Color rushed into his cheeks, that single deep dimple making another unexpected appearance. “Yeah, right. The case. I feel a little odd about this,” he said almost shyly, “but Georgia insisted you wouldn’t mind. She thought maybe we could help each other.”
My suspicion shifted direction. Maybe this had nothing to do with Harris or Patricia. It wouldn’t be the first time Georgia had tried to set me up with one of her friends from work. I glanced at his left hand as he reached for his soda. No wedding ring. No suspicious tan line where one should have been. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Help each other how?”
“It’s a missing persons case. You might have seen it on the news. The couple who went missing from Arlington—Harris and Patricia Mickler?”
My mouth went dry. The floor creaked at the top of the stairs in the hall where Vero must have been listening. “I think I may have seen something about it.”
“I don’t have any leads on the wife yet, but we know the husband disappeared from a bar in McLean twelve days ago. We found his car in the parking lot, along with his wallet and phone. Apparently, he met a woman for drinks, but she had some kind of an emergency and ended up in the bathroom for a while. A waiter remembered seeing him leave with someone else. We believe we’ve been able to identify her.”
Ice trailed down my spine. “You have?”
He nodded. “She was a member of a social media group that Harris was part of. He was at the bar for some kind of networking event. The woman never RSVP’d or confirmed her attendance online, but the name of the woman at the bar matches the one on the social media group profile, and she fits the description given to us by the waitstaff.”
A shaky sigh of relief slipped out of me. They had a suspect. And it wasn’t me. “So what does any of this have to do with me?”
“That’s where things get a little weird.” He set down his drink, trailing a line of condensation with his thumb. “I’m not saying she’s a suspect. But she’s definitely a person of interest in the case.” His dark eyes lifted to mine. “We think Harris Mickler may have left the bar with your ex-husband’s fiancée, Theresa Hall.”
I knocked over my glass, soda spreading over the surface of the table. The detective and I jumped up at the same time, both of us reaching for the napkins in the holder. I grabbed a wad of them, muttering apologies, my hands shaking as I mopped up the mess.
What had I done?
I braced myself against the table. Nick reached to steady me as I sank into my chair.
I’d told Julian my name was Theresa. I’d told him I was in real estate. I’d been wearing a blond wig and Theresa’s black dress. I hadn’t even looked to see if I recognized anyone else on the networking event page when I’d vetted Harris. There had been seven hundred members in that group. Even this week, I’d only been searching the roster for names that matched the ones I’d seen on Harris’s phone.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean, that isn’t much to go on.”
“If that was all I had to go on, no. But Harris’s cell phone pinged a tower later that night, within a three-mile radius of her house.”
No. Not from Theresa’s house. From here. Harris’s phone pinged from my garage. Right down the street from Steven and Theresa’s town house.
“Have you talked to her?” I heard myself ask.
“I caught up to her at her office this morning. She vehemently denied that she was at the bar that night. A bartender there remembered serving a woman meeting her description. He gave us her first name and said she was a real estate agent, but he never asked for her ID, so we can’t confirm it’s actually her. All the evidence we have is circumstantial at this point, but it’s piling pretty high, and Theresa has no verifiable alibi for the night Harris disappeared.”
“What do you mean?” Theresa wasn’t at the bar that night. I’d combed every inch of that place looking for Harris. If she’d been there, I would have seen her.
“Wherever she was, she doesn’t want to tell me. She’s insisting she was home alone. And your husb—” Nick corrected himself. “Steven says he was out entertaining clients. He can’t confirm she was home that evening.”
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t.” I couldn’t believe I was actually defending her. But the woman was about to become my children’s stepmother and she was dangerously close to being charged with a felony.
He gave an emphatic shake of his head. “I’m telling you, Finlay. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m pretty good at reading people. Theresa was definitely hiding something. She was so nervous she was practically tripping over herself.”
“You’re a cop,” I said, gesturing to his gun. “Cops make people nervous. And even if she had been at the bar, what possible reason would she have for kidnapping Harris?”
“That’s where I’m stuck.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his stubble. There was a weary edge to his voice when he said, “We found some photos on Mickler’s phone. He’d taken pictures of himself with dozens of women, some of them of an … intimate nature, and we suspect some of them may not have been taken with the women’s consent.” I schooled my face into a neutral expression, careful not to let on that I already knew. But Theresa hadn’t been in any of those photos. I’d made myself look at every single one, terrified I’d see someone I knew. “About a year ago, a woman called the tip line at the FCPD. She claimed she’d been drugged and sexually assaulted after meeting Harris for drinks.”
“Who was she?” I asked, trying not to sound anxious. “Did she give her name?”
“The tip line’s anonymous. The operator tried to talk the woman into coming in and filing a report, but the woman said Harris threatened to tell her husband they were seeing each other. She said he would ruin her marriage if she ever came forward. Given all the pics on the guy’s phone, it’s likely he’s a serial offender. Who knows how many women might be out there, wanting to get even with a guy like that? I’d thought maybe Theresa was one of them, but she wasn’t in any of the photos on his cell, and with the exception of the networking group they were members of, I can’t find any other common thread connecting her to Harris. If I can’t come up with a motive, the investigation’s dead in the water.”
“I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”
He raked the dark waves of his hair from his eyes, rubbing them as if he hadn’t slept in a week. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. And I wouldn’t have. Except I was unloading all this on Georgia over a few beers last night. I had no idea she even knew Theresa. Then she mentioned your custody case. She said there was no love lost between you and Theresa, and she thought maybe if I asked you, you might know something.”
A cold sliver of unease poked at the edge of my mind. “What are you asking me to do?”
He reached in his pocket and slid his business card over the table toward me. “I know Theresa’s hiding something. If you can help me figure out what it is, maybe I can gather enough evidence to bring her in. And if I’m right, and she was actually involved with Mickler, then it seems to me like that might help you, too.”
“Help me how?”
“If Theresa’s arrested on suspicion of murder, your ex-husband’s attorney would probably advise him to let go of the custody fight.”
“Murder? I thought you said Harris was missing,” I said cautiously.
Nick laced his hands together, leaving the card untouched on the table between us. “He’s been gone more than a week. So has his wife. There’s been no ransom call, and no activity on their accounts. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for a long time.” He let the implication hang in the silence that followed.
I picked up Nick’s business card, trailing a finger over the pointed edges. It would be far too easy to frame Theresa for my own crime and let her take the fall for it. Maybe Theresa did deserve to lose her future husband and family. After all, she’d had no qualms about stealing mine. But no matter how I felt about her, she was going to be Steven’s wife—my children’s stepmother. She might have done
a lot of terrible things, but kidnapping Harris wasn’t one of them.
I’d been the one to put Theresa in the spotlight, even if I hadn’t intended to. I’d used her name and worn her clothes. I’d crossed a lot of lines these last two weeks, but if I let Nick arrest her for my mistakes, what kind of monster did that make me?
This. This had to be the line I wasn’t willing to cross. I couldn’t bring Harris back from the dead, but maybe I could keep someone else from paying the price.
I held Nick’s card to my chest. “I’ll do some digging and see what I can find.”
CHAPTER 25
“This was a terrible idea.” Between the flashing lights and screaming kids and blaring video games, I was one Whac-A-Mole away from a migraine. I had made the mistake of letting my sister choose the destination for our monthly lunch date. I’m guessing this animatronic house of horrors appealed to her because it didn’t require her to keep Zach entertained for an hour while he was strapped like a sanitarium patient to a high chair. At least here, we could let him loose to run.
“Driver’s choice,” Georgia reminded me, brushing a grease stain from her shirt with a wad of paper napkins.
“Easy for you to say,” I said absently, checking the time on my phone. Still no messages from Vero. That couldn’t be good. “You’ve got the keys to the getaway vehicle.”
When the van hadn’t started that morning, I’d given Vero my keys and asked her to call her cousin Ramón to have it towed to his shop. On the way home, she was supposed to stop by the bank and take out a loan for the fifteen thousand dollars we were now short to pay back Andrei Borovkov’s wife—or sell the car. She’d opted for the loan. Vero was supposed to then arrange to meet Mrs. Borovkov, gracefully back us out of the deal, and return the advance Irina had paid us. I, for one, would feel much better once the woman’s blood money was out of my house.
“The kids are having fun. And you said you wanted pizza.” The sirens and lights didn’t seem to bother Georgia at all. She folded a greasy slice into her mouth while I tried to keep one eye on Delia and Zach in the climbing structure that wound above our heads. “How’s the book research coming along?”
“Is that why you sent Nick to my house? So I’d have somebody else to bug with all my weird questions?”
“I sent him to your house,” she said around a mouthful of pizza, “because Steven’s fiancée is a person of interest in a high-profile missing persons investigation, and I don’t like the idea of my niece and nephew spending too much time over there until we figure out how Theresa’s involved.”
“So you sent Nick to keep an eye on me?”
She washed that down with a mouthful of soda. “Let’s just say Nick volunteered.”
I slumped back in my bench. “Great, so now I have a babysitter.”
“He’s not a babysitter. He’s a detective. And a damn good one,” she said, pointing her straw at me. “And since you both have a vested interest in making sure Theresa’s not a felon, I figured you could help each other out.”
“Is that all?”
“Consider it a favor to me, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Since when do I owe you any favors?”
“Since I babysat two weeks ago.” I opened my mouth to argue but closed it at Georgia’s withering look.
“Nick’s partner’s going to be stuck in the hospital for a while. The big C,” she added solemnly. “Nick’s lonely. He could use the company.” My sister had always been a terrible liar.
“So this is a setup.”
She shrugged. “He’s a nice guy, Finn. He’s single, he’s honest, and he’s gainfully employed.” She licked pizza grease off her fingers. “Cops get good health care and retirement, you know.”
“I don’t need a babysitter or a husband. I’m doing just fine.” Georgia wore her skepticism like a favorite shirt. I jutted my chin at her. “What about you? When are you going to find yourself a wife? It’s been like a decade since you went out on a date, and you don’t hear me giving you grief about it.”
“Don’t be hyperbolic. It hasn’t been a decade.” I raised an eyebrow as she shoveled the last of her pizza in her mouth, tapping a finger against my crossed arms as she chewed. She pushed herself back in her bench and wiped her hands. “It’s been eighteen months, if you must know. And I don’t need a wife. I have my own retirement and health care. You, on the other hand—”
“Seriously, Georgia. I’m fine.”
“How fine?”
“I got a book deal.” Georgia made a face. She bumped her fist against her chest, releasing a soft belch. “Nice. Keep doing that in public and it’ll be a decade before you know it.”
Georgia rolled her eyes. “I thought you already had a book deal.” I’d had plenty of book deals before, and after Sylvia took her commission and Uncle Sam took his cut, there’d hardly been enough left to buy dinner and a decent pedicure.
“I got a better one.”
She took a long, disinterested sip of her soda. “Yeah? How much?”
“A hundred fifty thousand for two books.”
Georgia’s mouth fell open. A dribble of grease slipped down her chin. “Shut the fuck up.”
“I’m serious. I’ve got less than thirty days to get a draft to Sylvia, and I don’t have time to entertain your friend on his wild goose chase.”
Georgia smacked the table. “Holy shit, Finn! You did it!” I shrank in my seat as the mom in an adjoining booth turned to scowl at us. “I can’t believe it. That night you asked me to watch the kids, I figured you just wanted a night to yourself. I didn’t think you were actually working or anything.”
“Thanks for your vote of confidence.”
She crumpled her napkin and tossed it at me. “I mean it, Finn. I’m seriously proud of you.” She was. I could see it in the shine in her eyes. The last time Georgia had looked at me that way was the day Zach was born. And Delia before that. It was the same way my parents had looked at Georgia when she’d graduated from the police academy, and with every promotion she’d earned since. My throat burned with bittersweet pride, and I hid it behind a long sip of soda. I had finally written a worthwhile story and it would probably land me behind bars. “Have you called Mom and Dad to tell them the news yet?”
I shook my head, fidgeting with my straw. “You know how they feel about it.” It was fine to have a hobby when I was married, my mother had said. But after Steven had left, they were both very clear that writing books was an irresponsible career choice. They’d been pushing me to get a government job ever since.
Georgia leaned over the table and lowered her voice. “Now that you’ve got some serious money coming in, maybe you can get Steven and Theresa off your back about the custody stuff. With any luck, you and Nick will figure out where she was that night. Maybe that’ll put an end to it.”
I choked back a mirthless laugh. Oh, it would definitely put an end to it. If Nick followed the bread crumbs and found Harris’s body, I’d be lucky to see my kids ever again.
I shook my head. “Theresa may have done a lot of shitty things, but I honestly don’t think this is one of them. Innocent until proven guilty, right?”
Georgia sucked a tooth. “If she wasn’t at the bar that night, she’s got nothing to hide.”
Nothing to hide. Except the shovel in her shed, the search history on her laptop, and the body buried in her fiancé’s sod farm. Theresa was treading thin ice, and she didn’t even know it. All she needed to prove her innocence was a solid alibi for the night Harris disappeared. Which meant all I had to do to keep her out of prison was figure out where she’d been that night.
* * *
The navy-blue sedan parked in my driveway was suspiciously nondescript. Similar to Detective Anthony’s, with fewer antennae and a little more rust. A ripple of anxiety shot through me.
“You expecting someone?” Georgia asked, pulling in behind it after lunch.
“Probably one of Vero’s friends. Thanks for the ride. I’ll call you later.”
I fished the kids out of the back seat and punched in the code for the garage door. Vero’s Charger was there, but my van was gone.
Vero sat at the kitchen table eating the last of the Oreo cookies from the bag. Zach took off like a bullet to the playroom, peeling out of his coat as he ran. I picked Delia’s off the floor and slung it over a chair, waiting until they were safely out of the room before asking, “Where’s the van?”
She glanced at me over her glass of milk. “Ramón’s waiting on some parts. He gave you a loaner until they come in.”
My pent-up anxiety slipped out on a long, tired breath. “That was nice of him. So what’s the bad news?” I sat across from her as she pushed a receipt across the table.
“It needs a lot of work.”
I skimmed the invoice. The only surprising thing on it was the bottom line. “Ouch.”
She sucked down the last dregs of her milk and set down her glass with a dispirited sigh, as if she wished she’d dunked her cookies in something stronger. “The good news is that we won’t have any problem paying him.” Vero got up and fished a fat ziplock bag from the freezer. She dropped it on the table with an icy thunk.
The hair on my arms stood on end. “What’s that?” The contents of the bag were rectangular and green, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t frozen spinach.
“I met with Irina. I tried to explain. I told her that we made a mistake—that we didn’t realize who her husband was. I told her the job was too dangerous and we were returning the advance. She thought it was a ploy to renegotiate and get more money out of her since we figured out who Andrei works for and how much he’s worth. So she doubled the amount of the offer and refused to take no for an answer.”
I sank into a chair, the room wobbling. “No. No, no, no, no, no!” I pressed my fingers into my temples and shook my head. Vero’s voice rose over the screams in the back of my mind, that this could not actually be happening.
“I tried, I swear, Finlay! I practically shoved the money in her hand, but she wouldn’t take it. She says she doesn’t care how you do it, but she wants it done. Soon.”
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