Charles was running late on the dull Monday morning and I couldn't sit still. Talking to Tamara Coker had a way of revving my nerves for hours. She swore she hadn't seen the blade in ages, called me a psychotic manipulator, then swore some more that she hadn't even touched it before. Everything made me edgy, for once we had actual evidence but not enough to prove beyond reasonable doubt.

Charles barged into my room with a sunny smile.
"I can tell you something really good." He pulled out the other chair in the room.

"You somehow got a confession out of Tamara?" His face fell a bit.

"No. Asuquo found something, finally." I facepalmed.

"Come on Charles, we should be concentrating on getting something out of Tamara."

"I know. Consider it tying up loose ends." He put his hands out in proposition and I sighed.

"Go on sunshine, brighten my day."
He grinned.

"He has been sieving through Mrs. Coker's business life; colleagues, customers, competitors but I encouraged him to dig into her finances, search for any foul play or shady transaction, nothing popped."

"I don't understand where this is going."

"A little patience, Mary." He saw my anxiety, he was enjoying this.

"He noticed a pattern, payments made with her credit card, hotel bookings at least twice every week for about a year. I guessed it was for her business transactions but why would she need a room for that and why not just use her home if it couldn't have done in her shop? Plus, Asuquo visited the hotels she had booked in the last month before her death and her name wasn't in their register."

"So, she hadn't booked the rooms but her credit card paid for them. Did he...?"

"A little ahead of you there partner. The girls names weren't there either."

"Maybe the bookings were made with a fake name. Did you check for a consistent name on all the registers?"

"Did. Found a dead end called Anthony Joshua, unless you think Mrs. Coker was there with the boxer."

"She was there with a man." I caught on.

"Ah, brainy Mary. The receptionist at Dannic hotel recognized the picture of the vic that Asuquo showed her, she had been the one to check her in. She remembered her because the woman had been there with a guy at least twenty years younger than her, they tried to play it cool but she could tell from the way he looked at the lady that the relationship they had wasn't familial or corporate."

"Mrs. Coker had been a sugar mommy. Surveillance?"

"Negative." I sighed.

"Did she at least give a description?"

"Tall, moderate, no remarkable looks. It could have been anyone Kay, it could have been me."

"Your looks are remarkable."
He smiled.

"Really? What about me is remarkable?"

"Your antenna ears." I joked and we laughed a bit.
I wasn't feeling optimistic about this new angle.

"This only proves that she was in some sort of a secret relationship which isn't uncommon among wealthy widows. Even married women do it Charles, we are searching for her killer not her secrets."

"Secrets bury secrets. We need to find this guy, he might have the secret we need to wrap this up."

I placed my face on my right hand that was propped on the table.

"Fine, you guys keep digging."

**********

I had forgotten he was around. He was dressed similarly to the way he had been the first time we met but I liked this one better even as the kente was fading.

"Mr. Samuel." He stood and shook my hand.

"This is detective Charles Bankole, my partner."

He shook Charles's hand too and we all took our seats in the living room.

"The officer said you wanted to tell me something important."

"Yes. I hadn't thought about it because the heat has been on the girls but I can't live with the thought that Idara was killed by one of her girls so I began thinking of other possibilities and I remembered the cameras."

Charles and I shared a look.

"What cameras?" I questioned.

"Surveillance cameras. They were installed about nine years ago by my boss. He had started receiving threats from political opponents and wanted to tighten his family's security."

I hadn't thought of surveillance cameras because people didn't go about bugging their houses in Nigeria but apparently, paranoid politicians did.

"Does anyone else know about this?"

"Everyone knows about it." He said with certainty.

"Okay, there has to be a control room of some sort. Do you know where it is?"

"I don't know but the children should, especially Sade."

"Thank you very much Mr. Samuel." I said, rising and he smiled.

Good thing the man hadn't ran back to his wife.

Sade Coker looked like she was already losing weight. There was a tray of covered food on her dresser and bottled water. Her eyes remained closed until I dragged a chair to the side of the bed and sat.

"Long time no see detective." She trained unreadable eyes on me.

"How are you doing, Sade?"

"Not bad for someone quarantined for framed murder."

She was beginning to sound like Tamara except I wasn't sure Mara knew what quarantine meant.

"You are no longer bound to this room." I told her and watched as she squinted.

"You found who did it? You found who killed my mother?" Slowly she rose to a sitting position.

"We haven't."

"Yet." I added as an afterthought. "But your prints weren't on the murder weapon so you are in the clear for now because we have nothing on you."
She let out a huge breath.

"I wanted to talk to you about something else, Sade." She gave me a questioning stare.

"Your security mentioned surveillance cameras."

"Uncle Sammy is around?"

"Yes. Tell me about the cameras."

"Dad had them put up a few years before he was killed. He even had them in our rooms but once Mara hit puberty, she began preaching about privacy so mom had them taken down, except the ones looking over the compound."

"Where is the control room?"

"It's the room directly opposite yours, detective. My dad's room."

**********

Alex Otonko was basking at the peak of youthful exuberance. Already a graduate at twenty-two with a job that hardly required any work, he had a lot of time to just chill and make more easy cash.

We were in the room across from the guest's room that Sade said had been her dad's but was now just an empty room safe for the expensive looking gadgets in the middle of it. I was never into electronics but Alex looked to be having a field day with the little tilt on his lips and the obvious glint in his eyes.

He appeared a little younger with his soft looking hair grown out and trimmed at the edges. Even his skin rivaled that of a newborn; the perks of being young and smart.

"Okay, here we go." He called out to Charles and I in his fine toned voice with the gravelly undertone.

"Found anything?" Charles asked, bending a little to peer into the monitor as well.

"Luckily for us, the cams were set to record and have a memory large enough to hold recordings of about thirty days."

He didn't stop punching keys as he explained.

"That's a whole month." I stated.

"Right and it was programmed on the first which means we should have everything for this month. What's the date?"

"Twenty fourth. July 24th." A week had gone by since Mrs. Coker was stabbed, multiple times in her room and we still had no clue why.

"Twenty fourth, twenty fourth.. " Alex kept muttering as he sieved through files.

"Got it." The monitor brightened with a back and front view of the compound in the wee hours of the morning.

"Alright." Charles turned to me with a grin. "Grab your popcorn Kay."

We spent hours in that room because I didn't want to miss any detail of what happened in the compound on Mrs. Coker's last day. She had left the compound early, so had Sade and Vera who joined the school bus. The camera overlooking the back of the compound recorded no human activity at all.

Alex soon got bored and won Charles over with sports talk but I didn't take my eyes off the screen. They went out and came back with food while I watched the Cokers return from their various businesses. First Vera, then Sade and a few hours later, their mother.

I kept watching until Tamara left the compound and slid into a waiting car whose other passengers weren't clearly captured by the camera. The night vision wasn't as good as I'd have liked but it didn't matter because the compound remained static for hours.

"What is that?" Charles suddenly asked and I forced my drooping eyes open to peer into the screen while he leaned on the desk.

A hooded figure had quietly slipped into the compound through the partially closed gate. It was about twenty minutes past midnight.

"Alex." Charles called, furiously tapping the tech wizard soundly sleeping on the chair behind us.

Alex awoke, spewing gibberish as he wiped his eyes but Charles just kept shaking him as we watched the person approach the house, tactically avoiding the light rays from the living room.

"What?" Alex pronounced his first coherent word.

"We need a closeup image of this person." Charles looked about ready to dive into the screen.

"Huh? Oh-oh. Hold on." He moved forward.

"Come on, come on... Yes." He paused the clip at the exact moment the person glanced in the direction of the camera and zoomed in.

"Well, who do we have here?" Charles said, leaning back on his seat.

"Something you want to share?" He gave me a sly smile.

"Kaima Wilson, meet the justice seeking sister."

*********************************
Hey people, pretty sure I mentioned Alex earlier and the aunt?
Hope you liked this... See you tomorrow🧡