She shook her head, her lips pursed together. “I don't know, to tell you the truth. All I know is, it started right around the time my partner Blake Axelrod passed away.”
I jotted down the name Blake Axelrod in the notebook. “Your partner? He passed away recently?”
“Yes, two weeks ago, I think.”
“And, you say it started around the same time? Before, or after?”
She shrugged. “To be honest, I don't know. Blake's death was a real shock to the system, you know?” She took a sip of coffee.
“No foul play, I take it?”
“Excuse me?” she asked, setting her mug down. “He was hunting deer when he died, not ducks.”
I smiled. “Foul play? As in, unnatural cause of death?”
“Oh!” she replied, shaking her head. “No, I'm sorry, no. It was a heart attack.”
I nodded, scribbled down more notes. “Well, we can check your phone records, I believe, and figure out the exact date this all started.”
Peter decided to join us, quietly stepping into the conference room. We both turned to him. “Please, don't get up. Ms. Long I presume?” Peter asked, hand extended to our newest client.
She smiled warmly at him, took his hand. “Yes. Peter Frost?”
Immediately, I felt a little pang of jealousy at the way she looked at him, before quickly realizing I had no territorial claim on her. I mean, of course I didn't. Why would I? She was a human being, and her own woman for fuck's sake. Besides, she and I had only met a few minutes before. But, God, even the way she smelled was almost too much for me. My gut reaction was to tear off Pete's arm and feed it to him.
The leader of my pack came in and set next to me, on the other side of me from Jessica, his own notepad in hand. From the way he was acting, I could tell he wasn't nearly as phased by her as I was.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said gruffly. “How much have I missed?”
“Not much.” I passed him the notes and went over what we'd discussed already.
He glanced up from the notes as I finished. “And you keep saying it's a he, correct? But it's an electronically masked voice?”
She opened her mouth, as if to say something, then quickly shut it with a perplexed look on her face. “You know, now that you mention it, I guess we just assumed it was a he, me and Sheila I mean. So, no, I don't know for sure.”
Peter nodded. “And, you told Gen that Sheriff Peak did track the number, but that they go back to several different disposable phones. Like the ones you'd buy at the gas station? I assume he told you those are almost completely untraceable, correct?”
She nodded. “That's what he said. But, well, I wasn't sure if he was just pushing me off.”
Peter and I both frowned. “No,” I replied, “unfortunately, that's not the case. They are actually very difficult to track. Notoriously bad, to the point where congress is floating ideas on laws against them.”
“Any jilted lovers, old friends, business associates, people with bad blood?”
She made a face and shook her head. “Not a lot of ex-boyfriends, and none of them were ever any kind of bad breakup that I recall. Maybe I sold someone a painting, and they didn't like it? But that wouldn't make any sense. Why would they be upset with me about a painting they picked out?”
Peter and I both jotted down notes as she spoke, frowning as we looked at them.
“So what can we do?” she asked. “Anything?”
Peter glanced at me. “Richard, you wanna take this one?”
I nodded. I knew he had an idea of how he wanted to go about this, but if there were any changes he wanted to make, he'd tell me away from the client. He was always doing these little tests on me, to see how much of the training he'd drilled into me had really set in. “First,” I began, “we'd want to put you under surveillance, ideally at one of our safe houses where we can have total control of the environment, who approaches, all that. As you said, the frequency of the calls have increased, and moved from a 'get out town' to a 'get out of town, or else' motif. Generally, an escalation like that means there's going to be continued escalation, and not the opposite.”
“A safe house? An escalation?” she asked with a groan. “I can't do that right now, I've got too much going on at the gallery.”
“In that case, we can put someone on you, someone to shadow you throughout the day, and watch your house at night.”
Jessica seemed a little flustered at the idea of having someone tailing her all day. “Can't you just, I don't know, like pickup the phone and threaten them or something?”
Peter and I both licked our lips, unsure of how to exactly respond. “Well,” Pete said, “we could do that, but then you'd be tipping them off that you have security. Also, unwarranted threats against someone's safety, even if it's against someone that's threatening you, are generally frowned upon by law enforcement. Besides, if the person threatening you does try something, they'll take security into consideration when they make their plan.”