Suck it up Lover - Nick Fowler AU

Part 11

The next morning, armed with donuts and coffee, Megan entered the office as she did every morning.

"Hey dancing queen, everything okay?" came from Josh, who was writing something on the whiteboard.

"Good morning. Better not ask," tortured by sore muscles, she dropped into her office chair, "what are you writing down?"

"You'll see and hear in a minute." Josh, as usual grabbed the coffee and chocolate donut Megan brought him; "What I'm more interested in right now, though, is last night."

Megan knew exactly what Josh was getting at, you could tell by the look on his face, however Megan decided to play innocent."What about last night?"

"You know what I'm talking about. You and Nick? What was that?"

"Something like that is called dancing, Josh. Even though I don't really like him, that's how tango is danced. And besides, apparently Lexie put us together for that very reason."

"Oh Ok, yeah sounds understandable.", Josh nodded as he stuffed the last bite of donut into his mouth.

It took some time for the whole team to be present, but when Nick was the last to enter the office, Josh immediately went to the whiteboard.

"Thanks, Buttercup," Nick said as he took the coffee and donut labeled for him as he walked by.

"Last night paid off. While Nick and Megan were hitting the dance floor, we were able to get into Collins' private office and were unsuccessful. We could find absolutely nothing suspicious - nothing except that he deleted the funds from the system at Trimler's request. That was the bad news, now for the good news. After finding this out, there was only one option left - interrogate Trimler again. Which the team from New York did. Trimler proved to be talkative and finally admitted the reason. On business trips, he often looks for young attractive ladies who accompany him and with whom he can, as he calls it, "switch off". In other words, the women are ladies who, for money, accompany businessmen to dinners and, for an extra charge, keep them company in private."

"But then why were the amounts deleted from the system? It's not like what they were doing was illegal," Nick interrupted.

"Quite simply - because of his wife. What many don't know is that Mr. Trimler is the real owner of High Point Textile. Even before that, there had been marital problems between the two and Mr. and Mrs. Trimler had threatened him with divorce. A divorce he does not want, he does not want to give up the professional position and the money. And so the wife wouldn't know about it, the money was deleted from the system after the fact, when the wife threatened divorce again in a separate dispute."

Megan, listening intently the whole time and meanwhile bobbing her right leg and biting her lower lip, she couldn't make sense of how this was good news now. "Josh, I'm sorry, but you said you had good news. By good news, I thought we found the killer, not that we've ruled someone out."

"You're right about that, though. But now we know who didn't do it and we have to figure out if it's a coincidence that the women are connected in that way or if the perpetrator knows about it and took advantage of this situation to shift suspicion to someone else."

"That means the case will probably be placed with the cold cases, insofar as there is no new evidence?"

With a nod Lexie confirmed her statement. This was one of the things she hated about her job.
She was a curious person by nature, inside her everything was screaming to find the solution to the case and along with her need, there was also the bitter taste that there was a possibility that the victims' relatives would never know the truth and that the perpetrator would get away without punishment.