Free Dead Write: A Forensic Handwriting Mystery by Sheila Lowe Page B

him when he’s off duty?
    Put it aside, think about it later.
    The article she had pulled up about Shellee Jones before Jovanic’s phone call was waiting behind the screen saver. She ran her eye over the short piece, looking for anything that would add to the scant information she already had. Her hand went to her mouth. Oh crap.
    While dining out at a trendy restaurant in the East Village, Shellee Marie Jones, youngest daughter of successful hedge-fund manager Donald Jones, apparently ingested a substance to which she was severely allergic. Anaphylactic shock caused Jones to stop breathing, and although paramedics were called to the scene within a few minutes, they did not arrive in time. Friends and family were at a loss, claiming that Jones was always scrupulous about making sure she touched nothing that contained peanut products. An autopsy is pending.
    It wasn’t a common spelling of the name, but Claudia might almost have convinced herself that the article referred to some other Shellee Marie Jones if the head shot published with the article had not been identical to the one in the leather folder on the bed behind her.
    Another coincidence?
    She located the publication date. What she read unsettled her further. Jones’ death had occurred only three weeks earlier. The article made no mention of the dating service, but according to her Elite Introductions file, Shellee Jones had been a member of the club only since January. Even if Susan Rowan had seen the article, she wouldn’t have made the connection to Jones, as the young woman had joined well after Susan ceased working for Grusha.
    Three dead clients.
    “Yep,” she said aloud. “That’s one coincidence too many.”
    She ran over in her head what she knew of the men whose files the matchmaker had given her. At least she knew that Avram Cohen was alive.
    He was yesterday, anyway.
    She didn’t have the same knowledge about the other clients. One by one, she typed in their names and information. She browsed their Web sites and Googled them. Finding nothing alarming on the clients whose handwritings had raised no concerns, she went on to Marcus Bernard, one of her red flag handwritings.
    Copying from his file, she keyed into the search field “real estate developer, hotels.”
    Several links came up to East Coast projects that had been developed by Bernard’s company—a four-hundred-room hotel in Boston whose top floors contained luxury condos; a similar one in Philadelphia; another in Jupiter, Florida.
    Navigating to his company’s Web site, Claudia clicked through the links until she found one for a photo gallery. The sixteen thumbnails led to glossy photos of Bernard’s buildings and high society events he had attended. The bearded, tuxedo-clad Marcus Bernard matched his Elite Introductions file photo.
    As she skimmed through photos that had been shot at a charity fund-raiser the year before, her gaze caught on another familiar figure at the black-tie event: Grusha Olinetsky, recognizable despite platinum blond hair rather than her current jet-black, but twisted into the same French roll she still favored.
    Pear-shaped diamonds dangled from her ears and glittered across her throat. A clingy gold lamé strapless gown showed off pale shoulders. Grusha’s gloved arm was tucked possessively through Bernard’s and his hand covered hers.
    Claudia clicked the back button and paged through some of the other links without finding anything of interest. What she had discovered about Ryan Turner and Shellee Jones left her with the almost certain knowledge that she had been duped into coming here. She went and poured herself a glass of tap water from the bathroom faucet and downed a vitamin.
    What game is Grusha playing with me?
    It was a question Claudia intended to ask her client. But first, she would keep the appointments that Sonya had made for her with the club’s doctors. She intended to glean whatever information she could arm herself with before the