CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Lena stepped back and reviewed the timeline she'd put together. She'd dug back seven months before Lila's death and come up with an idea of Julian's activities during the time period.

As nearly as she could tell, he'd approached Barry Feingold about investing in Scimitar around December. By February, Barry was into Scimitar for something like five or six hundred million. It was after this point that things began to look fishy.

Feingold's firm, Arcturus Investments, had been implicated in a rather shocking number of fraud investigations. None of them exceptionally high dollar amounts—relative to the world of corporate finance, anyway—which was why there was no news coverage, but a shocking amount of medium dollar transactions.

Four of those investigations involved Scimitar. Most tellingly, the second most recent involved a firm called Breakaway Biotech. Breakaway Biotech's founder, Derek Hill, had resisted three attempts at a hostile takeover by Scimitar. Then, just six weeks ago, at the beginning of May, Derek Hill had been found dead in his garage of an apparent suicide. Two weeks after that, Scimitar bought the company for forty percent under market value.

So Julian Kensington was a piece of shit. That wasn't news, but why would he have felt a need to kill Lila? Did she know something and was about to go to the authorities with it? Or worse, the news?

That was the proof she needed. She needed to connect Lila, or at least Lila's death, with Julian's illegal activities with Arcturus and Scimitar.

And that brought her to the morning of Lila's death. The Kensington said they had a pool party at Barry Feingold's house, and Feingold confirmed that. Lena remembered thinking it was odd to have people show up at nine in the morning for a beach party, but she bought the line that it was hot and they wanted to take advantage.

She wasn't sure she bought it anymore.

The door opened, and Harris walked in. "Coffee and donuts, not necessarily in that order," he crooned. "I have a caramel latte for me and a black coffee for Lena's dark and bitter soul. I have a maple bar for me, and an apple fritter for Lena's old and bitter soul."

"You said bitter already."

"So right, I said it twice."

"That doesn't rhyme."

"Who said I was rhyming? You gonna eat it, or should I try to feed it to one of the K9s?"

She took the apple fritter and bit a sizable chunk out of the front. "Harris? How many people were in the photos Barry Feingold showed us of his beach party the day Lila Kensington died?"

Harris blinked and swallowed the bite of maple bar he was chewing. "Um… I don't know. Four, I think?"

"Barry, his wife and the Kensingtons?"

"I don't know if she's his wife, but Barry, the much younger woman whose love he has probably paid for dearly and the Kensingtons."

"No one else?"

"Not that I can remember. You want to see the pictures?"

"I do. Actually, I want you to take them with us. We're going to talk to Barry Feingold."

"You think he has something to do with this?"

"No, I just like wasting my time."

"All right. Shesh. No need to get snippy."

***

Arcturus Investments had an office in downtown that took up twenty-six floors of the 777 Tower in the Financial District. Barry's office was, of course, on the highest of those twenty-six floors, the building's thirtieth.

As Lena expected, building security, Arcturus reception and Barry's own secretary tried damned hard to stall the officers, but eventually, Lena found herself in an opulently decorated office with a beautiful view of downtown.

Barry greeted them with the slightly irritated smile that wealthy business owners always wore when dealing with the law. "I wish you guys had made an appointment," he said as he shook their hands. "I don't really have a lot of time."

"You'll make the time," Harris said easily.

Barry blinked, and before he could craft a response, Lena showed him the photos from the beach party. "You recognize these, I'm sure."

"I do. I've already corroborated my friends' alibis for the day of their daughter's tragic death. If this is about that, then I have to say, I'm a little offended. Their death was already ruled an accident by your department, and I'm sure that Julian and Clara would like the chance to achieve closure rather than having the wound reopened."

"How many people were at your beach party?"

Barry blinked, and his smile faded. Caught you.

"It was just us four."

"Not much of a party."

"I didn't say it was a party."

"The Kensington did."

"Well, maybe they wanted to call it a party, but—"

"Actually, you did too," Harris interrupted. "When I spoke with you on the phone, you said they were at the party, and you'd see if you could dig through all of the photos you took of guests and find some with them."

"Ooh, more photos," Lena added. "That will actually help us a lot. Do you think you can show us some of those photos, Mr. Feingold? Some that don't have Julian and Clara in them?"

Barry took a half-step behind his desk, an instinctive attempt to shield himself. "I deleted them already."

Lena lifted her eyebrow. "Do you always delete photos you take at parties?"

"My wife sends them to the people who want them, then deletes them."

"No problem. Can you give us the names of some people who were there so I can see their photos?"

Barry paled a shade. "No, I'm not going to violate their privacy for a witch hunt."

"So we should go to the press with our suspicions and inform them that you've elected not to cooperate with the investigation?"

That was a bluff. If Barry refused to cooperate and Lena tried to force the issue, her superiors would immediately quash it and reprimand or possibly suspend her for pursuing a case that was supposed to be closed. She needed to hope that Barry wouldn't know that.

He didn't. His left eye twitched, and then he said in a soft and slightly hoarse voice. "Can we talk off the record?"

Lena smiled. "Sure." That was another bluff, but what he didn't know wouldn't kill him.

Barry sighed and sat heavily in his chair. "Okay. There was no party. Julian called me and said there was an emergency and he needed help. He said that he and his wife needed to stay at my place for the day, and they needed to have proof that they were there. I told him to come over and bring swimsuits, and we'd figure something out."

"And it never occurred to you to ask what this emergency was?" Harris asked.

"No."

Lena didn't believe that for a second. She was almost certain that Barry had helped with a similar emergency back in May when Derek Hill was found dead.

But she would save that for later. Right now, her focus was on Lila Kensington.

"Tell me everything you know," she told Barry, "and maybe I won't ask for an FTC inquest into every dollar that's passed through Arcturus Investments in the past fifteen years."

Barry paled and nodded. "All right. All right. I'll tell you what I know."