“You worked that hostage deal over the summer, at the coffeehouse downtown.”

“I did.”

The bartender brought over the drinks and a basket of pretzels. “Tab?” he asked.

“Yes,” Reed said.

Lucy gave him her credit card and he walked away.

Reed drank a third of the beer in one gulp. “Mills, go.”

To the point. “First thing you should know is that I’m only looking into this case because it may be connected to one of my cases and I’m hoping we can share information.”

“My suspect is dead. You think Grant killed someone else?”

“Are you up-to-date on the bones that were found out in Kendall County?”

“Yeah, the woman embezzled three million dollars. She and her whole family, dead and buried.”

“Denise Albright. She was Victoria Mills’s college roommate.”

“Small world. Think Grant killed her?”

Lucy didn’t but didn’t say so. “Victoria was killed the night after the bones were discovered—the same day that the news reported the discovery.”

“But they were only recently identified. No one knew who they were, didn’t even speculate.” She drank, watched Lucy over the rim of her mug.

She had Reed interested. The best way to get information was to give information first.

“Correct. But the original news report indicated that four bodies were found. When I learned that Denise and Victoria knew each other, I started looking into anything that they may have worked on together, anything that might put them in danger. According to Victoria’s family, Albright did a lot of work for Mills and didn’t charge her.”

“She was an accountant, right?”

“Yes. Re-creating her records has been a chore—our White Collar Crimes unit is working on it. She had multiple clients, big and small. But we had a few names, so I started looking into Mills’s client list. So far, one name is the same.” Lucy was stretching this because she had no evidence that Albright had worked for Monroe, but Max was so certain that he was involved in Victoria’s death—even with no proof—that Lucy was willing to go out on the limb. “Harrison Monroe.”

Silence.

“He was one of Victoria’s clients and may have been one of Denise’s. We’re still investigating. But they knew each other from college.”

“Yeah, we have Mills’s client list.”

“Did you run it? Was anyone suspicious?”

“We interviewed a few people, but when Grant confessed, that was it. He knew information about the crime that we didn’t release.” Reed didn’t elaborate.

“It would help me if we could work together on this,” Lucy said. “Grant was assassinated in broad daylight.”