Noelle looked around at Evan’s office. It was small, and he obviously hadn’t put a lick of design thought into it, but it was oozing potential. There was exposed brick along the far back wall, the ceiling was high and had black-painted exposed ductwork, and there were two extremely tall windows looking out onto the street that let in a ton of natural light. It had a good vibe, even if it desperately needed a throw rug and a few pieces of art.
“The typical shady PI digs?” he asked.
She laughed. “No, actually, Sherlock, I was just thinking the opposite. You need something much more dreary with less character if you’re going to uphold the shady PI role.”
He grinned. “Have a seat.” She took a few steps to the plastic chair on the other side of his wooden desk with the black leather inset. The desk was cool. The chairs looked like he’d picked them up at the local Walmart. She sat down on the cheap plastic and crossed her legs.
Evan took the seat across from her and pulled out a file. They’d arrived back in Reno the afternoon before, and she’d spent the rest of the day cleaning out the remainder of the items in the storage container. She’d scheduled a pickup with a local secondhand store that had taken the large items of furniture she didn’t want. She’d considered keeping her dad’s recliner, but there was no practical way to get it to South Carolina, and she didn’t have room for it in her cottage anyway.
She did keep one of her mother’s plates, though not the entire set. She would put it on a stand on her bookcase when she got home. And she found the box of photographs she’d been looking for and took that too. The bright spot had been calling Callie and telling her that she had photos to share with her when she got home. Photos of when Noelle was a little girl. Callie had giggled with delight, and the sweet, innocent sound had given Noelle a much-needed boost.
After returning the key to the rental office, she got her deposit back and thought, That’s it. The job had been necessary, but it was also another goodbye—a final goodbye—and she’d been exhausted when it was done. That, in combination with the poor night of sleep she’d gotten the night before, had her in bed by nine and out cold by ten after.
She’d needed it.
Evan, apparently, had spent the rest of the day doing online research into anything that might have connected to the story the man with the slight accent had told her so long ago.
Jewels.
Abducted women.
Twins.
A potential massacre.
Like the FBI, he hadn’t found any specific crimes that matched perfectly, but he told her he did have some possibilities, and so she’d met him in his office.
“What did you find?”
He opened the folder, and she could see that it was a short pile of printouts. “I have to believe that if the part of the story about abducted women is true, the man who committed the crime was never caught. Or even charged. Maybe he killed them and then died himself, and his crimes were never discovered.”
“Even a massacre?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it was a small massacre.”
She gave him a look that was the melding of a smile and a grimace. “Hmm. Okay. Well, that doesn’t help us.”
“No, but I did find a few things that might be of interest. I narrowed my search to specific dates, which made it a little easier.”
He handed her the printouts, and she took them, scanning the page at the top of the pile. She moved that one to the back and read the second one. Each page was a series of articles from different locations about local missing women who were never found. She pulled the third page forward and read that one. “Slovakia?” she said. “You went worldwide?”
“Where I could,” he said. “Because of the accent.”
“Good thinking,” she murmured, looking quickly through the rest of the stack. It was pretty depressing to know that a basic internet search pulled forth so many missing women.
“I still need to do some digging,” he said. “But it’ll take more time. As it relates to other countries, there’s not a lot in English, so I pulled what I could for now. That’s just my initial find.”
Noelle moved back to the one from Slovakia, reading quickly through the headlines for that one. Several young girls had gone missing. Children under twelve. There was once a man who collected things, very fine things. Jewels. Rubies. Emeralds. Diamonds. And he draped them on the women he stole. No, if she was going to take the man who’d told her the story at his word, then this didn’t exactly fit.
She flipped the page, reading brief snapshots of crimes from the Netherlands that weren’t quite right either. There was the headline from an article near the bottom of that page that interested her, and she read the small portion that Evan had printed out and compiled on the one page. “Do you have the entirety of this article printed out?” she asked, tapping her finger on the one she meant.
He craned his head slightly and then nodded. “Hold on.” He had another folder on the other side of his desk, and he pulled that one out, going through the larger stack. She liked how he’d compiled snippets for each geographical location onto one page. It made it much easier to get an idea of what she was thumbing through. A few of them she’d been able to dismiss right away, as the timing didn’t quite work as far as the age of the man she thought they were dealing with.
She scanned the page he’d handed her. “Local authorities looked into a man in Brussels named Dedryck Van Daele, the heir to Van Daele Diamonds, a major diamond-mining company.” She looked up. “Diamonds?” Jewels. He draped them in jewels . . .
Evan nodded. “I remembered you mentioned jewels and thought that might be an interesting link.”
She read through a few more paragraphs. “So they looked into this man named Dedryck because a few young women went missing in the area where he lived, and one of those women—a waitress in town—told her friend that Dedryck had invited her to a party a few nights before she disappeared.” She frowned. “That’s all the evidence they had? That sounds kind of weak.”
“I guess the local authorities thought so, too, because I didn’t find any more information about the police looking at him for the other disappearances that followed.”
“Did Dedryck have children? Specifically twins?”
“No,” Evan said. “At least none that he claimed at the time. I actually can’t find any more information on him after that one article. The family business is no longer in operation.”
“Hmm.” That was interesting too. There was no one available to carry on the family dynasty? Or had it failed financially? Was it worth looking into? “Dedryck would be . . . what, in his eighties?” she asked. “Did you look for a record of his death?”
“I did, but none exists. So either I didn’t look hard enough or he’s still alive but living and working somewhere else.”
“Odd.”
“I thought so too. But again, it might not be connected to the man who told you that story.”
She sighed, setting the papers on his desk. “Even so, these crimes aren’t even related to ours. They may or may not have something to do with some man I barely remember who told me a story that might be a lie.” And if he’d told it to her for some other purpose, she had no idea what that might be. She let out a short laugh that held more frustration than humor. “I feel like we’re wading into the weeds, Evan.” And potentially about to trip down rabbit holes.
He ran a hand over his face. He looked as frustrated as she felt. And tired too. He was the one who’d stayed up half the night downloading files about missing women near and far.
“And I’m running out of time,” she said softly. “I have less than a week before I’m scheduled to go home. I cleared out my dad’s storage locker. I can’t just hang around town. I need to get back to my life. I need to get back to Callie.”
“You promised two weeks.”
“That’s up in five days.”