Jeremy followed Al into the hallway, then waited while Al headed out to check the switchboard log. He came back frowning.
“Sorry, Jeremy. The call was made from one of those prepaid cell phones. No way of tracing it. None at all.”
“Thanks,” Jeremy told him. Aggravated, he left the station. He thought about calling his brothers, then decided it could wait. Maybe, come Monday, Aidan could ask his FBI buddy if there was any way to trace the signal. But he doubted it. As far as he knew, not even the FBI could trace a prepaid cell phone, especially if the caller had been smart enough to buy the thing with cash.
It was dark when they left the hubbub of the city. The highway offered lights and plenty of cars, but the river road was dark.
As they drove, Kendall asked Aidan about his day, determined not to let herself be bothered by his suspicions of her friends.
“It was good. I went back to the B and B where Jenny Trent stayed and got a list of the other guests that night. Three other rooms rented, two singles and a couple. The couple was from South Dakota—the guy asked his wife for his hearing aid while we were on the phone, so I didn’t think he’d be helpful, but he was. The kid staying in the attic came back and passed out at one, didn’t hear a thing and never saw Jenny Trent. There was a teacher from Detroit in the other room who had met Jenny and wanted to be helpful, but she didn’t know anything and hadn’t heard anything. The old guy, though. He got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, which was off the hall, and saw Jenny. Said she was dressed up in black jeans and an inside-out T-shirt, and told him she was going out to meet some genius and get in on a great discovery.”
“See!” Kendall said triumphantly. “Vinnie was telling the truth. He’s as innocent as a snow-white lamb.”
Aidan glanced her way. “‘Innocent as a snow-white lamb’ and ‘Vinnie’ don’t really sound like they go together to me, but yeah, he’s probably telling the truth.”
“Probably?”
He grimaced. “How do we know Vinnie wasn’t the genius who was going to let her in on a great discovery?”
“‘Genius’ and ‘Vinnie’ don’t exactly go together, either.”
“Come on, you’ve got to admit he’s a genius with a guitar.”
She was quiet for a minute. “Aidan, even if Jenny Trent was in my shop and at the bar, it doesn’t mean that she didn’t meet someone during the day, somewhere else, and make arrangements to meet him late that night.”
“You’re right.”
He was staring straight ahead.
“Where do you go from here?” she asked. “It sounds as if you’re at a dead end.”
“When you hit a dead end, you just go back out to the street and find a new route,” he told her, flashing a smile. “Thanks to your friend Rebecca, I’ll go back and start over with Jonas, get him to put in a Federal request to have the bones and the blood and the dress analyzed, and get them up to either Quantico or D.C. I’ll call on some old friends up there for help.”
“But you still won’t know what happened once Jenny left the B and B.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“We’ll start researching the other victims.”
“Other victims?”
He glanced her way. “There have been at least ten disappearances just like Jenny’s over the past decade, most of them in the last few years. We’ll look into them all, one by one. I’m convinced that most of them, at least, are connected, so eventually we’ll catch her killer.”
“You act as if you know for certain that she’s dead.”
He didn’t answer, but then, she thought, he didn’t have to. She felt as if she knew Jenny was dead, too.
They stopped at a restaurant for dinner on the way out to the plantation, and to Kendall’s surprise, Aidan seemed ready—even eager—to talk about other things. Music, books, even the weather. After they left the restaurant, Aidan pulled into a gas station.
A small, skinny man came out to serve them.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Flynn said.
“Mr. Flynn, miss,” the man returned, tapping his baseball cap.
“Jimmy has been staying out back at the plantation,” Aidan explained pleasantly.
“Oh,” Kendall said, for lack of another response.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be bothering you none,” Jimmy said hurriedly. “I can leave if you need me to.”
“You can stay out there, Jimmy. I talked to my brothers, and they don’t mind.”
The man frowned uncertainly. “You’re not…you’re not pulling my leg or nothing, are you, Mr. Flynn?”
“No. Maybe we can work out some kind of a deal. We’ll get you set up back there a little better, and you can keep an eye on the place if we’re not around.”
The man’s hands were shaking, and he looked too overcome to speak, so he only nodded.
Jimmy filled up the tank, which hadn’t been anywhere near empty, Kendall noticed. Then Aidan paid him, and they drove off.
“Very generous,” Kendall said.
“No. Selfish,” he told her.
“How?”