“He’s Harrison’s partner. He ran the business here, Harrison ran it in Chicago until something happened, I don’t know what, and they closed down Chicago and came here. That’s how I met him and Faith. They run things a lot different than Simon. Simon was much more forgiving of, you know, losses.”

“Why did Stanley Grant confess to killing Victoria?”

“I don’t know. I swear. Faith doesn’t talk. She only tells you what you need to know. When I said SAPD was talking to me, that they might have seen my car, she said to tell them I had drinks with Melissa Randolph at Russo’s. That we’re friends and I was giving her career advice. That was it.”

Nate said, “Ash is here with the van.”

“Great. Shall we head to FBI headquarters, Mr. Clemson?” Lucy said.

He got up, shaking.

Lucy said to Nate, “I need to make a call. Can you take him?”

“My pleasure,” he said.

When they stepped out of Clemson’s office, Lucy called Max to warn her about Simon.

There was no answer.

Chapter Thirty-four

Max first tried calling Ryan, but there was no answer. His phone went straight to voice mail. Probably in the middle of something, but she really needed to talk this through with him. She left him a message to call her when he had the chance.

She’d found it. At least, she thought she found something suspicious.

Like she’d told Lucy, Simon had sold the land that would have been impacted by the Kiefer project to Harrison Monroe and it would have likely been worthless—or at least substantially devalued—had the public works project gone through. It appeared to be the last parcel of land that Simon had sold to anyone.

Six months after the Albrights were murdered—and less than thirty days after the Kiefer project was permanently halted, according to city council minutes—Monroe sold the land to a developer for nearly twice what he paid for it. A new commercial business park that leased property to both private and government entities was built up, and a new company was awarded a modified public works project that benefited the development and the new company.

Max wanted to know if either of those entities was affiliated with Monroe.

Max couldn’t figure out how Denise figured into all of it, unless Monroe had another plan to destroy Kiefer that she was privy to, a plan she couldn’t be party to. It would be motive. But how did she find out? Why didn’t she go to the authorities? Or had she planned to and that was why she was killed?

Max remembered what Ryan had told her—that land transactions leave a paper trail—and while she was one of the best at research, the nuances of these transactions weren’t clear to her.