by Sara Rosett
“Did he see her last night?” I asked, fiddling with the zipper on the Leah Marshall purse, which was caught at the halfway point.
“Chase was out of town, so he doesn’t know if she was there or not, but apparently that’s nothing to worry about,” Ben said.
I picked up on the edge of disdain in his words. “You don’t like him?”
Ben shook his head. “I’ve only met him once, but he’s . . . slick.”
Interesting description. I processed that information silently, then said, “Well, like you said, he is her brother and if he thinks everything is fine, then . . .”
“I know,” Ben said shortly.
“I wonder where her car is,” I said, shading my eyes to look up and down the street, which was filled on each side with cars parked in parallel slots.
“That’s a good question. I’ll check at the apartment. I told Chase I’d meet him there and give him her phone. I know that sometimes she just leaves her car there and walks to work. It isn’t that far and parking is a hassle on the beach road.”
“If it’s not at the apartment, it could be anywhere,” I said, gesturing to the beach road. “There are several public lots all along the beach.” I glanced at my watch. “Do you want to go over there now?”
He nodded. “It’s not too far from here.”
“Okay. While you do that, I’ll go pick up the kids from Summer’s condo. By the time I get there, it will be almost noon.”
We walked back to the hotel. Before I climbed in the van, I called, “See you in a little while.”
He waved and pulled out of the parking lot in his sporty blue Mazda and joined the traffic slowly creeping to the east, the direction we’d walked that morning. I turned the opposite way and inched along. It was late Saturday morning in a Florida beach town on July Fourth weekend. We weren’t going anywhere fast. After a few blocks, I took a road that led north, away from the beach, and the congestion eased. My phone rang and I glanced at the screen—blocked number—before I answered the call with the speaker on.
“Ellie? Is that you?”
I didn’t recognize the female voice, but I got calls at all times of the day and night about my organizing business. Being a professional organizer was a bit like being a Realtor. I wasn’t ever really on vacation, even when I was out of town, and with the economic downturn I couldn’t afford to miss any potential clients. “Speaking,” I said.
“Ellie. Thank God you answered.” A sound came over the line, a raspy gulp like the kids made when they were trying not to cry. My “mom sense” went on high alert, even though it wasn’t one of my kids on the phone.
“Angela?” I asked.
“I need you to take the purse, the fake Leah Marshall—this is really important—take it to my apartment,” she said. Her breathing was rough and there was a tension in her words, an urgency that had me sitting up straighter.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
There was a slight hesitation, then she said quickly, “Yes, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Just take the purse, okay?”
“Sure,” I said slowly. “I’m on my way to pick up my kids. I can drop it by there later—”
“No!” she said sharply, cutting me off. “You’ve got to do it now.” Her breathing was ragged and her words were vibrating with . . . fear, I realized. My heartbeat sped up. I pulled off the road into a Publix and stopped at the far end of the parking lot with the van slewed diagonally over the parking lines.
“Do you understand?” she said, her voice tense. “You can’t wait a minute. Take it now.”
“Okay. I can do that. What’s your address?” I asked, opening the van’s console, where I keep a pen and notepad.
“Thank you,” she said as she blew out a breath. “12989 Sea Water Lane, Apartment twenty-nine B.”
I jotted the address down. “I was worried about you when you didn’t show up last night and I didn’t hear from you this morning. Ben, too.”
“I’m sorry. I—,” she broke off. “I’m sorry. Tell Ben, I’m sorry . . . about everything,” she said, her last words caught up in a sob.
“Angela,” I said, using the soothing voice I did when the kids were hurt or distraught, “where are you? I’m sure everything will be okay. Are you at home?”
“No. That’s not important. What’s important is you take the purse there and leave. Do you understand?” Her voice trembled with intensity. “Don’t stay. Just leave it on the porch and get out of there.”
“Okay,” I said, tapping the address into the GPS, which was still mounted on the window screen for the drive down yesterday. I put the van in DRIVE. “I’m turning around right now.”
A dial tone sounded. I glanced at the purse, which I’d tossed on the passenger seat when I first got in the van. Why the panic, the fear? It was just a purse—and a fake one, at that. I hit REDIAL on my phone, but got a message saying the call couldn’t be completed.
The GPS routed me inland along the highway and then south back toward the gulf. I made a quick call to Summer to let her know I’d be a little late, then called Ben. He didn’t pick up. I was glad the route kept me off the busy beach road and I made good time, pulling into the Sea Water Garden apartment complex a little after noon. Located a few blocks inland from the busy beach road, the complex was misnamed because there wasn’t a drop of water in sight, only a shopping center and a few gated neighborhoods with patio homes. Several high-rise hotels towered over the patio homes, cutting off any sliver of the gulf. The complex was well kept with spotless cream two-story stucco buildings topped with terra-cotta roofs. The “garden” part of the name was accurate. The grounds were lushly landscaped with fringy Pindo palms shading the walks, which were lined with the low-growing, sturdier Sago palms. Purple bougainvillea mixed with ivy trailed over the stucco walls, draping down to low-growing shrubs and flowering ground covers.
I couldn’t find a slot near building “B” and had to park on the far side of the complex near the pool. There were several parallel parking slots running along the tall stucco wall that enclosed the property. My parallel parking skills were a little rusty, but I managed to pull into the space on my first attempt. I picked up the purse and hopped out of the van, feeling accomplished as I walked by the vine-covered wall that enclosed the pool. Through the wrought-iron gate, I could see a slice of blue water sparkling in the sun. It looked like the pool was only slightly larger than a hot tub, but I suppose if you were a few steps from the beach, you wouldn’t need a big pool. I saw Ben under the residents’ carport near a silver convertible BMW. The convertible’s top was up and he was peering in the driver’s window. I looked at the number painted on the ground, 29B. “Angela’s car?”
Ben straightened. “Hey, Ellie. What are you doing here?”
“Angela called me and asked me to bring this by her apartment,” I said, holding up the purse.
Ben closed his eyes for a moment and breathed out. “She’s okay? What happened? Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me anything. All she wanted to talk about was this purse. She said I had to get it here right away and leave it.”
“Is she here?” Ben asked, starting toward the apartment.
“No. She said she wasn’t home.”
He took a step closer to me. It was already shady with all the palm trees and it was even dimmer under the carport. “She wouldn’t tell me where she was and she sounded . . . ,” I paused, trying to think how to sum up Angela’s state. “Distraught” and “afraid” were the words that came to mind, but I didn’t want to voice those words. “She was . . . upset,” I said, knowing it was a pretty mild description, but I couldn’t quite overcome those sheltering, big sister habits. Ben was already worried and I didn’t want to add to his concern.
“Upset, how? Crying? Angry?”
I sighed, realizing that he wasn’t going to let me gloss over her reaction. “I don’t know her that well. I’ve only talked to her on the phone a few times, but I think today she soun
ded . . . scared.” I watched his face and said, “You’re really worried about her . . . that she’s in trouble?”
He put his hands on his hips and stared down at the car as he said, “Angela’s kind of like this car—you can’t drive it slow, you know what I mean? She’s crazy and fun and wild . . . I’m worried she got herself into something. . . over her head.”
He blew out a sigh and nodded to the empty slot next to the car. “The neighbor just left and she told me it’s been here all night—at least, it was here when she walked her dog late last night and early this morning.”
“It’s a nice car,” I said, taking in the leather trim and sleek lines. “Are you sure Angela had money problems?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t think she’s making payments on this. It was a gift from her dad.”
“I guess she could always sell her car if things got really rough,” I said as we walked to the apartment. “Her brother isn’t here yet?”
“I don’t think so, but let’s check,” Ben said as we walked up the curvy path and followed the little signs pointing us around the corner to Angela’s building. “How did you get here so fast?”
“I didn’t take the beach road.”
Number twenty-nine B was a secluded ground-floor apartment on the end of the building, a prime spot. It shared a concrete patio with the opposite apartment, twenty-eight B, which had a pot of petunias beside its front door and a mat that read, “Wipe your paws.” Angela’s door, with only a dry, crinkled palm frond caught under the threshold, looked bare in comparison.
Ben raised his hand to knock on the door, but paused, then leaned closer. “That’s odd,” he said, pointing to several deep gouges between the door frame and the handle. He tapped on the door and it swung open.
“Is Angela messy?” I asked.
“Not like this,” Ben said, carefully edging the door farther open with the back of his hand, revealing tumbled couch cushions and a lamp on the floor.
“Angela?” Ben called, and stepped slowly through the door.
“We shouldn’t go in,” I said. “We should call the police.”
“What if she’s in there? She might be hurt,” Ben said. He didn’t wait for a reply and shook my restraining hand off his arm. “Chase?” he called.
I followed him inside the small entry area. Ben stepped over a large leather cushion from the couch and moved toward the kitchen. From the entryway, I could see through an open door to a bedroom decorated with a feminine flare in shades ranging from pale yellow to deep gold. It was in even worse shape than the living room. Clothing hung from gaping drawers and was strewn across the floor. An overturned nightstand lay in the middle of the room and fashion magazines rested on top of everything as if they’d been flung into the air like oversized, glossy confetti.
A breeze stirred the lemon curtains in the bedroom, catching my attention. No one leaves their windows open in muggy Florida in July. “The window is open in this bedroom,” I said as I stepped carefully around several throw pillows. Ben moved that way, too. I stopped on the threshold of the bedroom while Ben swept aside the curtains.
A pale gold comforter had covered the bed. It was piled on the floor, along with eyelet-edged sheets. It looked as if a small explosion had taken place inside the double-doored closet, scattering clothes, shoes, bags, scarves, and hats across the bedroom floor in front of the open closet doors.
Ben examined the window. “This is how they got out. The screen is outside on the ground.” He turned from the window.
“But if the front door was already open, why . . .” I trailed off. “Do you think they were in here when we got here?” I whispered as I reached to pull my phone out of my purse. “They could still be outside.”
Ben spoke softly, too, as he said, “You call nine-one-one. I’ll call Chase.” We both moved back to the living room. I pulled the purse off my shoulder, then stopped abruptly. “I don’t have my phone. It’s still in the van.” I’d been so wrapped up in what was going on, I’d forgotten I was carrying the imitation purse. I’d taken off the Fossil crossbody bag when I climbed in the van. It was still there. Ben waved a hand to stop me. “Let’s stay together. Chase still isn’t picking up.” He left a terse message, then dialed the police.
There was a sharp knock on the door and a voice called, “Hello?”
I twirled around and saw a teenage boy, maybe sixteen years old, in a T-shirt embroidered with the words Costa Bella Flower Shop, holding a huge bouquet of mixed flowers. “Delivery for Angela Day,” he said, holding the flowers out to me. “Must have been a good party,” he said, glancing at Ben.
The gorgeous arrangement of roses, lilies, lilacs, and gardenias wobbled in midair as he held it out with one hand. I took them, but said, “I’m not Angela.”
“But you are in twenty-nine B,” he said, quickly consulting a piece of paper. “Enjoy.” He gave a little salute as he turned to go.
A man in a pale gray suit shoved past the delivery guy. “What the hell is going on here?” he barked as he surveyed the room.
“Chase,” Ben said, quickly crossing the room to him. “I just tried to call you.”
Chase pulled off Ray-Ban sunglasses. “Oh. Ben, is it?” While his sister had golden blond hair, his hair was white blond and cut close to his head. A mustache and goatee framed his lower face and I wondered if he’d grown it to distract from his rather pointed nose. If he had, it didn’t really work because the added facial hair only emphasized the feature and with his small dark eyes, he reminded me of a mouse.
“That’s right.” Ben handed off Angela’s cell phone, then quickly introduced me and explained we’d found the apartment door unlocked and the place ransacked. As Ben explained, Chase made a quick circuit of the apartment, twirling his sunglasses by the earpiece.
“Ben called the police,” I said.
He twirled the glasses faster. “Good. Good. That’s good,” he said, his dark gaze darting around the room. I got the feeling that he was anything but pleased. “Well, thanks for coming out to check on Angela. She’ll turn up soon. She always does,” he said, walking toward us, obviously intending to usher us out the door. It was the first good look I’d gotten of his face. It must have been the suit that gave me the impression of maturity. He was closer to twenty—maybe just barely that—than thirty.
I pulled the purse off my shoulder. “Angela called me and wanted me to drop this off—” I broke off and turned to the front door, which was still open. Outside, a high-pitched voice wailed, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod. Someone help. She’s dead.”
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2012 by Sara Rosett
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7977-4
