“Can you think of anyone else who might have wanted Elizabeth dead?” Pete asked the first woman.
“Have you talked to Rebecca yet?” she whispered.
He scanned the names from the cards. There was no Rebecca. “No. What’s her last name?”
“Weaver.” Her voice softened more. “She’s our boss. She and Elizabeth butted heads. A lot.”
The next two women confirmed Elizabeth and Rebecca had issues but weren’t willing to add their boss to a list of suspects.
Pete had to wait until the following day to catch Ms. Weaver in her office. She stood to greet him with a smile and a manicured hand. After offering him a seat and closing the door, she chose to sit in one of the other guest chairs rather than placing her desk between them. She turned the chair to face him and folded the manicured hands in her lap.
“I suppose you’ve heard I’m something of a hard ass,” she said with a sad smile.
“I’ve heard you and Elizabeth may have had some disagreements.”
Rebecca lowered her gaze. “That’s true. We did. Professional disagreements. Elizabeth was my best agent. She made a lot of money for this office.”
“What were the disagreements about?”
Rebecca crossed her long shapely legs. “Tell me, Chief Adams, do you ever have arguments with the people you work with about how to best accomplish a goal?”
“Is that what you argued over? Accomplishing goals?”
“Yes. We were competitive. We work in the same office. We both want to have the best sales numbers in any given period. But it was a friendly competition. Heated on occasion. But I respected and liked Elizabeth. We’d battle it out all day long and then buy each other drinks after hours.”
“I was told you were the boss.”
“I got the promotion to manager.”
“You won the biggest competition.”
“Yes.” Rebecca leaned toward him. “And Elizabeth bought me a bottle of champagne to celebrate.”
“Sounds like you were friends rather than enemies.”
“That would be accurate.” Rebecca relaxed back into the chair. “People see two strong women going toe-to-toe in the business world and they automatically call it a cat fight. I respected Elizabeth. And liked her. I hope she’d have said the same of me.”
“Do you know her husband?”
Rebecca’s expression darkened. “I do.”
“I get the impression you don’t like him as well as you liked Elizabeth.”
“Very astute, Chief Adams.”
“Why?”
Rebecca locked gazes with Pete. “He didn’t deserve her.”
“How so?”
Her eyes burned into Pete’s, challenging him to look away.
He didn’t.
“Dustin Landis is a lying, cheating bastard.”
The accusation shouldn’t have stunned Pete but did. “He cheated on his wife?”
“Frequently.”
“And Elizabeth knew?”
Rebecca finally broke eye contact to look down at her hands. “I think she knew for a long time but only recently admitted it to herself.”
Pete sensed the woman had much to say. Rather than prompt her, he remained silent, waiting.
“One of Elizabeth’s clients came to her about two months ago. She’d been visiting a friend at the friend’s apartment when she spotted Dustin and a woman acting very friendly.” Rebecca made air quotes around “friendly.” “They went inside the woman’s apartment. Our client’s friend told her Dustin was a frequent visitor. Elizabeth didn’t want to believe it at first but finally confronted him. Naturally, he denied it. At first. But the client had given Elizabeth the address, and when she threw it at Dustin, he confessed.”
Pete gazed across the room, gut punched. He’d trusted Landis. Bought his portrayal of the grief-stricken husband. Believed every lying word out of his mouth.
“Elizabeth ordered him out of their home, but he cried and begged. Promised it would never happen again. He promised to get counseling. And he did. Elizabeth was convinced he’d ended it with the woman. But in recent weeks, Elizabeth had grown suspicious. Upset. She intended to confront him.” Rebecca again caught Pete’s gaze with her intense, dark eyes. “Whether she had the chance or not, we’ll never know.”
“Do you know the name of the woman Landis was having the affair with?”
“No.”
“How about the client who spotted them together?”
Rebecca fired off a name before picking up the phone and ordering her receptionist to pull the woman’s contact information.
After she hung up, Pete climbed to his feet and thanked her for her help.
“I’m sure if you ask around, you’ll learn she wasn’t his first or only girlfriend over the years.”
“Elizabeth learned of others?”
“No. At least I don’t believe so. But there were others.”
“How do you know?”
Rebecca lowered her face for a moment before bringing her eyes back to his. “Because three years ago, I was one of them.”
Rebecca Weaver’s revelations left Pete feeling betrayed not only by Dustin Landis but by his own gut. Pete had thought he was a better judge of character than that.
His entire thought process shifted. Instead of seeing Landis as the heartbroken widower, Pete now assigned him the role of prime suspect with a whopper of a motive. Avoid a messy and costly divorce while clearing the way to a life with his mistress.
Tall, statuesque Rebecca also landed on Pete’s list of suspects. Dressed in black and running away from the scene, she could’ve been mistaken for a man. Then he confirmed her alibi. She’d been in Pittsburgh at a play with a group of friends the night of the shooting. The same friends backed up Rebecca’s claim that the affair had been brief, meaningless, and had ended long ago.
The client Rebecca had mentioned didn’t have a name for the woman she’d seen clinging to and kissing Landis but gave Pete the number of the apartment they’d entered.
No one answered his knock at the door. He waited and knocked again.
“She’s not home.”
Pete turned to find an older lanky man in a navy-blue work shirt and pants. The name on the embroidered patch stuck to the shirt identified him as Dave.
“I manage these apartments,” he said after shaking Pete’s hand. “The girl who lives here is in Chicago. Some sort of
