Page 37 of Justice for Francesca

“Isn’t this a bit of a stretch?” Calder asked. “I mean, even if she gained Tilly’s five percent, it’s not adequate to give her enough to outvote anyone other than the everyday staff themselves.”

Francesca sighed, throwing the marker in the tray. “No, it isn’t. But it’s suggestive, especially since it’s the one staff member with the highest individual percentage, tiny though it might be.”

“I wonder if anything was coming up for a vote that might have been of concern to her,” Cruz wondered.

“Something with the new club?” Calder offered.

“No, she’d have no say in that. According to Tripoli, each club runs as a separate entity per ownership for the members. Maybe something with Elysium? He suggested that she got bored easily with her projects, and he was hoping to buy her shares from her. What if, with the breakup, he was no longer willing to run the risk of mafia connections? Maybe he was going to try to force her out?”

“Or maybe even sell out the club.”

Cruz narrowed his eyes at her. “You know something we don’t know?”

Francesca turned her back to the men and considered the two columns again. “Nothing specific. Just a conversation I had with him where he mentioned that he wasn’t particularly worried about the mafia getting their hands on the club because if they did, he could just sell the club and buy a new one.”

“Maybe Mila was worried that the staff would swing a vote to sell out? She could have been working the family base and trying to keep a toehold in the club. Maybe she wasn’t as ‘unaffiliated’ as he thought.”

“Possible. Doesn’t feel right either, though, does it?”

“You think he’s saying one thing but feeling something else?” Calder asked.

She turned back to the table. “No. Not really. If there’s one thing I know about the man, he never lies. Just throwing it out there as an option. He did say that the other shareholders are more concerned about it than he is, so I don’t think it would take much to convince the staff to sell out. They’d make money out of the deal, and he’d just take whatever employees with him who wanted to go. He’s a bit of a Daddy Dom in terms of business.”

Calder and Cruz exchanged glances. “Excuse me?” Calder queried.

“He has a caregiver mentality, but at an alpha level. All of my interviews point to him as a father figure to his staff, and I’m guessing Cruz’s interviews this afternoon will say the same thing.”

Cruz picked up a paperclip and unfolded it into a somewhat straight piece of metal. “Calder, what did you find on the women?”

“Preliminary findings. There were signs of anaphylaxis with Mila’s lips and swelling of the tongue and the throat. Cause of death, technically, was an overdose. Toxicology reports a high level of fentanyl, hydrocodone, benzodiazepines, and alcohol in her system. She had a prescription for hydrocodone due to a back injury she suffered while water-skiing three months ago. The doctor assured me that she was weaning off it—hadn’t refilled in over thirty days—and there’s no record of her doctor-shopping. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t getting it illegally somewhere, but there wasn’t enough of it in her system to suggest that, and no prescriptions or stray pills were lying about the apartment. Alcohol, she’d probably had a few drinks. Not enough to be slovenly drunk, but mixed with those three drugs, she would likely have been incapable of fighting off anyone with intent. The highest content in her system was fentanyl, and it would seem logical that the allergy stemmed from that since there was no record of a reaction to the hydrocodone and nohistory of alcoholism or other drugs. Being allergic to the drug is not impossible but uncommon.”

“Consistent user of fentanyl?”

“I need another day or two for those numbers to come back, but to be honest, I doubt it. People don’t start with fentanyl and then supplement with hydrocodone. If she had a dependence on hydrocodone already and had been using long-term, maybe.” Calder continued through the highlights of his report. “There was trauma to the body from multiple lacerations and stab wounds. You both, obviously, didn’t need me to tell you that. One massive puncture wound delivered to the heart, and due to the lack of blood, relatively speaking, done postmortem.”

Francesca spoke up. “Infliction of those types of wounds suggests deep-seated anger. The killer wanted her to suffer. Possibly she hurt him, and he wanted to hurt her in return. Any leads on a boyfriend who might be holding a grudge?”

“Boyfriend prior to your Tripoli?—”

“He’s not ‘my Tripoli,’” Francesca growled.

“—was one Angel Flores. Very brief, and it ended when he went back on the rodeo circuit. Then she dated Evans. Then…”

Cruz flashed another look at Calder, who shrugged his shoulders and went back to putting his report on Mila back together neatly in the folder in front of him.

“Then…?” Francesca prompted.

“Then from March twenty-sixth, or thereabouts, she was seeing Michael Murphy.”

Francesca felt herself deflate. “That’s why Ortiz wanted you to interview him again. Because he just jumped to the top of the suspect list.”

“Yes. According to Michael, it was serious, but they separated last month during a fight. They were allegedly trying to work things out, but there’s no verification of any of that information because they didn’t tell anyone they were seeing each other inthe first place. He says they didn’t make it public because (a) they weren’t sure how Evans would take it, and (b) they didn’t want your family getting wind of it and trying to use it against Michael to try and pull him back into the nest. In fact, those were the reasons they fought in the first place. She didn’t think Evans would give a damn, and she wanted to out the relationship so that she could hang out at Elysium again. He didn’t want the relationship to be public because of your family. He didn’t tell us about the relationship in our initial interview, and we only discovered it because, in our search of Mila’s house, we found some of his belongings in her bedroom closet, so the chief wanted a formal interview here. He claims he didn’t say anything because we didn’t ask.”

“But he lied when he said he hadn’t seen her since the grand opening,” Francesca said.

“No. The question I technically asked him was, had he seen herat the club that night. Looking back, he paused slightly before answering and replied he hadn’t seen her at the club since the grand opening, which, technically, could have been true.”

“He had to have known that was a loophole answer,” she accused.

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