Page 151 of Tenderfoot

“According to notes from police interviews, not only had that one friend distanced himself from Trev, pretty much all of them thought he was a mooch. He’d made a play on one of his friends’ fiancées, and the friend didn’t like it, the fiancée liked it a lot less. Quite a few of them shared Trev had pretty much run through them all. The only one he remained tight with is Kevin.”

“Shot in the dark since it’s obvious this seems bigger, but did any of them dislike him so much they’d kill him?” Shanti asked.

“That’s kinda extreme, but the police have been thorough, and they’ve cleared them all,” Raye said.

“What about his family?” Jessie asked.

“Prodigal son,” Luna answered. “Mom and dad, brother and sister were wrecked he was murdered, but they shared with the cops that they worried about him and the life he was leading. He didn’t seem to have any direction. And when you don’t have any direction, you end up heading down the wrong path.”

Somehow, we just didn’t know how, outside the dating app scam, he definitely did that.

“None of them know about those deposits,” Raye said. “Except the dad reported Trevor told him he’d landed a good job that paid ‘five figures a month,’ and he seemed flush. But the dad also reported Trevor was cagey about where he worked and what he was doing.”

“I don’t think you can accept a gift of more than ten K before the IRS wants their cut,” Shanti remarked. “So maybe this Sun Dial deposit was payroll.”

“At exactly ten K each month?” Raye asked.

“It’s thin, but the payroll thing could be a cover so he could deposit it in order to pay bills and escape paying taxes,” Shanti replied.

“Alternatively, he could just be so stupid he doesn’t know he shouldn’t extort money and then deposit it in his bank,” Willow put in.

For sure a possibility when it came to Trev.

The screen changed to a slide that Raye or Luna crafted, which was a breakdown of what we had so far.

It had a different picture of Trev and said:

Trevor Lawrence Clampitt – 29

Employment: Unknown/Possibly Unemployed

Status: Very Dead, Murdered, Severed Carotid

Favorite Pastime: Being a Skeeve

Three Months, Sun Dial LLC Payment, $10,000 (??)

Cellphone: Missing (taken by killer?)

Laptop: Missing (taken by killer?)

If above taken by killer, what are they looking for now?

Friends and Family: Cleared of Involvement

Possible Witness/Partner: Kevin Johanssen

KJ Status: Held by NI&S?

The “favorite pastime” was a little on the nose, but not wrong.

“This is gonna get gross, so if gross stuff will ruin your chicken tenders, look away,” Luna warned.

I was not into gross stuff.

What I was into was getting this situation sorted so I could focus on telling Javi’s dad to back off, and spending time with Javi without this hanging over our heads, so I forced myself to keep my eyes on the screen.

Luna didn’t belabor it. The pictures were up for a very short time before she clicked through to the next one.

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