In the afternoon, Jenn went to the local PD to meet up with Agent Turner and Agent Potts. She brought J. Lee along, fulfilling Agent Turner's wish. The introduction was brief, and they started their discussion right away.

Agent Turner went into detail about all the information he had managed to dig up yesterday. Agent Potts simply stood aside, letting his partner do all the talking. The few times that Jenn asked for his opinion on the suspects' statement, he answered as curtly as he could manage before shutting up again.

J. Lee clearly noticed this too. At the end of the discussion, she commented on that. "Agent Potts, are you afraid of public speaking?"

Jenn raised her eyebrows, wondering what Agent Potts would say to that.

"I'm not." Agent Potts shook his head meekly.

"What gave you that idea, Agent Leon?" Agent Turner asked, laughing.

"You," she replied.

"What?" He gave her an incredulous look. "Me?"

J. Lee exhaled impatiently. "You technically did the whole debrief on your own. It made me wonder if your partner is capable of communicating at all." She glanced at Agent Potts. "You should talk more the next time I attend one of your discussions," she said bluntly, causing the agent to stare at her in wonder.

Agent Turner scoffed. "And why is that? Was I not communicating well enough with you?"

"No." She gave him a blank stare. "He communicates better with me. I prefer essence over details. That's all." A moment later, she added, "No offense."

"None taken," Agent Turner muttered, wearing a stupefied expression.

J. Lee gave them a brief nod before leaving the room. Jenn smirked. "Like this one better?"

The look on Agent Turner's face was comical. "Well ... her straightforwardness is something quite hard to get used to. I've never seen anyone like her."

Jenn simply chuckled at his reply and went out of the room to catch up with her partner. She stepped out of the building to see J. Lee already in Ben's car. She sat in the driver's seat, starting the car as Jenn climbed into the passenger seat.

"So what do you think?" Jenn asked, guessing how her friend would answer.

"A clucking hen and an owl," she muttered. "Blends well."

Jenn laughed. "The owl, I understand. But a clucking hen? Seriously?"

"Referring to him as a hippopotamus wouldn't fit."

"You've got a weird sense of humour," Jenn remarked, still laughing.

J. Lee simply stared ahead and drove on. "Where to now?"

"Since we're already outside, might as well go do some digging," Jenn mused. "Yes, that's it." She scribbled down an address on a piece of paper she found in the car and passed it over to her partner.

"This is ...?" J. Lee asked with the slightest trace of curiosity.

"The victim's house address." Jenn smirked to herself.

"Tears and tantrums. Yay," J. Lee uttered dryly, saying nothing more. Within ten minutes, they reached their destination.

Jenn got out of the car and took a good look at the house in front of them. It was a lovely little house, only with too much red paint. Her partner paid no attention to the house and went straight for the doorbell. A few moments later, a young girl answered the door.

J. Lee flashed her badge at the girl. "We would like to have a few words with your family."

The girl looked around the age of sixteen. She stared at them in confusion. "Is this about my sister?"

"Yes. Are your parents at home at the moment?"

"It's only my mum. Dad's at work," she replied, her voice breaking. "I thought we'd already given our statements and all that." She was obviously stalling.

"Well, we have some follow-up questions, so if you don't mind, may we come in?" Jenn knew that J. Lee was trying to be as patient as possible. She didn't do well with grieving families. She and tears didn't get along.

"Please be gentle with my mum. She's still grieving," she pleaded, stepping aside for them to enter. At this, Jenn wondered what Agent Turner and his partner did said when they came here yesterday.

"We all are." Jenn gave the victim's sister a consoling smile when her partner didn't make any response to that. "What's your name?" she asked the girl gently.

"Hannah," the girl replied solemnly. "Hannah Lee."

"Well, Hannah, I'm going to need your help here, okay?" Jenn said, looking into her eyes. "You said that your mum can't handle too much stress, right? So I need you to go inside and stay by her side. Help her answer some of the questions if she can't handle doing so herself, okay?"

"But the agents that came yesterday wouldn't let me speak. I was asked to go back into my room." Hannah sniffed. "They said that they would only speak with the adults."

"I know." Jenn smiled at the young girl reassuringly. So it must be that Agent Turner and Agent Potts had drilled Mrs Lee too hard. "But I trust that you're mature enough to handle this." She was sure that Hannah would know more about her sister's social life. That was why she needed Hannah to talk as well.

"Thanks," Hannah mumbled, sounding glad to be able to be with her mother. She went straight into the living room, and Jenn followed her closely. When they entered the living room, Jenn saw that J. Lee had already started without her. How typical of her.

Hannah went to sit beside her mother as J. Lee paused to give Jenn a questioning look. Jenn simply shook her head at that. She turned to Mrs Lee to give the family her condolences. She introduced herself as Agent Cole and shook hands with the grieving mother before letting J. Lee continue with the questions.

Jenn then excused herself, asking for permission to look around the house. Mrs Lee didn't give it much thought, nodding absent-mindedly at the request, obviously wanting to get this whole thing over with as soon as possible so she could get back to her grieving.

After getting permission to wander around the house, Jenn headed upstairs in search of the victim's bedroom. There were only three rooms and a bathroom upstairs, so it wasn't hard to figure out which one belonged to the victim.

Bingo. Found it.

It was the first room on the left of the staircase. She noticed that the its door was already half-open when the doors to the other rooms were closed. Odd, she thought. Perhaps Hannah was in here when she and J. Lee arrived and she went downstairs in a hurry and forgot to close the door. Jenn let herself into the bedroom, and the first thing that caught her eyes was the victim's perfume on the make-up table.

She picked up the bottle of perfume and held it close to her nose, taking a whiff of its fragrance. Nope, it wasn't the fragrance the killer had left behind at the crime scene. She carefully put it back where it was and continued to scan the bedroom. She saw a framed photo on a desk near the window, and she moved closer to take a good look at it.

The alder wood frame was beautifully engraved with the victim's name. It seemed to be expensive, and by the looks of the bedroom, Jenn knew that the victim wasn't a spender. Hmm, it must be a gift from someone close to her. Her boyfriend, perhaps, assuming she had one. Her guess was immediately confirmed when she saw the photo in it. The victim was smiling blissfully while being engulfed in a guy's arms. Jenn took a closer look at the guy in the photo, and her eyes widened in surprise. It was Paul Tanner, one of the suspects.

Well, this was getting interesting.

~

When Jenn finally finished inspecting the house, she went back into the living room. It seemed as if J. Lee was done with the victim's family too.

"Thank you for your time, Mrs Lee," Jenn said as they walked to the front door. "We're really sorry for your loss."

"Please bring the killer to justice." Mrs Lee spoke in a shaky voice.

"We will. Thank you for your time." Jenn gave the family one last glance before she went to the car. J. Lee was already in the driver's seat. The agent started the car and started driving back to the hotel.

"So did you get anything useful from the family?" Jenn asked.

"The mother was too busy sobbing. Each time I mentioned the victim's name, she just started tearing up all over again." J. Lee shuddered at the scene, which was still fresh in her memory. "As for the sister, she was pretty helpful. How did you know that she would know so much about her sister?"

"Just a gut feeling." She shrugged, not feeling like explaining her brief conversation with Hannah. It would take a long time for her to go over all the details. "What did you get from her?"

J. Lee accepted her potted casual answer and told her about what she had found out from the sister. Apparently, on the day of the murder, Gina Lee had made plans with her family to celebrate her birthday in the evening right after work since she was supposed to be at her birthday party later that night. However, she never made it home that evening. She'd called home to inform them that she was caught up with something at work so she couldn't get home in time for the occasion.

"Gina Lee called her family at around five thirty. But according to Agent Turner, surveillance cameras showed that she left the bank before six. That means she might be lying about staying at work," J. Lee speculated.

"Or it could be that something much more important than work happened after she made the call and she had to put her work aside for it," Jenn suggested.

J. Lee pursed her lips at the suggestion. "What could be more important than work?"

"Boyfriend, perhaps." Jenn shrugged. "You know how girls are when it comes to relationships."

"Yeah, yeah, all the 'love is blind' crap." Her friend said dryly, sighing. "Stupid," she muttered to herself, shaking her head.

Jenn gave her a light slap on the arm. "Hey, it's just a guess. No need to get all riled up over it." She chuckled.

"I'm just thinking aloud," J. Lee defended herself, unruffled.

"Wait, the sister said that she was supposed to be at her birthday party later on the day of murder?" Jenn asked, frowning to herself.

"Agent Turner said that the party was just to be a gathering," J. Lee said, plainly understanding immediately where Jenn was going with this.

"I'll ask," Jenn mumbled as she took out her cell phone to give Agent Turner a call.

The agent picked up on the first ring. "Hey, I was just about to call you."

"Oh?" Jenn uttered with slight surprise. She wanted to hear what he had to inform her about first, so she asked, "What do you have?"

"We found out that the party was actually held to celebrate the victim's birthday. Nick Jefferson and his colleagues kept it a secret because they thought that they would be the suspects if we saw it as them using the party to abduct her. Unfortunately, one of the people who was at the party let it slip accidentally just now."

Jenn's eyebrows rose at this new piece of information. Well, this certainly answered her unspoken question, but it just seemed odd of them to do so.

"So did you have anything to tell me?" Agent Turner's voice broke through her reverie.

"No. Just checking on you guys," Jenn replied smoothly. "Keep an eye on the colleagues. Good job." They exchanged goodbyes before she ended the call. Then she told J. Lee what she just heard from Agent Turner.

"Weird," J. Lee muttered after a moment.

Jenn nodded at that. "That's what I was thinking too. You only try to cover up if you have something to hide, so unless the colleagues are really that naïve, there must be something that they're hiding." Jenn turned to J. Lee. "Thoughts?"

J. Lee shook her head. "Let's ask Warner."