CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

When they left Lila Warwick's house a half hour later, they were empty-handed.

Jessie had feared as much. If the killer was going to stab Lila right there in the house, what better way to do it than on a livestream? The fact that they'd let her live, rather than killing her right then and there, suggested that they had other, bigger plans.

As they stood on the porch, Ryan called Jamil and Beth.

"There was nothing there," he told them. "I guess the good news is that we don't have a dead body. The bad news is that we have no idea where they went."

"Maybe not yet," Jessie said, "but we could soon. Remember, Lila's phone was gone when we went into the recording booth. That suggests someone took it with them."

"Any luck on that court order giving us access to its geolocation, Jamil?" Ryan asked as they walked back to the car.

"Yes, Detective," Jamil said. "We were able to get an emergency order quickly. Unfortunately, it's not pinging, which suggests that it's turned off. I wouldn't be surprised if the killer put it in a Faraday bag or something to ensure that we couldn't find it."

"Dammit!" Ryan said. "We're right back at square one."

"Maybe not," Jamil said. "While we were waiting for the court order to come in, I was able to do a little more digging into Chloe Baptiste's finances and I found something really interesting."

"Don't keep us in suspense," Jessie said, hoping they might have finally caught a break.

"Okay," he said. "She had multiple bank accounts before she married Laurent, both personal and business, along with several brokerage accounts and the standard retirement stuff. Most of them were folded into joint accounts after they got married."

"Doesn't that put her at financial risk if they get divorced?" Beth wondered.

"Truthfully, she would make so much in any divorce settlement that what she had before would seem like peanuts," Jamil explained, "which is why I found what accounts she chose to keep odd. "

"Like what?" Jessie asked as she got in the passenger seat of Ryan's car.

"One isn't that big a deal," Jamil said. "It's an IRA with about $2.2 million in it. I could see her holding on to it. There's no real disadvantage. She also maintained a standard checking account. It's the same one she's had since she was twenty-two and has $6,343 in it. It's possible that she's just keeping it out of nostalgia or simply forgot she still has it. But there's another that's more interesting."

"Why?" Ryan asked as he got in the car too.

"Because it's not a personal account held in her name," Jamil said. "It's a business account called Creative Holdings and seems at first to be related to sales and purchases of works of art."

"And that's odd because…?" Jessie said, waiting for the hammer to drop.

"Because it doesn't make sense. She already has another business account—a much larger one, that she seems to do all of her art buying and selling through. Invariably, those deals involve hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time, if not millions. Compared to that, this account is small potatoes."

"Like how small?" Jessie asked.

"Typically, the items go for between three and ten thousand dollars. Occasionally, they hit upwards of fifteen thousand. But it doesn't look like they're original pieces. It's a lot of prints of known works. And whether she's buying or selling—the latter of which is far more common—the prices are horribly inflated. In one instance, she paid $5000 for a print that would normally sell for about $800. I see another instance where she sold a piece for $7000 that was worth a grand at most."

"Maybe the frames are gold-plated?" Beth half-joked.

"I was always told that the value of a piece of art is what someone is willing to pay for it," Ryan noted.

"Yeah, but who's she even competing against?" Jessie wondered before addressing Jamil. "Has the IRS ever looked into this?"

"Not as far as I can find," Jamil said, "but that doesn't shock me. Considering the sums involved in her primary art deals, they wouldn't have much reason to take notice of transactions this small."

"But," Jessie said, "you said she sold far more than she bought, right Jamil?"

"Yes," he confirmed, "at a rate of about four to one. "

"So," Jessie mused, speaking aloud what she suspected the researcher was hinting at, "are you thinking that the art works might be a front for some other kind of business?"

"The thought had occurred to me," he admitted. "I just can't imagine this woman wasting her time on the sale and purchase of bland reprints when she deals in other, original works valued in the millions. It just doesn't make any sense."

"So maybe these transactions are covers for the sale of something else," Jessie said, "something illicit."

"Drugs perhaps," Ryan volunteered. "It wouldn't be the first time that an art dealer subsidized their lifestyle that way."

"But why take that kind of risk when she didn't need any help paying for stuff anymore?" Beth asked.

"And just for the record," Jamil added, "the preliminary toxicology screen from her autopsy came back a few hours ago. It showed traces of alcohol but no drugs, so it doesn't seem that if drugs were her thing, they were for her personal use."

Jessie thought back to what she knew about Chloe Baptiste—how she was willing to push the boundaries of propriety when it came to pressuring artists and gallery owners. Even when it clearly wasn't necessary, considering that she could outbid almost anyone, she seemed to like the thrill of bending people to her will. Chloe Baptiste liked to play with fire.

"What if it's not drugs?" she pondered aloud. "What if it's sex?"

"You think she was an escort?" Ryan asked in disbelief.

"No, that doesn't seem like her style," Jessie said, "but trafficking in the sale of sex through other people does seem like the kind of thing that might give her a buzz."

"That would also be incredibly risky for someone in her position," Ryan countered.

"Actually," Jamil piped in, "now that I look at it more closely, Chloe seems to have always sold the same prints. When she bought pieces, they varied. But almost all of her sales are prints of the same eight to ten works."

"That could make sense," Jessie agreed. "If each work was a code name for an escort, it would make it easy for her talk to potential clients about who they wanted, by naming pieces instead of people."

"It would also make it easier to do the books," Jamil added, "and to see which escort was ‘selling' the most. "

"This is a great theory," Ryan said, "but do we have any actual hard evidence to confirm that Baptiste is running an escort ring?"

"I don't know about hard evidence," Beth volunteered, "but when you guys started discussing the possibility, I pulled up security footage from the office warehouse that Baptiste operated from. I've only gone back a few weeks so far, but there is what I'd call a disproportionate number of super-attractive women who entered and left the facility in that time, and they come and go on a pretty regular basis. It could be completely innocent, but it fits with your hypothesis."

"Okay," Jessie summed up, "so if we play this theory out, now we have another motive for killing Chloe Baptiste. Maybe she pulled those hardball tactics she's known for on the wrong client, threatened to reveal that he was paying for sex unless he gave her more money? Or maybe some other person in the same business decided to take out the competition."

"But how does that explain the other murders?" Beth asked.

"Well, both Isabella Moreno and Lila Warwick are young, attractive women," Ryan pointed out. "Maybe they were employed by Chloe, and maybe the same client who didn't want her revealing his secrets decided to take them out too."

It was a compelling theory, but it didn't sit quite right with Jessie. These killings felt like they were motivated more by anger than desperation. Plus, both Isabella and Lila were public figures whose livelihoods could be ruined if they were to work as call girls and it came to light. Beyond that, the theory didn't explain the death of Fiona Greene. She seemed like the kind of person who detested getting her hands dirty. It was hard to imagine her embracing the inherently grimy world of sex work, no matter how "high class."

"Maybe," she said, "but I'm not sure all those puzzle pieces fit together."

"Still," Ryan pressed, "we should look into who bought those prints. That could be a whole other group of potential suspects."

"I just found something else," Beth told them. "Should I set it aside to work on this list of johns with Jamil?"

"What did you find?" Jessie asked.

"I was running Lila Warwick through the system to see if there were any connections among her and the other victims. I found one, but it doesn't look like it fits with this lead."

"Tell us anyway," Jessie told her .

"Well, it looks like two of them—Chloe Baptiste and Lila Warwick—shared the same financial advisor, a woman named Adrienne Shaw," she said. "The firm that Shaw works for, Wealth Consultants West, or WCW, specializes in helping ultra-high-net-worth individuals and for both of them, she was the primary advisor. The firm also advises the Moreno family, although Shaw isn't listed as their advisor. And unfortunately, there's no indication that Shaw ever worked with Fiona Greene. In fact Greene's financial advisors are with a different firm altogether."

Jessie had gotten her hopes up briefly, only to have them dashed by the last revelation. But them another thought occurred to her.

"What about before she joined WCW?" she asked. "Did Shaw ever work at Greene's firm?"

"Checking," Beth said, pausing briefly before going on. "Hold on, this is kind of weird."

"What?" Ryan asked.

"Jamil, can you backstop me here?" Beth asked. "Make sure I'm not missing something?"

He stopped his work on potential escort clients, rolled his chair next to hers, and looked over her shoulder at her monitor. Jessie could tell from his expression that he was as amazed as Beth.

"What is it?" she asked.

"According to multiple federal and state databases," Jamil said, shaking his head, "prior to four years ago, Adrienne Shaw, didn't exist."