A Beeline to Murder

“He left those details out. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s got a rap sheet with a lot of priors . . . assault, burglary, illegal drug possession, sexual assault. Now, with the probation violation and the attack on you, his future doesn’t look too bright. He’s got himself boxed into a corner.”


“Has he lawyered up yet?” Abby asked.

“No.”

Abby smiled at Philippe. “That’s a good thing, because Otto can ratchet up the pressure on him. I’m wondering if he had anything to do with Eva Lennahan’s murder.”

Otto looked at Abby with a poker-faced expression. “You know I can’t talk about an open investigation.” He rapped his fingers on the desk, as if thinking about something. Then, after a beat, he rose and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Bonheur. Would you give us a moment?”

“Mais oui,” Philippe replied, rising from his chair.

“I’ll be right out, Philippe,” Abby said.

Philippe followed the chief to the door just as Nettie hobbled up.

“I’ll take him to the waiting area,” she said to Otto and Abby.

After closing the door, Otto sat back down. “So we’ve got a history, you and I, and let’s just say you’ve helped me out more than once. So keep this to yourself, Abby. The vic—that is, Eva Lennahan—was a town council member who was running for mayor. You know that, right?”

“Yes. I know of her. Met her once,” Abby answered.

“Her campaign manager called us after she went missing.”

“Okay. So her campaign manager, not her husband?”

“No. He left for the Caribbean yesterday. My sources tell me that he’s in bad shape, grieving and all.”

“Well, I knew he was planning to go there for his birthday,” Abby said, “with Chef Jean-Louis, but that’s neither here nor there. You were saying about her campaign manager?”

“He knew her password to a phone location app and tracked her phone pinging off the tower closest to the Redwood cutoff.”

“Well, besides the tower, there’s nothing up there but brush, steep canyons, and a serpentine road that twists through the mountains.”

“All the way up to Vista Point,” Otto said, finishing her thought. “She had been at a fundraiser at the Las Flores Inn. No one saw her leave.”

“Why was she up at the Redwood cutoff, then?”

Otto shook his head. “It’s anybody’s guess. Perhaps she was lured up there by someone she knew.”

“How was she killed?”

“Strangled, looks like, with her own scarf, according to the coroner.”

“You said her campaign manager tracked her phone.... Did you find it with the body?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Anything taken from the scene? Her purse?” Abby asked.

“Her purse had been riffled through. No money in the wallet. A credit card was dropped on the seat, and a lipstick on the floorboards. A woman like her always has cash and cards. Her killer probably took the rest of her cards and her phone. Her campaign manager said he had searched everywhere and had finally resorted to pinpointing her location by tracking her phone. It was triangulating at the Redwood cutoff. That’s when he called us, and we sent a cruiser out to check on her. But the campaign manager called back to say the phone had begun pinging off a different tower, one in the south county, city of Baxter, and after that in Juniper Ridge, heading out of the county.”

“You know what this means, don’t you, Otto?”

“Yep . . . Our person of interest took her phone and is on the move.”

“Find her phone, and we find our guy,” Abby said.

“We’ve notified law enforcement in the south county. Put out a BOLO. They’ve established roadblocks. Our perp is trapped. Shouldn’t be long now.”

“Hope so. Whoever killed Eva Lennahan, I believe, was involved in helping her kill our pastry chef, too. Eva was probably killed to shut her up. That’s what I think.”

Otto was grinning widely. “Knowing that we’re going to close this case makes me hungry. How about let’s head down to the break room? I’m off that diet,” he said. “Didn’t work, anyway, and Nettie brought in some chocolate chip cookies this morning. Hungry?”