Cold Case Heat by Mary P. Burns

Author:Mary P. Burns [Burns, Mary P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2023-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

The interview with Billy Highsmith on Wednesday morning had gone about as well as Gale and Tommy thought it would, which is to say it garnered as little information as the interview with Mike Avery the previous afternoon. They’d sat in Billy’s big corner office at the international bank headquarters where he worked downtown and looked at Lady Liberty through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him while he intoned “I honestly don’t remember” and “I couldn’t say” to most of their questions, just as Mike had while they’d sat in the beautifully appointed office of his funeral home. Would Billy have stonewalled them anyway, Gale wondered, or had Syd influenced the outcome with her pointed questions and deliberate information last night? Or, had Mike contacted him?

“He’s lying,” Gale said, once they were out on the street. “He might’ve divorced himself from those lost boys back then, but somehow that separation paid dividends to Ned that we don’t even know about. Otherwise, why would he let Billy go?”

“We got nothin’ to come at him with, Gale. Same as Mike yesterday. Billy at least admitted to the drugs and prostitution, so now we’re certain that’s what the ledger was about. But there’s no statute, he was eighteen, a hayseed from upstate, and he cleaned up his life.”

“Something’s wrong with this picture. All my instincts tell me so.”

“Mine don’t. He never fled. And that kind of chutzpah would take big brass ones. What else can we look for with him?”

They watched the early lunchtime foot traffic emerge from buildings all around them.

“Phone records. Bank records. He owns a car. Maybe since Syd’s visit to Ned, he’s driven places he ordinarily wouldn’t go. Bridge and tunnel receipts or an EZ Pass record might tell us something.”

“Okay, I can dig. But I think we’re pissin’ into the ocean here.”

“Maybe Billy wasn’t involved in the embezzlement. But he knows something about the murder, Tommy—he makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

Hands in his jacket pockets, Tommy shrugged. “All right, I’ll put in for those. And there’s more evidence to dig through in those boxes.”

“We’ve been looking at a one-thread, one-person scenario. But this case is about more than one thing.”

“Our two favorite demons. Jealousy and money.”

“But whose jealousy and whose money?”

“I don’t follow.” Tommy’s brow furrowed.

“I don’t think they’re linked. Why would Ned kill the golden goose?”

“Only way he could silence Wyatt. By my research, Ned had made up his losses and was even ahead. I think he wanted more—the man had a very expensive lifestyle. And I think he thought he was gonna buy boys until the day he died. If Syd’s right, and Wyatt was being coerced, maybe there was a fight there.”

“So, money, not jealousy.”

“You’re gonna owe me ten big ones.”

“But Lucas intimated they were sleeping together. All three of them. I wonder if Ned was the prize they both wanted.” Gale slid her hands into her pockets and jingled the change there.

“That doesn’t work for me because we

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