“Failure to pay could be a reason to kill them, I suppose,” Drew said. “Though they would be better off alive to their bookie.”
Teagan looked at Drew. “Are the Contis involved in organized gambling?”
“I’ve never heard anything to that effect, but I don’t know what all Rossi has his hands in.”
Teagan faced her sister. “Can you tell if the wives went on these Vegas trips?”
Mackenzie’s eyes narrowed. “In each case, two airfares were charged to their credit cards. I assume that it was the wife as any guy having an affair shouldn’t be dumb enough to charge it to their joint credit cards.”
“Never know what someone might do.” Drew looked at Teagan. “We’ll have to follow up on this with the families.”
“I’ll start a list of follow-up questions.” Teagan got out her phone and made a note in the app.
Drew closed his book, his gaze pensive. “None of the wives had any idea why someone would want to kill their husbands. We’ll need to interview friends and coworkers next. See if they tell a different story. And in Forte’s case, we need to check with other gym members.”
Teagan added that to her notes. “We can do that first thing in the morning.”
“We should also interview the detectives in charge of the missing person investigations,” Mackenzie said. “You know how as an investigator you have gut feelings in an investigation that don’t make it into the reports.”
“Can you take care of that?” Drew asked.
“Glad to.” Mackenzie’s whole body lifted to attention.
Teagan loved seeing her sister so alive. She’d been kind of down this last little while. Teagan thought she needed a vacation and would suggest that when this investigation was over. Teagan should take one too, but they both couldn’t be gone at the same time, and Teagan wanted her sister to have first dibs on time off. After all, it was Teagan’s job to make sure everyone flourished in the company.
“What about Romo’s travel?” Drew asked. “Might he have run into these guys while on the road?”
Mackenzie grabbed Forte’s book, flipped to the back, and slid the binder across the table. She tapped the page. “This is a list of hotels owned by the company he works for. We could cross reference the list to Romo’s travel schedule if we could get his schedule.”
Teagan ran down the list. “None of these hotels are in the Middle East, which was Romo’s territory.”
Drew frowned. “Then it’s not likely the hotel connects Romo to Forte, but Hoyle had quite a few airline tickets booked on his credit card statements. Could they have connected at some time?”
“Anything to the Middle East?” Teagan asked.
“Not that I saw,” Drew said. “But he died a while ago, so it would have to have been before the summer of 2018. We don’t have records for Forte and Romo back that far and will have to request the financials and talk to the family.”
“I’ll add it to my list.” Teagan tapped the information into her phone.
“For now,” Drew said. “Let’s look at Forte and Romo starting with the last three months. Social media is listed in the reports but not as related to travels. We should check that too.”
“I already did,” Mackenzie said. “Didn’t take long. They each had Facebook accounts and never really posted anything.”
“So we start with financial records then.” Teagan pulled Forte’s book closer to her.
Mackenzie grabbed her laptop. “I’ll create a spreadsheet where we can log the travel dates for comparison.”
A logical move for Steele Guardians’ Chief Information Officer. Mackenzie, despite her free spirit, loved to organize data and information and present it in a logical way so they could all make decisions. Having someone devoted to just that was a true blessing to Teagan.
“Thanks.” Teagan flipped to Forte’s financial section and found the credit card statements.
“Romo was in Qatar from November first to the eighteenth,” Drew said.
Mackenzie’s fingers flew over the keyboard, her eyes narrowed with concentration.
Teagan ran her finger down Forte’s credit card statement for April. “Forte had airline tickets for BGW at the beginning of April. Not sure where that is.”
“I’ll look it up,” Mackenzie said, her fingers already typing. “Baghdad International Airport.”
