“They don’t think Stan killed her?” Judith’s voice caught at the end. She cleared her throat and sipped water.

“They’re now uncertain. They’ve reopened the investigation and I’m confident they will be diligent. If they’re not, I’ll come back.”

“You’re leaving,” Grover said bluntly.

“I have a few more things I want to look into, and if something changes I’ll stay, but for now I have no new direction to pursue. I will probably leave on Sunday.”

You do, but you don’t want to hurt them. What happened to the truth at any cost? If Simon is guilty—of murder or conspiracy—shouldn’t you stay until you can prove it?

“Tell me this,” Grover asked. “Can you say with one hundred percent certainty that Stan didn’t kill my baby girl?”

What did she say to that? “No, I can’t say that. I don’t think he killed her, but I think he knew who did and chose to remain silent. One hundred percent certain? No. I lean against him being guilty, and he was killed to keep his mouth shut.”

“This sounds like a criminal conspiracy,” Grover said. “What was Victoria doing?”

It was an odd thing to say.

“What do you mean?” Max asked.

“He means,” Judith said, “that Victoria may have been doing something … well, shall we say, something illegal.” Judith and Grover looked at each other, silently communicating.

Grover said, “Mitch came to me three years ago concerned about a major accounting discrepancy in the MCG books. When he talked to Victoria, she told him she’d ask Denise to fix it before it became a problem.”

“Did she?” Max asked.

“I assume so, because Mitch never talked to me about it again. I offered to review the books, but he said no, Victoria was fixing it. He was afraid of an audit, and no one wants to go through one of those, but nothing came of his concerns, so I didn’t really think about it until after you left the other day, when I remembered that Denise did a lot of work for Victoria and MCG and Simon.”

“Simon?” Max asked.

“When he was buying and selling houses. It’s a tricky tax issue, capital gains and things like that. I understand some but always trusted my own accountant to do the work. When you’re self-employed, even when you start an LLC, it’s best to have someone who knows what they’re doing handle the finances.”

“But this was three years ago,” Max said. “Why would you think Victoria was involved in anything illegal? And what sort of activity?”

“We don’t know,” Grover said.