“He speculated on a number of things—another trauma, abuse, abandonment, or if she felt desperate.”
The waitress returned with Tracy’s tostada and Fields’s carne asada. He stuck it with his fork. “I don’t hear no ‘mooing,’” he said. The waitress looked concerned. “Don’t you worry about it, darling. I’m just playing with you. Bring me another Corona, will you?”
The waitress took the empty bottle from the table.
Fields grabbed his knife and cut at the meat, putting a hunk in his mouth and talking as he chewed. “You said abandoned, like if her husband was cheating on her, or planning on killing her, and she found out?”
“Possibly.”
“Okay. So where does this get me?”
Tracy spooned some salsa onto her tostada. “Well, it could explain how a seemingly introverted young woman walked off that mountain in the first place, and went to such extremes to set her husband up to look like he’d murdered her.”
Fields lowered his knife and fork. “What do you mean, set him up?”
“According to your report, the husband had no knowledge of the insurance policy naming him a beneficiary.”
“That’s what he said, but we both know that’s probably bullshit,” Fields said.
“Maybe not,” Tracy said. “No confirmation on the ‘girlfriend’ Andrea was convinced her husband was sleeping with either. What we do know is she walked off the mountain, but not before she left the debris field of clothes and equipment, which means she had to have brought an extra set to get down the mountain. She didn’t carry all that up there for the hell of it. And she obtained a fake driver’s license, which all points to premeditation.”
“So you’re saying she got the insurance policy to make it look like the husband was trying to kill her?”
“Or maybe he was trying to kill her and she found out,” Tracy said. “But, yeah, getting the policy, consulting a divorce attorney, telling her boss she suspected her husband was cheating on her again, all could have been part of a plan to leave a trail of bread crumbs leading right back to her husband.”
“She doesn’t strike me as that smart, especially if she was as big a nut job as the shrink says.”
“Bundy was a nut job.” Tracy let that sink in for a moment. “According to Andrea’s boss, she was very bright.”
Fields put down his knife and fork and wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Okay, but the question is, who killed her now? And, assuming you’re right about all of this—that she somehow did find out the husband’s plan to kill her and she set him up—it would all be reason why he might seek her out and kill her. So we’re back to the husband.”
“Possibly, though I’d still put his desire to get at the trust fund as the more likely motivation—if he did it, which brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk to you about. Someone was looking for Lynn Hoff and for Devin Chambers.”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked a friend in the business of finding people to ask around and let me know if anyone was looking for Lynn Hoff. Someone was.”
“Someone who?”
“He doesn’t know. The client used a guerilla e-mail account to ensure they remained anonymous.”
“So that’s a dead end.”
“Not necessarily.”
The waitress returned with Fields’s second beer and refilled Tracy’s glass of iced tea. Tracy waited until she’d departed.
“My contact said the person initially asked the skip tracer to search for a Lynn Hoff, but other than the Washington State driver’s license we found, he also came up empty.”
Fields squeezed the lime onto his steak, then shoved the rind into the bottle. “Right, so other than now knowing someone was looking for her, it’s a dead end.”
“It means someone knew Andrea changed her identity to Lynn Hoff,” Tracy said, feeling like she was spoon-feeding Fields his investigation, and no longer surprised that the initial investigation had not produced results. “And, when the skip tracer advised that the usual channels were not bringing up anything on a Lynn Hoff, this unknown client threw out the name Devin Chambers.”
“He knew the name?”
“Apparently.”
“And Devin Chambers disappeared about the same time Andrea Strickland disappeared,” Fields said. “That’s what the employer said, right?”
Tracy had included that information in her report of the interview of Brenda Berg. “Chambers told her neighbors she was leaving town for Europe. She asked someone at the complex to collect her mail but made no attempt to recover it, or her belongings. Apparently, she has a sister in New Jersey who said Devin had a money management problem likely related to a prescription drug problem.”
“You think she was after Andrea’s money?”
“The skip tracer found an address for a PO box inside a drugstore in Renton registered to a Lynn Hoff. The pharmacy also had a record of at least one prior prescription under that name. And Renton is where Andrea Strickland used the name Lynn Hoff to have her face reconstructed, and did her banking.”