Jessica briefed Ada Paul DiCarloon what they had learned the previous afternoon. Eric Chavez, Terry Cahill, and Ike Buchanan sat in. Chavez had spent the early morning sitting outside Adam Kaslov's apartment. Adam had not gone to work, and a pair of phone calls went unanswered. Chavez spent the past two hours digging up background on the Chandler family.
"Pretty expensive furnishings for a woman working for minimum and tips," Jessica said. "Especially one who drinks."
"She drinks?" Buchanan asked.
"She drinks," Jessica replied. "Stephanie's closet was full of designer clothes, too." They had printouts of the Visa bills she had photographed. They had gone over them. Nothing out of the ordinary.
"Where's the money coming from? Inheritance? Child support? Alimony?" Buchanan asked.
"Her husband took a powder almost ten years ago. Never gave them a dime that I can find," Chavez said.
"Rich relative?"
"Maybe," Chavez said. "But they've lived at that address for twenty years. And dig this. Three years ago Faith paid off her mortgage in one lump sum."
"How big of a lump?" Cahill asked.
"Fifty-two thousand."
"Cash?"
"Cash."
They all let this sink in.
"Let's get that sketch from the news vendor and Stephanie's boss," Buchanan said. "And let's get on her cell phone records."
At ten thirty, Jessica faxed a request for a search warrant to the district attorney's office. Within an hour they got it. Eric Chavez then ran Stephanie Chandler's financials. She had little more than three thousand dollars in her bank account. According to Andrea Cerrone, Stephanie made thirty-one thousand dollars per year. This was not a Prada budget.
As uncaring as it may have sounded to anyone outside the department, the good news was that they had evidence now. A body. Scientific evidence with which they could work. They could now begin to piece together what had happened to this woman, and perhaps why it happened.
By eleven thirty, they had phone records. Within the past month Stephanie had made only nine calls on her cell phone. Nothing stood out. But the record from the landline at the Chandler house was a little more interesting.
"Yesterday, after you and Kevin left, there were twenty calls to a single number from the Chandler home phone," Chavez said. "Twenty to the same number?" Jessica asked. "Yeah."
"Do we know whose number?"
Chavez shook his head. "No. It's registered to a disposable cell phone. The longest call lasted fifteen seconds. The rest were just a few seconds long."
"Local number?" Jessica asked.
"Yeah. Two-one-five exchange. The number was one of a block of ten cell phones that were purchased last month at a wireless store on Passyunk. All prepaids."
"The ten phones were purchased together?" Cahill asked.
"Yeah."
"Why would someone buy ten phones?"
"According to the manager of the store, small companies will buy a block of phones like this if they have a project where a number of employees are going to be in the field at the same time. She said it keeps a cap on time spent on the phone. Also, if an out-of-town firm sends a number of employees to another city, they'll buy ten consecutive numbers just to keep things tidy."
"Do we know who bought the phones?"
Chavez consulted his notes. "The phones were purchased by a company called Alhambra LLC."
"Philly company?" Jessica asked.
"Don't know yet," Chavez said. "The address they gave is a mail drop on South. Nick and I are taking a ride up to the wireless store and see if we can shake anything else loose. If not, we'll stake the mail drop for a few hours, see if anyone picks up mail."
"What's the number?" Jessica asked. Chavez gave it to her.
Jessica put the desk phone on speakerphone, dialed the number. It rang four times, then clicked over to the standard user not available recording. She redialed. Same result. She hung up.
"I ran a Google search on Alhambra," Chavez added. "Got a lot of hits, nothing local."
"Stay with the phone number," Buchanan said.
"We're on it," Chavez said.
Chavez left the room as a uniformed officer poked his head in. "Sergeant Buchanan?"
Buchanan spoke briefly with the uniformed officer, then followed him out of the Homicide Unit.
Jessica processed the new information. "Faith Chandler placed twenty calls to a disposable cell. What do you think that was all about?" she asked.
"No idea," Cahill said. "You call a friend, you call a business, you leave a message, right?" "Right."
"I'll get back in touch with Stephanie's boss," Cahill said. "See if this Alhambra LLC rings a bell."
They assembled in the duty room and drew a straight line on a city map from the Rivercrest Motel to the offices of Braceland Westcott McCall. They would begin a canvass of the people, shops, and businesses on that line.
Someone had to have seen Stephanie on the day she disappeared.
As they began to divide up the canvass, Ike Buchanan returned. He walked toward them, his face grim, a familiar object in his hand. When the boss had that look on his face it usually meant two things. More work, and a lot more work.
"What's up?" Jessica asked.
Buchanan held the object up, a formerly benign, now ominous item made of black plastic, and said: "We've got another tape."