Page 44 of The Perfect Illusion

“Yes, please,” Brady requested.

He didn't explain why, but Jessie knew the reason. As Jamil had discovered while filling them in on the company on their drive over, and to his great frustration, Real World Communications had been re-named Elite Introductions three years ago. That's why he hadn't made the connection to the dating service as a possible line of inquiry. It turned out that the communications guru that Robert Hollinger listed as a business expense was actually his dating advisor.

He and Patricia met through Real World Communications, though they didn’t advertise that. Kai Cody and Rebecca Martinez met through Elite Introductions, which they also kept to themselves. It was only when Frank Walters revealed that he’d also met his wife, Carrie, through Elite Introductions, that the connection among all three became clear.

“All right,” Sterling said, standing up to return to the computer on her desk. “You’ll need to give me a minute. Now that Rachel has left for the day, I’m going to have to collate all this on my own.”

“While you do that,” Brady said nonchalantly, “maybe you can tell us where you were the last two nights?”

“Is this your way of asking for my alibi?” Sterling asked, arching her eyebrows.

“It is,” he said flatly.

"Okay," she said, punching up a screen that Jessie assumed had her calendar on it. "On Tuesday evening, I met with a potential client over drinks. The reservation was on the early side, 5:30, because he was going to some sporting event with friends after that. I can give you his name if you want, along with the restaurant, where I assume the staff can vouch for me. Last night, I was at home with my husband. He's a professor of art history, and we're going to Florence next week where he's giving a speech. He was practicing it for me."

As Jessie listened, she came to a disappointing realization. Upon first learning of Elite Introductions, she had suspected that someone upset about a failed match was the killer. But until now, she’d held out the possibility that Sterling might be responsible. While her alibis would have to be confirmed, the specificity of them, especially on Tuesday, at the very time that Patricia Hollinger was killed, seemed to eliminate her.

“What about this afternoon?” Brady asked out of a sense of obligation. “Where were you between 2 and 3 P.M.?”

"Right here at this desk," Sterling said. "As you might have heard, my assistant was gone for an endless doctor's appointment so I couldn't very well leave. Now, if you want me to compile a list of the young women who expressed frustration at not being selected, I'll need a minute to concentrate."

“Of course,” Brady said.

Jessie focused her attention on the clickety-clack of Sterling’s fingers on her keyboard. The noise sounded almost like someone knocking gently on the side of her brain, persistently trying to get in. It took her a moment to process that it wasn’t a person knocking, but an idea. A thought was trying to make itself known to her, but she had to open her mind to let it in. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate.

The soft mental knocking had started almost immediately after Sterling made her last comment about her assistant, Rachel, being at a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. That meant she would have been gone right in the window when Caroline Walters was killed.

Jessie’s mind filled with the image of Rachel. She recalled the pinched, slightly emaciated look of a woman who appeared intent on keeping up physically with the Joneses. She recalled the plastic surgery and the fancy clothes, both of which seemed pricey for a woman working as an assistant to a matchmaker. She also seemed a little older than expected for this kind of job, almost like someone who was starting over. Something about the disparate qualities of the woman didn’t quite fit.

Then she pictured how the woman had kept her hands balled up in fists and held open Victoria’s door with her left hand. It was almost as if she was trying to hide her right one and any possible damage it might have suffered, perhaps while holding a jagged chunk of sharp glass.

“What’s your assistant’s full name?” she asked suddenly.

“Rachel Thompson,” Sterling said, briefly looking up from her screen, “why?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jessie told her.

But the second the woman returned her attention to her monitor, Jessie began furiously texting Jamil.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“I have some names for you,” Victoria Sterling said two minutes later. “How do you want to do this?”

But Jessie was barely listening. Instead, she was reading the response that Jamil Winslow had just texted to both her and Brady. Sterling misinterpreted the lack of a response as an indication that she could proceed as she wanted.

"I have five young women who were vocally disappointed at being passed over," she said. "I'll share their names with you, but I have to say I'm skeptical of their involvement in this. I did detailed background checks on all of them before considering them as candidates. I even had a private investigator look into each of them. Not a single one had a criminal record, nor any mental health issues that we could find. I can give you all that information, but personally, I think it's a waste of time."

“I think you may be right,” Jessie agreed. “Tell me more about Rachel Thompson. How did you end up hiring her?”

Sterling looked perplexed but answered anyway.

“There’s not much to tell,” she said. “I put a posting on a couple of job boards. She applied. When I interviewed her, I liked that she was a little older than the other applicants. I was less concerned that she was just using the service as a way to find a man of her own. So I hired her.”

“When was that?” Jessie pressed.

“About three months ago,” she said. “Why are you suddenly asking about Rachel?”

Brady answered that question with one of his own.

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