This Secret Thing, стр. 21
Nico agreed, smiled, waited a moment. “Does Laura do any other sort of group activities?”
Dave Jones smacked his hand down on the kitchen table. Nico half expected him to holler Eureka! “I forgot. You said group activities, and it jogged my memory. Laura goes to these parties a lot. Sells kitchen gadgets and whatnots.” He gestured behind them, in the direction of the kitchen cabinets. “She’s got a shit ton of that crap from selling it.”
“So, she’s . . . successful at her business?”
Dave nodded. “I mean, I guess. I don’t really know, to be honest. It’s her mad money, she says. She needed a fund for the spa. Likes to get massages and facials and crap. I don’t know.”
“And does she have a favorite spa she goes to?” Nico asked, working hard to sound nonchalant, knowing what came next.
“Yeah. She pretty much goes to the same one all the time. Over on Crossroads Boulevard?”
Nico nodded encouragingly. Keep talking, he thought.
“She says you wouldn’t believe how often you have to go to keep it all up.” Dave Jones shook his head. “You couldn’t pay me to be a woman.”
“Me either,” Nico said. He did not say, In your wife’s case, it actually pays to be a woman. He cleared his throat, the universal signal that the conversation was about to change direction. “Actually, Mr. Jones, the spa your wife frequents has been linked to Norah Ramsey’s, um, business.” He sat, quiet for a moment, and watched Dave Jones’s face as he worked to remain impassive even as his eyes revealed the wheels turning inside his head.
“What’s that got to do with Laura?” the other man said. He didn’t bother to keep the defensiveness out of his voice.
“Well, that’s what we’ve brought her into the station to talk about. She’s with a female detective right now.”
“Laura’s . . . in custody?” The man looked like he was growing short of breath. “On what grounds?”
“I’m not at liberty to go into details about that, Mr. Jones. And she’s not in custody as of yet. We’re just . . . information-gathering at this point. But please know we don’t go around hauling housewives into interviews without grounds to do so.”
He wondered if the female officer he’d left Laura with would bear down on her the way he wanted her to. He wanted to use any means possible to get one of these women to crack. He needed that client list so he could find out more about what Matteo had been talking about the last day Nico saw him. On that client list was the name of the man Matteo had seen. If he had the list, he could start narrowing it down. And then he could find his brother.
He looked at Jones, who nodded his understanding, looking meek as he absorbed the gravity of what was happening. Nico continued, “I came here just to inform you of what was happening and thought maybe we could chat about any, um, questions or concerns you may have been having.”
“Questions or concerns about what?”
“Well, just maybe you’ve seen some things, heard some things, wondered about whether your wife has been, well, honest with you about her activities.”
Dave Jones didn’t hesitate. “Never. Not once. Laura is—well, she’s not the kind of person who would do what you’re insinuating. I can’t—” The man looked down at the floor, clasping the edge of the table like he was on a cliff and the table was a branch, the only thing between him and the abyss. Nico listened as he breathed in and out, in and out, loudly. He sounded like a bull about to charge.
Dave Jones looked up again. “I think you should leave.”
Nico nodded and stood. “Of course,” he said.
The other man rose as well. He did not extend his hand for Nico to shake, and Nico didn’t blame him. He felt for the guy. He turned as if to go. As much as this case was tied to his own heartbreak, he wasn’t going to allow it into this room at this moment. He had a job to do. He took a few steps toward the door, then stopped short, pretending he’d forgotten something. This was how he always did this part, using the element of surprise, borrowing a page from Columbo’s book. And it always worked, like it did for Columbo.
Nico might not’ve been smart enough to come up with this stuff on his own, but he was smart enough to borrow the things other smart people had come up with. His years in front of the TV as a kid had served him well. His dad had always liked watching Columbo reruns. He was glad his dad had passed away before Matteo’s disappearance. The worry would’ve killed him.
Nico dug in his interior coat pocket as he turned back to Dave Jones, who was watching him warily. “Almost forgot,” Nico said, making his voice sound apologetic.
He handed the man the search warrant he’d really come there to serve. He’d never expected the guy to give up his wife. After talking to him, Nico believed the poor schmuck truly didn’t know a thing. Of course Nico had to probe a bit, get a feel for the situation. And the guy had put his wife at the very spa where they suspected she was servicing men. So, there was that. Once Dave Jones accepted that his wife had been prostituting herself under his nose—and doing God knows what with the profits—he’d divorce her, and they could call him as a witness if it came to a trial.
Sometimes he hated how jaded his job had made him. But sometimes he appreciated