by T. R. Ragan
And yet, she remembered what came before she was bashed in the head, including her phone call with Mimi Foster at RAYTEX. The entirety of their conversation was hazy, except for the part about Matthew and his rumored involvement with the woman named Rebecca.
The idea of Matthew betraying her in that way didn’t compute. He wasn’t the type. She was no longer in love with Matthew, so that wasn’t an issue. So what was the problem? she asked herself.
No answer came. Nothing about the conversation or what happened afterward made any sense. The pounding in her head wasn’t helping matters. She couldn’t think straight.
There was a quick three-rap knock on the door to her private room before Detective Whitton entered.
Quinn’s eyes opened and she straightened in her seat.
He nodded at Quinn as he made his way to Dani’s bedside. “What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
Dani managed a smile, but even that hurt.
Quinn jumped up and went to stand by Detective Whitton. “Do you know who this is?” she asked Dani.
Dani frowned. “Of course I do.”
Quinn wouldn’t let it go. “What’s his name?”
“Detective James Whitton.”
“And you remember who I am?” Quinn asked.
“What’s this all about?” Dani asked.
“Please, just humor me. What’s my name?”
“Quinn Elizabeth Sullivan.”
Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Where do I live?”
“You live with your grandmother in East Sacramento on the same block as me. You drive a blue 1988 Lincoln Town Car. You’re twenty-two. Shall I go on?”
Dani was surprised by the emotion she saw on Quinn’s face.
Quinn grabbed her leather bag from the chair where she’d fallen asleep and then headed for the door. “I’ll give you two some time alone.”
And then she was gone.
“Poor girl,” Detective Whitton said. “After she found you passed out at the top of the stairs, she called 9-1-1 and then called me. There was blood everywhere, and she couldn’t get you to respond to her voice. Maybe I should go after her?”
“No,” Dani said. “I think she’s the one who needed time alone. She’ll be fine.”
“Well, let’s talk about you, then.” He gestured to the gauze around her head. “You got knocked in the head pretty good.”
“I’m fine. Really. I only agreed to stay overnight out of an abundance of caution and because the doctor insisted.”
“Do you recall what you were hit in the head with?”
“I have no idea.”
“We believe the weapon was the base of a lamp that may or may not have come from the basement. My team took pictures and checked for fingerprints. No luck there,” he said, “which means the perpetrator was wearing gloves.” He scratched his chin. “Are you up to answering a few questions?”
“I don’t remember much, but I’ll try.” Dani gestured toward the chair where Quinn had been sitting. “Have a seat. I don’t think she’ll be back for a while.”
He pulled out a tiny black book and a pen and took a seat. “Did you see your attacker’s face?” he asked, getting right to it.
She closed her eyes in hopes that would help her remember, but drew a blank. “Afraid not.”
“Height? Male or female? Anything at all?”
She shook her head.
He slid his notebook and pen back into his shirt pocket. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what you do remember.”
“I returned to the office before eleven. The door was unlocked. I should have known something was up, but I figured I must have turned the key in the wrong direction on my way out. When I stepped inside, I saw papers everywhere. My first thought was that Quinn might have interrupted a burglary and could be hurt. I remember feeling panicked as I checked the kitchen area before thinking she might be in the basement. I opened the door and wham!” She raised her hands and then let them flop down to the bed. “Next thing I knew, I was in the emergency room, dazed and confused.”
“Okay, let’s back up a bit. Before you entered your office, did you see anyone hanging around? Any cars you didn’t recognize parked in the vicinity?”
“No. I was on the phone. I didn’t see anything unusual, but I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Any idea who might want to do you harm?”
At the same moment he asked the question, Quinn reappeared.
“I can’t think of anyone,” Dani said in answer to his question.
Quinn walked to the window overlooking the parking lot and sat on the wide ledge. “Go ahead,” Quinn said. “Pretend I’m a fly on the wall.”
Detective Whitton looked at Dani, and she told him it was fine.
“We don’t think it was a burglary,” he said, “but when you get back to the office, I’ll need you to look through your things, make sure nothing is missing.”
Dani nodded.
“What sort of cases are you working on?” he asked next.
“I have a few ongoing workers’ comp cases. Nothing that stands out,” Dani said. “Quinn and I are working with Ethan Grant on the Ali Cross case. It did cross my mind that someone might not like the idea of there being a potential witness.”
“But why attack you?” Quinn asked.
“I wondered the same thing. But I also don’t think the intruder broke into the office intending to hurt anyone. Judging by the open drawers and papers scattered about, I think it’s obvious they were looking for something. Whoever it was, I surprised them, and they used whatever they could find to knock me out and escape. If they had come with the intention of doing me harm, I would think they would have brought a weapon.”
Once again Detective Whitton pulled out his notebook and pen. After making a few notes, he looked up. “Anything else?”
“When you were at the office,” Dani said, “I assume you saw the pictures and articles on the walls in the basement.”
Detective Whitton nodded. “I did wonder what all that was about.”
“Quinn has been collecting information on missing persons for years,” Dani said. “A few days ago, I was in the basement when I found some old employee booklets, reports that Matthew’s company puts together every year. Anyway, there was one I hadn’t seen before that included a collage of pictures taken at a RAYTEX company picnic held at McKinley Park a week before Tinsley disappeared.”
Detective Whitton and Quinn stared at her, waiting to see where this was going.
“In the collage were two pictures that caught my attention. In both pictures was a woman whom I thought looked a lot like me. In one she was talking to Matthew, and in the other she was running the face-painting booth, and the little girl she was working on happened to be Tinsley.”
“Interesting,” Quinn said.
“I thought so, which is why I scanned the page and sent it to an old friend at RAYTEX.”
“Did she recognize the woman in the pictures?” Quinn asked.
“Yes. Apparently the woman came through a temp agency and worked at RAYTEX for four months. I wrote down her name on a notepad at work.”
“And you think she may have something to do with your being bashed over the head?” Detective Whitton asked.
Dani thought about it for a second. “Now that I think about it, it’s highly unlikely since I only just found out her name minutes before the incident. I did learn something that’s been niggling, though.”
“Go ahead,” Detective Whitton said.
“It seems there were rumors that Matthew and the woman in the picture were having a fling, and she was let go around that same time.”
“We need to find this woman and talk to her,” Quinn said. “She could hold the missing piece to the puzzle.”
“We’ll get back to that later,” Detective Whitton told Quinn after he made additional notes. “Let’s stick with one thing at a time. Any other cases you’re working on?”
Quinn did not look pleased.
&
nbsp; “Cameron Bennington. She’s a lawyer,” Dani said. “She lives near Land Park. Apparently someone has been finding a way to get inside her house while she’s at work. Whoever it is moves furniture around and eats her food.”
“So weird,” Quinn said.
Dani nodded in agreement. “I told her to install digital cameras, and for a month or two that seemed to do the trick. But now the intruder is back.” Dani sighed. “This morning, I was doing a stakeout when a man walking his dog knocked on my window, startling me.”
“What did he want?” Quinn asked.
“He wanted to know what I was doing.” She waved a hand through the air. “Sorry. The man and his dog have no relevance to your question. My brain is foggy.”
“You’re fine,” Detective Whitton said. “You must have brought him up for a reason. Did you get a name?”
She nodded. “Frank Petri.”
A nurse entered then and started taking vitals, prompting Detective Whitton to put away his notebook before he pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to take off now. I’ll do a few drive-bys, make sure nobody is hanging around your office.”
“I appreciate that.”
He patted his breast pocket where he kept his notebook. “I’m also going to look into a few things. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“Thank you.”
He looked over his shoulder at Quinn. “Are you staying?”
“Yes,” she said. “I have a few questions for Dani too. I’ll be in touch.”
He smiled at Quinn and then said his goodbyes.
A few minutes after Detective Whitton left, the nurse finished what she was doing and exited the room.
Dani reached for her plastic cup and drank water through a straw, then straightened her bedcovers. Her gaze fell on Quinn, whose head was bent forward, her shoulders shaking enough to know that she was crying. “What’s wrong, Quinn?”
Quinn looked up. Her eyes were red and puffy. “I know you need your rest,” she told Dani, “but I need to know if you’re okay . . . really okay.”
“I’m fine. I really am. A slight headache is all.”
“Seeing you there on the floor,” Quinn said, holding a tissue to her nose. “So much blood. I couldn’t get a pulse, and I thought you were dead.” The tears streamed down her cheeks. “I can’t lose you too.”
“Oh, Quinn. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you don’t really know that, do you?”
“I could get hit by a bus tomorrow or the day after, so in that sense you’re right. I can’t make any promises. But if this is about your mom leaving, Quinn, I can promise you I will never leave you. Never.”
More tears came, and if the room wasn’t spinning just the slightest bit, Dani would have gone to her, wrapped her arms around her, and held her tight.
“You are an amazing person,” Dani went on, knowing she should have had a heart-to-heart with Quinn long before today. “You are smart, kind, and passionate. People make mistakes. Big ones and little ones, and there is nothing in the world that could convince me that your mom stayed away on purpose. You’re special, Quinn. Something happened to stop her from returning or, at the very least, reaching out to you. I’m sure of it.”
Quinn got to her feet, walked to Dani’s side, and carefully wrapped her arms around Dani’s upper body, then laid her head in the crook of Dani’s neck. Dani held her close. Everything she had told Quinn was the truth. Knowing her story, knowing Quinn was hurting, had made it easy to connect with her over the years. They both had their own inner pain to deal with, but having each other made the world a brighter, better place.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After cautiously scanning the office for intruders with her pepper spray in hand, Quinn spent the morning cleaning and organizing the place, picking up papers scattered across the floor and organizing them as best she could. She then cleaned the fingerprint dusting material from both of their desks. Files had been messed with, but she and Dani would have to sort through all that later. Once everything was semiorganized and off the floor, she went to the kitchen area and grabbed a bucket and a mop. Although she could tell that Detective Whitton had cleaned up the worst of the blood, Quinn could still see a faint outline of its stain, and smudges near the door to the basement.
As she scrubbed the floor and the mop turned an ugly gray color, she thought of Dani and how awful she’d looked, lying in the hospital bed. Purplish half-moons had formed beneath swollen eyes. The top of her head, the part peeking out from thick bandages, had revealed tangled hair matted with dried blood. She’d looked a mess, but she was alive. It made Quinn’s stomach churn to think she might have lost her.
Dani didn’t know it, because Quinn had never told her as much, but Dani had saved her when she came into her life. Dani was a caring, gentle soul who only wanted to help people, but Quinn never allowed her to get too close. Quinn wanted to open up emotionally, but she was afraid. Afraid once she did, Dani would disappear just as her mother had done.
A knock at the door made her jump. Usually she and Dani left the door unlocked when they were here, but after what had happened, Quinn didn’t feel comfortable and had locked it. Through the front window she saw Ethan. She set the mop in the bucket and went to the door to let him inside. “What’s going on?”
“I was bored so I thought I would come see if you needed my help with anything.” Ethan looked her over. “You look horrible.”
“Thanks. I’m tired. I had a long night.” She didn’t need to explain further since she had texted him from the hospital.
He looked around the office. “Any idea who attacked Dani?”
Quinn shook her head. “Nobody knows.”
“What’s really weird,” Ethan told her, “is that all day yesterday, I felt as if someone was watching me.”
Chills washed over Quinn. Ethan didn’t come across as paranoid. “Have you ever felt like you were being watched before?”
He shook his head. “It was after you and Mary Cross left. I had nothing to do so I rode my bike to Midtown.” His eyes widened. “The hairs on the back of my neck would tingle. I’m not kidding. I kept looking over my shoulder, but nobody was ever there.”
Quinn had been on edge ever since she’d found Dani lying in a puddle of blood yesterday. She wanted to tell Ethan to stay inside until they found Ali, but she knew that was ridiculous. They all needed to go on with their lives.
Easier said than done.
Quinn went to her desk to check her computer to see if any of Ali’s friends had replied to messages she’d sent from the hospital, hoping to find someone willing to talk about the girl.
“Do you think Ali Cross is still alive?” Ethan asked.
“I hope so. I’ve been thinking that it’s probably a good thing she hasn’t been in the news lately.”
“Why would that be a good thing?”
“Because if she is still alive, maybe whoever took her won’t feel any pressure to kill her and dispose of her body.”
Ethan grimaced. “You really believe that some maniac would think like that? I mean, if I were a psycho and I was going to abduct someone, I would have it all planned out. If I had half a brain, I would figure the media and the police were going to be on the lookout, and I wouldn’t care because all of that comes with the territory.”
“What if it wasn’t preplanned, though? What if this guy just happened to be delivering a package or whatever, and then he sees this girl all by herself and he doesn’t think at all? He just pounces, shoves her into the back of his van, and takes off.”
“If that’s the case,” Ethan said, “then my guess is he’s already killed her.”
“It doesn’t do us any good to speculate. We need to assume she’s alive.”
Ethan sighed. “Yeah. She’s got to be alive.”
“This is great,” Quinn said after she read a message on her computer.
“What is it?”
“I messaged some of Ali Cross’s friends on social media last ni
ght, asking if they would mind answering a few questions. Natalie Chapman just wrote back.” Quinn read Natalie’s reply again, glanced at the time, jumped to her feet, jotted down an address, and grabbed her purse. “I’ve got to go if I want to catch her before she goes to cheer practice to help train next year’s squad.”
“Mind if I go along?”
She wasn’t sure how Dani would feel about it, but what harm could it do?
“I won’t say a word,” Ethan told her. “I promise.”
“Okay, but we have to go right now.”
Ethan followed her out the door and then waited next to her car as she locked up.
Once Quinn was in the car, she pulled up a navigation app on her iPhone and typed in Natalie’s address.
It took only thirteen minutes to get to Natalie’s house, a two-story Victorian in Curtis Park off Fifth Avenue. It was white with bright-blue trim. Quinn thought about asking Ethan to stay in the car, but as soon as she’d shut off the engine, he’d jumped out and was now following her up the steps to the front porch.
Quinn knocked and waited.
When the door opened, she recognized Natalie Chapman from all the selfies posted on Instagram.
“Hi,” Natalie said, her voice cheerful. “You must be Quinn.”
“I am. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have much time.” Natalie’s gaze fell on Ethan. “Don’t I know you?”
Ethan flipped his hair out of his eyes. “Is your brother Eric?”
She smiled. “Yes! That’s it! I knew I recognized you.” She opened the door wider and told them to come inside. “We’re still waiting for one more girl on the squad before we head out. You might as well talk to all of us at once.”
“Was Ali a cheerleader?” Quinn asked as she and Ethan followed Natalie deeper into the house.
“No,” she said with a laugh. “I tried to talk Ali into trying out, but she prefers to spend her time with books and her artwork.”
“I saw some of her paintings,” Quinn said. “She’s talented.”
“Yeah. She’s smart and pretty and . . .” Her voice hitched. “I just can’t believe she’s missing. You’re a private investigator, right?”