Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
There was a decent-quality, color, photocopied picture of a white woman with a mass of blonde hair, a lot of eyeliner, and the plate denoting it was a mugshot under her chin.
Underneath the picture it said, Missing women. Divinity. Roosevelt, between 16th and 24th Streets. Evenings. Take $200 cash. CD will reimburse.
“Holy shit,” I croaked.
“What’s it mean?”
I tossed the papers on the table again. “Whoever this is knows I’m looking into those missing women.”
Luna held her wineglass and tapped its side with her finger as she stared at me.
“Luna, are you there?” I demanded.
“Right, first, we go see this Clarice lady.”
What?
And…
We?
“We also go get that car, or at least look at it,” she went on.
“Are you insane?” I asked.
“Aren’t you curious?” she returned.
I shifted in my seat. “Yeah. Sure. But—”
“Raye, calm down and think. Divinity is a lady of the evening. ‘Take two hundred dollars,’ means you’re gonna have to pay her for info, and that means she probably has info. The stuff about Roosevelt is Divinity’s patch, where we’ll find her, on Roosevelt between Sixteenth and Twenty-fourth. CD is Clarice Davis, and she’ll reimburse you for said info. Whoever this is knows something about those missing women, and whoever it is can’t do anything about it. Something’s up. Maybe it’s a cop whose hands are tied or something like that. But we can’t talk to Divinity unless we get a feel for this Clarice woman. So we’re gonna talk to Clarice first, then we’re gonna go look at whatever car that is, because…”—she reached, grabbed the fob and brandished it at me—“this is to a Mercedes. So whoever this is, is not playing.”
She was right.
They were not.
Because it wasn’t just the Mercedes.
The bulk of that stack of papers, which I hadn’t entirely gone through, were detailed dossiers of the men who assaulted the co-ed.
And when I said detailed, I’d only glanced at them, but still…they were detailed.
“Don’t you think this is dangerous?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she huffed out. “And I thought the tight end was dangerous. And Paul Nicholson. And that wife beater whose car you poured sugar into the gas tank. And—”
“All right, all right, you’ve made your point.”
“So are you gonna stop now? Or is the last year of work you’ve got pinned to your bedroom wall, with pink yarn twirled around tacks, pointing to places on a map of the Phoenix metro area and Post-its with descriptions of possible players, gonna be just a weird piece of artwork of a slightly unbalanced mind?”
“I’m not unbalanced.”
“It depends on the day,” she said into her wineglass.
Honestly?
I couldn’t argue that.
Her tone had changed when she said, “I didn’t like that Paul Nicholson business because it cut too close to Macy.”
I tried not to flinch.
I failed.
“Honey,” she said carefully. “By some miracle, you tracked down Elsie Fay. And that’s good. I’m glad. But, girl, that hit too close to the bone.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“But this,”—she tossed the fob to the coffee table—“I don’t know. Something about it is intriguing. I also don’t like you going out there alone. But if we go together…”
She let that hang.
“I’m not a fan of that,” I informed her.
“Welcome to how I’ve been feeling the last year.”
That hit me, and it did it hard.
So I said, “Maybe I should just quit.”
“And maybe you should just go talk to this Clarice woman. It’s just a chat. Call her. Set it up. If we don’t like the feel we get, we’re out. But…why not?”
I wondered how many people, before they met their grisly end, asked “Why not?” prior to engaging in the endeavor that led to their grisly end.
I had a feeling that percentage was high.
Even so, I was me.
And women were missing.
So I replied, “Yeah. Okay. Why not?”
It was later.
Luna was gone.
Cleo and I were lying on my bed.
I was in my nightie, on my back, upside down in bed, my heels resting on my scallop-topped, pale-yellow padded headboard.
Cleo had her butt aimed toward my face and her head on a pillow.
Ice queen mode during cuddle time, friendly puppy when a strange lady carrying a Hermès bag was walking out of my apartment toward us after breaking into it.
Figured.
I had my head turned to what I’d meticulously been building on my wall.
It had taken me a year after I’d cottoned on to what I thought was a pattern before I kicked it up to high gear.
But I was no detective.
I had a ton of info on that wall and zero idea what any of it meant.
“What the hell am I doing?” I muttered to myself.
My phone rang.
I reached for it on the pink, peach and yellow butterfly print comforter on my bed.
The screen told me it was an unknown number.
But I took the call because…
Why not?
“Hello?”
“Hey, babe.”
My belly dipped.
It was Cap.
I rolled to the side, into Cleo, and came face to face with a dog butt.