Page 429 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“May I have a word, sir?” Her voice was tight, but she was as polite as she could be.

He brought his drink but shooed away his wife. “Through there.”

The mayor’s two security guards followed at a distance as he headed first into a side hallway lined with thick carpet, crown molding on the walls framed with gold color. They passed a table with carved legs, a massive vase out of which spilled a profusion of flowers that exploded like fireworks from the mouth of the china.

The mayor opened double doors on the right side of the hall and stepped into a study lined with bookshelves.

No one sat in the high-backed velvet chairs.

“Care to tell me why you’re interrupting my evening?” Mayor Simeon Olivette lifted his glass for a sip.

“I’ll make this quick, sir.” Addie was aware of the police chief and McCauley behind her but faced the mayor on her own on this one.

Since her question was for all of them, she turned and included the two city cops with the mayor. “I need to know who requested from the FBI that an agent be sent here.”

“Me.” The mayor shrugged one shoulder.

“Did you ask for me specifically?”

He frowned. “We knew you worked for the FBI and as a profiler. Which is what we needed.”

She tried to figure out if he was referring to himself in the third person or if he meant himself and others. Maybe Police Chief Lachlan and Captain McCauley.

“We put the request through for help, and you showed up two weeks later.”

Addie frowned. It hadn’t been an emergency, necessarily. “That’s quick.” She glanced at McCauley. “Have you ever known bureaucracy to move that quickly?”

He frowned. “I’m sure we asked for an agent. I figured they’d send someone from Seattle. Maybe a task force. One person shows up, and it’s you? Didn’t make any sense to me.”

But he’d assumed Jacob killed Celia Jessop. Did that make sense to him, even though there was no evidence?

Addie frowned. “So you weren’t expecting me.” She glanced around. “But someone had to have mentioned my name. To get me pulled off the team I was on and ordered back here.”

At the time it seemed like she was being sent to Benson to get over her history and then get a promotion. Zimmerman had all but said as much when he told her she was being reassigned.

“We met about the need for outside help.” The mayor motioned to the two cops. “Talked about calling in the state police, or even a private investigator. We heard about this one who works all over—bringing down killers.”

“That’s just a rumor,” McCauley said.

“Fine,Iheard about her.” The mayor sipped his drink. “We also talked about using a private security team from here in Benson and letting them take a look at the case and see if they can solve it. A couple of them used to be cops, or feds, or something. But we don’t know them.”

“You know me.” Addie paused. “Was anyone else in these meetings, or just the three of you?” She glanced at Lachlan.

The chief of police frowned. “And Detective Maxwell, a couple of the times. He worked most of the cases.”

“Is he the one who connected them?”

Lachlan shook his head. “He figured there wasn’t much to it.”

Addie turned to McCauley. “Anything I should know from Austin’s phone?”

The captain frowned. “We’re looking for Hank.”

“McCauley.” He needed to stop giving her the runaround concerning the guy.

“Austin sent a series of texts to Hank.”

The mayor frowned. “What’s this about?”

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