? ? ?
The waitstaff came back from their extended break, and I left the Pork Pit in Catalina’s capable hands for the rest of the day. After checking to make sure that no one had booby-trapped my car while it was parked on the street, I got inside and headed toward Northtown. While I drove, I called my friends to fill them in on the situation.
First up was Bria.
“Detective Coolidge,” she said through the sound system in my car.
“Hey, it’s Gin. Are you at your desk? I need a favor . . .”
I told her everything that Jade had told me, including about her less-than-helpful trip to the police station earlier today. After I finished, I could hear Bria typing on the other end of the line.
“I don’t see a missing person report on Elissa Daniels filed anywhere in our system,” Bria said. “Who did Jade talk to?”
“Some cop named Sykes.”
“Sykes,” she snarled, a note of disgust creeping into her voice. “That lazy slob. All he does is sit around, eat doughnuts, and misfile paperwork. He probably just wadded up Jade’s report and tossed it into the trash the way he does all the others.”
“Sounds like a charming guy,” I said. “Real dedicated to protecting and serving.”
“You have no idea,” Bria muttered. “Anyway, give me all the info, and I’ll see what I can dig up.”
I repeated everything I knew about Elissa and her disappearance and suggested that Bria call Silvio so the two of them could pool their resources and exchange information. Bria agreed to get right on it and also to tell Xavier what was going on. She promised to call with any updates, and we both hung up.
Next on my contact list was Finn.
“Why, hello there, darling,” he drawled in a deep, suave voice. “You have reached the always awesome and ever-charming Finnegan Lane. How may I be of service to you today?”
“It’s Gin. Does Stuart Mosley really have the flu?”
Silence. I didn’t often throw Finn for a loop, but that wasn’t the response he’d expected.
“How do you know that Mosley is sick?” he asked. “And why are you so interested in my boss’s sniffles?”
I filled him in on the missing girl. “Did you know that your boss likes to squire sweet young things around Ashland?”
“Well, yeah,” Finn said. “It’s no secret. He’s done it for a while now. Ever since his wife died. He told me once that it helps to keep the society sharks at bay. The ones who want to take a big bite out of all his money. Do you actually think that Mosley might be involved in this girl’s disappearance?”
Worry rippled through Finn’s voice. He liked Mosley a lot and thought of him as a mentor the same way I thought of Fletcher. Finn didn’t want to think ill of his boss. Neither did I, but Mosley was far too mysterious for my liking.
“I don’t know, but he was the one she was supposed to meet last night. Mosley definitely has his secrets, and I want to be sure that kidnapping college girls isn’t one of them,” I said. “Can you find out if he really was sick at home last night?”
“I’m on it,” Finn said.
He also promised to contact Silvio and Bria and see what he could do to help them drill down into information on Elissa and anyone she might have had any contact with.
Last but definitely not least, I dialed Owen and told him what was going on.
“That’s awful. I can’t imagine what Jade must be going through. If Eva was missing . . .” His voice trailed off at the thought of his own younger sister, and I could tell he was thinking how horrible things were for Jade right now. “What can I do?”
Even though he couldn’t see me, I still smiled. Owen’s willingness to help, no matter how ugly or desperate the situation, always warmed my heart. “I was hoping you’d say that. Talk to Eva. See if she or Violet knows anything about Elissa and her friends. They all go to the community college. Maybe they have some classes together. Elissa seems like a good kid, but even good kids can have hidden depths.”
“Roger that,” Owen said. “And Gin?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. I don’t know what I would do if you were the one missing either.”
I smiled again. “That’s something that you’ll never have to worry about.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
? ? ?
By the time I finished my call with Owen, I’d reached my destination: the Five Oaks Country Club.
Five large, circular buildings made up the club, which featured all of your usual amenities, including tennis courts, swimming pools, and more. Given the cold, most of the outdoor areas were deserted, although I could see a few hardy souls off in the distance, bundled up from head to toe, walking across one of the golf greens. A couple of miserable-looking caddies with heavy bags of clubs slung over their shoulders trudged along behind the golfers. A gust of wind swept over the land, and they all stopped and tucked their chins down into the tops of their puffy parkas until the blustery breeze had subsided.
I parked my car and headed for the center building, an elegant structure of pale gray stone and gleaming glass that served as the club’s main social area. I pushed through the double doors and walked down a long ivory-carpeted hallway, listening to the hushed whispers of the stones as they murmured about money, manners, station, and all the other things that were so important to the people here. I reached out with my magic, focusing on their soft, sly mutterings, but no loud, obvious notes of danger or violence trilled through the stones. Whatever had happened to Elissa Daniels, I didn’t think that it had started here.
Only one way to find out for sure.
The hallway led into a large corridor with several sets of double doors set into its walls. The two doors in front of me were standing wide open, and the trill of more than a dozen conversations drifted over to me. No one was standing at the nearby host’s station, so I stepped up and peered inside the club’s main ballroom.
Round tables covered with pale peach linens filled the massive space from one end to the other. An acorn—the country club’s rune—shimmered in gold thread in the center of each tablecloth and napkin and was also engraved into all the silverware. A glass dome curved over the ballroom four stories above, letting in the weak winter sunlight, as did the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the back wall. Multiple sets of stairs led to the upper levels of the ballroom, where more tables were situated.