“I know, I know. Just try to think of better times.”

I try. But right now, that hurts too much.

CHAPTER
68

Concord, New Hampshire

Detective Sergeant Marie Gagnon takes a chair across from the deputy AG’s desk. It’s been a week since their nighttime chat at the grave site, and Bastinelli wants an update. He doesn’t waste any time.

“So, Marie, where do we stand?”

“Without the original records, I’m mostly working blind,” Gagnon says. “I’ve been able to put together some bits and pieces from talking to a couple of the old investigators, but you know how that goes.”

“I do,” says Bastinelli. “Memories get porous.”

Gagnon glances down at her laptop. “I talked to a retired detective named Foster down in Fort Lauderdale. He sounded a bit wonky, but he’d kept some of his original notes. Said he interviewed a stadium attendant who said she heard Cole Wright talking rough to Suzanne once. Saying, ‘I’ll wring your neck,’ or something like that.”

“Did his memory include the attendant’s name?”

Gagnon nods. “Stacey Millett. She’s a coach at a girls’ school in Milwaukee. I called her. She still tells the same story. But she doesn’t know if Cole was serious. She says he might have just been talking tough. And she volunteered that she’s a big supporter of President Wright.”

“That doesn’t help,” says Bastinelli. “Easy to impeach her testimony. What about the watch?”

“We found a serial number stamped along the ridge of the watch face. Traced it back to a New York manufacturer, Zahn Fine Watchcraft. Nice watch, but hardly a Rolex. It was shipped to a jewelry store in Hanover, New Hampshire, twenty-four years ago.”

“So the timing lines up.”

“I can do better than that,” says Gagnon. “The store was Schmitt’s Jewelers. Still in business. Third-generation German family. Meticulous recordkeepers.”

“So they know who bought the watch?”

“They do. Brenda Connelly. She was a Dartmouth student at the same time as Cole Wright. Now she’s a successful tech exec, though she came from family money.”

Bastinelli lights up. “Brenda Connelly. BC! Those were the initials on the back of the watch, right?”

“Yes. It’s Brenda Monroe now. I tracked her down through the alumni association. She said she and Cole dated for a few months freshman year.”

“So why the watch?”

“She says Cole was always late. It was a little joke between them. And it was a very nice watch. Even after they broke up, she remembers seeing him wear it. It’s not like it was a wedding ring,” says Gagnon. “And it sounds like Brenda might have dumped him, not the other way around.”

“Any threats or violence with her?”

Gagnon shakes her head. “Brenda says he was a perfect gentleman. Just habitually tardy. Even with the watch.”