Page 55 of The Perfect Appearance

Jessie hoped she was right.

***

“I’m still waiting, Jamil,” Jessie said impatiently.

She was sitting in the passenger seat as Grover drove them to HSS. Jamil and Beth were on speaker, but neither had been saying much, at least until now.

"Jessie, we only got the data ten minutes ago," Beth reprimanded. "Give us a moment. You're almost as bad as your husband."

“Sorry,” Jessie replied, not sure what demands Ryan had made but deciding not to pursue the issue.

Beth was right. To expect them to process all the patient file information they'd just received was unrealistic. Frankly, she was still surprised they had access to it at all. When she'd called Detective Ortega—she figured he'd be more receptive than Wagner—and asked for a list of each psychiatrist's patients in couples' therapy going back over the last decade, she thought he'd balk, but he hadn't, instead asking only one question.

“Can you tell me what it’s for?”

“I’d like to hold off to see if it amounts to anything,” she told him. “If it does, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, I don’t want to waste your valuable time.”

He sent the details over, which the HSS research team had been reviewing ever since. At this rate, Jessie worried that she and Grover would reach the station before anything popped.

“Hold on a second,” Beth said excitedly. “I think I found something.”

“What?” Jessie said at the same time as Grover and Jamil.

“I recognize this name,” she said, obviously pointing something out to Jamil that they couldn’t see. “Why is it so familiar?”

“What’s the name?” Jessie asked.

“Connie Bates,” Beth said. “It’s listed among Isabel Shea’s patients.”

The name meant nothing to Jessie, but it clearly did to Grover, whose whole face lit up.

“I know why,” he said. “I was watching online video clips of Gemma Britton on various shows last night. I remember her saying that she sometimes used the name Connie Bates to make dinner reservations, so the restaurant staff wouldn’t know ahead of time that someone famous was coming in and tip off the paparazzi. What if she used the same pseudonym to make appointments for sessions with Dr. Shea?”

Jessie could hear Jamil’s fingertips flying across the keyboard. When he stopped, she knew he’d uncovered something too.

“I find multiple couples’ therapy sessions for Connie and Carl Bates,” he said. “According to the financial data we have, it looks like the appointment dates correspond to payments made to Dr. Shea, sometimes by Gemma Britton, other times by Cameron Britton, all from a shared account. It appears that their sessions ended six months ago.”

"That makes sense," Beth added, "considering that Gemma filed for divorce just days after their final session."

Jessie could feel the anticipation bubbling up inside her.

“It sounds like Cameron might have had cause to resent both his ex-wife and his therapist,” she noted.

“But I thought the detectives cleared him,” Grover said. “Didn’t he have an iron-clad alibi?”

“He did,” Jessie confirmed. “But that doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a murder-for-hire. I don’t think they pursued it because it seemed like such a long shot. But now it’s much less so. We need to do a deeper dive.”

“For that, I’ll need access to his financials,” Jamil said.

“I’ll get them for you,” Jessie said. “With this lead in hand, Detectives Wagner and Ortega should be able to get a court order to access that info and I suspect they’ll be more than happy to let us take a look. I’m about to call them, but before I do, can you send me Cameron Britton’s address?”

“Why do we need that?” Grover asked cautiously.

“Because when the detectives show up to question him, we’ll be there to help.”

“You really think they’re going to let you horn in on their investigation,” he asked, his expression skeptical.

“If they want the information we have, you better believe they will.”

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