Stride froze with his coffee cup at his lips. Then he blinked and put the cup down. He’d talked with Serena about a lot of possible reasons Maggie and Troy had broken up, but that wasn’t one of them. “He did what?”
“Yeah, it was pretty romantic for a big teddy bear like Troy. He waited until the kids went to bed. Then he opened champagne. He put on Michael Bublé, and of course I immediately turned off Michael Bublé. And the next thing I know, he had a ring in his hand and was on his knees popping the question.”
“That must have been quite a surprise.”
“It was.”
“And you said—”
“No.”
Stride sat in his chair in silence. He didn’t know how to respond.
“Needless to say, that killed the mood,” Maggie went on. “About five minutes later, I was back in my truck heading home. And that was that.”
“That was that?”
“Right.”
“Have the two of you talked?” he asked.
“No.”
“Come on, Mags. You guys really need to talk.”
“About what? I don’t want to get married, boss. Period. Remember the one time I tried it? Dead husband, me accused of murder, the damn sex club that screwed up my head?”
“I’m not sure it’s fair to generalize about marriage from your particular experience,” Stride said drily.
“Well, being married made me rich. Otherwise, there isn’t much I want to remember about it. Marriage isn’t for me. Never again. I was happy with the status quo with Troy. I wasn’t asking for anything more. But that’s not what he wanted. So it’s over, and I’m moving on.”
“And by moving on you mean not getting any sleep?” Stride asked.
“There’s no connection. I’m not obsessing about it.”
“Are you sure? It’s a big deal.”
“Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’m okay, boss. Really.”
Stride sighed and didn’t push her any further. “If you say so.”
He knew she wasn’t okay, but with Maggie you had to settle for information in dribs and drabs. She wore a suit of armor around herself and didn’t like to take it off. Plus, the two of them were still wary about getting too personal with each other. They’d been burned that way in the past.
“So did your all-nighter here result in any new information?” Stride asked.
“Actually, quite a lot,” Maggie replied. “Remember the phone we recovered from John Doe’s car? He used it to call the same Duluth number about a dozen times while he was in the city. We figured he was talking to his handler, getting instructions. The number he called is dead now, but I pulled the call logs for that phone. Every call went back to John Doe’s phone—except one.”
“What was the other call?” Stride asked.
“You’ll enjoy this. It went to Sammy’s Pizza downtown.”
Stride chuckled. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, I’m betting whoever it was made a mistake and used the wrong phone to order his pizza.”
“Can we trace the order?”
Maggie shook her head. “No, we know the date and time of the call, but the orders are written up on one-part paper receipts that go out with the pizza. Guppo’s going to be talking to their delivery drivers.”
“Okay, anything else on John Doe?” Stride asked. “Are we any closer to identifying him?”
“No, he’s still a mystery. But the Gherkin says she expects a ballistics report back on the Glock later today. See, my charm really does pay off.”
“How about Haley Adams? What have you found out about her?”
“She’s a mystery, too. Apparently Haley is a pretty little liar. She’s not a UMD student. Nobody in admissions or in the film studies department ever heard of her. And the apartment we searched? She rented it last month. It looks like she came to town when the film crew did and conned her way inside. Her whole identity is a fraud.”
“Chris Leipold thought she might have been spying for one of the tabloids,” Stride said.
“Maybe, but if she was, I doubt the National Gazette would admit it. Not when she left a telescope pointed at Dean Casperson’s bedroom. That’s an invitation to a lawsuit. And speaking of the telescope, the model she had is called a Moonraker. It costs like five thousand dollars. This girl didn’t just walk away and leave it behind. Something happened to her.”
“Aimee Bowe told Serena that she thinks Haley is dead,” Stride said.
“Based on what?”
“She sensed it. Like some kind of psychic vision, I guess.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “California.”
“Well, vision or not, Aimee may be right. We’ve still got John Doe and his Glock to think about.”
Stride took his phone out of his pocket and opened up the photographs he’d taken inside Haley’s apartment. He scrolled through them again, hoping to see a clue that he’d missed the previous night.
“So who is this girl?” he asked.
“I don’t have any leads on her, either,” Maggie replied. “It doesn’t help that we can’t even get a read on what she looks like. Everyone describes her differently. Hair color, hair length, eye color, skin tone, it’s different with every witness. She wore disguises like day-of-the-week underwear.”
“She told Chris Leipold that she grew up in Florida.”
“Right, which may or may not be another lie,” Maggie replied. “Even if it’s true, we don’t know whether her name is really Haley Adams. However, just to be sure, I got Florida driver’s license records on every Haley Adams in the state.”
“What did you find?” Stride asked.
“There are about two dozen people with that name in Florida. I culled it to six women who seemed to be about the right age, weight, and look. I printed out copies and figured we could run them by the people on the crew. We can see if anyone recognizes her among the photos.”
She handed Stride a sheet of paper with enlarged copies of multiple Florida licenses. He took a quick look at the faces and realized that Maggie was right. Any one of these women could have been the Haley Adams they were looking for. Or none of them.
“Didn’t you say you culled it to six?” he asked. “There are seven licenses on this page.”
Maggie nodded. “Yeah. See the one on the bottom? Haley Adams from Fort Myers? She can’t be our girl, but I included her anyway.”
“Why?”
“She had something in common with our fake John Doe identity,” Maggie said. “She’s dead.”
Stride stared at the face of the pretty young girl from Fort Myers. Strawberry blond hair and green eyes. Sweet smile. A Florida beauty, 102 pounds. According to her birth date, she would have been twenty-four years old the next month if she were still alive.
“Interesting coincidence,” he said. “Maybe we have two ghosts.”
“Maybe so. There was something else that made me curious about this particular Haley Adams, too.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“She was murdered.”
9
Serena sat across from Cat at a wobbly wooden table in the basement bakery in Canal Park called Amazing Grace. She ate a scrambled egg skillet with Yukon potatoes while Cat picked at a sugar-sprinkled blueberry muffin with her slim fingers. The girl didn’t look at her. The two of them hadn’t said much since they’d left the cottage. For Cat, the worst punishment was not knowing what her punishment was going to be.
“Drew and Krista asked me to baby-sit today,” Cat murmured after a long stretch of silence. “Can I still do that?”
“Of course.”
“They’re counting on me,” the girl went on as if Serena hadn’t said anything. “And I haven’t seen Michael in like a week.”
“Cat, I said it’s fine,” Serena told her.
“Well, I wasn’t sure if I was grounded or something.”
“You’re not. And regardless, I would never tell you not to see your son.”
Michael was now a fifteen-month-old toddler. His adoptive parents, Drew and Krista Olson, had encouraged Cat to play a role in his life. After months of reluctance, Cat finally had stepped up. Drew and Krista were busy rebuilding their camping shop, which had been destroyed in the marathon bombing, so they called on Cat regularly for baby-sitting duties.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Cat said finally, biting her lip.
“I know you are.”
“Is Stride mad?”
“He’s mad at Jungle Jack. Not you.”