Free Where's Ellen? (Mystery) (MPP A JOE MCFARLAND / GINNY HARRIS MYSTERY Book 1) by Stuart Safft Page A

after a period of time, a witness remembers little details that he or she initially forgot or didn’t think to mention.”
    “OK,” and he went through the same story as yesterday. As he repeated everything that had happened, Steve became increasing upset, visibly shaking and even stuttering a bit. Ginny found herself empathizing with Steve, becoming increasingly convinced of how distraught he was. Joe, on the other hand, reached a more balanced conclusion, unable to decide whether Steve was really upset about his wife’s disappearance or whether he deserved an Oscar nomination for his performance.
    “Any other little details to add?” asked Joe when Steve finished.
    “No.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, I’m sure.”
    “Funny, since I can think of seven million little details.”
    “Huh?” stumbled Steve with a bewildered look on his face. “What are you talking about?”
    “Let’s cut the BS. We know that you’ll gain $7 million in life insurance and Tycon stock if your wife turns up dead. This strikes us as more than a little, minor detail which you forgot to mention to us.”
    “I wasn’t keeping it secret. I just didn’t think that it matt… Hey, wait a minute! You don’t think that I had anything to do with Ellen’s disappearance, do you? Do you really think I’d kill my wife for money? In case you haven’t noticed, we already live quite well on what we both earn.”
    “Yes, you do. But not as well as if you had an additional $7 million. Any other ‘little details’ you forgot to tell us about?” asked Joe.
    “No. And given your line of thinking and questions, you can contact my attorney when you want to talk to me again. I’ll get his card for you.” Steve briskly walked out of the room to the office, returned and handed Joe a business card of one of the criminal defense attorney partners in his firm. “Here’s his card,” barked Steve. “I sure wish you were doing something useful to find my wife instead of wasting time treating me as a suspect!”
    “That’s fine. We are focused on finding your wife. And that means pursuing all possibilities, not just the ones that you’re comfortable with. Just don’t leave the area without talking to us first,” instructed Joe as he and Ginny guided themselves back to the front door, exited the house and climbed into their car.
    “Well, that went pretty much as expected,” said Ginny. “He’s pissed and turning to an attorney. And we’re still not even supposed to be involved in this case.”
    “Yeah. It must be my sterling personality,” said Joe as he shrugged his shoulders and then put the car into gear and headed back downtown. “The good news is that Sanders seems to mostly see me as the one who pissed him off. Sure, you were there with me so you share some guilt by association, but I think he sees you as more understanding and more on his side than me.”
    “Another example of our good cop/bad cop routine, where I’m always the good cop without us even having to plan it out first.”
    “Bad cop just seems to come so naturally to me,” concluded Joe.
    As soon as they got back to their desks, Ginny started the paperwork and phone calls to get the necessary approvals to place wiretaps on all of Steve Sanders’ phones — home, cell and office. Thanks to her many years with the department, she knew how to do this with minimal risk of the chief finding out about it, at least for a couple of days. It must have been her lucky day, because she got the approved interception warrant within two hours and had the taps in place an hour after that. But things did get a bit crowded, thanks to the nonexistent cooperation between the local police and the FBI.
    At almost the same instant, after obtaining a federal wiretap warrant, Florio had taps placed on Ellen’s cell and office phones, as he had done earlier for those of Steve. Although there were multiple wiretaps, it was relatively straightforward: Some taps were allowed because of