What about Cece Baldwin? Nothing led Dean to believe she was more than someone befriended by Byrne but he was anxious to learn if this new phone message would change this opinion.

The rain began, light at first, and he adjusted his helmet to deflect the droplets from blowing in his face. It felt good. The rhythm of his strokes felt good too, an order, a progression, a logi­cal sequence, straight and definite. The investigation had been anything but that. Instead, the trail was an illogical hodgepodge of unrelated sequences that had skipped forward until evaporating someplace west of Hays, Kansas. The path led step by step from the renter of Bascomb Place, with Fred and Dean always a step behind him. Was someone else a step behind them, looking over their shoulder?

Logic kept sticking its nose in Dean's subconscious, prodding consideration of wider possibilities. The one that gnawed at him, blocked out but begging consideration, was the possibility that Cynthia Byrne was somehow involved. But Dean's denial of Cynthia's implication appeared well founded given her reaction to the discovery of the body in Norfolk. The emotion she displayed seemed to defy duplicity. But the policeman in him forced consid­eration of a possible scenario.

Suppose, he conjectured, Cynthia was involved. Jeffrey found the money, told her about it, and the two decided to fake his death and start a new life. Jeffrey fakes his death, but then fails to con­tact her. She's frantic he might have really drowned. That would have accounted for her reaction in Norfolk. But the whole thing didn't make sense. Where was Randy in this fairy tale? While Cynthia skipping with Jeffrey was next to impossible for Dean to buy, no one could convince him she would abandon her son. And Randy being somehow involved was ludicrous. Besides, what was the point to the whole thing? Why fake a death? Why not just move someplace else and start anew, and gradually make use of the cash? Perhaps Byrne was afraid someone would connect him to the theft, a fear that would be eliminated by his "death"-a fear that was turning out to be well founded. Someone besides Dean and Fred was dogging Byrne across the country.

Could Nota and his affiliated crime family be that sly? From all indications, they were people who went rabbit hunting with machine guns, blazing away at any obstacle in their path with total disregard for the subtleties of life, like seeking out records under assumed names and following their prey from afar. And how would Nota and associates come by this knowledge in the first place? They would've had to listen. As soon as Dean said it to himself, it began to make sense.




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