The detective squared the paper on the counter and took pictures with his phone. “What else did you find?”
“A proposal from Professor Whiteside. I didn’t open her Mac. I assume, like her cell phone, it’s password protected.”
The older detective and George entered the kitchen. “I’ve got all I need,” the detective said, flipping back through his notebook. “There’s no evidence of a crime here. Since Ms. Williams is old enough to walk away and not tell anyone where she was going, there isn’t much we can do.”
“That’s it?” George asked.
“We’ll stop by the bar where Ms. Williams intended to meet her friends later tonight,” the younger detective said. “And if we can find the women she was meeting tomorrow, we’ll talk to them, too.”
George ran his fingers through his hair and held his hand there while shaking his head. “You’re not giving this the attention it deserves. Ensley wouldn’t go off without leaving me a message. I know in my bones something has happened to her.”
He shot a distressed look at James Cullen, and JC knew he had to say something. “I agree with George. She didn’t leave on her own volition.”
Which was the pure, unvarnished truth.
“We’ll check with the neighbors to see if anyone has a smart-doorbell camera. One of them might have a video of her coming and going,” the younger detective said.
“We’ll also call Professor Whiteside. She might have gone off to meet him this evening,” the other detective said.
“That doesn’t make sense,” George said. “She knew I was coming, and if she left with anyone, she’d have taken her phone.”
“Do you know how she got here from the train station?”
“Her last text said she was waiting for an Uber.”
“We’ll check with the car service to see when they dropped her here and if they came back. We’ll also notify the NYPD. They can check her apartment and talk to her neighbors.”
George shook his head, and his voice was full of frustration when he said, “Look, she didn’t disappear from New York. She disappeared from here!”
“She might have said something to a neighbor about meeting a friend she didn’t list on her itinerary,” the younger detective said.
“I guess anything’s possible,” George said. “But it’s out of character.”
The younger detective handed George and JC business cards. “If you think of anything else, give us a call.”
George gave the detectives his business card, and the detective glanced at JC, expecting one from him. He grudgingly pulled a card case out of his pocket. He didn’t want them to know he was Elliott Fraser’s son, but if they googled him, they’d make the connection anyway. And above all, he didn’t want his dad or MacCorp connected with another woman’s disappearance.
George escorted the detectives to the front door, then returned to the kitchen, his shoulders slumped. “None of this makes sense. I’m going to call Dad back and suggest he hire an investigator. Those detectives will only do a preliminary investigation. We need someone to dig deeper.”
“What about Ensley’s friends in New York? Do you know any of them?”
“Barb Russell is her best friend in the city. I’ll call her.” George went to the den to fix a drink. “If Ensley has talked to anyone, it’d be her.” He carried his tumbler to the sofa and set it on the coaster on the coffee table while he scrolled through his contacts. “Barb might freak out when I tell her Ensley disappeared.”
“Tell her we don’t believe—” JC stopped because he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“What don’t we believe?” George asked. “That she was kidnapped? That she walked away on her own? Or maybe she went for a long-distance run to avoid having dinner with me? What?”
“Hell if I know,” JC snapped. “Maybe she forgot to bring something and walked to the closest convenience store.”
“No matter where she went”—George stabbed JC with a stare that put every ounce of his frustration on full display—“she’d have taken her goddamn phone.”
JC wanted to say, “She’ll be okay, George. I’ll find her.” But he couldn’t say anything. And being unable to reassure George was pure hell. He had to get back to DC and make plans to rescue Ensley, but he couldn’t leave George right now. He was stuck here, doing nothing to help her, and he’d never felt so useless in his life.
George punched the keys on his phone and put the call on speaker. “Here goes.”
After two rings, a woman answered, “This is Barb.”
“Hey, it’s George.”
The woman’s breath hitched, and a few beats of silence ticked by before she asked in a worried voice, “Are you calling to break our date tomorrow night? I heard you were in Cambridge.”
If the woman knew George was here, then she must have talked to Ensley. But what JC found even more impressive was the date part. He gave George a searching look, and George waggled his brows in return.
“I hope I don’t have to,” George said. “But I have a problem here in Cambridge. Since you already knew I was here, you must have talked to Ensley?”
“Yeah, about an hour ago. I thought she was having dinner with you. Why?”
“I was supposed to pick her up here at the house, but she’s gone. Her phone, computer, purse, suitcase are here, but she’s not.”
JC couldn’t sit still. The urge to call his dad was increasing by the minute. It was moments like this when he had flashes of the day he panicked while searching for his dad. Out of fear, he’d run away, gotten lost in the wine cave, and nearly died. He’d been a stupid thirteen-year-old kid at the time. Since then, he’d gone through months of therapy, but occasionally something triggered the memory of being lost and alone, and the anxiety rushed back.
He had better ways of handling it now,
