“Joshua Townsend, of course.”
“Great. Then we can skip the formalities.” The scraping of the wooden chair sounded along the concrete floor. “Alyssa, I’m sure you’re aware that my security brought you here so that you could recount all of the details of what happened last night.”
She visibly swallowed, her eyes ping ponging between myself and Brutus, who still stood, arms folded behind me.
“Don’t look at him,” I snapped, the charming façade I’d first had upon entering the room slipping just a little. “Brutus is our head of security, but I am the one who runs Townsend Real Estate. Everything that happens with this business, happens to me. It’s my name on the line and I don’t take that lightly. What happened to you last night, concerns me a great deal. You can understand that, right, Alyssa?”
Her brown eyes enlarged with worry but she nodded. “Yes, Mr. Townsend. And I told the police everything that happened.”
“Tell me.” Sitting up, I placed my arms on the table, clasping my hands, signaling that I was all ears. I listened intently as Alyssa recounted the events of the proceeding evening. She told of how they ransacked the home for approximately fifteen minutes, demanding to know where the money was.
“See, Alyssa, that’s what I find so confusing. It’s a model home. You were the acting sales agent, not even an employee of Townsend. You work for us through a temp agency. Why would two criminals be asking you for money? That doesn’t make sense to me at all. Can you explain that?”
She shook her head, brunette locs moving around her shoulders. “I have no idea, Mr. Townsend.”
I sat back, crossing my legs, and just stared at her for a minute. She began squirming in her chair.
“Look, Mr. Townsend, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I came down here after hours of questioning at the police station—”
“You were brought down here.”
She paused.
“There’s a difference, Alyssa. One of our security staff picked you up from your home and brought you here. You didn’t volunteer to come down all on your own.”
She shook her head. “Yes, but what I meant was, I came willingly. Because I have nothing to hide.”
“Are you sure?” I angled my head.
“Yes, of course.”
“Then why were you taking pictures the last time you temped for us?”
Her mouth fell open. Out of the corner of my eye I watched as Brutus lowered his tablet, angling it so Alyssa could view the screen. I already knew it was footage of her taking pictures on her phone of the model home. The video was from a month ago, when she’d last temped in that same office.
“Those were for a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yes. We were texting and I’d told her I was covering for the sales agent in one of the Townsend model homes. She wanted to see what it looked like. So I took some pictures to send them to her. See, look …” Without any prompting, Alyssa pulled her phone from her shoulder bag and scrolled through until she found what she was looking for. She turned the phone so that I could read the exchange between her friend and herself.
Indeed, her friend had requested a look inside of the model homes. But until I had verification that this friend was even real, I would suspend my analysis on the truth of her statements.
“Okay, Alyssa. I just have one more question I wanted to see if you could help me with. Why would two people think the sales office in our model homes had any money?” I narrowed my gaze on her.
She shrugged, giving Brutus and I a wary look. “I have no idea. I never told them there was any money in the office. All I know is any money they got came out of my purse, from what I saw. They stole from me, too.”
I nodded. “I understand, and trust me, if we find out you had nothing to do with this, you will be justly compensated for all of this hassle. You have my word on that.” With that, I pushed away from the table, standing. “My security will see to it that you arrive home safely. We will be in touch.”
I gave her a tilt of my head and turned to leave. I heard Brutus mutter a few words into his cell. He was ordering one of his team to take Alyssa home.
“This makes no sense!” I spat out, about an hour later, standing in the middle of Aaron’s office.
“Did she have something to do with this?” Aaron’s tone was clipped, his usual scowl marring his face.
I gave a shrug. “My gut tells me no but I’m having Brutus check in on the friend story, as well as running a background check.”
“Didn’t she already have a background run?”
