Gone Daddy Gone (Sloane Monroe Book 7)

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  Sleep tight, everyone.

  I’ll be coming for you all soon.

  CHAPTER 8

  A tapping sound like hail pelting glass woke me from a dream so real I saw myself living Shelby’s final moments like I was there with her, watching the murder happen in front of me. I jolted up in bed and looked at the time. It was four o’clock in the morning, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep again. Not now.

  I glanced out the window. It was a clear night. No wind. No breeze. So what was the noise I’d just heard? I waited and listened, wondering if I would hear it again. The house went quiet for a time, and then the tapping started up again.

  Cade rolled over and ran a hand down my back. “You havin’ trouble sleepin’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s all right. I can’t sleep either.”

  “I keep hearing something, a noise.”

  “Coming from where?”

  “Outside, I think.”

  He pushed the blanket to the side, grabbing his pistol off the nightstand. “Stay here. I’ll take a look around.”

  Not okay with being left behind, I stood, following him to the next room. He switched the porch light on, cracked the door a few inches, and looked out, pulling it all the way open once he saw who was standing on the other side—a young girl about Shelby’s age wearing a coat, a pair of yoga pants, and UGG boots. She had curly, auburn hair that she’d pulled into a messy bun, and she wore dark ruby-colored lipstick, which seemed a bit odd considering the hour.

  “Can I help you?” Cade asked.

  “I’m looking for Shelby’s parents.”

  “I’m her father.”

  She looked past him at me. “You’re Sloane, right?”

  I nodded. “Who are you?”

  “Veronica. Shelby’s friend.”

  Curious. Shelby had never mentioned anyone named Veronica to me before. “Veronica what?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Can I come in for a minute?”

  Cade stepped back, allowing her inside.

  “How do you know Shelby?” I asked. “From school?”

  She stuck her hands inside her coat pockets. “Umm ... not exactly. I need to talk to you.”

  “We can all sit down in the next room,” Cade said.

  She pointed at me. “I want to talk to you. Not him.”

  “Whatever you’re here to say, it needs to be said in front of me, understand?” Cade said.

  “You know what? I didn’t want to come here,” she said.

  “Then why did you?” I asked.

  “I dunno. I shouldn’t have. This was a mistake. I’m outta here.”

  Cade stood in front of the door, blocking her from leaving. Veronica’s eyes darted around like a jackrabbit, looking for an alternate way out.

  I spread my hands out in front of me. “Can everyone dial down for a second?”

  “I’m not the one causing problems,” Veronica said. “He is.”

  “If you’re only comfortable talking to me, that’s fine,” I said.

  Cade glared at me. “It’s not fine, Sloane. It’s not your call. If she knows somethin’, I need to know what it is.”

  I couldn’t understand how he failed to see he was only making things worse. I assumed whatever she had to say was delicate in nature—something she didn’t feel comfortable saying in front of him. I considered pulling him aside, but didn’t. I couldn’t leave our little flight risk alone.

  “If it makes her more comfortable to talk to me, let her talk to me.”

  He shook his head.

  Still blocked from leaving, Veronica seemed close to panicking. “I want to get outta here. Let me out. Coming here was a mistake.”

  “Please,” I said. “Can you give us just a second to talk? Then if you still want to go, you can.”

  Cade’s temper was nearing a breaking point. I joined him at the door, lowering my voice to a whisper. “Look, this girl’s spooked, and you’re not helping. Every second you refuse to budge decreases the chances of either of us finding out why she’s really here.”

  “I don’t like her tellin’ me—”

  I grabbed his arm, staring into his eyes. “Please. Let me handle this.”

  Upstairs, Maddie’s bedroom door opened and shut, and Boo came bounding down the stairs. I scooped him up.

  Cade flung his hands in the air and walked to our bedroom, slamming the door behind him. I glanced up. Maddie was at the top of the stairs, observing.

  She yawned. “Go find a place to talk to this girl, and I’ll deal with him. Leave it to me. He’ll be okay.”

  I turned back to Veronica. “I’m sorry. He won’t bother you anymore tonight. He’s just on edge, you know? He’s struggling to understand what happened to his daughter.”

  “I don’t care. I can’t talk to you around him. Not here.”

  I contemplated alternative options and shared them with Maddie. “Can I take her into the guesthouse?”

  Maddie descended the stairs.

  “You can, but I wouldn’t. Police cordoned it off earlier today. I mean, I can still get you in there, but I’d talk somewhere else if I were you.” She lifted her keys off a hook on the wall. “Take my car. Go for a drive. She’ll get the privacy she needs, and I’ll get some time to help Cade calm down.”

  I looked at Veronica, who nodded her agreement to the plan.

  I handed Boo to Maddie, took the keys, grabbed my coat, and walked with Veronica to the car. Anxious to learn the reason for her late-night visit, I didn’t go far, driving to a deserted strip mall parking lot not far from Maddie’s house. I put the car in park, allowing it to idle, and waited for her to begin.

  A minute passed and she hadn’t said anything, and I didn’t have the patience to wait. “Why are we here? What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Shelby said she told you about Paul Armstrong.”

  Bingo. We had a last name.

  “He was her boyfriend, right?”

  “I ... guess you could call him that.”

  “Was he or wasn’t he?”

  She paused, then said, “He’s married.”

  “Married? How old is this guy?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Thirty-three? Was he aware he was dating a twenty-year-old college student?”

  She nodded. “He knew.”

  It just kept getting better.

  “I’m glad you came to me, but why not go to the police with this information instead?”

  “I can’t talk to the police. It’s complicated.”

  “More complicated than Paul being married?” She was afraid. I got the impression it wasn’t over what she’d just told me. There was something else. Something she hadn’t said yet. “What is worrying you, Veronica? Maybe I can help.”

  “Shelby talked about you all the time. She idolized you, you know? She said she could trust you with anything.”

  If Shelby had really felt she could trust me, why did I feel like she’d hidden plenty?

  “She thought it was cool that you and her dad were getting married,” she said.

  “We’re not engaged. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Oh, Shelby told me you were getting married. She was really excited.”

  I felt the same sick, uneasy feeling I had in Maddie’s lab. Cade had told Shelby of his plan to propose to me.

  “Aside from the fact Shelby was dating a married man, is there anything else you’d like to tell me? Because I get the feeling there is.”

  Veronica fidgeted with the zipper on her coat, sliding it up and down. “Shelby wanted to quit school because she’d already found a career where she’d make plenty of money.”

  “I don’t understand. Shelby didn’t have a job.”

  “Yes, she did. She was a professional escort.”

  CHAPTER 9

  I sat there, stunned, not wanting to believe what Veronica had just said. She couldn’t have been right. Not Shelby. There had to be some mistake, and yet Veronica
had maintained a straight face when she’d said it. My instincts told me she was telling the truth. Shelby had always had a wild, carefree side, but sleeping with men for money? I didn’t want it to make sense, but it did—the expensive handbag, the diamond earrings, the shoes she’d worn when I last saw her. If she really was an escort, I now knew for sure they weren’t fakes or borrowed like Shelby had tried to get me to believe. They were the real deal.

  “Are you telling me Shelby was a hooker?” I asked.

  Veronica looked at me, laughed. “Uhh ... no. You’re thinking of those chicks in the eighties who stood on street corners, waiting on some loser to pick them up so they could earn a bit of cash to support their drug habit. I get why you would think that though. It’s because you’re ...”

  She stopped herself from saying the word she meant to say. Old. I was old. Old and behind the times apparently. “How does one become a professional escort at twenty? She’s only been living on her own for a year and a half.”

  “Before she left for college, she met a girl in Wyoming who introduced her to the business. When she said she was moving to Salt Lake City, the girl said she had connections down here and she could hook Shelby up with a job where she could make all the money she wanted.”

  “What was the girl’s name?”

  “Heather Farnsworth, but her escort name was—”

  “Sadie Steele.”

  The previous summer, Heather Farnsworth had been found dead inside of her pot dealer’s home in Wyoming. She had been gunned down by a woman who’d discovered Heather was having extramarital relations with her husband.

  “I worked Heather’s murder case with Shelby’s father, Cade. I even talked to Shelby about it. She never mentioned she knew Heather.”

  Veronica shrugged. “How could she?”

  She was right. She couldn’t. “How do you know all of this?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it does. You worked with her, didn’t you? You’re an escort.”

  She stared outside at nothing. “It’s not what you think.”

  I crossed my arms. “Enlighten me then. Explain it to me.”

  “Girls in the escort business are educated and smart. They come from good families. Famous families even sometimes.”

  “And the men? Do you expect me to believe they’re decent guys too?”

  “They are. Most are clean-cut professionals. Some own their own companies, some run companies, and some are celebrities. Every one of them is thoroughly vetted before he’s placed with a girl. They’re not douchebags.”

  “And yet these guys hire call girls?”

  “Shelby wasn’t a hooker or a call girl. She was an escort, just like Heather.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Escorts are clean, classy, and trained. They look more like well-dressed supermodels. You’ve probably been around them before and didn’t have a clue they were an escort and not the man’s date. Escorts aren’t just hired for sex. Sometimes a client needs a companion or a date, nothing more. Call girls charge less, and sex is part of the deal. And hookers ... well, everyone knows what they’re like.”

  “Are you saying Shelby never had sex with the guys who hired her?”

  Veronica opened the car door and stepped out.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She glanced back at me. “Sorry. The last twenty-four hours have been rough. I’m a mess. I need to smoke. Care to join?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  I expected her to grab a pack of cigarettes out of her purse, but she didn’t. She left her purse on the seat, closed the door, and pulled a slender pink vape pen out of her pocket. I’d heard of vaping before, but hadn’t been exposed to it until now. Maybe I was getting old. I watched her suck the smoke through the vape and blow it into the air. While she was distracted, I took advantage of the moment by sticking my hand into her purse to see what I could find. I didn’t get far before she turned back around, returning to the car for round two.

  “Okay,” she said. “Where were we?”

  “I asked you if Shelby ever had sex with any of the men who hired her.”

  “Shelby’s situation was unique.”

  Unique didn’t answer the question.

  “In what way?”

  “The way it works at the company she worked for is that every girl goes out on practice dates while they’re being trained. It familiarizes them with the process. No sex is involved. From there, they graduate to both sexual and non-sexual jobs. Shelby’s first post-graduate job was with Paul.”

  “What happened?”

  “He took her away for the weekend and became obsessed with her. When they returned, he told the agency he wanted Shelby all to himself. He offered to pay double the normal rate to have her date him exclusively.”

  “Did Shelby want to be with Paul too?”

  “She felt something for him at first, I suppose; it just wasn’t the same feeling Paul had for her. He showered her with gifts. That’s why she kept seeing him. She thought she could make their arrangement seem exclusive to him while she still saw other men on the side.”

  “How did the agency react to Paul’s offer?”

  “They had spent time and money grooming her. He couldn’t just make a demand and expect them to honor it. They talked to Shelby and agreed on a compromise.”

  “What was the compromise?”

  “He’d pay double to see her for an entire year, and she had to keep accepting dates with other men—the arm-candy kind, not the sexual kind. It gave Shelby what she wanted, and made Paul feel like she didn’t have a choice, even though she did.”

  I hugged my coat against my skin, the car’s warmth doing little to keep an icy chill from coursing through me. The sudden discovery of Shelby’s secret life was difficult for me to accept. What else didn’t I know?

  “Tell me more about Paul.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I mean, I shouldn’t. I’ve told you too much already.”

  “You have to, Veronica. Why else would you risk coming to me? You must suspect him of something or you wouldn’t be here.”

  She slumped in her seat, kicking her feet up on the dash. “I don’t think he’s to blame for what happened. I like Paul. He’s always been good to her. He found out what happened this morning, and he’s devastated.”

  Maybe, or maybe he just wanted her to think he devastated in order to hide his crime of passion. “He could be putting on a show to cover up the fact he murdered her in a jealous rage.”

  “You don’t know him. He loved her. He was trying to find a way to get rid of Elise, his wife, so he could keep seeing her.”

  “What do you mean get rid of her? Divorce?”

  She shook her head. “He can’t divorce her unless he’s okay with being flat broke. The money he spent on Shelby was from his wife’s inheritance, and they have a prenup. If the marriage dissolves, he leaves with nothing.”

  “Are you saying he planned to kill his wife?”

  She shrugged. “I had a weird conversation with Shelby last month. She said she was worried Paul was going to do something to his wife. Apparently, Elise had found out Paul was seeing Shelby. Elise confronted him and said he needed to end it or she was cutting him off.

  The words “do something” were open to interpretation. “Are you sure she meant he intended to kill her?”

  “He told Shelby he had considered hiring a guy he knew to get rid of Elise, someone who could make her death look like an accident. Shelby thought he was joking until he said it was his only choice. He thought his wife was having him followed.”

  “Whoa. Wait a minute. I may not know everything Shelby was doing, but she was still a good kid, and she wouldn’t have been on board with murder.”

  “She wasn’t. She told him if anything happened to his wife, they were done.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He hung up, and that was the last time he talked to her.”

  “Did Paul’s w
ife know he hired escorts?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno, but Shelby saw Elise right before she went home for Christmas.”

  “Where?”

  “At a coffee shop.”

  “And Shelby was sure it was her?”

  “She’d seen pictures of Elise before. Shelby went to the same coffee shop religiously every morning at the same time. The thing is—it’s downtown, and Elise lives twenty-five minutes away, so it wasn’t just a coincidence.”

  “Did they talk?”

  She shook her head. “Elise gave Shelby a cold stare, and then watched Shelby from the time she got in line to the time she left. Shelby wasn’t sure whether it was a scare tactic on Elise’s part, or if Elise just wanted to see the woman who had been seeing her husband. It really freaked Shelby out.”

  There it was, the real reason for Veronica’s visit. She didn’t blame Paul for Shelby’s murder. She blamed his wife. “Is this why you’re here? Do you think Elise had something to do with Shelby’s murder?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s possible, I guess. There’s one more possibility. Last month she started seeing someone new, a regular guy who had nothing to do with the escort business. She was crazy about him, and he had no idea she was an escort ... well, not at first.”

  “What makes you suspect him?”

  “One night he saw her leaving a hockey game. She was arm in arm with a couple of the players, and he lost it. She told him she knew the guys through one of her friends, but he didn’t believe her. He seemed suspicious ever since, and then started questioning her about everything.”

  “Is his name Jesse?”

  She raised a brow. “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “She mentioned him to me when she was home. What else can you tell me about him?”

  “His full name is Jesse Baldwin. He’s twenty-four, and he works for Burns Construction.”

  “Do you have an address or a phone number?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What about Paul? Can you give me his information?”

  She considered it. “I’ll only give it to you if he never finds out it came from me. As far as I’m concerned, this conversation we’re having never happened.”