Oh, well, thank God for that.
“If you’re done busting my balls,” Ethan said, “not that I don’t thoroughly like it, I have something you just missed and isn’t going to be a coincidence.”
He lifted a brow.
“What?” Gene asked. “More than the fact that the dead man took a little visit toDark Spirits?”
Ethan handed him his phone.
On it, there was the name of the restaurant that she’d just mentioned.
‘Papi’s.’
“Uh, okay. And?”
Ethan clued him in.
“Papi’sin the name of Jaden Medin’s restaurant. The widow worked there. We never got the name, and look at that. There it is, showing up now.”
His eyebrows went up.
“Are you serious?” he asked.
Ethan nodded his head.
“Yeah, I am. She might not have been able to cart three hundred pounds of man around, but she connects to the same place Esmeralda Barada worked and likely around the same time. That in combination of the man being there last night...”
That hung there.
“We’re going to have to research her at some point,” he admitted. “Did you add her to our list of suspects?”
That made Ethan laugh.
“All four of them? Yeah,” he admitted. “We have Rodrigo Cruz, simply because he’s the mob man in this little fun case. We have Margie Padillo, since she connects to the first victim who died. Adrian Marrero, the homicide captain, who saw Jarod last, and the Voodoo practitioner herself, Esmeralda Barada, since her name keeps coming up like a bad penny.”
Gene sighed.
“That’s not much, but at the same time is way too much,” he admitted. “Like overwhelm us with coincidences.”
Oh, he was aware.
This was definitely set up, and overkill at that.
Ethan reminded him.
“We’re on the first day. That’s four people we didn’t have five hours ago,” he reminded him. “And we’ll weed through them today.”
Yeah, Ethan was right.
As the techs were wrapping up, Gene caught the ME before he could load up.
“About the dead man’s home,” he began.
Ben broke it to him.
“Which would you prefer? They work the agent’s home or work the trace on this victim? Again, shorthanded, so…”
Damn.
