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Bill’s usual habits, she gave them a general rundown: He usually left for Vegas on Tuesday or Wednesday and returned Thursday or Friday, almost always during daylight hours. He never filed a flight plan. He normally wore the blue robe he’d been wearing that night. He typically drank four to five beers around dinnertime and maybe some wine with dinner. (Curiously, the glass where he’d been sitting at the dining table contained hard liquor.) They rarely used the alarm system in the house, unless they were on vacation. When he was in Las Vegas, he didn’t gamble. And she didn’t know anyone else with whom he had regular contact there other than his Realtor, David Mitchell.
    She also said that a number of keys to the Balboa Coves house hadn’t been returned by workmen, such as window cleaners, gardeners, and painters, but she hadn’t copied any keys herself. Nor did she know where Bill would have had any made.
    â€œYou can call me anytime,” Nanette said. “I want to help in any way that I can.”
    When her gunshot residue test came back, her hands were clean.

CHAPTER 5
    That Saturday morning, December 17, the first news story hit the local paper, stripped across the front page. Few details were released and no suspects were cited in the Daily Pilot story, which said, Police were tight-lipped about William Francis McLaughlin’s death, citing a need to protect their investigation.
    The NBPD wouldn’t even acknowledge that the divers seen combing the waters behind the house were part of the homicide investigation. But, in fact, two sets of divers scoured the channel for a day and a half, looking for the murder weapon. One was a team of Newport Beach lifeguards and the other was a U.S. Navy dive team, stationed in San Diego, that used metal detectors to search through the thick marine grass covering the channel floor.
    In the article, Bill was described by neighbors as a physically fit man who would jog through the complex, and when a homeowners’ association fund fell short of the kitty needed to install the community security gate in 1990, McLaughlin was among the residents who made an additional donation.
    Although neighbors said Bill had been affectionate with Kevin at a homeowners’ association party, they also said they found Bill and his family to be “standoffish,” because they hadn’t socialized much with neighbors over the two decades they’d lived in Balboa Coves.
    The regional paper, the Orange County Register, also played the story on its front page, with the headline NEWPORT MILLIONAIRE SLAIN IN GATED HOME .
    â€œHe was a really nice guy,” twenty-six-year-old Jenny McLaughlin told the reporter. “This has always been a really quiet neighborhood, but who knows.”
    Citing court records, the article characterized Bill and Sue’s divorce as “bitter,” noting that she’d gotten a restraining order to stop him from transferring any holdings and from calling her early in the morning to bully her into taking a payout of $1 million of his “hard-earned money.” If she didn’t, he’d threatened to take “unpleasant tactics.”
    He’s very controlling and domineering, Sue’s filings stated.
    In Bill’s filings from May 1990, he explained that Sue should not be given any direct control over any of the property. He needed full control over all of it, he said, as leverage for business purposes or his investments would fail. He offered to pay his wife $5,000 a month for living expenses.
    Bill also explained that the two 8:00 A.M. calls he’d made to her were never intended to harass her, only to save money on long-distance rates. He said he’d been threatened with legal action since 1989 by a former business partner, presumably Jacob Horowitz. Someone had been trying to serve him with papers, and he was simply trying to find out if it was Sue’s representative or someone else. He