THE NEXT MORNING JOE took a big gulp of his coffee, then continued looking at his emails. Arlington PD had already sent over their results of checking in to the twenty-two stores that carried the Celebrate the Date line; they’d found a grand total of sixteen purchases of the entire line in the specified twelve-month date range. Of those, only four had been cash transactions.
Unfortunately, two of the cash customers were lost to history – the stores only retained security footage for sixty days before the file was overwritten. The two remaining had turned out to be little old ladies, neither of which looked strong enough to swat a fly much less kill anyone.
Dallas PD still hadn’t responded, and Joe’s team had only covered a third of the Fort Worth locations on the list, netting thirteen t
