The wet journal posed its own mystery. I had no way to link it to Megan’s death. It could have appeared in the alleyway long before her body did. Additionally, the entries were unreadable. Every word had been written out of order. Either that or the writer had employed some sort of code. Staring at the pages made my head hurt, and I suddenly understood what it must feel like to be dyslexic.
As dawn approached, my eyes fluttered shut.
When I awoke again, weariness weighed my body down. I peered bleary-eyed at the clock. It wasn’t yet nine am. I’d only slept for three hours or so.
Evelyn was gone. No surprises there, considering how last night had ended. I yawned, rolled out of bed, and rifled through Evelyn’s things in search of the small notebook she always wrote her schedule in. As I did so, a golden necklace fell out of the suitcase’s inner pocket.
It was the pendant she’d been wearing the first day I’d come to Chicago. Curiously, she wasn’t a jewelry girl. Aside from her ever-present watch, she never wore anything else around her neck or wrists.
I lifted the owl-shaped pendant to eye level and noticed a tiny hinge hidden behind the golden wing. Fitting my fingernail in the groove of the locket, I tried to pry it open. It stuck fast. I gathered the chain and replaced the necklace where I’d found it. Snooping in Evelyn’s personal items was a surefire way to make her hate me.
I located her schedule book in the back pocket of her jeans from last night and flipped to today’s agenda. According to this, Evelyn was supposed to take Marie and the bridesmaids to the spa for an entire day of pampering, but the reservation didn’t start until eleven o’clock. In that case, where had Evelyn gone?
In the cafe downstairs, I nursed a cappuccino and a stack of pancakes at the counter. Though I hadn’t gotten wasted like the other girls last night, I felt hungover. My neck struggled to keep my head upright, and my eyelids fought to stay open. All I wanted to do was go back to bed.
Above the espresso machine, a small TV broadcasted the local news. Naturally, the lead story was Megan Hollows’s death. The screen showed a small gathering outside the Saint Angel, where police guarded the crime scene.
“Officials don’t know if Hollows’s death is linked to the other missing women in Chicago,” the reporter was saying.
Luis, the maintenance man, stood at the doorway of the cafe, so enraptured by the news report that he didn’t notice the leakage seeping from the trash bag in his grasp. He stared at the TV, jaw slightly dropped, and hardly blinked.
Perhaps he felt my gaze upon him. His eyes flickered toward me, and when he noticed I was watching him, he hastily doubled the dripping garbage bag, wiped the floor, and scurried out of the cafe.
“Jack!” Marie, eyes heavy with sleep, passed Luis and accosted me at the counter. “Where on earth is Evelyn?”
“Isn’t she with you?”
“No,” she replied. “She was supposed to meet me half an hour ago, but she never showed up. Is she still asleep?”
“I haven’t seen her at all this morning.”
Marie stomped her foot and moaned. “Big tip: if you get married, don’t make Evelyn your maid of honor. She’s horrible at it.”
I sidled off my seat at the counter. “What do you need? Anything I can help with?”
She spotted my leftover pancakes. “Yes. You can help me get the girls ready for our spa day. They’re all horribly hungover. Will you have room service send up an entire platter of pancakes and waffles?”
I saluted her. “You got it, boss.”
After breakfast in Marie’s suite—during which I pushed water, electrolytes, and ibuprofen down the bridesmaids throats—I helped Marie pack her friends into the Cadillac and drove them all to Eden, a ridiculously luxurious spa in the heart of downtown Chicago. There, the first order of businesses was hour-long massages for everyone.
“You as well?” the woman behind the counter asked me.
“It’s free,” Marie advised me. “My mother’s paying for this.”
“Count me in,” I declared.
While a masseuse with steel hands pushed the knots out of my back and shoulders, my mind wandered to Evelyn. Had I gone too far last night? Logically, I knew I should have turned the journal into the police, but in the past, I’d had too many run-ins with cops who didn’t know what to do with that sort of evidence. Regardless, Evelyn knew me. She’d seen me break the rules to get to the bottom of the case. Admittedly, she didn’t have much patience for my dubious actions.
After the hour of massages, Evelyn still hadn’t shown up. I was beginning to worry, but Marie and her friends didn’t spare me a moment to call or text her. The spa employees ushered us into the next room, where we received manicures and pedicures. While the other girls gossiped and joked—seemingly over the horrors of last night—I tried not to wriggle as my feet were buffed and shined.
The only person who didn’t seem to be enjoying herself was Angelica. She sat in the last recliner, farthest from the other girls so she didn’t have to talk to them. Staring blankly in the distance, she didn’t respond when the manicurist asked her preference for nail tips.
With my toenail polish drying, I waddled over to Angelica and sat next to her. “You doing okay?” I asked in a low voice.
She blinked, seemingly drawing her focus out of the void to award it to me instead. “Yeah. Sorry. Thinking.”
“About last night?”
She bowed her head. “I can’t stop seeing that girl’s body in my head. Who would do something like that?”
“A sick person,” I replied. “It’s the only explanation.”
“You do this for a living, right?” Angelica asked. “Investigating homicides. I heard Marie and Evelyn talking about it a while ago. How do you deal with it? Seeing all these dead bodies?”
I adjusted my fluffy white robe so it covered more
