“Thank you,” Karen said.“We understand from the officers who first arrived that you found Lauren after returning from a business trip?”
He nodded weakly.
“Yes.I’m in corporate sales and travel a lot.I was in our firm’s San Diego office yesterday and Monday.I wasn’t supposed to drive back today until after a mid-morning meeting.But it got cancelled so I left super early to beat the traffic.”
“Did you let Lauren know that you’d be coming home earlier than expected?”Karen asked.
“I thought about telling her,” he said.“But I left really early, like around 6:15.I didn’t want to accidentally wake her up with a call or text.And when it got later, I thought it might be fun to surprise her.”
Jessie noted that if what he said could be verified, he’d given himself a pretty solid alibi, considering the estimated time of death.
“When was the last time you spoke to her?”she asked, speaking for the first time.
“I called her around dinnertime,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket and scrolling through it.“At 6:27 to be exact.Everything sounded fine.She said she was making some vegetarian dish to see if I’d like it.I teased her, saying that unless the definition of vegetarian had recently been changed to mean cow, I wasn’t interested.Nothing seemed off.”
“That was your last communication?”Karen checked.
“No, I texted her at 10:06 to say goodnight.She didn’t reply but I assumed it was because she’d already gone to sleep.But now I’m thinking that she was already—.”He didn’t finish the sentence as his voice caught.
Jessie walked over and took the seat across the desk from him.When she spoke, she kept her tone soothing and sympathetic.
“Mr.Mannix, can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Lauren?”she asked delicately.“A co-worker or past romantic partner?”
He closed his eyes.She wasn’t sure if he was trying to think of someone or pushing the reality of her murder out of his head.She got her answer a moment later.
“I can’t think of anyone specific,” he said.“She obviously had boyfriends before we got together.But she rarely mentioned any of them and never suggested that anyone had threatened her or even contacted her recently.As to co-workers, she’s a realtor and has an office about a mile from here.But I’ve never heard her say anything about having issues with them.I mean, one woman apparently talks too loud on the phone and another would bring tuna fish sandwiches into the office for lunch, which made Lauren gag.But that’s about as bad as it got.”
“What about viewers?”Jessie wondered.“From what I hear, she had millions of followers across multiple social media platforms.And I’ve been told that some of her videos were—sharp-edged.”
Mannix managed a weak smile at hearing her description.“That’s a diplomatic way to put it.Yeah, she would sometimes get negative comments because people thought she was too sarcastic or foul-mouthed in the videos.But she never mentioned any messages that scared her.”
“And clients?”Karen pressed.“Did any homeowners ever get upset at how she marketed their houses?”
“Initially a few did complain,” he conceded.“But that changed pretty quickly once she started selling their places at well over the asking price.And after a while, people would come to herbecauseof her videos.They got a kick out of them.It’s not like they didn’t know what they were signing up for.”
Jessie intended to have the HSS researchers review all the comments across every platform, but what Mannix said made sense.She decided to deal with the inevitable thorny issue that was still unresolved.
“How long were you and Lauren married?”she asked.
“It would have been four years next month,” he said wistfully.
“And how were things going?”
He sat up straighter in his desk chair.“Are you asking if we had any marital issues?"
“I’m afraid we have to, Mr.Mannix,” she said, feigning contrition at needing to ask.
He shrugged.
“I mean, I guess we argued occasionally, but it was never a big deal.She’d get upset that I’d leave the toilet seat up.I got annoyed when she moved my stuff without telling me and I couldn’t find it.But major issues?No.Our biggest one was that she wished I didn’t have to travel so much for work.I felt the same way but it’s just not up to me.Am I a suspect?”
Jessie was a little surprised that he asked so directly, but Karen took it in stride.
“We’re just doing our due diligence, Mr.Mannix,” she said simply.“And the sooner we can eliminate you as a person of interest, the sooner we can focus on more credible ones.Along those lines, we can expedite that process if you’d be willing to authorize us to access the GPS data on your phone and vehicle.We can get a court order, but that takes a little time, which we’re short on.The easier you can make this process, the faster we can home in on legitimate avenues of investigation.”
“That’s fine,” he said.“Whatever gets you closer to finding who did this is okay with me.”
“Thank you,” Karen said.“In addition, if you can give us the contact information for the folks you were with yesterday from your San Diego office, that would be a big help.”
