“You gotta wonder if Sinclair had all the info about the threats when he turned down protection,” Gonzo said. He held up a print out of the Post article. “Did he see this?”

“Good question,” Sam concurred.

A knock on the front door interrupted them. She got up to get it and found Cruz on the porch.

“Hey,” he said. “I hear we’re working from the home office today.”

“What’re you doing here?” He was pale and drawn, and his arm was in a sling. “You’re still on medical leave.”

“Nothing wrong with my brain.”

“Come in,” Sam said.

He turned and waved to the driver of a car idling in the street.

Sam looked closer and saw that Elin had driven him. “Still seeing the phone-shutter-offer, huh?”

“I told you it’s not going to happen again,” he said through gritted teeth. “Can we drop it?”

“Eventually,” she said with a grin, delighted to see him back on his feet.

“You okay after everything with Reese?” he asked.

“You know how it goes. Shit happens. He didn’t shoot my dad.”

“I heard that, too. We’ll dig into the prior tenants the minute we close Sinclair.”

She nodded, grateful for his unwavering support. “Let’s get you up to speed.”

The others greeted Cruz warmly and updated him on the case.

“Moving on to Diandra,” Sam said. “What’d you find out, Jeannie?”

“She’s fifty-six, grew up in Missouri. The dad was a fundamentalist Christian minister, the mother a homemaker. Diandra went to Princeton, studied English literature. Met Preston there thirty years ago. Two sons, Devon and Austin. Began spewing her special brand of hatred as a newspaper columnist seventeen years ago. Moved to TV thirteen years ago.”

“Right around the same time as the rift formed with her husband’s homosexual brother,” Sam said. “Interesting timing.”

Jeannie nodded. “I thought the same thing.”

“I’d like to get her downtown for a more in-depth interview,” Sam said. “I keep going back to the irrational hatred she had for Julian over his sexual orientation. It just seems so over the top to me.”

“Conservative Christians are very clear on homosexuality,” Jeannie said. “And growing up as she did with a minister father, this stuff was probably pounded into her head all her life. I looked into her father’s background. He wrote a book twenty years ago about how homosexuality was going to unravel the fabric of our country. It made quite a stir at the time. Apparently, her book is an update of his.”

“So she comes by her hatred naturally,” Sam said, feeling the buzz that came from uncovering a juicy lead. “We definitely need to have another conversation with her.” She growled with frustration. “Freaking suspension! I want to go at her myself.”

“We can handle it,” Gonzo said, looking to Jeannie who nodded in agreement. “We can also talk to Sanducci.”

“I can research his closest aides,” Cruz said.