“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Come again? Where are you getting all of this? Brookes is your most reliable witness.”

“She has been, yes. But Sutton Montclair is sitting in a Paris jail cell, and claims Brookes helped her plan a getaway, and she left her rings in her possession. If that’s true, then Ivy Brookes is our murderer.”

“You found Sutton Montclair?”

“Sure did. Just got a call from the French police. They’ve got her for murder. A double murder, actually. She’s denying it, of course, and the Paris inspector on the case seems to feel Sutton is innocent. And I’ll tell you, Jim, Montclair never felt right to me for all of this. It didn’t jibe. Why systematically try to ruin your wife? Why not just divorce, or leave? He may not be Captain America, but he doesn’t strike me as the malicious type.”

“You’ve always been starry-eyed for him.”

“I’m going to ignore that statement, and when it turns out I’m right, you can apologize over a steak dinner.”

Jim’s eyes lit up. “Deal. So what do you want me to do?”

“If Brookes is behind this, there will be a trace, right? There’s no way to do it completely clean.”

“Yes, that’s true. And there is a phantom IP address that came through with all the others, one from here in Franklin that I haven’t been able to track down. It went through about fifty routers, bounced all over the world. It doesn’t seem to be registered anywhere, though. It’s a loose thread.”

“You find it for me, Jim. Stop looking inside, and look at it from the outside. As if someone is purposefully misleading us. Knowing it could be coming from outside after all, and not from the Montclairs, you trace it down, and make sure it’s airtight.”

“I don’t know, Holly. All the fingers point to Montclair.”

“I know they do. All of them. How often do you see a case that lines up so perfectly? How often have you ever seen a case that was so clear? Everything points at him. Everything is so neatly assembled that perhaps, perhaps, someone wanted it to look like that. And if this someone has connections to people who can forge documents, and helped Sutton Montclair get out of town... Trust me here, Jim. My gut is screaming at me. Reset your thinking on all of this, and find me some proof so I can have a nice, long chat with Ivy Brookes.”

“You really believe it’s a setup?”