He, who worked for a day-trading company, had been devastated by the news and had seemed genuinely shell-shocked. He’d even called Nash this morning, just after seven, wanting information and offering any help, but when Nash had asked him questions on the phone, he hadn’t been able to come up with any new information to aid the investigation. According to Jeffrey, Brandi, who worked in a local bank in the trust department, didn’t have an enemy in the world. Originally from Seattle, she was sweet and kind and made friends easily. They’d been college sweethearts and Brandi had followed him to Portland when he’d taken a job in a trading company downtown. They’d had plans to marry, though he hadn’t yet gotten down on one knee and made it official. He had, though, put the ring she’d shown him in a local jewelry store on some kind of layaway plan and was making payments on it. He’d planned to propose at the first University of Washington home football game this fall, had hoped to get her sorority sisters on board, maybe pop the question while captured on the Jumbotron or whatever it was that filmed the game. He’d started choking up and had to end the conversation.
Jeffrey Albright Conger was a mess.
Or a very good actor.
As she dropped into her desk chair again, she made a note to meet him personally and check to see if anyone had a life insurance policy on Brandi Potts. Just in case. Though it seemed from outward signs that Brandi’s murder was more likely related to the other women who were a part of Dead Heat than a kill-for-a-quick-payoff scheme, you never knew. Nash had already decided to look into Conger’s finances and to check just in case girlfriend number two was stashed away somewhere.
Besides, Brandi Potts’s connection was a thin thread as she was only an extra.
Nonetheless, Nash kept coming back to the film and the fact that Dead Heat’s female lead was still missing.
Where the hell was Allie Kramer?
Nash wrote the question down and circled it. The timing of the star of Dead Heat’s disappearance had to be significant. Had she been killed, an earlier victim of the same killer? Then why hadn’t her body been left and displayed in plain view like the others? If the killer’s MO was to leave the dead bodies at the killing ground and decorate them with a bizarre mask, then why hadn’t he done the same to Allie? Or had she somehow escaped? Had she been warned of the attack that would happen on the set? If so, how? Who had tipped her off? Was she involved? If so, how had she vanished off the face of the damned earth?
Frustrated, Nash reminded herself to double- and triple-check the chain of command on the prop gun again. Someone had messed with the weapon. Someone who had access. It seemed a very unlikely coincidence that Allie Kramer’s double had been gunned down on the last day of filming when Allie herself hadn’t been on the set. The actual shooter, Sig Masters, was still on the list of suspects, but from all outward purposes he had no reason to try to kill either Lucinda Rinaldi or either one of the Kramer girls, each of whom, at one time in the script, Nash had learned, was to be the target of the killer in the movie.
She was missing something, she knew it.
The obvious link was Cassie Kramer, sister to Allie, daughter of Jenna, but that was just too easy, Nash thought.
One killing had occurred in LA.
The next happened in Portland.
Of course Cassie Kramer had been in the area of each homicide when it had been committed.
Convenient.
Others connected to Dead Heat had been up and down the coast.
It seemed unlikely that there were two killers, so whoever had shot Holly had come to Portland in the last few days and killed Brandi Potts.
Nash tapped her pencil on her notepad. Every damned lead was guiding her back to Cassie Kramer. She’d been on the set when Rinaldi had been shot, here in Portland on location, she’d been in LA and had drinks with Holly Dennison the night before the woman was murdered, and she was back in Oregon last night when Brandi Potts had been gunned down.
And, of course, there were the notes on the backs of the hideous masks: Sister. Mother.
Who else would refer to the women in the pictures as such?
Someone who wanted to set Cassie Kramer up as the fall guy while he or she had her own reasons for wanting the two women killed? What if the masks were a distraction? What if they were left with the sole purpose of keeping the police guessing and pointing them in the wrong direction? What if there were some other unknown links between the women? An ex-lover? The only witness, Peggy Gates, had said she’d seen a woman or small man running from the scene. Hell, that person, male or female, might not be the shooter. He or she could be a witness to the crime, who ran off or was running for some other reason.
