“Unless she’s sittin’ on the cash or she blew it as cash, she never got it,” Mick told her, “least, not in a way that leaves a trail.”
Kami shook her head, visibly stunned at this news then she asked, “What about her bills?”
“Ain’t my place to tell you but I’m doin’ it all the same,” Mick said to Kami. “Shauna’s fully current on all her bills, never been in arrears. Far’s we can tell, for at least seven months, Harry’s been payin’ ‘em.”
“Holy crap,” Linda snapped on a near shout.
“He’s also been payin’ her doctor bills,” Mick went on.
She had Curt giving her money and Harry paying her bills. She was being kept by two men. Now she had none, except, perhaps, this Robert character.
I looked at Max and resisted the urge to run to him, tackle him to the ground and sit on him. He looked ready to explode.
“It’s worse,” Mick announced and the room, already tense, became suffocating.
“What?” Kami whispered.
“Not too long ago, Shauna sold her house. She closed about a month ago, paid rent to the new owners to stick around.”
“I don’t believe it,” Kami was still whispering.
“She’s closed her accounts,” Mick finished. “Closed ‘em yesterday. She’s also put orders in to shut down gas, water, electricity, phone and cable, startin’ first of May.”
Kami wasn’t letting this information sink in. “But, if she sold her house, she’d have hundreds of thousands of dollars. She owned it outright. Why would she ask me for money?”
“Maybe because she hired a contract killer?” Linda screeched and I changed my mind and decided I should probably tackle Linda first before she continued, “With my daughter’s money!”
“That’s… that’s crazy, Mom!” Kami shot back, deep in the pit of denial. “She’d never hurt Curt. He told her he loved her, he wanted to marry her, he was gonna leave Bitsy for her.”
“Yeah, she told you that like she told you I took her ring shoppin’,” Max clipped.
“But –” Kami said.
“I never took her ring shoppin’, Kami,” Max went on.
“But –” Kami repeated.
“Never fuckin’ entered my mind,” Max carried on.
“She said –”
“She lied, Kams, Jesus!” Max exploded. “We weren’t even exclusive, I made it clear she could go her own way when I was gone and I’d go my own. I had a woman on the job I was on and she knew it.”
My eyes got wide and my body grew still. That was news. Linda’s gaze slid to me and I tried to act casual but I found it extremely difficult.
Kami was shaking her head and Mick entered the conversation. “Sorry, Kami, but thought you should know.”
Kami just tipped her head back to stare at him and my heart went out to her. She looked beaten down by the betrayal. She might act like a bitch a lot of the time but, bottom line, she was a good friend.
Mick went on, “You’re free to go but I might need to ask you more questions so I want you to stick close to town.”
“Why?” Linda was back to snapping at Mick.
“Because we need to talk to this Robert Winston guy and we need to ask Shauna a few questions and we can’t find her. And, seein’ as this has all come to light, we might have a few more things to get clear with Kami,” Mick answered.
“What things?” I asked.
“Don’t know yet, just don’t want her leavin’ town,” Mick told me.
“You can see that Kami had nothing to do with this, her statement checks out,” I said to Mick.
“Yeah, but –”
“Did you find anything to place her at the construction site? Dirt on her shoes? Rocks?” I pushed.
“No, but –”
“Did you find roofies in her house?”
“No –”
“Do you have any known dealers who have admitted to supplying roofies to Kami?”
“Nina –”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“You have her gun in your possession and it hasn’t been loaded or fired; a warrant to search her house which has pulled up nothing or she wouldn’t be free to go; a cancelled check that proves what Kami told you she’d done with that money true, whether it was to a known acquaintance of Shauna’s or Shauna, that doesn’t change the fact the money was meant for Shauna. You have no physical evidence that places Kami at the construction site and no other evidence whatsoever to link Kami to either murder. All you have, as far as I can see, is the fact that Kami Maxwell was asleep between one and four the morning of the murders which, by the way, so was the vast majority of the residents of Gnaw Bone and the entire Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones.”