Claudia Ashford was living in a second-floor apartment on a street lined with older brick buildings and mature oak trees.Miles and Vic made their way inside, found Ashford’s apartment with ease, and knocked on the door.It was answered right away despite the early our—it was 7:45—by a slight woman in her mid-fifties, with short silver hair and the careful posture.
“Yes?”she asked.
“Are you Claudia Ashford?”Miles asked.
“I am.Who are you?”
Vic showed her badge and ID.“Agents Stone and Sterling, with the FBI.We were hoping you’d have some time to talk.”
Ashford seemed to consider this for a moment before finally nodding.“Is this about things going under all that time ago?Is that still a topic of interest?”
“We believe it may be connected to a case we’re currently working,” Miles explained.
“Ah, I see.In that case, yes, please come on in.”
She led them inside as if she didn’t have a care in the world.The apartment itself was small, but she had made it warm.A patterned rug covered most of the living room floor, and the shelves were full of framed photographs and a few pieces of jewelry displayed in shadow boxes, the kind of thing someone keeps when they're proud of the work and have nowhere else to put the pride.A window with gauze curtains let in the late morning light and a kettle was already going on the stove when she answered the door.
"Coffee?"she asked.“Tea?
"Coffee would be great, thank you," Miles said.
She brought three cups and settled into a chair across from them, pulling her cardigan a little tighter.She was studying them the way people do when they're not quite sure what kind of meeting this is going to be.“So…what can I help you with?”
Over coffee, they gave her a brief but honest outline of why they were there.They spoke of the two victims and how it seemed that they had been targeted because of their platinum jewelry.They also mentioned the method of murder (though they were light on details here), and that it seemed that whoever was responsible had specialized knowledge of the material, the kind that came from years of working with it professionally.
“One of the victims came to your old company for business,” Vic said.“And given how things ended with your business, we were hoping you could help us figure out if there was anyone among your former staff who might have the capability or even the motive to do such a thing.”
Miles had watched Claudia’s face closely as they had explained things.He expected to see the shutters come down, the defensive pull-back he'd seen from people whose past professional failures were being dredged up in connection with something terrible.But Claudia Ashford surprised him.She listened carefully, and when they finished, she set down her coffee cup and nodded.
"I figured it was something like this," she said."I mean, my case is old news."She paused."You want to talk about the people who worked for me?”
"We do," Vic said.
"All right."She settled back."I'll tell you whatever I can."
There was no bitterness in her voice about it, no defensiveness about the business or what had happened to it.Miles had done enough of these interviews to recognize when someone was performing composure versus actually having it.Claudia Ashford had it.She'd been through prison, through the collapse of a four-generation family business, through the public exposure of everything she'd done wrong, and she had come out the other side of it with a different kind of quiet.Not broken.Just very finished with pretending.
"Talk to us about your craftsmen," Miles said."Specifically, the ones who worked with platinum.Who had the deepest knowledge of the material?"
She thought for a moment."Platinum is unforgiving.It requires specific tools, a controlled environment, and a kind of patience that not everyone has.Most of my jewelers could work with it in a basic sense, but the real expertise was in three people.Daniel Hartley, Rebecca Voss, and Thomas Brennan."
Miles noted the order she put them in…and also noted that it matched their top three targets exactly.
"Tell us about Brennan first," he said.
Claudia's expression shifted slightly.Not hostile, but careful."Thomas was one of the best craftsmen I've ever worked with.Technically gifted.He understood platinum the way some people understand music, intuitively, in his hands."She wrapped her fingers around her cup."But Thomas had a very difficult time when the business closed.He'd been with me for nearly twenty years.He'd taken out loans against the expectation of continued income and when everything stopped, he lost his house."
"He filed a lawsuit against you, correct?Vic said.
"He did."She said it without flinching."He argued that I owed him compensation for what happened.The judge disagreed.The court found that his financial situation was the result of his own decisions, not my obligation."She looked out the window for a moment."But Thomas didn't see it that way.He came to my home twice before I went to prison.He was angry and he wasn't rational about it.I seriously considered filing for a restraining order."
"But you didn't," Miles said.
"I was about to go to prison," she said simply."I had other things consuming my attention."She looked back at Miles."He wasn't violent.He was just very, very bitter.But his anger was at me.At the situation.It was personal in a way that had nothing to do with the clients.He honestly didn’t even seem to care about them."
Miles thought about that.It was the same gap he'd identified over breakfast.Brennan's grievance seemed to run in a straight line toward Claudia Ashford and the perceived injustice of the bankruptcy, not toward the wealthy clients who had worn the jewelry.That mattered when you were trying to understand a killer who had chosen his victims specifically for what they wore and what it represented.But then again, Miles had learned enough about Kane's influence to know that it could redirect a pre-existing rage.Take a man already burning with resentment and give him a framework, a philosophy, a reason to aim it somewhere new.He made a note to himself.
"What about Hartley?"Vic asked.