“And?”
“Beth says she went by your house with Brent a few days ago and tried the back door.”
“I’m sure she did.”
Ignoring that, preferring to wait for facts and not emotion, he asked, “What are you up to?”
“We’re at the cottage, creating cross-referenced family trees to show the connections between the murdered women, the people you and I know and Margaret Nottingham. Oh, and Sam and Jenna are here, too. They’re still sorting through missing-persons reports from around the country.”
“Jane Doe,” he murmured.
“Are you coming over?” she asked him.
“Soon.”
“Good. We’ll pull something together for dinner,” she said.
“Sounds good.”
Rocky hung up and realized he was near Brent’s Which Witch Is Which, and decided he needed to drop in.
Brent was there—glum and alone.
He looked at Rocky with weary eyes. “No tour tonight—I guess news of my visit to the police station got out.”
“I’m sorry,” Rocky told him. “You did have the cell phone.”
“I was set up.”
“By who?”
“I wish to hell I knew,” Brent said.
“We’ll catch him and this will end,” Rocky said. “And then, who knows, your adventure might become a selling point.”
“This from the man who ruined my life.”
“Your life isn’t ruined—the dead women are the ones whose lives have been ruined.”
Brent swallowed and glanced at Rocky with a guilty expression. “Yeah, sorry, you’re right.”
“Did you go by Devin’s with Beth a few nights ago?”
Brent frowned. “Yeah, but she wasn’t there.”
“Thanks,” Rocky told him.
“Why are you asking?”
“Brent, I know you think I tried to ruin your life, but there was nothing personal about it. It’s just that the more we know, the easier it is to zero in on what we don’t know and narrow down the clues to the ones that might actually lead us somewhere.”
“So what do I have to do to get off your suspect list?” Brent asked. “You want me to wear an anklet that tells you where I am all the time?”
“Not a bad idea,” Rocky said. “But not really legal, either.”
“Hey, I’ll report in any time you want. I’m not going through that again.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“No, no, you don’t,” Brent said. “But I believe you’re trying,” he added grudgingly.
Rocky’s phone rang, and he excused himself to answer.
It was Sam Hall. “Get over here now. We have an ID on our Jane Doe.”
17
“Hermione?” Rocky said. He knew he sounded bewildered, but really? Hermione?
“Hermione Robicheaux,” Devin said. “Her family moved south in the 1800s. But once Jenna found the missing-persons report with her picture, it was easy to trace her family history and end up right here in Salem.”
“We contacted the Nashville police. They sent her dental records to the morgue in Boston, and the M.E. confirmed it. She’s our Jane Doe,” Angela told him.
“Hermione?” Rocky said again.
“Her parents apparently liked the name, even before Harry Potter,” Sam said. “She was thirty—one of our older victims. And the reason we couldn’t ID her sooner is she had vacation time coming and planned her trip here on her own to look into her family history. When she didn’t show up at work a few days ago, her boss thought she had just up and quit—apparently they didn’t get along too well―but her coworkers got worried. Her parents died when she was young, and she grew up in foster homes. But they contacted the distant cousin she’d listed as next of kin, and that’s who filed the report.”
“Makes her death even sadder,” Devin said. “She was just looking for family—for people to love.”
“Maybe she’s finally found family,” Auntie Mina said.
Devin looked over at her and smiled, then turned back to Rocky. “No one here reported her missing?”
“She might not have had time to check into a hotel. Besides, the people who work around here can see hundreds of people in a day. It’s not surprising no one recognized her picture.”
“So the victims weren’t random,” Sam said. “Whoever the killer is, he has a way to find victims who fit his profile.”
“And he knew how to hack the surveillance system at the hotel,” Jane pointed out.