Recollection Rick
Chapter 11
Rick points to an image on the screen of his laptop. "Do you think this might be our woman?"
Kate reads the attached blurb. "'Small but mighty. Five-foot-two Clea Blechman broke the Indiana women's record for the clean and jerk.' The description fits. And I can see why she might want to dump a name like Blechman. This article is ten years old. Can you find something more recent?"
Rick scans through his hits. "Here, this is five years ago. She must have been keeping Blechman as her competitive name. She came in third in her division in the snatch. I'm not even going to touch that. I'll print out the picture and send it to your phone. Michael Fisher and the rest of the staff at Peaceful End can have a look at it. She can't have changed that much."
"Great. Anything else we can use?" Kate queries.
"Not that I can see. It looks like Clea, or whatever we want to call her, reached the apex of her competitive career five years ago. And she would have needed another gig anyway. No one still that low on the ladder is going to get calls for endorsements."
"She might have gone for being a personal trainer," Kate speculates. "They don't make bad money, but most of them aren't getting rich either. I told you about the one I dated. You based a character on him. However, for the record, we didn't sleep together."
"Uh-hm. You told me that before," Rick acknowledges. "But the character wouldn't have been much of a threat to Rook if he and Nikki just shook hands. Anyway, suppose Clea was the woman who played Berringer's former employer. In that case, she might have turned to grift to finance her competitions and/or her lifestyle. Then the question would be, what did Roger do to make her mad enough to kill him?"
"From what we've heard of him so far, the man was a pathological liar. I mean faking getting a car serviced – what kind of person does that? Why even bother?"
"Maybe he had somewhere else to go," Rick suggests. "Perhaps he was running another con, one on which he was supposed to share the profits with Clea."
"And he didn't," Kate concludes.
"He didn't," Rick agrees.
"I think that's about all we can do on the case for now," Kate declares. "Did you want to get some writing or studying in? Maybe pump Alexis about Dana?"
"I'm at a decent stopping point in my writing, and I've had about as much cramming for Recollection as I can take right now. But I've figured out a more subtle way of keeping tabs on the Alexis-Dana connection. I have an in with a group running one of those mystery evening things because I helped write some of the clues. I gave Alexis a couple of free tickets. She and Dana will expect to have eyes on them at an affair like that but won't know that the owner of one set of eyes will be reporting back to me."
"Whether you have an in or not, why would anyone spy on your daughter for you?" Kate demands.
"Because he has a daughter of his own, who comes to my book signing events. I promised to return the favor."
"Babe, is there a secret fraternal order of fathers devoted to invading the privacy of their daughters?"
Rick makes a zipping motion across his lips. "I'll never tell."
Michael Fisher nods and passes Kate's cell around the room to Peaceful End staff. A couple of them nod as well. Michael returns Kate's phone. "That's the woman who called herself Barbara Mason."
"Good. Look, whatever results our lab gets from her card could be vital evidence in Roger Berringer's murder. So, I'll need fingerprints and D.N.A. from anyone who handled it, for their exclusion as suspects," Kate explains.
"That would only be Ceil and me," Peter realizes. "No problem for me."
"You can have my fingerprints," Ceil offers, "but my D.N.A. is already on file. I did one of those ancestor things."
"If need be, our people would need your permission to access that information. But it may not be necessary. Peter, I just need to swab your cheek," Kate holds up her phone again. "And I have an app that can take both your prints right now."
"Nothing from the lab yet?" Rick asks when Kate makes it home for lunch.
"No, after the extra sample I brought in, it will probably be at least tomorrow before I hear anything. I worked my theoretical official shift, so unless something else comes up, I should be here for the day."
"A situation worthy of celebration," Rick remarks. "I have rib eyes in the freezer that I can throw on the grill."
"Sounds great, but I had something in mind besides food. How long does Lily usually nap after her midafternoon feeding?"
"Two hours if I'm lucky."
"Two hours would be terrific for a nap of our own."
"Yes," Rick agrees, "Yes, it would."
Rick stirs at the sound of beeps and whirs coming through the baby monitor. "Sounds like she's up, but she'll be playing with that thing for a while before she decides she's lonely. That will give us time to wash up and get some clothes on."
Kate snuggles deeper into his arms. "I don't want to move."
"Me either," Rick agrees, "but we face the perils of parenthood. The afternoon delight, however, was a sweet surprise. I wonder if there's a way to get Osnitz to drag his feet on a regular basis?"
"If there were, it would break your daughter's heart – Alexis, not Lily."
"You're right. Osnitz and Professor Gilly are her idols right now."
"She still is pretty fond of her daddy. So am I."
Rick presses a kiss to Kate's neck before getting up. "In that case, you want to take the next diaper change?"
Kate snorts. "Babe, don't push it."
"I wanted you to come in for the results instead of just sending you an email because I believe that you'll find them unexpected," Osnitz explains when Kate meets him at the C.S.U. lab.
"What is so unexpected?" Kate inquires.
"We excluded the D.N.A. and prints from the staff who admitted to touching the card. And we found two more samples. One belonged to a woman. Her phenotype shows her at between five feet and five-foot-three, with dark hair and dark eyes."
"Right, that's our suspect, Clea Blechman, aka Barbara Mason, Sandra Bucholzer, et al."
"That D.N.A. also matched an unknown sample Perlmutter recovered from Roger Berringer's body," Osnitz adds.
"Which should make her the killer. So what's the other sample?"
"It also matches one found on the body, and it's a sibling match to Michael Fisher, a brother."
"That would be Peter Fisher," Kate realizes. "Are you telling me that Clea Blechman and Peter Fisher could both have killed Roger Berringer?"
"I'm not telling you anything except what we found, Detective," Osnitz responds. "It's up to you to figure out who committed the murder."
Kate paces the floor of the loft. "I don't get it, Babe. It would make sense for either Clea or Peter to kill Roger Berringer, but which one did it? The D.A. can't charge one of them without a defense lawyer using the other one to raise reasonable doubt."
Rick blocks Kate's path and wraps his arms around her. "Unless they pulled a scaled-down version of 'Murder on the Orient Express.'"
"I'm not channeling Hercule Poirot, Babe. What are you talking about?"
"I mean, Kate, that Peter Fisher had every reason to want to send Roger Berringer to hell, and apparently, Clea wasn't fond of Roger either. They could have killed him together."