Free Deception with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Two) by Jenn Vakey Page A

place as the book. We should start working through this and see where we can get with his assignment. There might also be a hint in here about where we can find the other pages.”
    Rilynne was still reading the journal when they walked into the station.
    “I’m going to go swing by the lab and see if they have identified the trace,” Matthews said as they stepped into the elevator. “I’ll meet you in the conference room.”

Chapter Five
    R ilynne had skimmed through half of Villarreal’s journal by the time Matthews walked back in. “Tell me you found something?” he asked wishfully.
    “So far it appears that he put anything of importance in his reports,” she stated. “He did write some theories down, but he proved all of them inaccurate a page or two later.”
    He leaned against the table, folding his arms in front of him. “Does it say who he was meeting at the house?”
    “Actually, there’s no mention of the house at all. At least not in the first half,” she said, setting the journal down on the table in front of her. “Was Ben in the lab with the results of the trace?”
    “It was a mix of a heavy duty motor oil and aluminum shavings. I asked Steele and Tylers to look into it and see where he would have been able to pick that combination up,” he said. “He seemed a little disappointed that you weren’t with me,” he said pointedly.
    “Steele or Tylers?” She kept her gaze firmly on the journal. She could feel his eyes on her, but pretended to read. “That would be Ben Davis,” he answered.
    “That’s probably because I’m always the one to go up there,” she said, stressing on ‘always’. “When’s the last time you went to the lab when you weren’t going with me?”
    “Mhmm,” he mumbled as he laid the map back down on the table. “We know from the trace that was put on the bills where the ones that weren’t deposited in the account were spent. We can use that list to try and narrow down Tylers and Steele’s list when they have it.”
    She sat the journal back down. “Wouldn’t some of the bills have been handed out to other customers to make change? That could spread them out all around the city.”
    “That’s why Villarreal was making all of the payments in fifties and hundreds,” he explained. “That lessened the chance that they would be passed from hand to hand. So if we plot the places that they were used, we can see if any of the locations are near somewhere Shane could have picked up that trace.”
    “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take the journal then if you want to work on that. I’ll let you know if he mentions any places that he visited or thought were relevant to the case.”
    After another hour of reading, Rilynne came across something that struck her as odd.
    “I think I may have something here,” she said. Matthews sat the stickers he had been using on the map down and walked over to her. “He said that he felt someone was betraying him.”
    “Does he say who it was?” he asked.
    “No,” she said. “I read forward a little, and he doesn’t mention it again. He doesn’t even say why he felt betrayed. It was just a one liner at the bottom of this page.” She held it out and pointed.
    “Of course he wouldn’t add details. That would just make it easy for us.” Rilynne could tell by his tone that he was getting frustrated.
    She pulled the journal back in front of her and picked up where she had left off. Unlike his copies of the reports that she looked through, reading the journal made her slightly uncomfortable. Villarreal had included not only things having to do with the case, but also his own feelings. Rifling through a person’s life, even after their death, always left her with an uneasy feeling. It was almost like reading someone’s diary, and in Villarreal’s case, it actually was.
    His decision to take the assignment had been harder on his marriage than anyone had mentioned. He had written that prior to telling his wife he would