“I … uh … don’t know a Jeannie Jones,” Rick said nervously.
“Oh.” Matthew feigned surprise. “We were told when you worked at the school you used to watch her.”
Rick gave a violent shake of his head.
“You know someone killed her,” Matthew said quietly. “Someone like you who wanted to find a princess to marry, only then he decided Jeannie didn't live up to his standards so he killed her. Did you kill her, Rick?”
His brown eyes fixed firmly on the ground. “I never killed anybody.”
“When she didn't work out you tried again. Tillie Schueman. Then Georgia Lars, you do know Georgia, right?”
“I do her garden,” the man muttered.
“You liked her, thought she might be the one, so you hooked up with her online.”
“I don’t own no computer.”
They knew for a fact he did. One of the friends who had opened up his home to Hendrick had filed a report claiming that Rick had stolen several things from him when he left, including a laptop. Rick claimed the things were gifts.
“You broke into her house,” Jonathon said.
“No. No, I didn't.”
“Georgia’s roommate said someone had broken in. It was you. You wanted to find out things about Georgia you could use to con her, to get her comfortable enough with you to agree to meet you in person. You wanted her dress size so you could have a dress made for her for your date.”
“No.” Rick finally lifted his gaze to look at them. “I wasn't interested in Georgia. It was Whitney.”
Exchanging glances with Jonathon. “You were really after Whitney Leroy?”
“Yes. No. I wasn'tafterher, I wasinterestedin her. She was pretty. Sometimes when I was there, she would talk to me. She was sweet. She would bring me homemade lemonade. I wanted to ask her out, but I thought she’d say no. I just wanted something. Something to remind me of her.”
The glassy look in the man’s eyes bordered on creepily possessive. Whitney hadn’t mentioned any of this when they'd asked her about the gardener, so Matthew wasn't sure how much of what Rick was saying actually happened and how much he had imagined. “What did you take when you broke into the house?”
His face turned beet red. “A pair of her panties,” he mumbled half under his breath.
Could Rick really have been after Georgia’s roommate Whitney? The relationship had developed over the internet, just like the women hadn’t really known who the man on the other end of the computer was, so their killer couldn’t really know who was on the other end of his computer. Perhaps Hendrick Mint had thought that he was building a relationship with Whitney, it could explain why Georgia hadn’t lasted very long. The others he had kept for weeks, Georgia was dead two days later.
“You’re under arrest,” Matthew informed the man as he opened the backdoor of their car.
“For what?”
“Multiple counts of murder.”
“Not breaking and entering?” Rick looked confused.
“Breaking and entering is the least of your concerns.”
* * * * *
4:50 P.M.
“Jaden Kite is out on bail.”
“Already?” Allina asked, dismayed.
“Called in his fancy lawyer,” Heidi replied.
“Is Joynelle safe?” she asked. Once they had dragged her husband away earlier the woman had given her statement.