“Where?”
“Spring break, New Orleans. And I have another one for you that you may not have known.”
“Shoot.”
“Your friend Jonas was assigned here then, too.”
“That has to be wrong. I was with Jonas at Quantico ten years ago.”
“That was actually his second time around for the FBI. He worked for the field office here in a civilian capacity. Then he decided to make a career of it, and that’s when he wound up in Quantico with you.”
If it hadn’t been for that piece of information, he probably would have begged off when Matty called, crying, and asked him to meet her again, but knowing what he did, he decided that meeting her might turn up some valuable information.
He headed to the same café, checking the time as he entered. After five. He didn’t have long. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want Kendall leaving the shop and going home alone.
The minute he sat down across from Matty, she handed him a plastic bag.
“I found this in Jonas’s car,” she told him.
He took the bag and looked inside.
It was a woman’s wallet.
According to the ID, it belonged to a woman—Sheila Anderson. A pretty blonde smiled up at him from her driver’s license photo.
He stared at Matty.
“I found it under the passenger seat,” she told him. “I think he must be having an affair with her.”
He rose, suddenly anxious. “I’ll look into this, Matty, I promise.” He found himself hesitating. “Don’t throw your marriage in the garbage just yet, okay?”
She tried to smile. “I won’t. I just…help me, Aidan. Please.”
Sheila lived in a more residential section, just inside the boundaries of Orleans Parish. She rented a big old Victorian that had been built in the late 1800s and was now on the historic register. It sat apart from its neighbors, with a good thirty yards on each side, and the rear of the property was filled with huge trees and overgrown brush, because Sheila didn’t believe in gardening down nature.
Her car was in the driveway, but that was no surprise; Sheila would have taken a cab to the airport rather than pay to park there for an extended period.
“Sheila?”
Kendall banged on the door. Nothing. She tried to peek in the windows, but only a few lights had been left on and the curtains were down, so she couldn’t see anything.
Kendall dug into the bottom of her bag for the ring of keys she didn’t use on a daily basis, because her key to Sheila’s house would be on it, along with one to Vinnie’s, one to Mason’s and extra set for the shop.
She slid the key into the lock and turned. The door opened to silence and gloom.
She stepped into the vestibule and set her purse down on the table. The house seemed very dark, so she closed and locked the door behind her, then fumbled around for lights. “Sheila?”
Kendall turned on every light as she went through the house, which was clean and neat, everything in its place, until at last, dreading what she might find, she walked up the stairs to the second floor.
There were three bedrooms. One was Sheila’s home office and guest room, one was her storage room and one was where she slept.
Kendall noticed that in contrast to the neatness of the rest of the house, a casual cotton dress was lying on the bed, and a pair of shoes sat on the floor next to it.
As if they had been set out for her to change into quickly.
Kendall looked anxiously around the room. There was no luggage, which meant Sheila had probably left the house with it. But why had she left the outfit on the bed? Had she decided on different clothes at the last minute and not had time to put these away before her taxi arrived?
Leaving the lights on for reassurance, Kendall hurried back downstairs and into the kitchen, where Sheila tacked up notes on a bulletin board. There was a number for the hotel where she’d planned on staying in Caracas. Kendall reached for the phone and dialed it.
A man answered, speaking Spanish. Kendall fought for a few of the right words to be polite, then asked if anyone there spoke English. The man switched languages immediately. As they spoke, Kendall felt her heart sink. Sheila Anderson had been a no-show. She had never checked in. And the man was sorry to say that her credit card had been charged for the first night. They had a cancellation policy.
As she slowly set the phone back on the receiver, Kendall turned back to the board, where Sheila had tacked a message to herself: Call Mason.
There was nothing weird about that, she told herself. Sheila had had a bit of a crush on Mason for a long time, and she was pretty sure that Mason, for all his flirty ways, harbored a soft spot for Sheila, too.
But now Sheila was gone.
Sheila was dead. She knew it.
As she stared at the board, the house was suddenly pitched into darkness.
The door to the shop was locked. Aidan could see Vinnie sweeping up and Mason zeroing out the cash register.
He banged on the door.