12. Sinclair

As we returned to Matt's, the sky clouded over, and it started to drizzle. Nothing too bad but enough to keep us in, which was fine. A rainy afternoon was perfect, in my opinion, for reading, listening to music, watching a movie, and, in Jayne's case, eating more chocolate and just generally anything that involved little effort.

With her tins of chocolate, the box of chocolates Matt had sent back with me, and a Dr Pepper nearby, Jayne set up at the table, firing up her laptop and digging into her new research project: drugs and poisons that disappeared in the blood.

If anyone checked her search history, we'd have some explaining to do, but I doubted we were even being considered as suspects.

I sat on the couch with my own laptop and dug into Charlotte Frett's online presence. It was Jayne's idea and a good one. The more we could learn about Charlie, the more we should be able to understand what had happened to her.

Maybe.

If she'd died of natural causes, then that was all there was to it. I didn't know if it was my inherent connection to death as a necromancer, but this didn't feel like suicide or natural causes to me. It felt like foul play.

Charlie had a Facebook page and an Instagram account. The latter was filled with animal pictures, all the pets she took care of. The folks she worked for were tagged in the posts, which made me think it was Charlie's way of showing them how well their pets were being taken care of.

Except that would also alert anyone paying attention that those people were away. Not the smartest thing to do in this day and age.

I scrolled through until I found a snap of Slim. I looked at the date it had been published, then texted Matt. Were you out of town on March 9 th , 2024?

I went back to scrolling while I waited for him to answer. Didn't take too long.

No, I was home. Isla and I went to see a concert that night. Pretty sure I traveled the week before that, tho.

Okay, thanks. It was only one example. Not enough to draw a conclusion from. Was Charlie smart enough to delay posting the pet photos after people had returned? I wanted to think so. But what if she wasn't? What if that hadn't occurred to her? Or what if she thought it was a great way to let people see their pets were all right while also boosting her business? It would be good to verify that with a few more pet owners, but that would take some work and a lot more digging.

Matt sent another text. You guys up for dinner tonight? My treat for watching Slim. I know a great Italian place on Magazine.

Sounds good. I'll ask Jayne.

"Matt wants to know if we're interested in dinner tonight. His treat. He mentioned an Italian place nearby."

Jayne looked up. "Oh, that sounds good. We haven't decent Italian since Nashville. I'm in if you are."

"Definitely. I'll let him know." I confirmed with Matt for 7 p.m., then went back to work.

It took me a while, but I looked through her entire Instagram account. There were no personal pictures except for at the very beginning, when her account had been more general. Those posts were about New Orleans. I could only assume that when she started her pet-sitting business, she'd decided to dedicate her account to the animals she looked after.

Her pictures were good. They were often taken from the animal's eye level, giving them a more intimate perspective. Her love for her job and the creatures she looked after shone through.

I moved on to her Facebook account. She had a personal profile and a page for Frett's Pets. I started with the business page and realized it linked to an actual website, so I clicked through.

The website was nice but nothing elaborate. Lots of pet pictures interspersed with her information, links to her Facebook and Instagram, and a contact form. She'd included a list of services without prices and another page with a long list of glowing recommendations from clients.

I decided to test my new theory as much as was possible. I grabbed a notebook and pen and started jotting down the client names connected to the reviews.

I ended up with nine names. Some were incomplete, like the listing from R. Millner. Could be Roger or Rita, I had no idea. Thankfully, most of them gave a first and a last name.

I went back to her Instagram account and dug deeper into the pet owners who'd been tagged in her posts. That was harder. Not everyone used their real name as their Instagram handle, and those who didn't rarely used their whole name.

After some serious digging, which felt like actual detective work, I was able to figure out three of them, all because they were professionals who'd linked their websites to their Instagram accounts.

Clicking through to the websites made figuring out who they were a lot easier.

Next, I went to the police report Birdie had sent about all the recent break-ins. One by one, I checked the names of the people who'd reported the crimes.

None of the names matched. Didn't necessarily mean anything. They might be renting. Or the property could be held in a different name. I wasn't giving up just yet. I searched for the addresses of the people on the list of Charlie's clients. What resulted was both extremely useful and incredibly scary.

The amount of data I was able to pull from the Internet astonished me. Searching names gave me ages, addresses, phone numbers, past residences and, in some cases, partial Social Security numbers. No wonder identity theft was so prevalent.

But all my work was for naught. None of the clients' addresses matched up with the places that had been burgled. I really thought I'd been on to something.

Frustrated, I let out a long sigh.

"What's wrong?" Jayne had looked up.

I shook my head. "I thought I'd figured something out. I didn't."

"What?"

"Well, Charlie posted a lot of pictures of the pets she was sitting on her Instagram account. That's basically all she posted. I thought maybe there was some connection between those posts and the houses getting broken into. In other words, someone had figured out if she was pet sitting, then the owners of that pet weren't home."

Jayne nodded. "Yeah, I could see that. But no?"

"No."

"Did that include all the names on her calendar? From the pictures and video I took?"

"No." I hadn't exactly forgotten about that, but it had kind of slipped my mind. "Hang on."

I brought those pictures up and again wrote down all the names I could find. Then I compared it to the names of those on the police reports. I let out another sigh. "Nope. No matches."

"It was a good thought. Makes sense."

"Yeah." My phone went off again. I checked the screen. Another text from Matt. I tapped on the notification and brought up the message.

Can you come over? Something's happened .

I frowned. That sounded ominous. I typed back. Both of us?

Might as well.

"Hey, Matt wants us to come over. I don't know why, but he said something's happened."

Worry darkened Jayne's gaze as she looked up. "Is Slim okay?"

"I don't know."

She got up. "I just need to put my flipflops on."

A few minutes later, we knocked on Matt's door. He answered, a crease between his brows, his expression downcast. "Thanks for coming over."

"Is Slim all right?" Jayne asked as we walked in.

Matt let out a soft snort. "Yeah, he's fine." His words were followed by an irritated exhale. "I, on the other hand, am not. You want something to drink? I've got a pot of coffee. But I could do tea, too. I've never been much on it, but Isla liked it, so there's a few boxes in the pantry."

"Any of it decaffeinated?" Jayne asked.

Matt nodded. "I think all of it. Hang on." He went into the pantry and came back with four boxes. "Any of that appeal to you?"

She held up the box of peppermint. "I'll have this."

He added water to a gleaming chrome and cobalt blue kettle, set it on a burner, then ignited the gas ring beneath it and cranked it up high. "Sin? Coffee?"

"Sure."

He got cups out, along with sugar and creamer. By the time we'd fixed our coffee, the kettle was whistling. Jayne got her tea made, and we stood there around the island, looking at Matt, wondering when he was going to tell us why he'd asked us to come over.

He sipped his coffee, then set the cup down. "The reason I called you is because of what you told me the other night, Sin. About how you and Jayne solved that cold case in Nashville. I need some help. I know I could go to the police, but this is the kind of thing that could ruin my business. And possibly my life."

I put my cup on the counter. "What's going on?"

He opened the drawer in front of him, took out a small manila envelope, and held it, tapping it against his hand. "Before I show you this, I want you to know it is absolutely not what it looks like. Not even remotely. It was taken a long time ago, when Jess was four. She's my youngest niece. Tamara is the oldest."

I was not following what he was trying to tell us. "Matt, what's going on?"

He opened the envelope and tipped out the contents. A folded piece of paper, a small metal key, and a photograph slid out onto his quartz countertop. The photo wasn't great quality, and it looked like it had been printed on regular white copy paper stock, not the typical glossy photo paper. It was of Matt with a naked, crying toddler on his lap. Matt was smiling, holding the little girl by the waist.

He swallowed audibly. "I know what it looks like, but it's not that. Jess was crying because she didn't want to get out of the pool, and Julie was trying to get her changed because there was a storm coming and I was trying to help. I was laughing because Jess had just called me a dummy head." He looked like he might cry. He shook his head. "I can't believe someone thinks I'm the kind of man who would … who would … it makes my skin crawl."

I nodded. I understood what he was trying to say. He didn't need to put it into words.

He cleared his throat. "I would never hurt a child. Any child, whether they were related to me or not. The very thought sickens me."

It sickened me, too. "What does this picture have to do with anything? I'm not sure I understand what's going on yet."

"Me, either," Jayne said.

"Here. Read this. That should make it clear." Matt unfolded the note and laid it over the photo.

The message had also been printed from a computer: If you don't want this to go viral, it'll cost you. Deposit $100,000 in cash into locker #58 at Supersaver Storage Center on St. Charles and Lafayette. You have 48 hours. Then things get interesting.

Jayne's hand went to her mouth. "Someone is trying to blackmail you."