I took a long sip of the coffee and pulled the paperwork towards me, bending my head to look at it. We divided the tasks up. I had a long list of all Juliet's suspicious correspondence, along with her log-in and log-out times, courtesy of Lancaster Friedland's IT department, including all activity recorded from her personal access pass. I also had her home IT records to match against her suspicious shopping activities. At some point over the next few hours, I intended to prove that Juliet wasn't in the right place to have committed her so-called crimes. Solomon, with a better grounding in financial crimes, took on the larger task of investigating the insider trading violations. Picking up my pen, I began cross-referencing every bit of data, and making notes as I went.
It was an hour before either of us spoke again. "How's it going?" asked Solomon.
I looked up, shaking my head. "Not good."
"What have you found?"
"I can match most of the suspicious online shopping to times when Juliet was in her own home, but the times are weird."
"How so?"
"Odd times of the day. Like, really early in the morning when most people would still be in bed."
"What are you thinking?"
"That Juliet was still in bed and someone snuck into her house and used her computer. She has a work station in the kitchen. It wouldn't be hard to get in, mess with the computer, then leave again without anyone noticing."
"Risky behavior."
"Apparently, our stalker isn't concerned about that," I said, thinking about the previous evening when the stalker came equipped with an ax.
"True."
"Or with being super creepy. I also found some goods that Juliet hasn't accounted for in her list of items."
"Such as?"
"All women's stuff. A couple of mid-range purses, some clothing, some home goods. They were sent to another address. Juliet is paying for stuff she didn't even receive! I think it adds up to... almost twenty thousand dollars. How could she not have missed twenty thousand dollars?"
"More money than sense."
"You sound like my mom."
Solomon laughed. "Give me the address. I'll go check it out."
"I'm coming too!"
"No, you're not. The stalker already shot you. I'm not sending an injured, unarmed woman to a suspicious address."
"I'll wait in the car. Promise! Not even lying. See?" I held up my hands, showing my uncrossed fingers. "Also... I got dibs."
"Dibs?"
"Dibs I found the information; and want to check it out."
"Okay, we'll check it out later, but you are not getting out of the car."
"Fine. I found something else too. Juliet was always logged into her computer at work at the time when she supposedly made those nasty emails."
"That's not good."
"That's not the best bit. She always logged out up to ten minutes before the emails were made. Then the computer is logged into again and logged out only a few minutes later! Then Juliet would log in again an hour or more after that. I call that a good clue that someone else was using her password to log in when she was temporarily away from her desk. I'm going to cross-reference those times against her security pass. I think I'll find she left the office, and maybe even the building."
"I agree, but I don't think that someone was even seated at her desk. Lucas found evidence of a remote log-in pathway hidden deep in her computer."
"I've used remote log-ins before."
"A lot of companies use them for employees to access their desktops when they're away from the office. It prevents employees from carrying confidential data with them; and allows access to any file they need from wherever they are in the world."
"Lancaster Friedland has a lot of sensitive data."
"But they also have a thoughtful work practice, which includes working from home. I'll need to check and see if they installed that. It'll make it harder to track a person's physical presence at Juliet's computer, but we could trace the log-ins back to a user's IP address, and that's just as good as a fingerprint." Solomon grabbed his phone and I listened as he spoke into the handset. I figured he was talking to Lucas, given the tech speak he used. When he hung up, he said, "Lucas says it's going to take some time."
"We don't have much time. Juliet's lawyer needs a solid defense."
"I know."
"We need a plan."
"A plan?"
"To lure the stalker out into the open."
"Do you have something in mind?"
"The more I look at the purchases that Juliet received, the more I think her stalker is jealous of her, just like I thought Penelope was. She is ordering high-end things, things that Juliet would find hard to return either because it's inconvenient, or it's a final sale, or because it's a super high value order. I don't think it's meant to physically inconvenience her, but more to irritate those around her. Like Rob, for example. He's not a spendthrift, and some of the purchases are things I would expect them to make a joint decision on, like the wedding arrangements. It must annoy him to think Juliet is spending all that money without consulting him. Maybe the stalker wants to hurt Juliet financially too."
"It could be intentionally to split them up."
"I think that's a good possibility. But then I look at the goods Juliet didn't receive, and I think the stalker almost tries keep up with her. To have the kind of brands Juliet has, or might purchase. That also supports my theory that the stalker is a woman. It's like she's jealous of what Juliet has. The first key is: she's trying to disrupt Juliet and Rob."
"I'm listening. For what purpose? All this trouble just to break them up?"
"Ultimately, yes. If enough disruption keeps happening between them. All of this does that," I said, spreading my hand across the paperwork that spelled out tens of thousands of purchases. "The abrupt alienation of friends, and annoyance in her relationships, and when that fails, taking the job away, and finally, ultimately, her liberty. There's just one thing I can't work out."
"Yes?"
"Does the stalker want to get rid of Juliet to get to Rob? Or does she want Juliet so badly that she intends to put her where no one else can have her?"
"Well, that's an interesting and creepy theory."
"The creep factor is high in this case. Obsession could be the motive."
"So what's your plan?"
"To use the stalker’s shopping habit against her. One of our top motives is to split Juliet and Rob up, so why not plan their wedding instead?" I paused, hardly able to wait in my excitement as I latched onto my new strategy.
"They're already planning a wedding."
"Not that wedding, not the real one. A fake wedding, you know, to have in a couple of days. They can tell all their friends and family that they've decided to push the wedding forward in light of all the recent awful events and as they might lose their real opportunity, they're going to take the time to get married at home. After all, why not? Nothing can break them apart. It's the ultimate symbol of their unity as a couple and their goals for happiness. Plus, they have all these wedding things at their disposal. They already have the dress and the flowers and the suit and the decorations. They don't need to do another thing except unpack those boxes."