Rick had always teased her for being so scheduled, so organized. “Lighten up, D.C.,” he’d say. “Be a little more spontaneous!” So she had decided to give it a try.
Her original schedule had called for her to work that day, but she had requested the day off. Even though it was last minute, her request had been granted. She took that as a good sign.
Rick already had the day off. She had gathered what she’d needed. Eggs, milk, syrup, and all the makings for omelets and waffles. Champagne, too. She would surprise Rick by showing up at his house and making him a champagne breakfast.
When she got to his house and let herself in, she was surprised that he wasn’t up yet. Rick rarely slept in. She remembered sighing and thinking, Just my luck. Maybe he’s already up and gone out somewhere.
But when she had checked the garage, she saw that his car was there. So she had gone upstairs to check his bedroom. And she had found him, all right. But he wasn’t alone. His former girlfriend was snuggled up in bed beside him.
Rick sat up when he heard the door open. His eyes had gone wide when he had seen Dawn standing in the doorway. He called her name, but she was already gone. Down the stairs, out the door.
He had caught up with her as she was getting into her car.
“D.C. – wait! I can explain!”
“Explain? There’s nothing to explain,” she’d snapped at him.
She opened the door, but he caught her arm before she could lower herself into the driver’s seat.
“Look,” he had said. “Kristy came by last night to pick up a few things she left behind here. We had a friendly drink. And then a couple more. One thing led to another. It was just a momentary lapse, D.C. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She’d pulled her arm out of his grasp and turned to face him.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me. It’s over, Rick. I’m done with you. Don’t call me. I won’t take your calls. Don’t come over to my place. If you do, I’ll slam the door in your face.”
She had climbed into the car, put the key into the ignition and sped off.
Rick hadn’t listened to her. He sent her flowers, notes of apology. He’d called her for weeks. True to her word, she hadn’t spoken to him. Finally, he had given up. She hadn’t seen him again until that morning, when she had walked into Lieutenant Westbrooke’s office and found him waiting there.
Dawn shook herself out of her reverie when Rick announced, “We’re almost there. Just a few more blocks.”
He pulled up a short time later before an apartment building. As they exited the car, Rick gave a soundless whistle.
“Well, well, well,” he said softly. “Our luck sure is in today. That’s our boy there, strolling down the sidewalk across the street.”
As he approached a cross walk, Dawn studied Samantha’s boyfriend. Tall, she observed, just as the case files had noted. Long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes were currently concealed behind a pair of sunglasses, but she’d bet they were blue. A long black raincoat swirled around him as he waited for the light to change. When it finally did, he crossed the street and began moving toward them. His head was down and he wasn’t looking around, so he didn’t spot them until he was almost upon them. As his eyes met Rick’s, recognition lit up in them. With a scowl, he moved pointedly to one side and bypassed them without a word.
They caught up with him just as he reached the door to the apartment building.
Moving in front of him and blocking his way, Rick said, “Jason. We want a word with you.”
“You want to talk with me? Call my lawyer. That’s all I have to say to you.”
“Only guilty people hide behind their lawyers,” Rick said softly.
“You’re entitled to your opinion. Now, get out of my way. I’m not talking to you or anyone else about Samantha.”
Something about the way he said Samantha’s name caused Dawn to step forward and say, “You loved her, didn’t you?”
Jason Gamarel froze. Turning, he looked at Dawn. What he saw in her face caused him to respond reluctantly, “Yeah, I loved her.” Swinging around so that he was facing Rick again, he said, “You and your cronies never understood that, did you?”
“You had a big fight just before she disappeared,” Rick countered. “How were we supposed to interpret that?”
Jason shrugged. “So we had an argument. Big deal. All couples fight. We’d fight, we’d make up, we’d make love, and we’d get over it.”
Dawn said, “Jason, we have a new suspect in Samantha’s disappearance. He hurt two more women. I’d like to show you a sketch of him, see if you can identify him.”
Jason didn’t even hesitate. Opening the door to the apartment building, he said, “You have a lead on what might have happened to her? That’s different. You can come in.”
When Rick started to follow Dawn, Jason blocked his way.
“I said that she could come in. Not you.”
“Detective Cimarron and I are a matched set,” Rick retorted. “You can’t have one without the other.”
“Cimarron. That’s your name? He looked only at Dawn, not responding to Rick at all.
“Yes,” Dawn responded. “I’m Detective Dawn Cimarron, from the Mountpelier Police Department.”
“Mountpelier police? What has this got to do with you? And why are you working with this jerk from the CBI?”
“Special Agent Rikovsky and I recently discovered a connection between a case we’re working on up in Mountpelier and Samantha’s case. It would really help if you would talk to both of us together.”
Jason just shrugged, moved out of Rick’s way, and let them both into the apartment building.
The apartment he led them to was on the third floor. There was an elevator, but Jason took the stairs. When they got to the third floor, he led them to the first door on the left and let them into the apartment.
Dawn looked around, studying the space. A short hallway led directly into the living room. The floors were hardwood, but a blue and white striped area rug covered all but the edges of the room. A sofa upholstered in a soft taupe color lay at the far end of the living room. Decorative aqua pillows were placed on each of the corners. An afghan in a navy and aqua pattern was laid across the top of the sofa. A couple of large pictures hung side-by-side above it, scenes from Italy. To the left of the sofa was a small kitchenette. To the right were a couple of easy chairs, done in a steel blue color. A small dark-wood table lay between them, and a hat rack was placed to the one closer to the door. A sunhat with a wide blue-flowered band sat on top of the rack, and a long aqua scarf hung from one of the pegs. Dawn walked up to it and felt the material appreciatively.
“This is lovely,” she commented. “Samantha’s?”
“Yeah. She made it herself. She loves blue. It’s her favorite color.”
He had spoken in the present tense about Samantha, Dawn noted. So he hadn’t yet given up hope.
Moving to one of the chairs, she said, “Would you mind if we sat down?”
“Suit yourselves,” Jason replied. “Ah… I guess I should offer you something to drink. We have bottled water and soda. Or coffee, if you prefer.”
“We?” Rick said. “You have a new roommate, Jason?”
“No. I just still think of this place as ours. Samantha’s and mine, you see?”
“Oh.” Silenced by that, Rick took the other easy chair.
Responding to Jason’s offer, Dawn picked up smoothly, “We really don’t need anything to drink, Jason, but thank you for the offer. Would you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“Questions? I thought you had a picture you wanted me to look at. I want to look at that first.”
Dawn handed over the composite sketch of the subject that Devlin had worked up based up the observations of Officer Jordan and the convenience store clerk. Jason stared at it intensely for a moment.
“Do you recognize him, Jason?”
With a shake of his head, he handed the sketch back to her. “No,�
� he said. “I don’t recognize him. Who is he? Why do you think he might have something to do with Samantha’s disappearance?”
“As Detective Cimarron told you before, he’s a suspect in a different case that we think might be connected. It’s an ongoing case, however, so we really can’t tell you much about it,” Rick said.
Jason shrugged. “All I have to do to find out is power up my computer and search for ‘Mountpelier’ and ‘crime’. I’m sure whatever the case is, the press is all over it like a bad rash.”
“That’s true enough,” Dawn said.
“So save me some time and tell me about it, at least what you’ve released to the press. Maybe something will ring a bell with me.”
“Okay,” Dawn replied. “Here goes. Two days ago, one of our Mountpelier patrol officers was shot for what initially appeared to be no good reason when he made a routine traffic stop. The officer returned fire and disabled the suspect’s vehicle. The suspect then took off by foot into the woods. When the back-up support the officer had called for arrived, they had probable cause to pop the trunk of the suspect’s vehicle. Inside, they found two women. One was dead. The other is alive, but she is in a coma, and the doctors aren’t sure if she’s going to make it.”
She saw the question in his eyes and answered it even before he could ask it. “No, neither of the women is Samantha.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yes,” Rick interjected. “One has been positively identified. The other does not match Samantha’s description in any way, shape, or form.”
“So what makes you think this case is connected to Samantha’s, then?”
“I’m afraid that we can’t tell you that, Jason.” Rick responded. “It’s an aspect of the investigation that we’re keeping back for now and not releasing to the press.”
“So if I tell them – the press, I mean – it would really screw you up, huh?” Jason did not look displeased with the prospect.
“No, Jason – it would screw Samantha up. If it gets out that we’ve made the connection, the killer would be forewarned. And I don’t think you want that to happen, do you?”
“No,” Jason admitted. His eyes strayed to a framed photograph of Samantha resting on an end table beside Dawn. Gesturing toward it, Dawn said, “May I?”
Jason nodded and watched her as she picked the photograph up and studied it, his gut clenching.
Samantha, he thought. Golden-brown hair and big brown eyes, filled with wariness and a touch of sadness. He had made it one of his missions in life to drive away the sadness in her eyes. He had been succeeding, too. The picture the detective was holding had been taken in the woods on a summer day. He and Samantha had gone hiking, and he had presented her with a bouquet of wildflowers. She had reached out for them, tossed her hair, and smiled at him. He’d snapped a picture of her just then, the sun golden on her skin, her eyes lit up with delight, the bunch of colorful wildflowers in her hand.
Dawn set the photograph down again. “That’s a nice shot,” she commented. “Did you take it yourself?” At his nod, she said gently, “Jason, anything you can tell us would be helpful at this point.”
“I already told my story, again and again, three years ago.”
“Yes, but now we’re looking at it from a different angle, and we’ve got fresh eyes on the case, including mine. I’ve read your statement from the case notes, but I’d like to hear it from you in person. Sometimes that makes a difference. Would you do that for me?”
“I guess I could. Where do you want me to begin?”
“How about you take me through the last few days before Samantha disappeared?”
“Let me think. It’s been a long time now. We’d been getting along fine. We spent the whole day Saturday sailing on Emerald Lake. Some other couples went along with us. We came back at sunset and went out to dinner. Then we went home, went to bed.”
“And the next morning?”
“We slept in late. Got up, had some breakfast. Samantha had just gotten a new waffle maker and wanted to try it out. She was like a kid with a new toy. Anyway, she made us breakfast. Then we decided to go out for a bike ride. We came back an hour or so later and had lunch. I watched sports during the afternoon, and she did some sewing. Later, we discussed what we were going to do for the rest of the week. I had a meeting on Monday, and I wanted to wear my favorite blue shirt. But she hadn’t done the laundry. I wanted her to do it that night, but she got mad and told me that she was tired, and I could darned well just wear a different shirt. That’s what we fought about. She said that if I wanted to wear the shirt, I could just do the laundry myself. But we’d agreed on who did which chore, and doing the laundry was hers. So I insisted that she do it. When I wouldn’t let go of it, she just grabbed her keys and ran out the door. She did that sometimes when we fought. She always cooled down and came back. Except this time, she didn’t.”
*****
After Jason had finished telling them all he could recollect of the days just before Samantha disappeared, Dawn showed him a photograph of the Serenity medallion that Search and Rescue had found. Jason had taken a long, hard look at the photo, but returned it with the comment that he did not recognize it and could not imagine Samantha wearing such a piece of jewelry.
They concluded their interview with Jason shortly after that, and Dawn and Rick returned to the car. As Rick was turning the key in the ignition, Dawn said, “I’d like to interview Samantha’s aunt next, see if she noticed anything unusual in Samantha’s behavior just before she disappeared.”
Rick shot her a glance. “I already went over all that with Faith during the initial investigation. Read the report. It’s all there.”
“I’d still like to talk to her. We have new information. Maybe something will jog her memory.”
“Suit yourself,” Rick responded.
A short time later, they were back on the road again, heading for the home of Samantha’s sister, Faith Kaelish. Dawn took the opportunity to text a brief summary of the meeting with Jason Gamarel to the other members of the team.
Just as she finished, she noticed Rick repeatedly looking at his rear-view mirror, frowning as he did so.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“I think we’ve picked up a tail,” Rick responded. “Take a look. Three cars back. Black SUV.”
Oh, crap. Dawn thought. She swung around in her seat, but only for appearance’s sake. She knew exactly who was tailing her. And Rick Rikovsky was just about the last person in the world she wanted to know that a Lewellen Security team assigned by her father-in-law was shadowing her movements.
Dawn turned around in her seat and asked, “How long have you suspected that SUV of tailing us?”
“I first noticed it when we were on our way to interview Gamarel. Didn’t think much of it until I noticed the same van behind us now. I’m going to slow down, let it pass us, get the license plate and call it in.”
Not if I can help it, Dawn resolved. She pulled her cell phone out of her right pocket and unobtrusively typed out a text. It was to Sloan Lewellen and read: Tell your men to back off and get lost. Now.
She had an agreement with her father-in-law. Shortly after her marriage to Ty, when Dawn had discovered that Sloan was throwing the umbrella of protection he provided for the members of his family around her, she had confronted him and demanded that he pull the security team assigned to her off the job at once. Sloan hadn’t argued with her; he’d just called his ex-wife and let her do the talking.
Her mother-in-law had persuaded Dawn to accept the security detail. She had accepted the situation for two reasons. One, the threat of kidnapping and being held for ransom was very real. It had already happened to the Lewellen family once, and they didn’t want to take a chance on it happening again.
The second reason she had accepted the security detail was that she knew Maeve would worry every second of every day if she did not. For her mother-in-law’s peace of mind, she was willing to go above and beyond. Howe
ver, she had made one stipulation: if the security detail ever interfered with the performance of her job, Sloan was to call them off at once. Knowing that Dawn had the ability to shake the tail off anyway, Sloan had quickly agreed to her terms.
Less than sixty seconds after she had sent the text to Sloan, Rick said, “Wait a minute. The van just pulled off at the last exit. Guess they weren’t following us after all.”
Dawn breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that the rest of their trip to Faith Kaelish’s house would be completely uneventful.
Chapter 23
Faith Kaelish’s eyes were initially full of hope when she opened the door to her house and saw Rick, but the hope died in her eyes as she studied his face.
“You haven’t come to tell me that you’ve found her, have you?”
“I’m afraid not, Faith,” Rick responded. We just have a few questions to ask you, that’s all.”
“You have a new lead, then?”
“Possibly.” Gesturing toward Dawn, he said, “This is Detective Cimarron, from the Mountpelier PD. She’s working with me on the case now. May we come in?”
Unlike Jason Gamarel, Samantha’s aunt did not question why a representative from the Mountpelier Police Department was accompanying the CBI agent.
In response to his request, she merely answered, “Certainly.” Swinging the door wide open, she escorted them inside and led them into the living room. “Please, be seated,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink? Some coffee, maybe?”
“No, thanks, Faith. We’re fine.”
Samantha’s aunt seated herself and looked at Rick expectantly.
“Faith,” he began, “we’ve recently discovered that there might be a connection between Samantha’s disappearance and a case that Detective Cimarron is working on.”
“A connection? What kind of connection?”
“I’m not at liberty to say right now. But it might help if you answered a few questions from Detective Cimarron.”
“What kind of questions?”
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