When All The Girls Have Gone (7 page)

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Daniel Flint said. “Use your own judgment, Mr. Cutler. I just want answers.”

“Even if it turns out that those answers might affect Louise’s reputation or your memories of her?” Max asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Daniel said. “I’m sure she was murdered, but regardless, I just need to know the truth. If this woman—Charlotte Sawyer—is looking for answers, too, then as far as I’m concerned we’re on the same team.”

“All right. I’ll keep you informed of my progress.”

“Thanks,” Daniel said. “Got to go. Chef is about to blow. We’ve got a full house here in the restaurant tonight.”

The phone went dead in Max’s hand. He set it on the old wooden table and looked out the kitchen window. A light Seattle drizzle was soaking the quiet neighborhood. He could see the glow of a television set behind the curtains of the little Victorian down the street. Mr. and Mrs. Lund were addicted to PBS and a steady diet of British police dramas.

The windows in the house next to the Lunds’ were still dark and probably would be for another hour or so. The two young men—newlyweds—had moved in recently, but they worked long hours and often met friends for dinner at one of the downtown restaurants.

The residents of the neighborhood were a mix of retirees obsessed with their gardens and cruise plans, and young families convinced they
could double their money if they upgraded their starter houses and sold them in a couple of years.

He was too old to own a starter house, but after Whitney had walked out to “get on with her life,” the fixer-upper was all he could afford. It was his own fault. He had compounded the financial disaster of the divorce by quitting his job as a profiler back in D.C. and moving to Seattle to go out on his own.

Everyone had warned him about the weather. Some said it wasn’t the rain that got to some people, it was the long stretches of gray. But he had been living in the city for over six months and he was fine with the climate.

He had discovered that he liked being his own boss, too, even if he wasn’t making a lot of money yet.

He probably should have rented when he arrived in Seattle, he thought. It would have made more sense financially. But he was an all-or-nothing kind of guy when it came to making commitments. The day he had walked off the plane he had made his decision. He would be staying in Seattle.

He opened a can of tuna and made a couple of sandwiches. There was one large dill pickle left in the jar. He added it to the plate. A well-rounded meal required a vegetable of some kind.

He took a beer out of the refrigerator, picked up the plate with the sandwiches and pickle on it and carried the meal to the kitchen table.

A light shifted in one of the windows across the street. The curtains were pulled aside. A familiar face appeared.

Anson Salinas raised a hand in greeting. Max returned the gesture. The curtain across the street dropped back into place.

Anson was also new to Seattle, having moved there some four months back. Prior to that, he’d spent over thirty years in law enforcement, much of the time as the chief of police of a small town on the rugged coast of northern California.

Max opened his laptop and contemplated the results of his latest search while he drank some beer and munched a sandwich. He was not entirely amazed to see that the two dead women and the three who had reported
being raped had a few things in common. The circles on the map had indicated a pattern. The trick was to figure it out.

He studied the sparse details he had pulled up online for a few minutes. Then he looked at the time. It was not too late to call his new associate, he decided. He wondered if he should be worried about the fact that he was looking for an excuse—any excuse—to call her.

Charlotte answered on the first ring.

“What is it?” she said. “Did you find something?”

Urgency shivered in her voice.

“I just got off the phone with Daniel Flint,” Max said. “He’s okay with the three of us sharing information.”

“Oh, good. I’m so glad. So now I’m a client, too?”

“No, you’re a person with whom I will be sharing information,” he said patiently. “I thought I made that clear.”

He wasn’t sure how to classify her, but he wanted it understood up front that she wasn’t a client. It was bad policy to sleep with a client and he had been having fantasies of sleeping with Charlotte ever since he had walked out of the elevator and found her waiting for him in the lobby.

“I’m sort of a consultant, then?” she asked, dubious now.

“No, because then I’d have to pay you.”

It probably wasn’t smart to sleep with consultants, either, he thought.

“I see.” She sounded almost amused. “Well, whatever you want to call it, we’re working together, right? Colleagues.”

Probably not a good idea to think of her as a colleague, but he was running out of descriptive labels.

“Colleague is good enough for now,” he said. “I called to ask you some questions.”

“Yes, of course.”

Max looked at the carry-on sitting beside the kitchen table. “You said your stepsister is on a retreat in the Caribbean?”

“That’s right. She’s at a convent run by a cloistered order. They offer retreats to women several times a year. It’s their primary source of income.”

“What’s the name of the island?”

“St. Adela. The convent is named after the saint. Why?”

“How did your stepsister find it?”

“Jocelyn said she researched tech-free retreats online and chose St. Adela. Look, where are you going with this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I usually don’t, not until I get there.”

“Very philosophical.”

He thought he heard a smile in her voice. Maybe it was just his imagination.

“Very philosophical for a PI, do you mean?” he asked.

“For anyone.”

“I see.” He tried to think of some way to extend the conversation. “Got plans for tonight?”

“Oh, yeah. Wild evening ahead. After dinner I’m going to do my nightly meditation and then I’m going to watch some television and then I’m going to go to bed and read. And during that entire time I will be worrying about Jocelyn and wondering why Louise Flint is dead.”

“Sounds like a full evening. I’ll be doing pretty much the same thing. Except for the meditation thing.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. He waited for her to end the connection first. But she didn’t make the move, at least not right away.

“Max?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think my sister is okay?”

He hated questions like that.

“I have no idea,” he said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

He was pretty sure she was going to hang up.

“I just remembered a question I wanted to ask you,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I checked Louise Flint’s GPS. It looks like the last trip she made was to Loring, Washington.”

He heard a sharply indrawn breath.

“Loring?” she whispered. “Are you sure?”

“All I know for certain is that Loring was the last destination registered on the GPS. I can’t find anything that tells me that Louise had any acquaintances there. Daniel Flint has no idea why she would have made the trip unless it was to see a foundation donor. But the receptionist at the foundation said there was no record of any big donors in Loring.”

“When did Louise make the trip?” Charlotte asked quietly.

“The day she died.”

“I have no idea what is going on, but if it is in any way connected to Loring, Washington, it can’t be good.”

“Tell me why.”

“My stepsister went to college in Loring. She dropped out in her sophomore year and finished somewhere else.”

“Why did she drop out?”

“She was attacked on the campus. Raped. They never caught the bastard. Jocelyn could not identify him because she didn’t get a good look at him. He came up from behind with a knife and blindfolded her.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m damned scared,” Victoria Mathis said. She tightened her grip around the stem of the martini glass. “First Jocelyn takes off on a monthlong retreat and now Louise is dead. I’m telling you, something has gone very, very wrong.”

She was the one who had texted the others late that afternoon, summoning them to an unscheduled meeting of the club that night. Normally there would have been all five members present. But with Louise dead and Jocelyn in the Caribbean, there were only the three of them. And of the three, she and Emily Kelly appeared to be the only ones who were truly frightened. It was obvious that Madison Benson thought they were overreacting.

Maybe it was her background in marketing that was making her nervous. She was very good at spotting trends in the hothouse environment of the fashion world. She also knew just how fast a trending style could go south. She relied on her intuition for success and right now it was warning her that there was no way she could pretend that Louise’s death and Jocelyn’s disappearance didn’t make for a disturbing trend. They all knew that they had been taking risks.

Madison Benson, seated on the other side of the table, gave her a disapproving look that was tinged with exasperation.

“There’s no reason to panic,” Madison said. “Louise died of an overdose. That’s not the biggest shock in the world. We all know her history.”

Victoria suspected that Madison was using the same tone of voice that she used to calm anxious investors. Smart and savvy, Madison had the whole package—glamorous good looks, a head for numbers, an eye for financial opportunities and an edgy, charismatic personality. Her business was still small compared to the big hedge fund managers, but she had a growing portfolio of satisfied clients.

Victoria was pretty sure that some of those clients—male and female—had fantasies about sleeping with Madison, who could have moonlighted as an exclusive dominatrix. But as far as the members of the club were aware, she was not particularly interested in sex. Jocelyn had suggested on more than one occasion that Madison was still looking for her true mate—a man or woman she considered to be her equal.

“Louise had been clean for years,” Emily Kelly said. “I’m sure if she had gone back to drugs we would have had some indication. But I didn’t notice anything different about her lately.”

Victoria almost choked on her martini. “What are you talking about? You’re in human resources. You’re the one with the psych degree. You’re supposed to be an expert when it comes to evaluating people. Of all of us, you should have been the one to notice that Louise was not herself lately. She was unusually quiet and withdrawn, almost secretive, for most of the past month. I thought she was sinking into depression.”

“Maybe she was.” Emily’s mouth tightened.

Of all of them, Emily was the one who didn’t really fit into the club, Victoria thought. She was sure that Emily was aware of that. It had become clear that Emily lacked the nerve for the kinds of risks they took.

It was Madison who had lobbied to make her a member, and admittedly Emily contributed a useful skill set. She had a talent for digging up background information and—the Louise issue aside—she was usually very insightful when it came to predicting the actions of their targets. But she lacked the assertive, risk-taking vibe that characterized the rest of them.

As far as they knew, Emily did not have anyone special—male or female—in her life. She rarely mentioned her family.

Emily was not exactly an introvert, but neither was she outgoing. She
was the same age as the rest of them, but she seemed older. With a little makeup, a few blond highlights in her hair, some on-trend clothes and a big dose of self-confidence, she could have been attractive. The dorky-looking glasses didn’t help matters. All in all, it seemed that she went out of her way not to draw attention to herself.

“I just assumed that Louise was seeing someone,” she said. She sounded defensive. “I thought she was more quiet than usual because she wasn’t ready to talk to the rest of us about the relationship, that’s all.”

“Why would she keep quiet about a new relationship?” Victoria asked.

“We all know that Louise was . . . complicated,” Emily said. “Given her background, she would have been uneasy about becoming emotionally invested in a new relationship.”

Madison’s eyes narrowed. “Looks like the reason she seemed withdrawn and even secretive lately was because the new person in her life was her dealer, not a lover. Shit. She had to know we would have freaked if we thought that she was using again. That kind of behavior would have put all of us at risk. Everyone knows you can’t trust a junkie.”

Victoria sat back in the booth and looked at Emily. “You’re the expert on people. Got any ideas about Jocelyn? Why do you think she suddenly decided to disappear?”

Madison frowned. “Don’t say that. She didn’t disappear. She went off on a retreat. Stop making it sound so mysterious. There is nothing odd about it.”

Emily looked at her. “I’m not so sure. Victoria is right. It does seem a little strange that Jocelyn would suddenly head for a convent on some no-name island in the Caribbean for a month. It’s not like she’s seriously religious.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with religion,” Madison said. “A lot of people are going off on tech-free retreats these days. They’re trying to unplug for a while. It’s like doing yoga or meditation. Jocelyn has been complaining about feeling stressed out. She said the foundation was really pressuring her to bring in bigger donors.”

“The thing is,” Emily said, “Jocelyn is a planner. Sure, she takes risks,
but she’s not impulsive. She thinks things through. This idea of going on a retreat feels like it came out of left field. She never mentioned doing anything like that before she announced that she had booked a plane ticket.”

Madison’s delicate brows scrunched together. “Maybe she thought through the retreat idea for a while and just didn’t bother to mention it to us.”

“Maybe,” Emily conceded.

But she didn’t look convinced, Victoria thought. If anything, Emily looked more nervous than ever. And now Madison was finally starting to appear concerned, too.

There was a brief moment of silence around the table. Victoria drank some more of her martini and slowly lowered the glass.

“It seemed like a game at first,” she said. “A real-life video game.”

Emily shook her head. “It was never a game. We all knew we were taking chances. There was always the possibility that someone would realize what we were doing.”

“But we were very careful,” Madison insisted.

Victoria looked at her. “Maybe not careful enough.”