“Who was she seeing?”
“No one knows.”
“Friends? What about her girlfriends?”
“I’ve mined that field, Chris. No one seems to know anything. No one noticed anything strange.”
“What about coworkers? Sometimes a woman will share with those outside of her inner circle?”
Emily set down her wineglass and stared at Chris. “Wait a second. Her friend Samantha Phillips had a strange encounter with Mandy not long before her disappearance.”
“OK, Em, what did she say?”
“She told me two things that were interesting. One, that Mandy had told her the sex of the baby, but not her husband.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was something about how Mitch had wanted a son so much, but that it was a girl she was carrying.”
Chris wrote down:
“That’s a bit farfetched,” she said. “Even for around here.”
“Happens in China every day and probably a thousand times on Sunday.”
Emily looked upward and shook her head. “OK, fine. But I highly doubt it.”
“You never know. Anything more?”
“Let me see,” she said, looking through her notes from the first interview with Samantha Phillips. She used a pen to guide her tired eyes across the paper. “Here it is. She had an encounter with Mandy around Halloween. Nothing much here. Says that Mandy was acting evasive about something and gave her the bum’s rush at the door.”
Emily set down her notes.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, I got the distinct impression that Samantha was holding out on me. Like she’d suspected something was going on with Mandy when she went to her house.”
“Like what?”
“They were best friends. Samantha stopped by to check on Mandy and she didn’t invite her inside.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“She wasn’t alone, was she?”
Chris wrote down:
Next up was the Darla Montague file. It was a thin folder, with only two sheets of paper inside.
“This is the girl who had an affair with Crawford,” Emily said.
“Jesus, Emily, what kind of a town is Cherrystone, anyway?”
Emily knew what Chris was getting at, but she brushed it off. “Like every other town, I guess.”
They talked about Darla and how she’d had “one or two, well,
“She’s a nice girl,” Emily said. “Mixed-up and stupid, but nice. She’s not a part of this. Just a bystander in the way of a man who takes what he wants no matter who gets hurt.”
“OK. I’ll accept your assessment on that. Let’s leave her alone tomorrow.”
It left one key witness, Tricia Wilson.
“I’ve got Tricia handled. I called in a favor to a buddy at one of the financial institutions. If I gave you the initials, you’d have to kill me, Emily.” He smiled and she returned the gesture. “I guess it’s good to have friends who can help out now and then.”
“Like you’re helping me.” She looked into his eyes. “Thank you, Chris. I really want to nail this bastard.”
“We’ll get him tomorrow. But we can’t do it unless we get some shut-eye.”
Emily looked at the clock. It was almost 1:00 A.M.
“Shit, I’ll look like hell tomorrow,” she said.
Chris completely disagreed. “You’ll always look beautiful,” he said.
With that, they turned out the dining room chandelier and padded down the hallway to bed. Too tired to make love, they snuggled together under the covers. As they drifted off to sleep, Emily found herself enjoying the closeness of the man she loved in a tender and gentle way. She breathed him in. The next morning, he returned to Seattle on the plane and she drove across the mountain pass.
She needed time to think. About Tricia. About Mandy. About Jenna. And even a little bit about herself.
Ten employees of Evergreen Marketing were huddled under a blue tarp on the west end of the company’s parking lot. Recent state law had shoved smokers far from the doorways and picnic tables by the Dumpsters where they’d once congregated. The tarp kept them dry as they smoked and chatted about how much they hated their jobs, their kids, their spouses. None ever seemed to say a word about their smoking shanty and the constant push to make their lives more miserable. Emily parked her car and glanced over. But no one in the smoking mass was Tricia Wilson.
Evergreen Marketing commanded a single floor of a five-story building in Renton, a city known for a Boeing plant and pretty views of Lake Washington. She presented her card to the receptionist. She smiled, and buzzed for Tricia to come to the front desk.
“You have a visitor. Please come at once.”
Patty emerged from a cipher-locked door. When her eyes met Emily’s it was with more a look of resignation than of concern. Her blond hair had been highlighted since Emily had last seen her. She also wore an exceptionally nice pair of camel slacks and a wheat-colored twinset, likely cashmere.
“Hello Sheriff Kenyon. After that DA creep tried to trash me, I sort of expected you’d come to see me.”
“I’m here, Tricia. Is there someplace we can talk?”
“Sure.” She turned to the receptionist. “Fatima, we’re going to use the Rainier conference room.”
“Very good,” Fatima said, logging a note into her PC.
“She’s here for training,” Tricia said softly as they walked toward the conference room. “She’s a VP with a company we’re working with. My guess is that we have about six months. Then, poof, our jobs are gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said as Tricia flipped on the lights. “I’m grateful that no one has found a way to outsource the legal system.”
Patty smiled. “Just wait. I’m sure someone will find a way.”
They sat down in the windowless conference room with a massive mosaic of Mount Rainier, Washington’s tallest peak, covering an entire wall.
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
“I’m not sure. That depends.”
“On the truth, right?”
“Yes, the truth.”
Tricia swiveled in her chair and put her hands on the table. “OK. Well, what I told you wasn’t completely a lie. Mitch was an asshole. He treated me like dirt, and he did push me around a few times.”
Emily locked her eyes on Tricia’s. “Did he beat you?”
She looked down at the table. “Yes, he did abuse me. But not really, not physically.”
Emily pushed a little harder. She knew a crack in a story when she saw one. She needed to force the issue. “Does the name Maggie Emery ring a bell?” she asked, again her eyes fixed on Tricia’s.
Tricia’s face tightened at the mention of the name of her coworker from the dealership. Her blue eyes flashed.
“You talked to that bitch?”
“I didn’t. But one of Prosecutor Hazelton’s assistants did.”
“I can imagine what she told you. She hated me. She wanted Mitch for herself. I should have let her have him. That would have been sweeter revenge.”
“Has this been about revenge, Tricia?”
“Revenge would be too simple.”
“What about the photographs? Were those doctored?”
Tricia Wilson was trapped and she knew it. “OK. I did doctor my makeup and hair for those pictures. But I want you to know that he really did abuse me.”
