Pausing before ringing the bell, I said, “You ready?”
“No, but let’s get on with it,” Gilley said.
I rang the bell, which had such a happy chime for two guests who were bringing such dark news. As approaching footsteps sounded on the wood floors inside, I squared my shoulders, prepared to keep my emotions in check, but I did take a small step back when the door was then opened to reveal a pretty young woman with a heart-shaped face, deep-set eyes, and long, dark, wet hair. She looked like she had just gotten out of the shower and had dressed quickly in a baggy XL men’s sweatshirt and black leggings.
“Hi?” she said, obviously startled by our appearance.
I pushed a smile to my face. “You must be Tiffany,” I said.
“I am,” she said, a bit surprised, I thought, that I knew her name. “Can I help you?”
“Is Sunny home?” I tried.
“No. She went out.”
“She went out?” I said.
“Yeah. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”
“Did she say where she was going?” Gilley tried.
“No.”
Gilley offered her his hand. “I’m Gilley Gillespie, and this is Catherine Cooper. We’re very good friends of Sunny, and we’ve both heard marvelous things about you.”
“Hi,” Tiffany said, and she seemed to relax a bit in the presence of Gilley’s charm.
“Tiffany, could Sunny have gone to pick up Mr. D’Angelo?” I asked.
Tiffany shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t say anything about where she was going when she went out the door.”
“She didn’t?” I pressed. This was confusing. Why would Sunny not give her sitter any information about where she was going or how long she’d be out?
Tiffany shook her head, shrugged, and said, “I was in the basement playroom with Finley, and I thought I heard footsteps above us in the kitchen and then the sound of the garage door opening and closing, but when I came upstairs to see if Sunny was up and around, she wasn’t anywhere in the house, and when I looked in the garage, her car was gone.”
“Did you call her?” I asked. This was very strange indeed.
“Yeah, about an hour after she left, ’cause I didn’t know when she’d be back, but Sunny left her phone here.”
“She . . . she left her phone behind?” Gilley asked, and he was as shocked as I was. What mother of a toddler would leave behind her phone? And if Tiffany’s timeline was correct, wouldn’t Sunny have realized by now that she’d left it at the house, and come back for it?
In answer to Gilley’s question, Tiffany said, “Mm-hmm. I followed the sound of the rings from my call upstairs to the master bedroom. I found her cell phone on the nightstand, and I left it there, but right around nine o’clock it started ringing and pinging like crazy. So many people were calling and texting Sunny that I had to put it on silent so that it didn’t wake Finley.”
I turned to Gilley. “No doubt word of what happened at the theater has gotten around, and people are calling and texting her.”
“Could that be why she left?” Gilley asked me.
“What word’s going around?” Tiffany asked innocently, but I wondered if she didn’t already have some clue about what’d happened if people had been texting Sunny. Tiffany probably couldn’t access Sunny’s phone due to the phone’s security protocol, but she could’ve read the first part of the incoming texts.
Instead of answering her question, I asked, “What time did Sunny leave, Tiffany?”
“It was right before I was gonna give Finley his bath and put him to bed, so I think, like, seven thirty or eight. The weird thing is that I swear I heard her come back into the house a little after nine. I was on the treadmill in the workout room.” At this admission, Tiffany’s face flushed. “They let me use it as long as Finley’s sleeping and I have the baby monitor with me,” she added quickly. My gaze traveled to her wet hair, and she added, “And they let me shower here too.”
“Hold on,” Gilley said, blinking as he spoke. “You thought she came back to the house but left again?”
“Yeah. I was only into my second mile when I swear I heard someone in the laundry room, which is next door to their workout room. It totally creeped me out, but when I went to check, nobody was there, and Sunny’s car was still gone from the garage.”
“That is creepy,” I said.
“Right?” Tiffany agreed. “I mean, I could’ve imagined it, but I swear that when I passed the laundry room on the way to the workout room, the door was open, but when I went to check to see if Sunny had come back, it was closed. I could be wrong or it could be my imagination again, but it still freaked me out.”
“Is Finley sleeping now?” I asked.
“Yeah. He went out like a light. I think he was pretty tired. Sunny said he hadn’t been sleeping well, so I made sure to tucker him out in the playroom.”
“Good thinking,” I said. And then I sighed when I struggled to come up with a plan to track down Sunny.
“We could drive around and see if we spot her car,” Gilley suggested, reading my thoughts.
I nodded and glanced at my phone, noted the time was now after ten. “We have no other choice. But where could she be at this hour?”
Gilley shrugged. He had no clue, and Tiffany shook her head as well.
“Are you okay to stay with Finley for another hour or so?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ve got nowhere to be, and I don’t have to be up early tomorrow, so I can stay as long as you need. Or until Mr. D’Angelo comes home.”
“That’s right,” I said. “He’s due back here any minute. When he gets home, could you have him call my cell?” I offered Tiffany my business card.
She took it and said, “I will. And if Sunny comes back, I’ll send you a text.”
“Thank you, Tiffany,” Gilley said. She was a sweet, earnest young lady. I could see why Sunny trusted her to care for Finley.
“And we’ll call you if we find Sunny,” I suggested.
Tiffany swiped at her phone and said, “What’s your number? I’ll send you a text.”
We exchanged information and said our goodbyes.
Tiffany went back inside, and Gilley and I made our way to the car. “She’s a sweet thing,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “And she seems to really adore Finley.”
Gilley glanced over his shoulder, back at the house. “I swear I’ve seen her before, though.”
“She might live around here,” I suggested. “And she’s a runner. Maybe you saw her running.”
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “That’s it,” he said. “I’ve seen her out running.” As we reached the car, he asked, “Where did you want to start?”
“Gosh, I don’t know,” I said, my hand on the door handle, as I looked at him over the roof of the car. “Any ideas where she could’ve gone?”
In answer he said, “Was there anyplace that you liked to go when the boys were with their nanny and you needed a little free time away?”
I smiled, but there was a trace of guilt to go with it. “Target,” I said. “I used to go there and just walk the aisles aimlessly for an hour or two. There was something so freeing and luxurious about walking around that huge space, free of the cries and grabbing hands of toddlers.”
“Motherhood wasn’t your strong suit, was it?” Gilley said with a chuckle.
“Those early days with twins were hard,” I admitted. “Let’s see, the nearest Target is in Riverhead.”
“Ugh,” Gilley said. “That’s an hour away, Cat.”
I glanced again at my phone. “And I think they close at ten, so they’ve just closed.”
“She could be on her way back,” he suggested.
“True. Let’s do a simple search of the grocery store parking lot and a few of the restaurants that we know Sunny likes to frequent.”
“What restaurants are those?” he asked.
“I was hoping you’d know.”
He simply shrugged.
“Well, let’s start at the grocery store and work our way out from there.”
“Okay,” he said.
We were just getting into the car when a set of headlights turned into the drive. I held my hand up to block most of the glare and heard Gilley say, “She’s home!”
But as the car turned to park next to mine, I could see that it wasn’t Sunny, after all. It was Darius.
He took note of the two of us standing next to his car and offered us a little wave before getting out and grabbing his gym bag. The man was soaked with sweat, and he smelled ripe.
I could tell that Gilley could smell it, too, because I saw him back up a little.
“Hey, guys!” Darius said, hoisting the gym bag to his shoulder. “Were you keeping my wife company until I got home?”
I closed my door and waited for Gilley to come around the car to stand next to me. He subconsciously waved his hand in front of his nose when he got a strong whiff of Darius, but luckily, he didn’t comment on it.
“Hello, Darius,” I began. “We actually weren’t here to visit. We came to give Sunny some absolutely dreadful news, I’m afraid.”
Darius blinked, and his expression turned serious. “Is her brother okay?”
It didn’t surprise me that he assumed something had happened to Shepherd. In the past two years, he had been shot twice and had ended up in the hospital both times. “Shepherd’s fine,” I said, quick to reassure him.
His shoulders sagged in relief, but then he asked, “What’s happened, then?”
I looked at Gilley for a moment, trying to decide how to tell Darius about Yelena, but Gilley read that as a cue to spill it to him.
“Yelena was murdered,” he said.
Darius blinked, his jaw fell open, and he took a step back, letting the gym bag drop to the pavement. “Yelena?” he repeated, his head shaking back and forth slightly as he took in the news. “Yelena Galanis?”
“Yes,” I said.
Darius looked from me to Gilley and back again in disbelief. We both stood somberly while he absorbed the news. At last, he said, “When . . . How?”
“Tonight. It happened backstage, during the intermission of her show. She was stabbed by an unknown assailant,” I said.
Darius stared at us with even more incredulity for a long moment, his jaw hanging open, and then he looked over his shoulder toward the house. “Did you tell Sunny?” he said hoarsely.
“No,” I said. “She’s not home.”
He turned back to me again, his expression alarmed. “She’s not . . .” Darius lifted his wrist to look at the time. “What do you mean, she’s not home?”
I pointed to Tiffany’s car. “Your sitter is here. Sunny went out around seven thirty, and Tiffany doesn’t know where she went.”
Darius shook his head some more, and I could tell he was trying to process everything that we’d just told him, and struggling to do so. He then looked over his shoulder at Tiffany’s car, before swiveling his gaze back to me. “Did you call her? Did you call my wife and ask her to come home?”
“No,” I said. “According to Tiffany, Sunny left her phone in the house.”
Darius ran a hand through his hair and widened his eyes. “She what?”
I understood his shock. Sunny wasn’t the type to leave her phone behind when she went out and left her toddler in the care of a sitter.
“She left her phone behind, Darius,” Gilley said softly.
Darius’s gaze pivoted to Gilley. “She would’ve noticed that she left it behind,” he said. “She would’ve come back for it.”
“Tiffany thinks Sunny came back to the house around nine so maybe she came in to look for it, couldn’t find it, then went back out to see if she’d left it somewhere she’d already been.”
That was the only scenario that even half made sense to me.
Darius placed both palms against his eyes, and I could tell he was trying to think and make sense of all the information we’d just given him. He then allowed his hands to drop, bent to pick up his duffel, then hoisted the strap over his shoulder again while also pulling out his phone. Tapping at the screen, he said, “I texted her when my plane landed to let her know I was gonna stop at the gym to get in a quick workout and I’d be getting in a little later than planned. I thought she was napping and that’s why she didn’t text back. She’s been so tired lately.”
“Do you know where she might be?” I asked, hoping he’d have some clue.
He started to shake his head again, but then he paused and looked toward the street. “She’s been spending a lot of time at the garden of her yoga studio. She took charge of it when the yoga group came together.”
“Her yoga studio?” Gilley asked.
Darius nodded. “She’s one of five owners of a yoga studio in Amagansett. It’s called Om Bliss.” That was news to me. “Sunny’s been working on the garden lately, trying to coax some life into it. Nobody else there cares about it, but it’s one of Sunny’s pet projects.”
“Would she be there at night?” I asked.
Darius shrugged. “Sunny and I both like to unwind in our respective sanctuaries. For me, it’s the gym, and for her, it’s that garden at the yoga center. If she’s not tending to it, she might be meditating or doing a little yoga by candlelight.”
“We should head over and see if she’s there,” I suggested.
Darius nodded, but then he seemed to hesitate. “The only other place she might be is the park.”
“Which park?”
Darius scratched at the widow’s peak on his forehead. “It begins with an H,” he said. “It’s off of Newtown, in the center of downtown.”
“Herrick Park?” Gilley said helpfully.
“Yeah,” Darius said, snapping his fingers. “There. Sometimes she hires Tiffany to babysit for her while she drives over there to read for a while. She could’ve grabbed a book, gone there to read in her car, and nodded off, and that’s why she’s not back yet or worried about finding her phone.”
“That makes sense,” I said. Sunny always had a book handy, and I’d once seen her when she was quite pregnant doing just that—sitting in the public lot downtown, just reading in her parked car.
“Darius,” I said next, “you go check out the yoga studio, and Gilley and I will try the park.”
Darius nodded, then looked again toward the house; he seemed conflicted. “I gotta change,” he said, pulling at his clothing. “And check in with the sitter to make sure she’s okay staying with Finley.”
We’d already done the latter but I understood that he wanted to check in on his son himself and change, which I was all in favor of because the man was a sweaty, stinky mess.
“Understood,” I said to him before motioning to Gilley to get back in the car. “Tiffany has my business card. Send a text to my phone so that we can communicate, and if we find her, we’ll text you immediately.”
“Good,” Darius said, opening the passenger door to pull out his carry-on and a guitar case. “I’ll get on the road in the next couple of minutes.”
I nodded, and Gilley and I left.
“That park isn’t far from the office,” I said as we got on the road.
“It’s about three blocks, actually,” Gil said.
I glanced at him, and he explained, “I go there sometimes for lunch when you’re out with your man. It’s peaceful. I like it.”
“How come we’ve never gone together?” I asked.
“Because it’s peaceful, and I like it,” Gilley said, his eyelids drooping heavily.
“Ha-ha,” I said just as dryly.
At that moment my phone pinged with an incoming text. Gilley lifted my phone from the cradle between the seats and read the text so that I could keep my eyes on the road. “It’s Darius. He’s on the road, heading to Amagansett.”
“That didn’t take long,” I said. We’d left him less than five minutes earlier.
“He’s as worried as we are,” Gil said
, putting the phone back in the cradle under the dash.
“I hope she’s in one of the two places we’re looking,” I said. “I want to find her before she hears the news from someone else.”
“Me too,” Gilley said. “It’s been a traumatizing night for everyone, I suppose.”
“True that,” I said. “It’s not every day you’re in close proximity to one murder, then stumble upon a second.”
“What the heck was that all about, anyway?” Gilley said. “I mean, a mob hit in the back alley of a coffee shop just down the street from the theater where Yelena Galanis is murdered? It’s too insane to be a coincidence.”
“Or it’s too insane not to be,” I countered. “We’ve seen our fair share of mob hits around here, so another one wouldn’t be so very surprising, other than the timing.”
“True,” Gilley said, shuddering. “I just want to find Sunny and get her home so that we can then go home. I need a hot bath and a big dish of ice cream to chase the blues away.”
I was about to make a snarky comment when Gilley pointed ahead. “There, Cat. That’s the parking lot for the park.”
“Got it,” I said, pulling into the lot.
As soon as I entered the lot, Gilley laid his hand on my arm and said, “Isn’t that Sunny’s Range Rover at the end?”
Only one car was in the lot, and it was indeed a silver Range Rover, just like the one Sunny drove. I pressed the gas a little to get us to the SUV quicker.
“Can you see if she’s in the car?” I asked as we approached. Gilley’s eyesight was better than mine.
“No,” he said. “It’s too dark.”
I parked, and we got out.
“Doesn’t look like she’s in the car,” Gilley said.
I nodded and rounded to the passenger side, just to peer in, and that was when I let out a small gasp and shouted for Gilley.
“What?” he replied, rounding the Range Rover to come to my side. “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering him, I pulled on the handle of the car, but it was locked. I banged on the window, but Sunny, who was lying on her side, her torso spilling into the passenger seat, didn’t stir. As I peered through the glass, I could clearly see that she held a prescription bottle in her hand. “She’s taken some pills! And, Gilley, she’s not moving!”
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