The Shop

couch.

“You probably shouldn’t be doing that,” Jolie said.

The other guy, a skinny Southern rocker type, took one look at Jolie and said “Hey, man, I gotta go.”

When he was gone, Niraj said to Jolie, “She’s not here. She never came back. They replaced her at the office.”

“Maddy replaced her?”

“I guess so. I haven’t seen her, either.”

“You’re staying?” Jolie motioned to the coffee table and the other furniture.

“I didn’t know what else to do, and I have to get that U-Haul back or it’s going to cost me another day.”

Jolie asked, “Do you know a man named James Dooley?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did Amy ever say anything about Chief Akers threatening his wife?”

“We didn’t talk about things like that. I knew she and Maddy were good friends, but it wasn’t really my business. She had her relationships and I had mine. Kind of hard to explain.”

“Did you ever talk to Chief Akers?”

“I don’t think I ever met him.”

Jolie asked if Niraj had ever met Amy’s brother, Luke.

“I met him a few times. Man, he was antsy.”

“Antsy?”

Niraj shifted on the couch and winced. “He had all this energy. Like he was going somewhere in a hurry.”

“He was ambitious?”

He laughed. “No, he just talked big. He’s like those people who think they’re gonna win the lottery. Always talking about how he’d strike it rich. Amy, she liked to burst his bubble. He’d be boasting about some new can’t- miss scheme, and she’d just blow him out of the water. She could be very cruel.”

Jolie didn’t doubt it. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“It’s been months.”

“What did Luke do for a living?”

“Worked for a landscaper. Blowing leaves, trimming hedges, that kind of stuff.”

“I take it he didn’t want to be a leaf blower forever.”

“No kidding. He talked about getting his own tree-trimming business and stealing his boss’s main client.”

“Main client?”

“The attorney general of the United States, you believe that? Luke thought he could shut out his employer, offer him a better deal.” He let out a short laugh. “Quintessential Luke. He knew nothing about running a company —totally out of touch with reality.”

“Did you know about his underage girlfriend?”

“Riley? That was one of his plans. He said he was going to knock her up and marry into all that money.” He grinned. “If Luke owned a store, it’d be called Schemes ‘R’ Us.”

Jolie asked him if he was surprised Luke had taken the woman at the motel hostage.

He thought about it. “I was and I wasn’t. Luke wasn’t the violent type.”

He scratched his arm. The sleeve of his T-shirt rode up, revealing a peacock tattoo. “One thing I wasn’t surprised about, though—he sure got himself into a shitload of trouble.”

Jolie was about to run an NCIC search on James Dooley when Skeet came by her desk. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

“Okay.”

He had a weird smile on his face. “How about we go to my office?”

Jolie pushed her chair back to get up. Just then she heard a voice out front and recognized it immediately. Riley Haddox. “I need to do one thing first.”

Skeet said, “That’s fine.”

“You sure?” Jolie glanced in the direction of the front room.

“It’s been waiting all day. It can wait a little bit longer.”

He had some kind of secret. Jolie knew from experience it didn’t bode well for her.

“Anytime in the next couple hours.” He rapped his knuckles twice on her desk before walking down the hallway to his office.

Jolie went out to meet Riley.

Zoe was with her. Did Riley take Zoe with her everywhere?

The contrast between the two girls was dramatic. Riley was beautiful. Blonde hair, lithe body, the works. Zoe, on the other hand, was just pretty. There were some people you pegged as likeable before they opened their mouths, and Zoe was one of them. She was shorter than Riley and heavier, but, taken altogether, attractive. Jolie found her attention going to Zoe, which Riley clearly sensed and didn’t like.

Riley took back the spotlight. “Do you know if the police have the phone? Can you get them to give it back?”

“Why don’t we go to my desk?” Jolie couldn’t say “go to my office” because she didn’t have one, just the desk pushed face-to-face with Louis’s desk. But since Louis was taking vacation time, they’d have a modicum of privacy.

Riley clacked behind her.

Jolie motioned to one chair and pulled another from around Louis’s desk.

Riley sat down, then Zoe. Riley said, “Why didn’t you call me back?”

“Because I didn’t have anything until just a while ago.”

“You were going to call me, weren’t you?”

This girl needed a good talking to. Through Kay, Jolie knew that Riley’s father was at his wits’ end with her. He couldn’t control her and apparently didn’t even try. At this point, she wasn’t even going to college—any college. “If I’d had anything, I would have.”

Riley’s eyes narrowed.

Clutching her purse to her chest, Zoe leaned forward. “It’s been so good of you to help us. Riley’s just so scared—”

“I can’t imagine if those photos got out!” Riley said. “What would I do? It could hurt us—hurt my family. It would be humiliating!”

Jolie didn’t think it would be any more humiliating than being forced to resign as head of the DOJ after he was charged with failure to report a substantial amount of income on his tax returns. But she didn’t say that. Her own daddy had brought her up to be better than that. “I wish I could help you, Riley, I really do. But there’s some question where the phone is. It was not put into evidence by the Gardenia PD. It’s not with the FBI, either.”

Riley’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Are you serious? What am I going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“No one knows where the phone is? How can that be? Mrs. Frawley said—”

“Mrs. Frawley said the police searched Luke’s apartment, but she didn’t see what they took.”

“But what do I do now?”

The phone’s GPS could be tracked, but all Jolie’s requests to date on tracking phones had been denied due to privacy issues. Law enforcement agencies big and small didn’t want to touch that hot potato unless it was absolutely necessary. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

Riley stood up. “Well, thanks,” she said, her voice like ice. “I guess I should’ve expected you wouldn’t help me.”

“Could you sit down for a moment?” Jolie said.

Riley sighed. “What now?”

“How close were you to Luke?”

“We were going to get married.”