Page 15 of The Perfect Appearance

“Not if he was in disguise,” Jessie pointed out. “The description of the guy, and what I saw on that video, suggests to me that the hair might have been a wig. The tinted glasses are also suspicious. And the dramatic clothing choices also seem like an attempt to distract people from picking up on his true identity.”

Grover still seemed skeptical.

“Okay,” he said. “Assuming this manwaswearing a disguise, why risk going to Britton’s office to kill her, especially when she might see through the ruse. Why not just try to take her out when she was on the street, where there’s less chance of his identity being discovered.”

“Now that’s a great question,” Jessie noted. “If Hardigan really is a past patient, finding out why he went to her office could be the key to solving this. Maybe he felt that Britton failed him as a therapist in some way and decided to punish her in the place where she’d let him down. Maybe she’d stopped seeing him, and this was another way to get in for an appointment. The motives are hard to discern, and the best way for me to narrow them down is to see those records.”

“But all this is based on the assumption that the receptionist was just wrong about it being a new patient,” Grover reminded her. “Isn’t that a big leap?”

Jessie thought about that for a moment.

“You’re right,” she said. “It is. That’s why I’m going to call her.”

Grover looked aghast.

"Hold on," he cautioned. "I thought this was just supposed to be a document review. Wouldn’t calling a witness be inserting yourself into the case in an inappropriate way?”

Jessie smiled at him.

“Grover, I didn’t know that as a British personal security officer, you were such a stickler for LAPD rules and regulations. Come on, it’s just a phone call. Not a big deal. One might start to wonder if all this policy fastidiousness on your part is an indication that you’re in cahoots with my husband.”

“Speaking of Captain Hernandez,” he replied, pointedly not taking the bait, “How will he feel about you overstepping your bounds in this manner?”

“I can assure you that by now, he’s very used to it,” Jessie said. “And you should worry less about Ryan. Remember, I’m the one who’s paying your bills.”

It was true. Mostly because of a series of personal misfortunes, including the deaths of her adoptive parents and her professional mentor, as well as her divorce from her rich but psychotically vengeful (now-dead) ex-husband, Jessie was independently wealthy. It was that wealth that allowed her to hire three personal bodyguards for an indeterminate period of time.

“When you put it like that, do what you want, Boss," Grover said archly.

Jessie picked up the phone to do exactly that.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Who are you again?” Cara Boynton asked.

Jessie tried to project a casually dismissive bureaucratic air as she answered for a second time.

“I’m with LAPD,” she replied, not technically lying as she looked at the interview details in front of her, “and I’m just following up on the questions that Detectives Wagner and Ortega asked you at the scene on Friday and in their follow-up interview the next day.”

“I thought they said that they had everything they needed from me,” Boynton protested. “I really don’t want to relive that whole experience again.”

“Understood,” Jessie told her, pressing ahead. “I’m not interested in any of the graphic details. My job is simply to reconfirm relevant particulars. You want to be of assistance in finding Ms. Britton’s killer, don’t you?”

“Of course,” the woman replied quickly.

“Good, then here is my primary inquiry: how can you be certain that Tyler Hardigan was a first-time patient?”

Boynton didn’t respond at first, apparently surprised by the question. Grover, listening in on speakerphone, shifted nervously in his seat, apparently now invested in the outcome of the conversation.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she finally answered. “He said he was a new patient. In fact, that’s why Dr. Britton saw him, as part of her policy, to see one new patient every month. I understand that the detectives now say he was using a fake name, but he still walked into the doctor’s office, and she didn’t suddenly object or say anything about knowing him.”

“But you saw him,” Jessie countered, “as did I on the building’s surveillance video. Did that hair look real to you? Were those tinted glasses necessary indoors? Isn’t it possible that he was disguising himself so that Dr. Britton wouldn’t recognize him as a past patient?”

After an extremely long pause, Boynton replied.

“I didn’t think so,” she said. “But now that you say that, I don’t really know. I wasn’t looking at him that closely, other than to notice that his outfit was kind of wild. But Dr. Britton gets all kinds, you know.”

“Let me ask you this,” Jessie went on, “would Dr. Britton’s patient records indicate why she might have stopped seeing certain patients?”

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