When All the Girls Have Gone

  She appeared to give that some close thought. He told himself not to take it personally. Then she gave him a small but very real smile.

  “I appreciate the offer,” she said. “Thanks.”

  It wasn’t a huge leap forward in terms of establishing a level of trust, he thought, but it was definitely a step.

  He immediately wondered why he was worried about trust levels. In his business, success was based on the assumption that everyone, including the client, usually lied. Everyone had secrets to protect.

  Outside on the wet street Charlotte pulled up the hood of her anorak. He pulled up the collar of his windbreaker. It was all the protection he had. There was a baseball cap on the backseat of his car, but he hadn’t thought to take it with him earlier when he met Daniel Flint at Louise’s condo. He wondered if that made him look like a poorly prepared investigator. Image was everything in his new line, according to his family.

  The vehicle he had used that afternoon was the nondescript gray compact that he kept for in-city work. It didn’t stand out on the street, which, of course, was why he liked it. Then again, it didn’t make much of an impression, either.

  Not that he was trying to make an impression on Charlotte.

  She didn’t say anything when he opened the passenger-side door for her. She probably figured he wasn’t doing all that well in the private investigation business. If so, she would be right.

  He closed the door and hurried around the front of the car. By the time he got behind the wheel, his hair was plastered to his head and his jacket was soaked. He stripped it off and tossed it into the rear seat. The jacket would survive, but all in all he was not doing a good imitation of an ace detective.

  And just why the hell did that seem important? he wondered.

  He fired up the engine and pulled away from the curb.

  “You’re wondering if Louise had something to do with the deaths of those two women, aren’t you?” he asked. “Maybe sold them the drugs?”

  “No, I really can’t see her as a dealer.”

  “You said yourself, you didn’t know her that well.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw her tighten her grip on the strap of her bag.

  “That’s true, but I do know Jocelyn well,” she said. “I can’t imagine that she would have become close friends with a drug dealer.”

  “Take it easy. The trick to finding answers is not to get too far ahead of yourself. At this point all we’ve got are questions. Start making assumptions and we’ll end up going down a blind alley.”

  Charlotte released her death grip on the strap of the bag and folded her arms very tightly beneath her breasts. She gazed straight ahead through the windshield.

  “We?” she said.

  He slowed for a stoplight and took the opportunity to get a closer look at her. She turned her head and met his eyes.

  “You said at this point all we’ve got are questions,” she said.

  He flexed his hands on the wheel. The light changed. He eased his foot down on the throttle.

  “Figure of speech,” he said. “I’m working for Daniel Flint. I have certain obligations to my client. There’s the little matter of client confidentiality.”

  “Does that mean you can’t work for me, too?”

  He glanced at her again. “What, exactly, do you want me to do?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I want you to find out if Jocelyn’s sudden decision to go off the grid is in any way connected to Louise’s death.”

  He thought about that for a minute. “I’ll talk to my client about it. See if he has a problem with sharing information.”

  “Yes, please do that. Because if you don’t want to take my case, I’ll find someone who will.”

  “Wow. I sense blackmail.”

  “Leverage.”

  “You’re tough.”

  She glanced at him, clearly surprised. “No. Jocelyn is the tough one.”

  “Not saying she isn’t tough. Just saying you are.”

  Charlotte concentrated on the view of the wet street. “You’ve only known me for about an hour.”

  “Sometimes that’s all it takes.”

  “I’m not tough,” she said. “What I am is the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other type.”

  “You just keep on doing what you think you have to do until you can’t do it anymore.”

  “I suppose so. I’m definitely not the spontaneous type. Just ask my ex-fiancé.”

  He told himself not to get too excited just because she had labeled the fiancé an ex. Probably someone else in the picture by now, he thought.

  “I’ve got a problem taking you on as a client,” he said. “It could set up some conflicts of interest. But I’ll talk to Daniel Flint this evening and explain that you and he both have a mutual interest in finding out what happened to his cousin. I’ll see if he’s on board with me using my judgment about sharing information with you.”

  “All right,” she said. She hesitated a beat. “That one-foot-in-front-of-the-other thing?”

  “What about it?”

  “My therapist told me that it’s not always a great strategy. She said I need to cultivate spontaneity and open myself up to new possibilities.”

  “You see a therapist?”

  “I went to one for a while after my fiancé, aka the asshole, dumped me five days before the wedding. Not that I’m bitter.”

  “Of course not,” he said, deadpan. “Holding a grudge against the guy who walked out just before the wedding would be way beneath you.”

  “Absolutely. Bad karma, too. But I will admit that there are times when I think about sticking little pins in a little doll.”

  “Totally understandable.”

  “Thank you.”

  He glanced at her. “So this therapist told you that you should learn to be more spontaneous?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You still seeing her?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “She insisted that in order to move on I had to accept the fact that I bore an equal share of the responsibility for the breakup.”

  He whistled softly. “That’s cold. How the hell did she come up with that angle?”

  “She said I had deliberately ignored the dysfunctional aspect of the relationship and the signs of incompatibility. I had allowed myself to indulge in magical thinking because I had convinced myself that Brian was Mr. Right. What can I say? I got tired of being told that it was my fault I got stood up at the altar—or, almost at the altar.”

  “So you fired the therapist.”

  “Yep.” Charlotte paused. “Actually, that was the best part about the therapy. And I have absolutely no idea why I’m discussing my personal life with you.”

  “I’m no expert on creative spontaneity. I’m pretty much a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other type myself. But from what you’ve just told me, I’d say that dumping your therapist was a pretty good example of a spontaneous act.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” Charlotte said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  She seemed pleased.

  “Not to change the subject, but there is something I would like to point out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You said you didn’t think your stepsister could possibly be close friends with a woman who was dealing drugs; one who might have been connected to the deaths of two women.”

  “Right.”

  “But I gotta tell you, whenever the cops arrest serial killers, child molesters and other assorted bad guys, the first thing all the friends and neighbors say is—”

  “‘He seemed like such a nice, normal guy,’” Charlotte concluded. “Yes, that had occurred to me. But you have to admit that there is one thing here that argues in favor of Louise’s innocence.
”

  “What?”

  “If she had been responsible in any way for the deaths of those two women or for selling drugs to the others, she certainly wouldn’t have kept a record of her actions that might link her to the crimes.”

  “You don’t know much about bad guys, do you?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Take it from me, they like keeping score.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Nothing.

  There was nothing on Louise Flint’s laptop or her cell phone that gave him even a hint about where she had hidden the package.

  Thanks to the electronic keys the hacker had handed over, for a steep price, he had been able to open Flint’s correspondence and files. But he had discovered absolutely nothing.

  Now the one person who knew what Flint had done with the package—Flint herself—was dead.

  Rage bubbled up like toxic waste. Trey Greenslade slammed the laptop closed and shoved himself up out of the chair. He started to prowl the narrow confines of the hotel room, trying to think. It wasn’t easy because he was shivering a little. Anxiety, he thought. Take a couple of deep breaths. Whatever you do, don’t panic. You can handle this.

  But he was on the edge of losing it and that was not good. Not good at all.

  He yanked open the minibar and removed a small bottle of vodka. He unscrewed the cap and took a hefty swallow. The liquor burned, clearing his head in the process.

  He went to the window, flattened one palm against the glass and looked out at the lights of the city while he tried to compose a new strategy. The problem was that he’d had to move too quickly, he thought. He hadn’t had time to draw up a solid plan. But there had been no choice.

  When he had discovered that Louise Flint had gone to Loring, Washington, there had been very little time to act. He’d had to move fast and he had done just that. Now Flint was dead, but he hadn’t found the package in her condo, her storage locker or her vehicle.

  Maybe she had stopped somewhere on the return trip to Seattle and hidden the damn package.

  It was a two-hour drive to Loring. The route was dotted with small rural communities, farms and ranches. As far as he had been able to tell, she didn’t have any friends or relatives in the area. She wouldn’t have left something so valuable with a stranger.

  He drank some more vodka and tried to concentrate.

  It was possible that she had stopped off somewhere along the way and rented a commercial storage locker. But there were probably several of them scattered around the countryside between Seattle and Loring. Even if he identified the right facility, he would have to figure out which locker Flint had rented.

  It was hopeless. He had to find another angle. The only good news was that, as far as he could tell from the list of recent calls on her phone and her e-mail files, it looked like Flint had not communicated the location of the package to Jocelyn Pruett or anyone else.

  It made sense that she would have kept quiet, he thought. She must have known that the contents of the package were worth a fortune in blackmail.

  Okay, so he could assume that Flint had taken her secret to the grave. He was safe. For now. But the thought of the package out there, waiting to be discovered and blow up his whole world, was terrifying.

  All these years, he thought. All these years he’d never known that the package existed. He’d lived his life in blissful ignorance. But now that he was aware of it, he was never going to get another night of decent sleep until he found the damn package and neutralized the contents.

  Shit. Just when everything had finally begun to go his way. Why had things started to spiral out of control at this point?

  He drank the rest of the vodka and turned away from the window. It was all he could do not to hurl the bottle against the nearest wall. But the last thing he wanted was someone from the hotel security staff to come knocking on his door. He made himself put the empty bottle down very deliberately on the desk.

  For a moment he just stood there staring at the damned laptop and cell phone.

  All right, he thought. Think this through carefully.

  Flint was out of the picture. She could not do any more damage. Furthermore, it appeared that she had not contacted anyone on the drive to or from Loring. That left only one realistic possibility—at some point she must have given the package to one of her friends in the club for safekeeping.

  It was time to move on.

  But first things first. He was a careful man and at the moment he was in possession of a computer and a phone that had belonged to a dead woman. It was highly unlikely that anyone would ever connect him to Flint, but it had long been his habit to take precautions. He had to get rid of the tech. That would be easy enough. He planned to run along the waterfront early in the morning. He’d go out to the end of one of the piers and toss the laptop and the phone into Elliott Bay.

  His own phone rang, startling him. He glanced down at the screen and suppressed a groan. When he took the call, however, he made certain that there was no trace of impatience in his voice.

  “Hi, Grandma,” he said. “How are things at home?”

  “I’m calling to make sure you haven’t forgotten the special meeting of the board.”

  Marian Greenslade’s voice never failed to grate on his nerves. She was nearly eighty, but she had been a formidable force in the Greenslade family for as long as he could remember—rigid, hypercritical, impossible to please. Age had not softened her—just the opposite. She saw herself as the keeper of the Greenslade family reputation. The death of her eldest son, Trey’s father, a few months back had only hardened her resolve to ensure that the family business remained intact so that it could be handed down to the next generation.

  Trey had no intention of letting that happen. He was not about to spend the rest of his life weighed down by the anchor of the company. He had his own plans for Loring-Greenslade. But first he had to get control.

  “Don’t worry, Grandma,” he said. “I’ll be at the meeting.”

  There was a short pause on the other end of the line.

  “I assume you also plan to attend my birthday reception next week,” Marian said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “It wouldn’t look good if Charles showed up and you didn’t,” Marian said.

  Marian was never subtle with her threats. But in this case there was no reason for her to worry, Trey thought.

  In the weeks following his father’s death, the board had appointed one of the vice presidents to act as interim CEO while it went through the formality of a search process. As everyone in Loring was well aware, however, Marian Greenslade would make the final decision. Trey knew that his cousin was his only real competition for the job.

  Got to keep the old bitch happy.

  If it became necessary, he would take care of Charles. Accidents happened. Take the hunting accident that had killed his father, for instance.

  No, Charles would not be a problem.

  “I’ve got to go, Grandma. I’m having drinks with a potential client tonight.”

  “Good night,” Marian said. “Remember, it’s crucial that you attend the board meeting.”

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  He ended the connection, suppressing a shudder. He really did not like the sound of Marian’s voice. It was even more annoying than his father’s voice had been. The two shared other characteristics, as well. Gordon Greenslade had been just as rigid and critical; just as impossible to please. But at least he was gone now.

  Trey went back to the window. What he was searching for was out there, somewhere. He had to find it.

  At the start there had been five of them in the club. As far as he could tell, Louise Flint had no close friends outside the club. If she had entrusted the package to anyone, it would have been one of the other women in the group.

  One down, one missing, three
to go.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Yeah, sure, no problem,” Daniel Flint said. “Use your own judgment, Mr. Cutler. I just want answers.”

  “Even if it turns out that those answers might affect Louise’s reputation or your memories of her?” Max asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Daniel said. “I’m sure she was murdered, but regardless, I just need to know the truth. If this woman—Charlotte Sawyer—is looking for answers, too, then as far as I’m concerned we’re on the same team.”

  “All right. I’ll keep you informed of my progress.”

  “Thanks,” Daniel said. “Got to go. Chef is about to blow. We’ve got a full house here in the restaurant tonight.”

  The phone went dead in Max’s hand. He set it on the old wooden table and looked out the kitchen window. A light Seattle drizzle was soaking the quiet neighborhood. He could see the glow of a television set behind the curtains of the little Victorian down the street. Mr. and Mrs. Lund were addicted to PBS and a steady diet of British police dramas.

  The windows in the house next to the Lunds’ were still dark and probably would be for another hour or so. The two young men—newlyweds—had moved in recently, but they worked long hours and often met friends for dinner at one of the downtown restaurants.

  The residents of the neighborhood were a mix of retirees obsessed with their gardens and cruise plans, and young families convinced they could double their money if they upgraded their starter houses and sold them in a couple of years.

  He was too old to own a starter house, but after Whitney had walked out to “get on with her life,” the fixer-upper was all he could afford. It was his own fault. He had compounded the financial disaster of the divorce by quitting his job as a profiler back in D.C. and moving to Seattle to go out on his own.

  Everyone had warned him about the weather. Some said it wasn’t the rain that got to some people, it was the long stretches of gray. But he had been living in the city for over six months and he was fine with the climate.