She's Not There - Madison Marla (книги без сокращений .txt) 📗

She explained to Amber who she was and asked if she could have a minute alone with her. Amber’s heavy-lidded gaze cased TJ from head to toe, nearly leering. Yuck. She’d ask the snake her questions and get the hell out of here.

When they were alone in the lobby, Amber took a sexy pose on a light-blue divan that perfectly complemented her brown dress. As she crossed her long legs, the slit on the side of her dress opened high enough to expose her underwear—or would have if she’d been wearing any. Her eyes traveled over TJ again. “What do you want to know about Kayla?”

“Did you see her the night she disappeared?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn’t you come forward with that information?”

“It didn’t seem important.”

TJ resisted the urge to slap her. “Where did you see her?”

Amber sat back and crossed her arms. “I came in here at about nine that night. After about an hour, I got bored and decided to go downtown to Vinnie’s. When I walked out to my car, I met Kayla coming in and told her nothing was happening here. So we went down to Vinnie’s.”

“You ride together?” So far this would explain no one at Secrets seeing Kayla the night she disappeared and why her car had shown up in an east side parking lot.

“No, we drove our own cars.” Amber shifted position as two handsome men approached the club, making sure they’d seen her.

“Then what? Just tell me everything you remember.”

“Vinnie’s was packed. Couple guys at the bar gave us their seats, then hung around. They must have thought giving us the seats would get them in our pants. Fools. After we got rid of them we each did our own thing. I saw some friends and went over and had a drink with them. After that I don’t know where she went. I didn’t see her again, so I figured she either left or met someone.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see her with anyone?”

“Kayla always had guys around her.”

“But no one in particular that night?”

“Not that I remember. It was a long time ago.”

Crap, this got her nothing new. But she knew lots of the staff at Vinnie’s. They’d tell her whatever they could remember, but the skank was right—it had been a long time ago.

“What about the two guys you blew off? How pissed were they?”

Amber’s neatly penciled eyebrows shot up, her green eyes widening. “You don’t think they could have done something to her?”

“I don’t think anything. What do you remember about them?”

Scrunching her eyes, she seemed to be concentrating for a minute. “Not much, really. They were dressed like factory workers on a night out. Jeans, flannel shirts over T-shirts, work boots, like that. They thought we’d be impressed they were stagehands for some Broadway show playing at the Center.” She snorted. “Like that would impress us.”

“How did you blow them off?”

“We tried being nice first—told them we were waiting for dates—but they kept hanging around. They didn’t get it so Kayla told them to disappear. We’d had a couple drinks by then and she was getting loose lips.”

“Do you remember what she said?”

“Not exactly. Maybe something like, ‘Thanks for giving us your seats, but you can move on now.’ And when that didn’t work she told them we weren’t interested in losers like them. Might have been worse than that. I don’t remember for sure, but they left.”

Weird. It sounded like Jamie Denison’s attitude at the Sombrero Club. Probably didn’t mean anything. But they’d have to try to find the stage guys, see what they had to say. She thanked her and got up to leave when Amber offered to buy her a drink. There was no mistaking the question in the probing peridot eyes.

“Sorry, got other people to talk to tonight.” Shit. TJ figured if she would ever be tempted to have a fling with a woman, this flytrap would be the last one she’d try it with. She shuddered and hurried back into the bar to get Shannon.

On the way to the car, Shannon asked, “Now what?”

“Think I’m gonna go back to Eric’s.”

Shannon stopped walking. “Did you find something?”

“Maybe. But I’m not sure what it means.” She made a face. “Might not mean squat. It’s freezing out here. I’ll call you on your cell and fill you in on the way there.”

The house was quiet when TJ returned to Eric’s. She put on a pair of sweats, and restless, went back upstairs and made herself a drink. She carried it to Eric’s office, where she sat down and studied the whiteboards for a while, then got up and added the newly gathered information under Jamie and Kayla’s names. She circled the new bullets under each name that said, “Blew off creepy guy.” What could that have to do with anything when it was two different guys?

TJ sat down in Eric’s plush, leather desk chair. They were missing something. Not missing something exactly; there was something there, something important they hadn’t connected. What was it? TJ couldn’t stand feeling like the answer hung there on the fringes of her consciousness, just beyond her ken. Damn! She knew nothing would bring it out now. She had to walk away from it. Do something else.

On her way back downstairs, she noticed the door to Jeff’s room ajar and peeked in to see if he might be awake. He wasn’t there. Strange. Maybe the others were out for the night. Back in the kitchen, she peeked into the refrigerator. She got out some turkey and bread, set it on the counter, and saw Phanny watching her. That dog was always hungry. She fixed herself a sandwich piled high with white meat, ”accidently” dropping a piece on the floor the dog snapped up.

“I thought you were gone for the weekend.”

TJ looked up from mid-bite to see Eric moving toward the refrigerator.

“Change of plans. Came back for a turkey sandwich.”

He laughed. “You’ve got a friend I see.”

“Yeah, this dog’s always where the food is.”

The turkey and bread came back out, and Eric sat next to her at the island with a double-decker turkey sandwich in front of him.

TJ knew his style. He was good at getting her to open up by saying nothing. “Forget it if you’re waiting for me to tell you what happened.”

He took a bite of his sandwich and studied her.

“Okay,” she admitted, “Richard stayed in Chicago. Some family thing.”

Eric kept eating.

TJ could tell he was resisting a smile by the way his laugh lines puckered at the side of his eyes. “You never did like him,” she accused.

Eric put down the sandwich and turned to her. “The guy’s a good cop.”

She glared at him.

“I don’t like him for you, all right?”

“Why?”

Eric looked surprised she asked him. “I suppose ‘he’s not good enough for you’ isn’t what you want to hear.”

TJ kept glaring.

“I guess I always thought you deserved someone who made you his top priority. Not married to his job—someone younger, a little less street-worn.”

“You sound like Janeen. May have run its course, anyway.” She sighed. “I got somethin’ to tell you—nothin’ to do with Richard.” She told Eric about their trip to the Sombrero Club, and what she’d added to the boards. “Somethin’s naggin’ at me, though.”

“I hate that feeling. How do you pull it out?”

“Dunno. It’s always different. But what do you think? Was Kayla capable of being nasty like that?”

“When she’d been drinking, sure. Do you think you can find the guy?”

“I checked the archives from the paper. Found out the name of the play. There should be records of who worked the stage that night.”

“Seems like it gives us more new questions than answers, doesn’t it? Maybe the profiler can give us some insight.”

“Profiler—what the fuck?”

54             

The afternoon the profiler arrived, Tina spotted the large, dark blue van as it moved into the circle drive and stopped in front of the door. She looked on in wonder when the side door opened as if by magic and a long ramp slowly emerged from the van, lowering to touch the ground. A thin, sharp-eyed man operating a motorized chair rolled down the ramp. Tina ran to get Eric, who hurried to put a portable ramp on the front step for their guest.