Page 39 of The Girl He Crowned

“Erratic in whatway?” Christopher asked.

“He would show up forwork late, and make mistakes,” Edward said. “He also got into arguments withseveral of the staff. Trying to steal with us was the last straw.”

“When you fired Saul,what did you think he wanted the files for?” Christopher asked. It was a goodquestion, and one that showed that his personal problems hadn’t distracted himfrom being able to do his job.

“Honestly, Ididn’t think about the details too much at the time,” Edward said, “but we dohave rivals. There are many larger businesses that would love to clone one ofour custom designs. A part of me suspected that he might have been preparing togo to one of them, or perhaps to set up in business for himself.”

Those werereasonable, normal fears, but it seemed likely now that this ‘Saul’ had donefar more than that.

“The three womenwho have been killed all had your clocks in their houses,” Paige said. “Wethink it’s possible that the list Saul took was used as a way of targetingpotential victims.”

“You think thatbeing fired from here pushed him over the edge?” Edward asked.

Paige hadn’tthought it through fully, because she’d only just learned of the existence ofthis employee who had taken the client list. The potential connection to thekillings had been obvious, but she hadn’t really stopped to think about hispotential motives.

Was it plausiblethat an employee might react to being fired by going on a killing spreeinvolving his former employer’s clients? It didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility.Maybe he’d left with the client list in the hope of setting up a business forhimself, and then lashed out at the clients when they’d refused his attempts toget their business? Without evidence, it was no more than a guess, but perhapsit was a version of what might have happened.

“We need to knowthe details of the employee you fired,” Paige said, “and we also need to seethe client list that he stole.”

“The employee isSaul Bennett,” Edward said. “I believe I have an address for him somewhere.I’ll print you his employee file. I’m more reluctant to just hand over ourclient information, though, especially after it has already been copied once.”

“Mr. Hales,”Christopher said. “Bennett could be working his way down that list, killing everyoneon it one by one.”

“I…” Edwardhesitated for a moment or two, but then nodded. “All right. I suppose thesafety of our clients must come ahead of any commercial considerations. Just,please keep the information confidential.”

“We’ll doeverything we can,” Paige assured him.

He sighed andthen, rather than going one of the ledgers around the walls, went to thecomputer that sat on the desk.

“People expect amore old-fashioned way of working from us,” he said. “But this is simply moreefficient and easier to work with.”

He pulled up afile onto the screen, each with sub-files. Edward clicked on the one for DebbieDanton, and her details came up on the screen, along with an intricate seriesof design drawings that sat on the page, sketching out exactly how they wouldbuild the clock the client required.

“Our system letsus keep track of every clock we build or which comes in for repairs,” Edwardsaid. “The clients seem to like the touch of theater it provides, and, well, apart of me always wanted to be an artist, until the needs of the familybusiness called.”

The drawings weredefinitely impressive, each one capturing the clocks in minute detail. For now,though, Paige’s eyes were on the names and addresses of the clients. She sawDebbie Danton’s name there, as well as Siobhan Maraty’s, and Melody Smythe’s.She was convinced now that this was how the killer was finding his victims.

She downloaded acopy of the files to her phone, hoping that it would be enough to get them tothe killer.

“Thank you, Mr.Hales,” she said, when she was done. “This should help us a great deal.”

At least, shehoped that it would. To find out for sure, though, they needed to go visit SaulBennett.

*

Paige had longsince stopped being surprised by the wealth in the town of Eddis. Even so, asshe and Christopher pulled up outside Saul Bennett’s address, she had to admitthat it seemed strange to her that a clockmaker would live in a place likethis.

It was a large,expensive townhouse on an obviously affluent street, with a collection ofexpensive cars parked outside that Paige had come to associate with the town.

Paige was alsolooking up Saul Bennett on the FBI’s systems. It didn’t take long to find thathe had a couple of arrests for assault, neither of which had gone much further.One caught Paige’s eye: He’d been arrested after trying to strangle his thengirlfriend in a restaurant.

“How do you wantto play this?” Christopher asked. He looked tense, like he was expecting thisto turn into a tactical situation at any minute.

“We can do thisquietly,” Paige said. “We’ll walk up and knock. If he runs, we’ll deal with it,but so far, he has no reason to think that we suspect him of being a killer.”

The last thing shewanted to do was cause chaos on the streets of Eddis. Both Sheriff May andAgent Sauer had made it clear that it was exactly the kind of thing they wantedto avoid.

With Christopherby her side, Paige walked up the steps to the townhouse and rang the bell, thenwaited.

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