Okay, but maybe Lindsey’d kept her own name upon marriage. Shayla had.
Maybe. Harry wasn’t convinced. But think about that question, with its hmm that’s loaded with subtext. Adam’s really asking “How long have you been shagging our friend Grunge?”
“Ohmigod, no!” Shay blurted. “I mean, yes, I live across the street. I do. But I just happened to see Lieutenant Greene when I was dropping my son off at the high school, and, um…”
Oh, good. Now you sound weirdly defensive, so Adam’s gotta think you’ve been sleeping with the SEAL nonstop for the past two months. And look at Grunge and Lindsey. Do they look even remotely married to each other?
They didn’t.
“Can you get your friend at the SDPD to run a license plate for me?” Peter was asking Lindsey. He hadn’t sat down on the couch next to her—instead he’d merely moved closer and stood there as he rattled off the combination of letters and numbers from Dingo’s maroon POS.
“Back in the day, Lindsey was a police detective up in LA,” Adam murmured to Shayla as Peter explained how he’d thought he’d seen Maddie getting into that car, and how Shay’d helped him follow it to the mall, where they’d met Dingo and his bearded friend.
“The timing of Maddie’s text to Eden could be a coincidence,” the SEAL named Izzy pointed out. He’d sat down in one of two easy chairs positioned on either side of a gorgeous old river rock fireplace, and pulled his beautiful wife onto his lap.
“But we don’t really think that, do we?” Shayla argued. “Peter got way up in Dingo and Dumber’s faces—” he’d left that little detail out “—and an hour later, Maddie sends that text to Eden?”
“Yeah, I’m with Shayla,” Lindsey agreed with a smile in Shay’s direction. “Finding Maddie might be as simple as running Dingo’s plates and getting his home address.”
“Assuming he keeps his registration current,” Peter said. “Which I seriously doubt. I got a heavy whiff of couch-surfer off of him.”
“Still, it’s a good place to start,” Shay said. “We should also see if we can access Maddie’s Facebook page—”
“We can.” Eden pointed to a laptop that was open and running a screen saver on a gorgeous oak coffee table. “That’s Maddie’s. But we already looked through her Facebook friends and hardly anyone’s local. Her most recent messages are to someone named Fiona, from Sacramento.”
“Oh, good!” Shay sat on the sofa between Lindsey and Adam, pulling the laptop closer so she could look at the screen.
Ahem, Harry said, and she looked up to find everyone looking at her, as Eden said, “That didn’t seem like all that much to inspire an Oh, good.”
“No no, Sacramento’s definitely not good,” Shayla explained, “but access to Maddie’s page is…I’m going to scan through her photos, see if I can find Dingo or his long-haired friend.”
If it’s okay with you, Harry prompted.
Shay cleared her throat and aimed the words at Peter. “If that’s okay with you…?”
“Hell, yeah,” he said. “It’s brilliant. Move over, Adam, I wanna look, too.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Maddie stared as Dingo said, “Holy shite.”
The condo where Fiona had lived with her aunt Susan had burned.
Badly.
It hadn’t burned literally to the ground because it was on the second floor, but the place was clearly uninhabitable. It was hard for Maddie to see the full extent of the damage in the darkness, but it looked as if most of the kitchen roof was gone. And the beige stucco walls surrounding the shattered and now-empty windows were charred and streaked with soot.
“Holy. Shite.” Dingo whispered the words again. But he laughed a little, too. “I guess Fiona finally lost it. Big time.”
Maddie turned to look at him in disbelief. “You think Fee did this…?”
“You think she didn’t?” He was already on his phone, accessing the internet. “Looks like it burned…Yep, the fire happened on Friday morning. Neighbor saw the smoke and called nine-one-one around nine. No one was injured. That’s good, at least.”
If Fiona had started the fire, that certainly explained why she’d been pulled out of class on Friday, never to return.
“She’s psycho,” Dingo reminded Maddie as they walked down the street, back to where he’d parked his car. “It’s psycho what she’s done—framing you like that. Nelson is fuckin’ dangerous, and Fee knows it. She wants him to hurt you. Or worse.”
“So where’s her aunt Susan living now?” Maddie asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “Although where does someone horrible who probably doesn’t have many friends go when their house burns down? A hotel, probably.”
After stopping for donuts and talking Maddie into sending that text to “Dad’s” friend Eden, Dingo had finally stopped stalling and driven them out here. Maddie had hoped to find out from Susan if Fee had gone home to her mother’s or her father’s house in Sacramento—and to get a phone number so they could call her. Although now it was entirely possible, despite what Fiona had said in her message to Nelson, that instead of Susan sending Fee home, the girl had gotten herself locked up.
“Did the article you read say anything about arson?” Maddie asked. “Was anyone arrested?”
“As in Fee?” Dingo countered. “No. It didn’t say. But if Fee is in jail, that’s a win for us. It’ll be a quick and easy way to show Nelson that she’s lying.” He paused as they got back into his car. “On the other hand, she was always talking about how loaded her da was, and how much he was paying Susan each month so that Fee could live here in San Diego. Kinda hard to imagine a scenario in which he lets his only child rot in the slammer.”
She shot him a disbelieving look. “Rot in the slammer? Really?”
“Sorry, love, have I got it wrong? It’s hard to keep up with your American slang.”
“It’s perfect—if you’re a doofus.”
Dingo laughed. “Well, I’ve never denied that, have I?” He started his car. “Lookit, it’s getting late. Shall we call it a night—find a campsite, perhaps get slightly baked before bedtime? Is baked acceptable slang for you?”
“It’s great,” she said, “but it’s not late—it’s only eight-thirty, Grandpa. Fee told me Susan didn’t usually get home from work until after eleven. If we have any shot at all of finding out where she’s staying, we need to find her law office. I wonder if she’s got a website…Will you Google her?”
“Google what?” Dingo asked. “Auntie Susan’s Law Practice?” He was grinning at his cleverness—and getting back at her for that doofus comment.
“Attorney Susan Fiera, San Diego, California,” Maddie said.
“Nope, her last name’s different from Fee’s,” Dingo said. “She and Fee’s da had different das. Hers was named Smith.”
Susan Smith. Great. There were probably dozens of lawyers in SoCal with that impossibly common name.