Oetjen pointed to herself as she sat back down. “To me? What did I do?”
Les allowed for what he hoped was a comforting laugh. “Probably nothing, Dolores. But your phone number popped up on a list of others, and we wanted to ask you about that.”
“My number?” she parroted.
Sam allowed for a slight edge to creep into her voice. “Yeah, Dolores. Your number-on the phone of a guy we just put in jail.”
Oetjen’s mouth opened in surprise. “What? Who?”
Lester extracted a photograph from his pocket and laid it on her desk. “You ever see him before? His name is Travis Reynolds.”
She stared at the picture without touching it, as if it might be electrified. “No,” she replied, her voice reflecting her growing concern. “I don’t understand. How did he get my number?”
“You phoned him,” Sam said bluntly. “You had his number.”
Oetjen straightened in her chair. “But I don’t know him.”
Lester leaned forward and tapped his finger on the oversized desk pad calendar she had before her. “That’s the date the call was placed from here.”
As she had earlier with Travis’s photo, Oetjen stared at the calendar. “I don’t know,” she murmured.
Sam stood for emphasis and leaned on the desk. “Ms. Oetjen, just so you realize, this is a murder investigation. You might want to start getting your head straight here.”
“What were you doing that day, Dolores?” Lester asked gently, in classic good cop-bad cop style. “Is it written down there, maybe?”
Oetjen looked up at him. “None of this makes sense.”
“The calendar,” Sam said flatly.
The young woman placed her hand to her head and looked around haplessly, saying, “Right, right. I’m sorry. Of course. It’s…,” before seeing her tablet computer lying off to her right, faceup on the table. “I don’t actually use the paper calendar. My mom gave it to me, but I can’t carry it around.”
She hurriedly brought the tablet to life, smiling reflexively at Lester as Sam rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know,” Oetjen said, her eyes scanning the screen. “It was a normal workday. I had a couple of appointments.… one house showing.”
Les laid his hand on the desk phone. “Is there cell service from here?” he asked.
“It’s not very good,” she replied.
“So you usually use this?”
“Yes.”
“It looks like a sophisticated phone. Does it record outgoing calls for the previous month, do you think?”
She looked at him. “I don’t know. I suppose it does. I’ve never checked. That would be handy, wouldn’t it?”
Sam had heard enough. She walked away and began sightlessly staring at house offerings on a poster across the room.
Lester smiled. “Dolores,” he offered, “If you’d allow me, I’d be happy to see if it works.”
She waved at the device. “Oh, sure. Be my guest.”
Spinney began punching commands into the phone as Sam turned and asked in a more pleasant tone of voice, “How many extensions do you have in the house?”
“Three,” was the instant response. “And a cell I keep in my purse for when I’m on the road.”
“Les,” Sam asked. “Is that unit gonna capture all outgoing calls, or just the ones placed on that unit?”
Lester was their most electronically skilled member, although Willy had made it his mission to catch up.
Les glanced at Oetjen. “You bought the three phones as a package? This looks like one of these sets that can have up to six extensions.”
“It is.”
“There you have it,” he told his colleague. “All calls’ll be logged in here. This is like the mother ship.”
They watched him as he continued hitting buttons, guided by the small screen mounted into the phone’s display.
“Here we go,” he finally announced, pulling out his own cell phone and quickly taking a picture of the image on the screen. “At ten forty-three that night, lasting three minutes.”
Oetjen half rose in shock to stand and stare at the display. “What? Ten forty-three? Are you sure?”
“Yup.” He tapped the source of the information with his fingertip.
She sat back down heavily. “I don’t believe it.”
Sam quickly returned, circled the desk, and stood with her face inches from Oetjen’s. “It wasn’t you, was it, Dolores?”
“No,” was the barely whispered response.
“So who was it?”
“It must’ve been Aaron.”
“Aaron who?”
“Whitledge.”
“He your boyfriend?”
Dolores nodded, qualifying, “Kind of.”
“How long have you two been seeing each other?”
“Not long. Six months. Usually only on weekends, but not every one, either.”
“Tell us about him,” Lester suggested as Sam backed away.
“He’s nice,” she said vaguely.
“I’m sure he is. How did you meet?”
“At a party.” She rubbed her forehead. “Well, sort of one. It was at a bar, actually. A club, I guess.”
“Name?” Sam asked.
“The Four Leaf Clover, in Montpelier.”
Sam changed her demeanor, becoming more intimate in her body language, and almost confided her next comment. “You more interested in a commitment than he is?”
Oetjen sighed. “Yeah. As usual.”
Lester stayed silent as Sam continued. “He a bit of a player?”
After hesitating, Oetjen murmured, “Guess beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Tell us about that day,” Sam tapped the desk calendar. “What was it like?”
“It was fine. He came up, we had fun, he stayed the night-which he doesn’t always do.”
“How ’bout at ten forty-three? What were you doing then?”
“I was sleeping,” Dolores said, her voice stronger. “I had a sale that day, which is a big deal for me. I’m not doing that well, especially nowadays, and sure as hell not after that stupid storm. So when Aaron came up, we celebrated. I overdid it a little with the wine. By ten o’clock, we’d had dinner, watched a Netflix movie, cuddled a bit. I was wiped.”
“But he stayed over?”
“Yes. That’s what I said.”
“Are you a heavy sleeper, Dolores?” Les asked.
She smiled sheepishly. “I think I am, especially if I’ve been drinking.”
“So Aaron could’ve used the phone without your knowing it?”
“I suppose,” she said. “I don’t know why, though.”
“What do you know about him?” Sam asked. “Where’s he work, for example?”
“Montpelier. I think for state government.”
“You think?”
She flushed. “He said he wasn’t really free to talk about it. That his boss had him do special things sometimes that he couldn’t discuss.”
Lester almost laughed. “Like he was a secret agent?”
Dolores looked embarrassed. “I know. I know. It seemed kinda dumb to me, too, but then I thought maybe he was covering for being a file clerk or something. I liked him. He was nice to me. And so what if he wasn’t into commitment or anything long-term? He made me feel special, and I started thinking that was good enough.”
“Did you ever go to his house?” Sam asked. “Or did he always come here?”
“No, we spent the night at his place a couple of times. Mostly, he wanted to get away from Montpelier. It was a cool apartment, though. I liked going there. It was a converted loft or something, overlooking the main drag-State Street. Not big, but nice, with big windows.”
Lester handed over his notepad, open to a blank page. “Write down the address.”
“And add whatever phone numbers you have for him,” Sam requested.
Oetjen did as requested, asking as she wrote, “Is he in trouble now? You said you were looking into a murder.”
Les made a point of laughing. “Good Lord, no. We’re not looking at him. We just want to see how he connects to this other guy, and even he’s not the one we’re after. This is like looking at a bunch of pick-up sticks, and figuring out which one fell first.”
“That being said,” Sam added grimly, folding the sheet of paper and placing it into her pocket, “We don’t want you calling Aaron after we leave. You do that, we’ll know about it, and we’ll be back to talk about the price of hindering a police investigation. Do you understand that?”