUV with two armed security guards.One placed the masks in a large travel trunk and then in their vehicle while the other kept watch.It was more than a little intimidating.”

“Thank you, Mr.DuBois,” Jessie said.“We’ll do our best not to upend your relationship with your client as long as they’re above board as well.Let me ask you this though, if you had to guess what these cash-bought, hand-made, jewelry-encrusted masks were for, what you say?”

“If it’s alright with you,” he said, looking rattled by the question.“I’d just a soon not guess.”

Jessie understood his reticence.His business was caught up in a murder investigation, and one of his clients seemed pretty sketchy.He might not be willing to venture a guess, but Jessie had a few ideas.And she was anxious to pay Valentina Russo a visit to get some answer

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Kat pretended like this was just a lazy Sunday evening.

As she sat on the couch at Jessie and Ryan’s place, she sipped the hot chocolate that Hannah had made for her and made no mention of how she’d spent two hours this afternoon casing the courthouse where Ash Pierce would be appearing for a hearing tomorrow.

They’d spent most of the time she’d been here discussing Ryan’s hope to return to work soon, though the expression on Hannah’s face suggested she thought it might take longer than he did.

“Enough about me,” Ryan finally said.“How are you doing in the seventy-two hours since I last saw you?”

“Oh, not much different,” Kat said, deflecting as she turned her attention to Hannah.“But I’m bored with myself.I want to hear how our campus sleuth is doing these days.”

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