She could hear Vinnie talking on the other end of the line, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Finally Mason scratched a number on a piece of paper and hung up, grinning.
“Oh, God, what? Did Aidan give him a hard time?”
“No. He’s all excited. He said he was helping investigate.”
She arched a brow distrustfully. “Vinnie is excited?”
“Yup. He said he and Aidan are tracking down that girl, Jenny Trent, together.”
“Where’s Aidan now?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to call Vinnie back?”
“No.” She took the phone from him and dialed the number he had gotten from Vinnie.
“Oh, that’s Aidan’s number, by the way, not Jeremy’s. Sounds like those two are just like this now,” he said, crossing two fingers.
Was Aidan playing Vinnie? she wondered. Lulling him into a false sense of security? Or had he decided her friend was innocent?
Aidan answered his phone immediately.
“Flynn.”
“Aidan?”
“Kendall.”
That was it. Just her name. But he had said it as if he enjoyed it.
“I’m calling about those dolls on your lawn, Aidan. I think they came from my shop. Mason told me that he sold three of them yesterday.” She glanced at Mason. “To a—”
Mason grabbed the phone from her. “Hey, Aidan. It was some freaky woman dressed all in black. Looking back, I think someone was disguising her—or his—identity.”
Mason listened and nodded, then hung up the phone.
Kendall stared at him. “Hey! I was talking.”
“He’s busy. Said he’ll call back.” Mason shrugged, then started wiping down the counter and straightening the napkins.
Kendall tried not to feel anxious.
And she tried even harder to convince herself that she didn’t care one way or another what Aidan Flynn really thought of her.
Jonas called both Hal Vincent and Jon Abel, then rang Aidan to fill him in, so Aidan made his first stop the M.E.’s office. To his surprise, Jon Abel came out to see him right away. He wasn’t exactly cordial, but he was at least polite. Aidan offered him the dress that Vinnie had identified as the one Jenny Trent had worn on what had possibly been her last night on earth. “You have bones—from two different women, you’ve told me—and you have the blood sample I brought you, and I believe your technicians might be able to pull skin cells from the lining of this dress, which belonged to a woman named Jenny Trent. I’m hoping that if you run DNA testing on all those items we’ll be able to find out if one of those bones was hers.”
“I can try,” Abel told him, looking down at the dress. “I can try. The blood sample is extremely deteriorated. I don’t know about the bones. And they may be able to find sloughed-off skin cells. I’ll try. I can’t promise you anything more than that.”
“We have a girl who definitely disappeared from the French Quarter. She had family, and that family deserves our best,” Aidan said.
“I told you, we’ll do what we can,” Abel told him.
Aidan didn’t know why he didn’t offer Abel the brush, or why he didn’t intend to turn it over to Hal Vincent, either. If DNA couldn’t be pulled from the bones or the blood, the DNA they could pull from any hairs in the brush wouldn’t be much good anyway.
He thanked the M.E. and left.
At the police station, Hal Vincent came out to see him. It was hard to read what the man was thinking, but when he brought Aidan back to his office, Aidan gave him the backpack, complete with Jenny Trent’s passport, and told him everything he’d discovered so far.
“I’ll bring Vinnie down here and talk to him,” Hal said.
Aidan thought for a moment, then surprised himself by saying, “I think Vinnie is telling the truth when he said he left her at her door. I don’t think he did it.”
“Yeah?” Hal asked, looking up at him.
“You learn to read a man,” Aidan said.
Hal looked quickly down at the backpack. “Sure. Sometimes. If you know for a fact that this girl disappeared from here, I’ll see to it that some of our best officers are assigned to the case.”
Aidan leaned forward. “What about her car?”
“Her car?”
“It was found in a public lot,” Aidan said.
Hal Vincent stroked his chin. “Was it? Well, I’ll find out if it’s still impounded or what.” He looked at Aidan. “What’s your stake in this?”
“I’ve been hired by the next of kin.”
Hal sat back, a touch of resentment in his expression. “Oh, yeah? How did you manage that?”
“Easy. I asked a question.” Aidan rose. “Thanks for your help.”
“It’s my job,” the detective said, and there was a touch of steel in his tone. “Thanks for your help.”
“Yeah, I’ll be touching base,” Aidan said pleasantly, then rose and left the office. He could feel Hal’s eyes on him through the window as he exited the station.
It was close to six when the shop phone rang. Trying not to appear as anxious as she felt, Kendall moved to answer it, but Mason reached it before she did. There was pure mischief in his eyes as he answered it, talking pleasantly to whoever was on the other end.