“There must be another account.”

“Not according to all of this.” Jack pointed to the papers that were strewn across the coffee table.

“Is it possible that Julia placed all of her wealth in her assets? That she didn’t have a large amount of liquid cash?”

“No. There’s really no equity in these assets. She owed a lot of money on them, especially for the building she was constructing for her plastic surgery practice.” He held up the loan papers so that Thomas could see.

“My God, look at how much money she borrowed. How do you get that without some type of collateral?”

“Maybe plastic surgeons are considered a good risk?”

“Unless they die.” Thomas exhaled. “Well, that explains why she wasn’t making anything. She was in the process of building this practice.”

“So, the woman Colin is trying to screw over for her money was poorer than a church mouse. What an unlucky bastard.” Jack laughed and pulled out another document. “And on top of that, here’s the cancellation notice for her malpractice policy—and he thought that she was bluffing with this. She wasn’t giving him a penny. Not that she had one to give.”

“As I told you, Jack, this is all just more bad news. In fact, it’s very bad news. These documents only add to the proof that he’s guilty. He said he was a player. The reason he gave us for being innocent was that he needed Julia alive. He wanted to string her along so she wouldn’t ruin him financially. If he found out she had nothing all along, that there was no way he could possibly get a cent from her and that he was already financially ruined, that’s motive to kill her. His excuse goes out the window. This is why Detective Gavin finally gave these to us.” Thomas sat down on the couch. “Colin’s screwed. Hell, maybe he should be.”

Jack’s phone rang and he looked down at the text. “It’s Val. She’s in the lobby. I almost forgot that I told her to meet me at this time. I thought I’d have some interesting news to tell her about Dr. Blythe. Well, I guess it could still be called interesting.” He took one last swallow from his glass, finishing the contents. Then slid his shoes back on. As he was leaving he took one more look at Julia’s documents and picked them up. “Maybe Julia spoke to Val about some of this,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask. We have nothing to lose at this point.”

32

Val sat uncomfortably in the hotel lobby chair. The Naugahyde felt sticky and smelled of stale coffee. She had hoped that Jack was going to tell her what happened with Dr. Blythe. But instead he asked her to look at Julia’s documents.