She laughed. “Coffee,” she called back. “Please. I’m getting a little bleary from all the pouty-lipped selfies.”
“Yeah, what is up with that face everyone makes?” he called back to her as he filled the coffeemaker and turned it on.
“It’s a come do me face,” she said. “Which is disconcerting when thirteen-year-olds make it.”
“Jesus,” he said.
“Sorry,” she called back. “If it’s any consolation, Maddie hasn’t taken any selfies with that expression. She tends to go for the grim glare.”
“Thank God,” he said as he opened the fridge. He tried to keep it stocked with fresh veggies and fruit—none of which Maddie had touched. “Hey, can you bring that thing and sit in here? I’m suddenly starving. I’m gonna scramble some eggs.”
As he put the egg carton on the counter near the stove, Shayla appeared in the doorway with Maddie’s laptop in her hands. He was struck again by how effortlessly pretty she was—like a rock garden filled with wildflowers—and Jesus, wildflowers in a rock garden? He obviously wasn’t suffering from mere Dingo-madness. Maybe he was more fatigued than he’d thought. It was one thing to want to get naked and lose himself in an attractive woman—another entirely to start waxing poetic about wildflowers.
Pete grabbed a pan and turned on the heat for the stove’s front burner. Protein would help.
“Want some?” he asked, efficiently cracking eggs and tossing the shells into the sink as his neighbor carried the computer toward the center island.
“No, thanks,” she said. “Coffee’ll do.”
He purposely turned to watch her walk—to prove to himself that he could do that without looking at her ass.
Shit. He’d dropped an egg.
He wiped it up with the sponge as she perched that ass that he was not looking at on one of the stools he’d bought specifically for this counter in this little house. In which he’d hoped to live happily ever after with his daughter. Hah.
It was then that she gasped. “Found him!”
“Dingo?” Pete came to look, grabbing the towel to wipe egg from his fingers.
“Nope. But a close second. It’s Dumber.”
Pete looked over her shoulder, and yes. That was definitely Dingo’s long-haired, large-bearded friend from the mall garage. Shayla had those photos she’d taken displayed in a second window on the computer screen, for comparison. It was a solid match.
“His name is Daryl Middleton,” she said. “His profile is pretty sparse, not a lot of photos posted—certainly none of Dingo, at least not that I’ve found yet, but—whoa! Says here he works at the Irish Pub.” She smiled up at Pete, excitement dancing in her dark brown eyes. “That’s not far from here. It’s over near Burgers Plus.”
“Oh, I know where it is,” Pete said, going back to the stove to turn off the heat under his eggs. His food could wait.
“Except, oh no!” Shayla said. “There’s a post from last week where he says he got fired. Apparently, he wasn’t there long—and God, it’s like he’s proud he lasted less than a day. I’m gonna Google him…”
“Even if he worked for just one hour, someone at the Irish knows him. I’m still going over.”
“Eat first,” she said. “And think twice. Even if the owner is there at this time of night, he or she isn’t just going to hand over a former employee’s personal information to someone who’s not a cop. Let’s give this to Lindsey, because the only Daryl Middletons I’m finding off-Facebook are in their sixties—and none of them live in San Diego.”
Pete wasn’t convinced, and somehow she knew that. “What if you go over there,” Shayla continued. “And not only do you not get any info, but whoever you talk to calls Daryl and warns him that you’re looking for him, so if Maddie and Dingo actually are at his place, they immediately adios. Plus, if they have any brains at all, they’ll figure out you tracked Daryl to the Irish Pub through Maddie’s Facebook, so they change her password and lock us out of her account. And while it’s not exactly a gold mine of info, it’s better than nothing.”
Shit. “Yeah, you’re right. That would not be good.” Pete turned the burner back on. “So tell me this: Which one of Maddie’s friends is Middleton connected to?”
“A girl named Fiona Effable, and oh. Yeah. As I said her last name, well, that’s clearly not real, is it?”
Effable. F-able. Right. Pete tried not to twitch too perceptively as he absorbed the fact that Maddie had a friend who publicly referred to herself as fuckable.
“Fiona’s profile says she lives in Sacramento,” Shayla reported, “which is weird, because she and Maddie seem to post to each other a lot. Not lately, but right up until this past Friday. Then, over the weekend and past few days, there’s a lot of Maddie solo-posting to Fiona’s page—messaging her, too, but no response. It’s weird, Maddie keeps asking Can you Macarena? Maybe it’s some kind of inside joke. But she posted it, let’s see, one, two, three…five different times. Last time in all caps.”
“Macarena, like the dance?” Pete asked.
Shayla shrugged. “I guess. Do people actually still Macarena?”
“I prefer the Mashed Potato,” he said, and did a few steps, right there in front of the stove.
Shayla’s laughter was musical as it rang through the room. “Oh, my God, that was really good. Where did you learn to dance like that?”
“Lisa,” he admitted. He could feel his face heating. Jesus, when was the last time he’d blushed? “She was really into musical theater so I know a lot of basic steps. Including the Macarena.” He did a bit of the arms, making her laugh with delight again. “Which, yeah, could be an inside joke. Or maybe it’s code.”
“Could be either,” Shayla said. “Or both. They’re teenaged girls.”
“How long have they been friends?” Pete wondered. “Can you tell?”
“Hmm.” She focused again on the computer. “I can’t tell for sure, but…Okay. Yeah. It looks like Fiona and Maddie only started posting to each other about…two months ago.” She looked up at him.
Pete said the obvious. “When Maddie moved to San Diego.”
“Maybe Fiona saying she lives in Sacramento’s an intentional misdirect,” Shayla suggested as the coffeemaker burbled its last and went silent. “Kind of like Effable’s not her real name…?”
“Fiona might not be her real name either,” Pete said, grabbing a pair of mugs from the cabinet and pouring them each a hefty serving. “So what do we do?” Oops, now he was using the word we.
Shayla didn’t seem to notice—or care—as she shook off his offer of milk and sugar. She, too, drank her coffee black.