Trust Me (Last Stand #1)(29)
Author: Brenda Novak

He read through her guest book, which contained entries from the visitors to her site. Most were men, drooling over the nude pictures. One comment came from a teenage girl interested in being introduced to Hugh Hefner and getting her own “start in the biz.”

Ms. Dodge had a blog, too, which she used to promote her weight-loss products. She wrote about the number of calories burned in her daily workouts, what she did during each session, even listed the foods she ate.

The photos in this section weren’t as revealing as the ones in Playboy, but she was obviously using her body to motivate others to buy her video and diet products. She posed in skimpy outfits to show how particular exercises had tightened her abs or toned her behind. There was related information, too—various low-calorie recipes, clothing suggestions, hair- and skin-care tips.

David wondered how often Oliver Burke had frequented this site. He checked the guest book for past entries, but it didn’t go back far enough—

“Whoa, now I know why you told Tiny you had to work. I’d rather spend my lunch hour with her, too.”

David twisted to the side to see Mike Fitzer standing at the entrance to his cubicle, looking at his monitor.

“She’s involved in one of my cases,” David explained.

“If you have to bring her in, I’ll pay you fifty bucks to let me frisk her.”

David wished Mike would mind his own business. He was the laziest detective on the force. It was difficult to believe someone could accomplish so little and still manage to hang on to a job.

“Hate to disappoint you, but I’ll be lucky to speak with her. She’s only peripherally involved.”

“Too bad.”

Mike didn’t move on, so David rolled away from his desk. “Something I can do for you, Mike?”

“Actually, there is. You know the woman who started The Last Stand?”

“I know the three women.”

“I’m talking about the one who’s been getting so much press lately. Skye Something.”

“Kellerman.”

“That’s her.”

No surprise there. This was the second time in two days someone on the force had mentioned Skye to him. But ever since she and her friends had started TLS, hearing her name at the station wasn’t all that uncommon. “What about her?”

“She’s a major pain in the ass.”

“What’s she done?”

“She’s hired a private investigator to look into one of my cases, and he’s majorly pissing me off.”

David momentarily lost interest in Miranda’s Web site. “Because…”

“He keeps getting in my face, telling me how things should be done. He thinks he knows more about running an investigation than I do.”

David thought he probably did. “Which case is this?”

“Sean Regan’s.”

“The man who went missing on New Year’s Day?” David had read about Regan in the paper, heard about him at the office.

“That’s the one. Skye’s convinced his wife had him killed, so this private investigator of hers is badgering me to run a few license plates and get other information.”

“Is there any chance the wife did it?”

“Not in my opinion.”

“What do the facts suggest?”

“There’s no life insurance to speak of, so she had nothing to gain financially from his death. She’s a good mother, someone with no criminal history. Why would she all of a sudden decide to kill her husband?”

“Why does Skye think she did it?”

“She claims Mr. Regan thought his wife was having an affair, that Mrs. Regan wanted to get rid of him so she wouldn’t have to fight him for custody of their kids. But chances are greater it was Sean who was cheating, and now he’s run off to avoid his family responsibilities. His boss told me Sean missed a lot of work in the weeks right before he went missing. Said he was acting strange.”

So Mike had done some legwork…. “Strange in what way?”

“Whispering on the phone while he huddled in the corner. Coming back very late from lunch. Making stupid mistakes.”

“You think he’d up and leave his kids?”

“For the right woman? Hell, yeah. He wouldn’t be the first father to do it.”

The enthusiasm in that statement made David a little uncomfortable. What would he do for the right woman? Forget his own responsibilities?

He understood that temptation better than most. “I’ll talk to Skye,” he said.

“Tell her to stay out of my business before she really pisses me off,” Mike grumbled. Another detective called his name and, nodding at David, he crossed the room.

Muttering a curse, David turned back to his desk, clicked on the E-mail Me button and sent Miranda Dodge a message telling her he had a few questions about Oliver Burke. Then he signed off. He had some appointments this afternoon and needed to be on his way. One was with the hygienist who’d worked for Burke before he was forced to close his doors.

Skye easily located the address written on the slip of paper she’d salvaged from Jane Burke’s garbage. It happened to be only a few blocks away from Jane’s current residence. Initially, she’d thought Jane and Oliver might be planning to move, but the place wasn’t for sale or rent, so she looked up the phone number in a crisscross directory, and called to ask if anyone at that location had any connection to the Burkes. The woman at the other end of the line said her daughter was a playmate of Kate’s—then asked why she wanted to know and Skye hung up.

So much for the extra effort….

Disappointed that her garbage foray hadn’t netted more, she threw the note away and used Google and the fee-based online resources of LexisNexis, ChoicePoint and Merlin Data to search for anything connected to Oliver or Jane Burke.

Prior to Burke’s attack, Skye had been an account executive for a carpet company, completely ignorant of how the criminal justice system worked. But since then, thanks to her efforts with The Last Stand, she’d learned a lot about running an investigation.

She found the Burkes’ marriage certificate, which held no surprises. The birth certificate for their daughter, Kate. Bankruptcy and foreclosure papers from when Jane lost the house after Oliver went to prison. Quite a few newspaper articles about the trial surfaced on the Internet, too. Normally, an attempted rape would rate a one on a scale of one to ten compared to the more sensational topics, such as arson, murder and terrorism, which received the majority of media attention. But Oliver had been such an unlikely ra**st, and so well-known in the community, that prosecuting him had drawn fierce battle lines between the believers and unbelievers—the kind of controversy that sold papers.