When Derek came out, his strides were long and purposeful, and a worried frown crossed his face. “She’s not here.”
“Maybe we could check her bedroom?”
He waved them through. “Yes, of course.”
They walked into the bedroom to see the bed was also a mess, with clothes on the floor, clothes on the chairs.
Sounding apologetic from behind them, Derek said, “She was never a neat person.”
“What can you tell us about her?”
“She is mean, and other than the fact that she is greedy, jealous, arrogant, and of the opinion that no other woman can do what she can do when it comes to modeling, she hated Elena with a passion, and she hates to see others succeed with an almost equal amount of passion.”
“Do you know why?” Andy asked.
“I’m sure you can guess, Detective,” Derek said in a hard voice. “I have no illusions about who and what Naomi is. I still don’t. The fact of the matter is that she is who she is, and that will never change.”
“Why are you friends?” Richard asked again.
“Because I’ve known her for such a long time, I’ve seen her evolve,” he said. “It’s almost amusement at this point. She’s like an accident ready to happen.”
At that, Richard winced. “That doesn’t sound very nice.”
“No, it probably isn’t,” he said, “but it’s the truth. Just like the fact that she is only friends with me for what I can do for her.”
“And what is it that you can do for her?”
He laughed. “Well, this apartment for one. And I brought her the Chinese food the other day because she hadn’t eaten.”
“Is she that broke?”
He nodded. “When she is broke, she lives a very dangerous lifestyle.”
At that, something else clicked in Richard’s head. “Meaning the attack at the bar the other night?”
“Yes, and it’s not what you’re thinking,” Derek said. “It’s not that she’s prostituting herself. But she’s a very adept thief. She is offered lots of opportunities.”
“That can get very dangerous,” he said, “and it also completely opens up a suspect pool for our missing-person problem right now.”
“She also has a tendency,” Derek said, taking a deep breath, “to disappear for days and weeks on end, particularly if she’s gone on a bender, when she gets very sick and depressed.”
“So, we don’t have any idea if she’s missing or if she just chose to walk away.”
“Exactly. The fact that the agent called you is something that is unusual in itself.”
“I think it was only because we had recently spoken to him,” Andy said.
“That makes more sense,” Derek said.
“I was wondering if she’d lost some major opportunities because of this or not?” Richard asked.
“All the time,” he said with a grimace. “I’ve been seriously considering just breaking off my almost daily contact because she’s on such a self-destructive path. But it felt wrong.”
“And your relationship all this time has been just friends?”
“Yes,” he said, “just friends. I’m gay,” he said, “so we’ve never been lovers. I never ever went in that direction.”
“And who is your partner currently?”
He looked a little startled at that question, but he answered readily enough. “Benjamin,” he said. “Benjamin Haskell.”
Richard nodded. He wasn’t sure what the hell was bothering him, but something was. Maybe it was that little bit of dark energy that he kept seeing, and the fact that he was even seeing it really drove him nuts because a part of him didn’t want to. Yet, at the same time, he wanted to see more of it, and he couldn’t or didn’t know how to. He tried to shift his position to look the way he had originally started this extended aura sight the other night with Stefan, but that didn’t work either. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing at all.
“And how has your relationship with Naomi been lately?” Andy asked.
“It was normal,” he said. “I keep my distance, but I’ve always been there if she needed me.”
“How does she get along with your partner?”
“She has never gotten along with any of my partners,” Derek said. “I think she considered them competition for herself.”
“So not just women are competition to Naomi?”
“When she loves, she loves deeply. I am hers in her mind, though whether she loves me or not, I don’t know,” he said. “But I am deemed hers, so anybody else in my world is somebody she has to compete with for attention.”
After that, the detectives did a quick sweep around but found nothing to show where she might have been.
“Do you know where she went last?” Richard asked Derek.
He shook his head. “I saw her last when I brought the Chinese food. She was in a shitty mood, so I got up and left. I don’t know if she went to bed right afterward or if she went to the bar.”
“The bed is messed up, but it’s hard to tell if she was sleeping or not,” Andy noted.
“Her bed always looks like that,” Derek said.
Richard turned, looked at him, and asked, “Do you know what she was wearing at the time?”
Derek looked at him in surprise, frowned, and said, “She was wearing her favorite red slinky top.”
“Do you want to take a look in the bedroom with us and see if that outfit is there?”
He nodded immediately. He strode back into the bedroom, stopped, and looked, swearing. “How can you ever find anything in this mess?” He looked down in disgust. “You got gloves?”
Richard looked to see if he was serious, realized he was, and said, “We can take a quick look.” He went to the laundry hamper. Nothing red and slinky. Moved a few pieces of clothing on the floor and on the chairs, so he could see what was underneath. Nothing red. He checked the closet. Nothing. “Does she use a laundry service?”
“In her heyday she
