by Diane Capri
Jess nodded.
Ginger tossed her hair over one ear. “We get your magazine here. Several copies. Every month. Our clients read it cover to cover.”
“Thank you. We’re always happy to be in the best places,” Jess said with a smile.
Ginger wriggled as if cold water had run down her back. “We try.”
“So, could I have a word with Luca?”
“Of course, you can. Luca would be thrilled to talk to you, I’m sure.” Ginger started down the serpentine bend, gesturing for Jess to follow.
The foyer curled around into a large room with pod-like booths inset like futuristic caverns. Steel and glass were everywhere. Mirrors surrounded the booths. Recessed spotlights glittered like jewels in the ceiling. Jess imagined a single three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn would disorient her enough to make her fall over. At the rear of the room was a bar with an ornate espresso machine and several rows of bottles.
The booths were devoid of customers, but staff members were checking and cleaning and stocking. Ginger pointed to one of the largest booths and left.
A thin young man with olive skin, black slicked hair and huge brown eyes defined by long, black lashes sat in a molded chair. He stood as Jess entered the booth, and towered over her by a good six inches.
The salon’s uniform left little doubt to his physique. In a word, Luca was cut as sharply as the decor demanded. He flashed a confident smile as he held out his hand.
“Luca.” He bowed slightly in a way that could have seemed theatrical, but he somehow pulled it off.
Jess handed over another of her cards. Luca glanced at it and gestured toward the rear of the room. “We take your magazine.”
“So Ginger said.”
He pulled out two stools from under the counter. Jess sat on one, he sat opposite her, his back straight and eyes wide.
“You created Karen Warner’s hairstyle.”
He smiled. “I’m her stylist.” He shrugged. “Well, I was.” He held up crossed fingers. “Hopefully I will be again one day.”
Jess saw the hope in his face. His subconscious hadn’t accepted the jury’s decision that Karen Warner was dead. He really wanted to believe she would be coming back. Hell, Jess wanted to believe that, too.
“How long have you been Karen’s stylist?”
“Six years. Thereabouts.” Luca rubbed his temple with two fingers. “Trim every two weeks, highlights every four. Tuesdays at ten. Her husband scheduled and paid for a recurring appointment, whether she needed it or not.”
“Meaning?”
He grinned. “Sometimes we’d just sit here and chat for an hour.” He nodded toward the bar. “She liked a Mimosa or a Bloody Mary. Or two.” His eyebrows bounced up. “Would you like…?”
Jess shook her head. “A little early for me.”
Luca nodded, sagely.
“Did you notice any change in her routine in the last few months before she was kidnapped?”
Luca twitched his lips and shook his head.
“Did she pay with a different credit card? Was she worried about anything? Did she seem preoccupied?”
Luca shook his head again. “Do you think she had anything to worry about?”
“She was kidnapped. Maybe she knew she was in danger.”
Luca scoffed. “She wasn’t worried about that. She wasn’t worried about much it seemed. She just liked to talk. Give her a drink, and she could really talk.”
“Did she drink a lot?”
“She would have liked to, but she wouldn’t have dared go home smelling of alcohol.”
Jess frowned. “Dared?”
Luca shrugged. “Well, just saying. But she wouldn’t have done it. Her husband wouldn’t have approved. You only had to listen to her to know it took all her effort to keep him happy.”
“You think she was worried about her marriage?”
“I didn’t get that impression.” Luca shook his head. “She just had more life in her than him. But she once said that nothing would make Donald divorce her. I think she just acted like he was always there with her, even when he wasn’t.”
“Did he ever come here?”
“Not to my knowledge, but I don’t do the bookings. Might want to check with the front desk. I can say for sure that I never met the guy.”
“Did she have a phone?”
Luca nodded. “She had a ten-year-old thing. Big buttons. Black and white display. No touch screen. We used to laugh about it.”
“Isn’t that a bit odd?”
“She had it before they were married. She liked to keep it because it reminded her of her single life.”
Jess frowned. “Was her single life very different?”
“She told me some stuff. Different things. She was young. No responsibilities.” He smiled and winked. “We’re all a little bit crazy when we’re young.”
“You’re still young.”
He grinned. “And still crazy.”
“So, tell me. How crazy was she?”
He shook his head. “Stupid stuff. No big deal. She rode a motorcycle and things. Nothing.”
Jess again remembered the Dirt and Track magazines she’d seen at Melissa Green’s house. “Riding a motorcycle doesn’t sound that crazy.”
“Doesn’t, does it?” Luca closed his mouth, pressing his lips together.
Jess smiled. “Tell me what crazy things she did before she was married. It might help me find her.”
“No.”
“What about her behavior? Was there any change before she disappeared?”
He shook his head.
“Please, Luca. I’m trying to find her.”
He sighed. “She didn’t change her behavior, her credit cards, her drinks, nothing. She was a friend. We shared an hour or two twice a month for years. I don’t know what’s happened to her, but what we shared won’t be publicized by me just because she’s not here.”
“I’m not looking for a story, Luca. I’m looking for Karen. Anything at all could be helpful.”
Luca pursed his lips. He took a deep breath.
“Please, Luca.”
He sighed. “I think she might have been seeing someone.”
Jess leaned forward. “Who?”
Luca shrugged. “She never said anything. It was just a feeling. She was… I don’t…happy.”
“She wasn’t happy before?”
“It was just…she was just a little different. But she wasn’t worried. Definitely.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“You mean the cops? I talked to them. But…like…it was just a feeling. It was probably nothing.”
Jess sighed. “If I find something that might be related to her background, can I ask you about it?”
“You mean like to confirm something? Course. If it helps find her. I’d do anything to bring Karen back. Or anybody else who’d gone missing like that. Course, course.”
Jess rose. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. The buzzing stopped. A moment later the display showed Dropped Call.
Luca shook his head. “Bad reception in here.” He pointed to the walls. “Too much metal and stuff.”
Jess pushed her phone back in her pocket. “Did Karen’s phone work in here?”
“Are you kidding? Her phone was so old it barely worked when she stood under a cell tower. When she wanted to call someone, she’d use the one in the staff room.”
“Really?” Her skin tingled. “Can I see it? The phone in the staff room?”
“Believe me, it’s not that exciting.”
“I’d still like to see it.
“It’s just a phone…but okay.”
Luca led her through the serpentine bends to the foyer, and through the gap Ginger had slipped through earlier. A few people were lounging on chairs playing cards. They sat up nervously when Jess entered.
“Chill,” Luca said to the gamblers.
He pointed to an ordinary wired landline phone. “Nothing special. Can’t dial international, but US is
okay.”
Jess looked at the card players. “Were people in here when she made a call?”
Luca shook his head. “When clients use the phone, we leave the room.”
Jess looked at the card players. “Did anyone ever hear Karen Warner talking on the phone?”
The crowd gave her glum looks.
“Raised voices? Anything?” Jess said.
The crowd shook their heads as one.
Jess picked up the receiver and dialed her own phone. It rang and a number appeared in the display before the call was dropped.
Luca shrugged. “Told you. Bad reception.”
“But she used this phone?”
He nodded. “Most times. Just a few minutes. Usually at the end of her session. No big deal.”
“And no change in the pattern before she disappeared?”
He took several breaths, concentrating before replying. “No. No change.”
Jess thanked Luca, left The Crystal, and sat in her car with the air-conditioning running. She forwarded the staff room phone number to Mandy with a request to trace calls for the past three years, which would cover the period before Karen Warner was kidnapped. Mandy’s reply was typically flip, but she’d do the work. She always did.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Tuesday, May 23
Santa Irene, Arizona
Mandy forwarded the phone log from the service the magazine used for such work. It spanned three years and almost ten thousand entries. Each call was listed with the number dialed, time and date, and duration of the call.
Jess downloaded the list to her laptop’s spreadsheet program. She filtered out incoming calls and narrowed her search to calls on Tuesdays from ten in the morning until noon. There were eleven outgoing numbers. A couple of local numbers appeared frequently. When she checked online, she found they were pizza places.
She used a spreadsheet to generate a table of the most frequently called numbers. After the pizza places, nothing stood out. She pulled out her notebook and found the number Dr. Warner had dialed from his phone, the number for the burner cell phone that had once been used by Hades. The number wasn’t on the list. Jess leaned back in her seat. When she exhaled, she realized she’d been holding her breath.
She manipulated the spreadsheet data again. She looked for regular incoming calls, the same number every time Karen visited the salon, but there was no match.
She hovered her finger over the spreadsheet’s exit button and stopped. There was one more possibility.
She opened up the original list of numbers and filtered on Tuesdays from ten to twelve, but this time she included incoming calls.
A grin stole across Jess’s lips and vanished as quickly as it came. One phone number showed during Karen’s appointment time. Ten-fifty a.m. Two minutes’ duration. Jess scrolled down the list. There was no other occurrence of the number on any other day. The calls came in consistently every two weeks for several months and then stopped.
Jess shivered. The calls had stopped the day before Karen Warner was kidnapped. She scrolled up and down the list, eyeballing the dates and times and numbers. She ran her search again, to be sure, but there was no doubt. Someone had called the salon for two minutes every Tuesday when Karen Warner was there. Once Karen had been kidnapped, the calls stopped.
Jess sent the number to Mandy with a request to locate the number. A few minutes later the details came back. It was a landline. A fixed location. The number had an address, and an owner: Fred Wilson.
Should she call the police? Santa Irene PD had closed the Warner case. They were hardly likely to rush to open it up again.
Mercer seemed like he would jump at any information, but what did she have, exactly? A phone number with a physical address that might or might not belong to someone who called Karen Warner at the hair salon?
She could be wasting his time. Worse, he was strung out enough already. If it turned out to be a school friend or an old roommate, he would be crushed.
She needed more information, and there was only one way to get it. She punched Fred Wilson’s address into the Mustang’s GPS and raced out of The Crystal’s parking lot.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Tuesday, May 23
Santa Irene, Arizona
Jess followed the GPS’s instructions south, out of Santa Irene, toward the mountains.
The route showed a hundred and fifty miles to a town fancifully named Death and Taxes before it speared off into the Yuma National Forest. She settled into a fast cruise and reached the mountain road in less than two hours.
The Mustang’s engine struggled to find the right combination of gear and revs as the slope climbed. She locked the transmission in manual.
The rock formations were spectacular. They were different than the mountains around her home in Colorado. These had a regularity that seemed unreal. As she gained altitude, she couldn’t help but feel the arrangements had been carved by a giant.
The woods were thick in some places, thin in others. Occasionally, houses were visible between the firs and pines. The road narrowed.
Her cell signal was showing one flickering bar. She was unlikely to find reception as she traveled further into the mountains, so she pulled over, and checked the address on the map on her phone.
There was no developed land reflected on the street map, but the satellite view showed a log cabin in a clearing. The layout looked simple enough, but she snapped a quick screenshot and saved it to the phone before resuming her drive into the mountains.
The road twisted and turned, following the contours of the land and weaving around outcrops of rock. Pavement gave way to well-worn ruts in the hard-packed ground. She stopped a half mile short of the log cabin and stepped out of the rental.
The air was crisp. Chilling after the heat in Santa Irene. Jess pulled her jacket closer.
The silence was shocking. Her ears took a few moments to adjust from the city sounds they were accustomed to. It seemed that every single sound she heard was separated by long silences as if everything in the forest loathed to break the tranquility.
She collected her Glock from the trunk of her car and confirmed the magazine was full. She slipped a second clip into her pocket.
She only intended to recon the area. Get an impression of whether the landline and Fred Wilson might lead to more information about Karen Warner, or useless data that had deceived her instincts.
But nature could be more dangerous than any city street. Preparation had kept her alive more than once.
She walked along the road, looking to the right, for any sign of a driveway to the log cabin. She glimpsed a roof behind the trees.
She crouched down as she continued along the road. Nestled into a natural clearing was the cabin. A few feet closer and she saw it was constructed in two sections joined by a continuous roof, creating a covered breezeway between them.
In front of the clearing was a hitching post, but no horse. It looked straight out of an old western movie, lacking only John Wayne to make the wild west come alive.
The woods around the clearing were thick with undergrowth. A mixed blessing. Good cover, but daunting for progress. Why didn’t she bring binoculars? She’d only be observing from afar. From what she now knew of Hades, she had no desire to get close enough for physical contact.
She knelt low by the trees around the cabin’s driveway, drew her Glock, and waited. After a couple of minutes, she was satisfied that nothing was moving.
She tucked her jeans into her shoes. She really wasn’t prepared for what she had in mind, but she wasn’t going to turn around now.
An unmistakable metallic click sounded behind her.
A man spoke. His voice rough and slow. “Don’t. Move.” His enunciation made it clear it wasn’t a suggestion.
Jess’s heart thumped. Her skin tingled. She remained stationary, her hands on her Glock, but her Glock pointed forward.
“Nothing stupid,” said the man. His voice was gravelly, rich with harmonics. He was old. His
words were easy. Jess hoped whoever he was, he was as calm with his trigger finger.
He approached her, his steps making the barest crunch on the thick vegetation. “Put that gun on the ground,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“We’ll talk after you’re disarmed, missy.”
She took a deep breath and placed the Glock down in front of her.
“Now stand up, and turn around.”
She did as she was told.
The man was tall and thin, maybe about sixty-five. He wore light green digital camo and sported a full beard. He was pointing a revolver at her. And not just any revolver. A Smith and Wesson Model 29. A long barrel .44 Magnum. Dirty Harry’s weapon of choice.
Despite the threatening potential of the gun he wielded, there was one thing in his appearance that was cause for relief. He was way too old to be Hades.
“What you here for?”
Jess glanced left and right. The man was alone. She took a deep breath. “I’m lost.”
He eyed her gun. “With a Glock? You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“I’m a lone female, wandering around the wild.” She nodded at the man’s revolver. “You never know who…or what you might meet.”
He snorted a laugh. “Could say that. You from the city?”
Jess frowned.
“City council? Big government? Tax office? Any of that crap?”
Jess shook her head. “I’m a reporter. With a magazine.”
“Don’t suppose it’s Guns and Ammo?” He grinned. Either he had surprisingly white teeth, or he wore dentures. Jess put money on the latter.
Jess gave a flat smile. “Taboo.”
The man sneered. “Well. I don’t need it. Can’t remember the last time I wore a tuxedo and gambled in Monte Carlo.”
Jess ignored the sarcasm. “Do you have a telephone?”
A smile grew wider across his face. “Just ’cause I live in the woods, doesn’t mean I don’t talk to folks from time to time.”
Jess nodded toward the log cabin. “You live alone here?”
“Twenty years. Built it from nothing.”
