by Sara Rosett
Mort had been leafing through the message board posts, but he stopped and looked at her. “And in return for all this legwork, you’re expecting some inside info on the investigation. We have people who do this, you know. You’ve probably duplicated their work already.”
“I have to do all this research myself—to make sure. I’m not taking anyone’s word for anything, not even the FBI’s. I’m writing this story, Mort,” she said firmly.
He sighed, stared at her for a moment. “Off the record...”
“Of course.”
“None of this is for publication. Not yet. The SEC has had some complaints.”
When he didn’t say anything else, Jenny raised her eyebrows. “About...”
“Irregularities, possible stock price manipulation, questionable investor information.” He glanced pointedly down at the papers.
“Anything on the partners,” she asked as she consulted her notebook for names. “Connor Freeman or Jack Andrews?”
“Nothing I can say. We’ve interviewed some local investors. Freeman and Andrews are next up.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mort.” It wasn’t a lot, but Mort was on-board now and would keep her in the loop. “I have to get back to work. I’ll call you.” She left him hunched over the papers, his empty soda glass forgotten.
HALF an hour later, Special Agent Gregg Sato, smelling so overpoweringly of flowers that Mort had to roll down the window a few inches, turned the car into the parking lot of the business complex where the office of GRS was located. “What the—”
Mort didn’t look up right away. Sato tended to whine about everything from the traffic to the wrinkles the seatbelt put in his suit coat. But when Sato didn’t follow up with a moan about the parking situation, Mort glanced up from the pages he’d been reading then let them drop into his lap. “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
Yellow police tape ringed one of the buildings, and a police officer stood outside the tape, waving incoming traffic toward the next set of offices. Two technicians were combing the small island landscaped with ivy and low-growing bushes that jutted out into the parking area in front of the sealed off building. When the police officer saw their car, a brown four-door Chrysler with tinted windows and special plates, he motioned them to a park beside a crime scene van.
“No idea, but I’m sure it’s not good for our case,” Sato said.
Chapter Four
Dallas
Wednesday 12:32 p.m.
ZOE wished she had fled the office when she had the chance. She was seated in a miniscule park area on a stone bench at the center of the office complex. The day had begun cool, but as the sun rose, the humidity began to build along with the temperature. It felt as if the sun was steaming the moisture from yesterday’s rain out of the ground. She’d long since taken off her suede jacket and now she pushed the sleeves of the batik print cotton shirt above her elbows. She’d grabbed whatever she could find in her closet this morning and hadn’t been thinking about dressing for the heat of the day when she left the house in the pre-dawn hours.
She twisted around to watch several guys in suits huddling at the edge of the park. Zoe had already answered copious questions from the police officer who arrived on the scene first. Shortly after his arrival, the parking lot had filled with a fire truck, an ambulance, and more police cars. They separated her and Sharon, taking Zoe into the small park area to answer questions. Sharon leaned against her minivan.
Zoe sat nervously watching as the quiet office park buzzed with activity. Zoe assumed the people photographing things and gathering small items in bags were crime scene investigators, and two men in suits had to be the police detectives. A scruffy man toting a large camera climbed on the roof of a nearby building to film the scene until a police officer made him stop. Soon, crime tape blocked off the office and encircled Connor’s BMW. Zoe watched as Sharon finished talking with a suited man, climbed in her van, and drove out of the parking lot, passing several vans with television station logos positioned at the exit.
Zoe shifted on the bench. Her car was only steps away. It wasn’t blocked off by the crime tape. She could slip away right now. Zip out of the parking lot, just like Sharon had. No one was watching her right now. She reached into the hip pocket of her jeans to slip out her keys, but froze when she heard a deep voice behind her. “Got anything for me?” It was Detective Martin. He’d been asking her questions in that bass voice a few moments ago until he was called away. She twisted her head slightly to look over her shoulder. He was on the other side of a hedge. She could just see his pale yellow crew-cut and his eyebrows that sloped down to form the base of a “v” at his nose. Zoe half stood, ready to make a break for her car.
A woman answered him, but the hedge blocked her from Zoe’s view. Snippets of her words filtered through the foliage, “...death ... yesterday around noon.”
Zoe sat back down as abruptly as if someone had pushed her. Sharon’s stats showed that Jack had used his computer at twelve-thirty. If Connor was dead at that time, why wouldn’t Jack have called the police? Was it possible he hadn’t noticed? Zoe bit her lip. She supposed it was possible Jack could have returned to the office and not noticed Connor’s dead body. Possible, but not probable—that’s what the police would think, Zoe was sure. And why would he leave and drive to Highway 375 with a storm on the way? None of it made sense.
She dropped her keys into her lap and rubbed her temples. She just wanted to go home. So much had happened in the last day.
“So, Jack Andrews is your ex-husband.”
Zoe looked up. There was a new guy in a suit seated on the bench that was at a right angle to hers. This guy didn’t look like the other law enforcement people she’d been talking to. They’d looked like average folks. This guy looked like he should be staring out from a billboard in Times Square. He was in his late twenties and had glossy black hair, a tan complexion, and sharp black eyes. The cut of his charcoal suit over his broad shoulders shouted designer. He smoothed down his chartreuse tie. “Ma’am? Andrews is your ex?” he repeated, smirking a bit at her confused stare as if he regularly had a befuddling effect on women.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Zoe asked sharply. She was hot and tired and stressed. She didn’t need this guy’s condensation. “I’d really like to go home. I’ve answered all these questions with Detective Martin. Is he still around?”
“No idea. I’m sure he’ll be along soon,” he said as if Detective Martin were a dog that had wandered away but would return home on its own. “You haven’t answered our questions, yet. I’m Special Agent Greg Sato.” He pulled out a badge. “FBI”
“FBI?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said as he put his badge away. “Now, you’re Zoe Hunter, correct?” He asked, his tone implying she couldn’t handle anything more than simple sentences.
She sat up straight. Her pulse thumped, and the spurt of irritation she felt at his self-satisfied expression burned away some of the lethargy she’d been feeling. “Yes, I am. I don’t know what happened to Connor. I found him like that this morning. And, before you ask, he’s made plenty of people mad. I couldn’t even begin to give you a list. He wasn’t the most accommodating person around, if you know what I mean. And as for Jack,” she shrugged, “I can’t tell you. He’s missing.”
Sato’s dark eyebrows arched. “Missing?”
“Yes. Missing.” His mildly amused tone irritated her. “The Highway Patrol informed me last night. There is a search going on for him right now.”
Sato, who’d been lounging back with his arm draped over the bench, sat forward and glanced back at an older guy with a lined face and a head of gray hair, who stood off to the side of the small park. He leaned toward Detective Martin, who was talking, but he was watching Zoe’s conversation. His suit jacket was off, his sleeves were rolled up, and he was moving one hand down over his mouth in a contemplative gesture. Sato looked at the older man inquiringly. He nodded his head, which Sato seemed to take as confirmation of Zoe’
s words.
Sato blinked and turned back to her, his whole demeanor thrown off. He was no longer smooth and arrogant. “We’ll discuss that...later.”
“Then I can go?” Zoe said, picking up her keys again.
“No, not yet,” Sato said, with more surety. “How many shares of GRS do you have?”
“None.”
He scoffed. “None?”
“Yes, zero. What does that have to with anything?”
He pulled on his cuffs, and Zoe could see the arrogance rising again. “You expect me to believe that you haven’t jumped on the GRS bandwagon? Even if he is your ex, surely you got in on it.” Zoe shook her head, and he said, “The stock has risen from a dollar-nineteen to twenty-five dollars in the last few months, and you don’t own any?”
“No. Not one share.” She could see Sato still didn’t believe her, so she added, “My aunt is a very smart woman. She’s the only one in my family who’s ever made money—and hung on to it. She told me to invest in real estate. That’s what I do. Stocks are too volatile.”
“The housing market hasn’t been exactly booming lately.”
“No, but you know what? Even if prices go down, I still have those offices over there. If I wanted to sell them, maybe I wouldn’t be able to sell them for what I could have a few years ago, but they still have value. They’ll never be worth nothing. With stocks,” she made a movement with her hand like she was throwing something away, “it can all be gone in a day.”
“Interesting theory.” Irony laced his words.
Zoe frowned. “Why are you asking about GRS stock?”
“Routine inquires,” he said. “Did you help Andrews with his business?
“No,” she said. “Office work is not my thing.”
He tugged at his cuffs again as he said, “Do you own a gun?”
“No.”
“How about your ex-husband?”
“No.”
The older man came over. He nodded to Zoe and leaned down to speak quietly to Sato. Sato stared at him a moment, then turned back to Zoe. “Where would your ex-husband go if he was in trouble?”
Zoe laughed. “Nowhere—he doesn’t get in trouble. He’s a boy scout.”
“A relative? A friend? A vacation home?” Sato persisted.
Zoe’s eyebrows knit together as she realized he was serious. “What are you saying?”
He ignored her question. “Where would he go?”
“He’d come home. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said quietly.
“Any relatives nearby? A parent, maybe?”
“No. His dad died years ago in a car accident—drunk driver. His mom died the next year. He doesn’t really have anyone else.”
“Old college roommate?”
“No,” Zoe said, shaking her head and thinking for the first time that it was a little odd how disconnected Jack had been when she’d met him. “He’s not really a ‘joiner,’ I guess you’d say. He keeps more to himself.” She supposed she hadn’t noticed because she’d always had plenty of friends.
Sato handed her a business card. “If you hear from him, it is very important—urgent—that you contact us.”
“What are you saying? The Highway Patrol thinks he’d dead. How could I hear from him? Do you know something—”
He stood up quickly, and cut her off. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch.”
Dallas
Wednesday, 3:05 p.m.
ZOE called Helen on her way home and apologized for skipping out.
“Oh stop,” Helen said. “Your life is a tad crazy right now. You’re forgiven.”
It took almost the whole drive for Zoe to tell her about Connor and the aftermath with the police. After a beat of silence, Helen said, “That’s terrible, but you know, I’m not that surprised. Dang, here comes my supervisor. Got to go. I’ll call you back.”
Zoe finished the drive automatically, moving through the familiar routine without thinking about it. The gnawing unease that had been with her since last night had grown into full-blown anxiety that made her sick to her stomach. The sight of Jack’s beat-up Honda sitting at the curb jerked her out of her daze. For half a second, she thought maybe—
Then she remembered. The tow truck guy. She’d given him this address. She parked in the garage then walked back down the driveway to pluck the envelope from under the windshield wiper. It contained a note that their auto service would be billed for the tow.
Zoe was leaning against the passenger side door of the Honda when the generic brown car with two men in the front seat rolled to a stop behind her neighbor’s MINI Cooper parked on the other side of the street a few houses away.
She stood for a few moments, looking down into Jack’s car. Was it only this morning that she’d looked into the car, wondering about Jack? So much had happened and she only had more questions. Zoe sighed in frustration. She wanted to know what had happened to Jack.
The police or highway patrol or whoever she’d spoken to this morning—she was a little fuzzy on who exactly had been in charge—had obviously released Jack’s car and allowed the tow truck driver to return it to his home instead of impounding it, but from all those questions that Sato had asked, she had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before the FBI might want to look at it, too. The gnawing in her stomach kicked up another notch.
As she opened the car door, her neighbor with the blonde pageboy who always wore yoga pants and tank tops drove by in her MINI. She tooted the horn and waved. Zoe waved back. She had no idea what the woman’s name was, but they waved to each other when their paths crossed. Zoe glanced at the four-door brown car that had been parked behind her neighbor, but didn’t think anything of it because she was focused on picking up the phone and the rest of the things that had fallen on the floorboard.
She sat down in the passenger seat with the door open. She hit the display on Jack’s phone. He’d made several calls yesterday morning. Nothing since noon yesterday. He had one missed call between then and now. There was also a voice message from the same number as the missed call. She tried to log into his voicemail, but didn’t know his code, so she dialed the number.
“Dental Associates, how may I help you?”
“Sorry, wrong number,” Zoe said and hung up. She looked through the rest of the phone’s screens, but couldn’t find anything that she thought was important, so she turned her attention to the car.
From the floorboard, she picked up three napkins and some playing cards. She went through the console and the glove compartment, but apart from a few gas receipts, sunglasses, and the normal detritus of maps and phone chargers, she didn’t find anything that helped her figure out what had happened yesterday. She sighed and moved over to the driver’s seat to pull the car into the garage, using the spare key that was still on her key ring. She turned off the car, then picked up the sunglasses by one earpiece and twirled them around. They had reflective lenses and she never could see his eyes when he wore them. Feeling at a loss, she stuck them on top of her head, which, for some reason, made her feel slightly better. She gathered the phone and bits of paper and went inside.
Dallas
Wednesday, 3:50 p.m.
FORTY-FIVE minutes later, Mort elbowed Sato. “There she is.”
Sato struggled up from his slouched position and blinked rapidly, trying not to look as though he’d drifted off.
It was easy to recognize Zoe Hunter, even from a distance, because of her red hair. She walked briskly down the driveway, stopped at the mailbox, which was located near the street in a bed of geraniums, and deposited several letters. Then she crossed to the house directly opposite hers, where she unlocked the front door and disappeared inside. Sato looked at Mort.
Mort shrugged. Sato’s hand inched up to the ignition key, but before he could start the car, Zoe emerged with a small white dog on a leash. She set off down the street with the dog pulling at her arm. Mort said, “She won’t go far. If we follow her, we’ll stand out. Better to wait here.”
Mort flipped to a new page in the file he held in his lap. “It would have tipped her off. Besides, we don’t have a search warrant for it.” Without looking up he said, “Don’t be sour—just because she didn’t fall for you.”
“You think she’s clean?” Sato demanded. “You buy that innocent act?”
“Didn’t say that,” Mort said, easily. He stared through the windshield. “I don’t know what I think yet.” For so long, he’d felt as if a deep, black cloud had engulfed him, overshadowing everything. He walked around with the constant feeling that something was about to go wrong, something was off, which was crazy. The worst thing in the world had already happened—he’d lost his child, watched her fade away as the disease took over her body, and he’d been powerless to do anything to help her. And now he couldn’t do anything to ease Kathy’s pain or his own. It couldn’t get worse. But that ominous feeling left a miasma over everything, dulling and diluting life.
Today, watching Sato talk to the Hunter woman, he’d felt a spark of curiosity. Was she telling the truth? Was she as naïve as she had seemed when she looked at Sato with those wide hazel eyes? Probably not. She’d been savvy enough not to fall under Sato’s spell when he turned on the charm. That had been entertaining. But there was something there...her denials had a ring of truth, he just wasn’t sure if they were completely true or only partially true.
Mort’s phone rang. He identified himself, listened, and then hung up and immediately began redialing.
Sato twisted toward him. “What?”
“That 911 call with the sighting of someone in Deep Creek? Well...” he paused to punch in an extension.
