Six

David returned while Evie finished up a call with Jenna’s academic advisor. When he shook off his coat but didn’t go to the conference room, she nudged her bowl of sweet-tarts toward him, got a smile of thanks as he took one and sat down.

“Thanks, Mrs. Cline,” she said into her phone. “Yes, I’ll call if I have more questions. I appreciate your time.” Evie clicked off with relief. The woman loved to talk.

It wasn’t hard to read David’s expression. “That bad?”

“Yeah. I should have taken you along for the interview with Saul’s sister. You would have melted. Cynthia Morris, forty-two, single mom with a teenage son. She made a point to let me know right off that she and Saul were stepsiblings—his dad married her mother. Then she gave me an hour on how good a brother Saul was. He stayed in her life even after the two parents divorced, his dad married yet again, and there was yet another set of steps for Saul to deal with.”

“Loyal, caring.”

David nodded. “He’d stay at her place if he was working on that side of town, be the uncle to her son, play some ball, be a good influence. He was there the week he went missing, came by that Sunday night, stayed until Wednesday morning.”

David opened his notebook and read aloud, “‘He was in a mellow mood, not particularly busy with work, said he’d just finished a couple of long involved matters. For him, he was flush with cash, insisted on getting some repairs done while he was around, had the plumber out, got my car battery replaced. Being a nice brother.’”

“Oh, man,” Evie said softly.

“Yeah. He mentioned to Cynthia he had a meeting with a client in South Harbor that Wednesday afternoon and thought he might hit a concert in Arlington Heights if he had time that evening. I’ve confirmed he had a ticket purchased for the concert on his credit-card statement. It’s not clear he attended the concert, but a receipt on Thursday morning puts him at a gas station well north, in Gurnee. Cops at the time confirmed with security-camera footage it was in fact Saul using that credit card and that he was alone—their assumption is that he’d traveled north for work. After that the trail is stone cold. It’s going to be his job that is the source of this. But family, particularly Cynthia, takes the brunt of his absence without a trace.”

“That’s the toughest kind of interview.”

David put away the notebook. “It wasn’t as emotional as you would expect, but very sad. She knows he’s dead. She just wants answers, to be able to give Saul a fitting funeral.”

Evie thought it would help David to talk about the rest of it. “What else did she say? I need to get my head away from Jenna occasionally, think about something else.”

David smiled. “Now you’re just being kind. You’ve really got a few minutes for this?”

“I do.”

“Cynthia was worth the time.” He took his notebook out again and read a few more notes. “He was into his cars, sports, liked baseball, would often go to a club to listen to live music, loved jazz, would attend a concert every few months just to enjoy the crowds. He was the guy every lady should marry, but no one ever did.

“Saul loved his work. He loved the puzzle of it, the search for how to answer the question were it an affair, stealing from their boss, or lying on their résumé. He considered it to be a good service to society, keeping people honest. The PI work came naturally to him. He liked people, could walk into any environment and be comfortable there.

“His motto was ‘Follow the people, find the crime.’ He’d be out on stakeouts, following people all hours of the day and night. He knew this city and its suburbs like the back of his hand. He’d hire taxi drivers to help him out, and sometimes borrow business vehicles from friends—a landscape truck, flower-delivery van, or a plumber’s truck.

“Saul wasn’t a particularly physical man, out to win every fistfight he might get into, but he could disarm tense situations and avoid altercations. If he couldn’t disarm, couldn’t simply leave, he’d throw the dirty punch and knock the guy out, or smash him with a bottle—he would fight to end it fast, wasn’t going to be polite about it.”

“That’s useful to know,” Evie observed.

“It is. She understood his personality and that’s what’s most valuable to me. She painted a picture so I can see him.” David scanned the rest of his notes. “A couple more personal ones . . . she told me Saul was never going to be a wealthy man, he had too many people he’d slip a hundred dollars to when they were down on their luck, too many friends who needed help. He was generous of spirit, assumed you would get yourself on your feet again, believed you could.

“He was looking for a new apartment, a place where he could have a dog. He could live anywhere and it was time for a change, he told her.

“‘He’d brought this puzzle box over,’ she said, ‘one of those thousand-piece marathons—a Norman Rockwell painting of baseball players in a locker room. He’d set up a card table by the living room window and be hard at it when I got home from work. He wasn’t the type to simply walk out of his life, leave things behind, leave his dreams. He wasn’t a wealthy man, didn’t have all the breaks go his way in life, but he was a good brother. A very good brother. He didn’t just disappear on me.’”

David closed his notebook. “She loved Saul. And if he made that kind of lasting impression on her, chances are good his friends are going to have the same perspectives. This wasn’t a family dispute that went wrong, probably not even a personal one.”

“The rest of his family? She mentioned more stepsibs.”

“Scattered across the nation now; Cynthia is the only one within a hundred miles he saw regularly.”

“The jigsaw puzzle is interesting,” Evie remarked. “He was doing some thinking.”

David nodded. “I thought the same, hence the written quote. A nice diversion, a puzzle, something to have in his hands while Saul lets his mind mull over another matter. I’d love to know what he was thinking about. I haven’t come across a client being billed during that last week.”

“Maybe one of the suspended cases, working it on his own time. Or a personal matter, something he wants to solve for a friend. A good-deed kind of case?” Evie proposed.

“That would fit him,” David said, thoughtful. “He was working a puzzle, figuratively and literally, thinking through how to approach a problem. The question is, did it get him killed or did something more prosaic happen?” He raised a shoulder. “Something as random as looking for someone that put him in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“The fact his car also disappeared seems as relevant a clue as anything else you have. It could have been a murder, and then an ordinary street thief takes the car that’s been sitting for a day or two in a tempting part of town. But when no car gets found, no body, that tends to say they were disposed of by the same person. You’ll find a lead somewhere, David, and figure this out.”

David smiled. “Optimism is appreciated. I’m certainly going to try.” He pushed to his feet. “Thanks for listening.”

“You chose the right case, David. You’ve got the patience to talk with a lot of people—which is a good thing, given your whiteboard is about ready to fall off the wall it’s so crowded with names.”

David laughed as she had hoped. “I’ll be doing some talking to people,” he agreed. “I came back to pull the files of those who most likely would want him dead and then I’ll be heading out again.”

Evie set her phone alarm for her next interview, then turned her attention back to the four boxes of case material. Personal items first, she decided, and opened box two.

The nice thing about people’s habits is that they leave trails, she thought—notes, lists, receipts, phone numbers. She picked up Jenna’s purse, spread its contents on the desk, then opened Jenna’s wallet. Library card, student ID, health-insurance card, a dentist’s business card, an insurance agent with a renter policy number written on it. The checkbook showed occasional checks to a church, her landlord, the student-union bookstore.

Evie pulled out the less-organized bits and pieces in the front of the wallet. A reminder note to call Susan about volleyball, a Post-it note with a phone number and the name Chad, the time and place for a study group meeting, a diner’s receipt for a chef’s salad and Diet Coke. And then Evie stopped sorting items. She was holding a ticket stub with a swirling stack of cursive M’s, a creative logo she immediately recognized. “David.”

Her voice had enough urgency that he immediately appeared in the doorway. “What is it, Evie?”

She held it up. “My missing college student was at a Triple M concert the night she disappeared. I’m holding the ticket stub.”

A long silence as he looked at the pink rectangle and then the whiteboard. “Tell me the date again.”

She looked at the stub. “October 17, 2007.”

“I was there,” he said. “I’ll never forget that date. I was onstage with Maggie for a few minutes at the end of that concert. It was the night of the car crash.”

Evie didn’t know how to respond. Maggie was a Chicago native, had come to stardom because the local college crowds loved her—this was one of the coincidences that came up in cases, histories overlapping. But it hit hard.

David dropped into a chair. “I can probably tell you a bit more about that night. It’s not a concert I’m ever going to forget.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Evie. The date on your case should have triggered the connection. I should have realized it had to have been a Triple M concert.”

“I didn’t think about that possibility either.”

She handed him the ticket stub, its date still readable. He turned it over in his hand, a man lost in thought. He finally looked over at her, returned the ticket. “Maggie played concerts in college towns across the Midwest during those years. Does this help solve what happened to your Jenna?”

“I dislike coincidences. But they are usually just that. The fact we’re looking into this case years later, and you happen to be dating Maggie? That’s a random coincidence. Similarly, the fact it was the night of the accident with enormous impact on both of you. Lives do intersect, even in high-population cities like Chicago.” Evie paused. “But what are the odds if Jenna was at that concert, her killer was also?”

“College crowd, college-student victim, college-age killer?” he suggested with a nod. “That seems like a reasonable direction.”

“Someone selected her at the concert, followed her home, did her harm,” Evie stated. “The venue is just blocks from where she lived, an easy walking distance on a comfortable night. A mostly college-age crowd, a lot of others heading back toward campus would have walked those same blocks, it’s not so obvious she’s being followed.”

“If it was a college student, you’d figure the cops would have solved it by now,” David said. “It’s hard to leave no evidence behind, but from what you’ve said already, there isn’t much to work with along this line.”

“Agreed.” Evie hesitated to bring up a theory, but it seemed appropriate now. “Or go a different direction,” she offered. “Someone from the band she might have been interested in? They met up later that night after the concert is over?”

He didn’t immediately shake his head. “I knew Maggie’s band members, her sound guys. The stage crew not as well, as they would shift around depending on the venue. The band was beginning to pay its own way. They were making enough to draw a salary, small, but it was a paycheck. Eight men and women were the core of it back then—band, sound, a manager. I can get you a list of names. With the star-struck attention from fans, I’m sure there were more than a few phone numbers exchanged between fans and crew. Most of that core group were single then.”

“You said band members have changed over the years? Sound guys?”

“Five of the original group were still with Maggie. Lives go different directions, and the travel, the concert life, are only glamorous from the outside. It takes a toll on marriages and on kids. And the crowds have decided there’s one star on the stage, the rest are simply the support cast. It can hit your ego when the spotlight doesn’t shine on you, but on the one you’re making look good.”

“I’m beginning to see why you went to New York to be Maggie’s main security guy.”

David smiled. “There are always dynamics going on between members working together. Maggie has been lucky over the years to mostly work with people who can wisely handle what they’ve signed on to. The money differential is also prominent—they all do well, but she’s the famous voice.” He leaned back, thinking, finally shook his head. “Evie, I may have liked some of those around her more than others, but I can’t say any one of them ever stood out as a concern. These are guys Maggie worked with, and I spent a lot of time around them, with a cop’s instincts for when something was off. They might have connected up with fans, but murder? That’s a mind-set that doesn’t play with what I know about them.”

He considered it further and shook his head again. “Her security crew, they’re mostly former cops, retired military. Even in the early days, security at a concert venue was tight. As the fame grew, security traveling with them became part of her life. These are guys who don’t look the other way when a band member or sound person crosses the line. I might hear about it before Maggie would, but I would know what’s going on around her, around her band members. We don’t take chances with her or her reputation. If there was something off with a long-term member of her group, I have to think I would have seen it.”

Evie thought that rang true. David would have seen it—a guy loving Maggie the way he did wasn’t one to be careless about details. She took the conversation another direction. “Any chance there are photos of the crowd that night, anything left around from that evening?”

“Maggie was working with a publicist by then, so there would be photos for marketing purposes that might still be in the archives. And Maggie keeps a scrapbook for herself, adds to it from every concert. She likely has a few images.”

“I think the concert was the opportunity,” Evie suggested. “Jenna was away from her place until late, she was out and about, in a good mood, not cocooned in studying. She made herself accessible that night. Any concert would have been the trigger. It just happened to be Triple M playing that night.”

David gave a small nod, accepted her attempt to lighten the connection, but then blew out a long breath. “I don’t take prayer lightly, Evie, and I said more than one before I made my decision to join this task force. It’s probably not chance that this is the county I selected or the case you picked. I’ll think back on that time, see if I can come up with anything that might be useful. But let’s not tell Maggie about it when you meet her. I’d rather not give her this kind of news to think about—not yet.”

“Agreed.” His perspective about God’s influence intrigued her. Evie thought God was often involved in the details of her work, but David had an assumption that seemed much more certain. She hoped he was right, for it implied her case could be solved after all.

Her phone alarm dinged and she silenced it. “My interview with Jenna’s biology class TA is in ten minutes.”

“I’ll let you get your questions organized,” David said, standing. “That ticket stub, Evie, it’s significant in at least one other way. It tells me your Jenna liked good music.”

“Very true,” Evie said, appreciating the lighthearted point. David walked back to the conference room. She picked up her notepad and added another fact to her list.

18. Jenna attended a Triple M concert the night she disappeared

“Evie, when’s your next interview?” David asked later, stepping out of the conference room and sliding a stack of folders into a carry-on bag.

“I’m meeting Jenna’s best friend in”—she checked the time—“thirty-six minutes.”

“Mind if I tag along? I need a brief break from Saul before I start in on these conversations. I’ll be switching from family who loved him to some people who at least have a motive to wish him dead.”

Evie understood that whiplash. “I’d welcome a second opinion on what Robin has to say.” She packed files in her backpack, not sure what she might actually need. “Why don’t you drive? I’m meeting Ann at noon. You can drop me off with her and then go talk with your favorite person of interest.”

“That would be Everett Gibson,” David told her as they exited the office space. “He did six years for aggravated assault after beating a neighbor into a near coma. Cops strongly suspected Everett at the time, as he and the victim had past history, but they just couldn’t break the man’s alibi. Everett said he was settling a minor traffic fender bender with a judge’s wife—for cash, untraceable, wouldn’t you know—on the other side of town when the neighbor was attacked. An easy alibi to dismiss except the judge’s wife backed him up. The case stalled. Saul got hired to look at that alibi. He managed to prove the judge’s wife bought prescription painkillers off Everett on occasion, but that she hadn’t seen him on the day in question. Once Everett’s alibi was proven false, the case came together quickly. The man took a plea deal for the six years.”

“When did he get released from jail?”

“Two months before Saul disappeared. He continues to have a spotty record with the law. Everett’s now in the county lockup for trying to steal a truck off a used-car lot.”

“At least you know where to find him.”

David smiled. “There is that. Getting him to confess to Saul’s murder will be a challenge, given I don’t know that he did it and there’s zero evidence to suggest he did. For now, I just want to see how he reacts to Saul’s name. The guy has a temper. That can be useful.”

Evie nodded. “It should be a revealing couple of hours for both of us.”

Evie met Jenna’s best friend, Robin Landis, at a coffee shop across from the fashion design firm where she worked. David perched on a stool off to the left of their table, in comfortable hearing distance, but not in Robin’s line of sight. Robin was willing to help, yet she was so emotional about her missing friend that Evie wondered how many details were being lost because of her eagerness to be useful. Evie found herself deliberately slowing the pace to try to settle the woman. She circled the interview back through less overt topics, taking notes in longhand rather than shorthand just to slow down the process further.

Eventually she asked, “Was Jenna having any problems with another student studying the same curriculum? A lab-assistant position a fellow student didn’t get, an internship with only one slot—anything that might have put her in competition with others in her degree track?”

“That happens a lot when you get into the PhD programs, and Jenna was headed that route. She wanted to be a researcher at a biotech firm—it was a serious ‘major goal in life’ focus. She didn’t want to go the medical-degree route but wanted as much as she could learn about diseases, genetics, and research methods as she could cram into her schedule. She was insane to carry the course load she did, but she was impatient to get the knowledge.”

“Any reason for that?” Evie asked, curious. “Someone in her family was sick? She lost someone to a genetic disease?”

“Not that she ever said, and she would have. We were tight that way. It was more like, ‘I can be the Einstein of my generation in genetics, the Alan Turing of biology’—she would talk that way. She liked to discover things, understand things.”

Evie remembered an Alan Turing biography on a side table in a photo of Jenna’s living room—something she’d been reading before she disappeared. “Was she a music lover? Was a concert something she would put into her schedule, even overloaded with studies as it was?”

“Live music was a big deal for her,” Robin confirmed. “It was the only thing that would get her out of her serious study mode. She loved to sing, had a wonderful voice. I don’t know what happened to her music collection, but she had hundreds of songs in her playlists and knew all the lyrics to them. An interesting band, a musical—that was her entertainment, her reward for all the work she was putting in toward her degree. She didn’t have a lot of money, but her parents were good to her, slipping in a few extra dollars with her school fees for those kinds of evenings out.”

“Triple M, the band in concert that night—was that Jenna’s choice or simply the band playing that Friday?”

“The band playing that night. I don’t think she had a special interest in them, though Jenna loved the song ‘A Waiting Love.’ She sang along with it, gave us a solo on the walk home as she sang it again. Tiffany had gotten a block of tickets so we could go as a group, and when people heard it was Triple M, they cleared schedules to be able to go.

“Jenna was delighted with the concert that night. The fact she had a boyfriend, it was a serious thing, and Triple M’s music was focused on songs like that—the music was right up her alley. Jenna figured another year and Steve would ask her to marry him. She was anticipating it, dreaming big and loving life. Not just having a great personal life, it was also doing something great for the world at large, and that’s why the studies mattered so much to her. She wanted to make a big difference in the world. Me”—Robin shrugged—“I just wanted to dream up fashionable clothes that didn’t go out of style within one season. Sometimes it’s weird, realizing we were such good friends. And now she’s the one gone. . . .”

“She had a lot of photos of you in her albums,” Evie mentioned.

Robin brightened. “That’s nice. We were close—a college camaraderie of doing life together for a time. Jenna sat through all my failed boyfriend sagas, handed over the tissues and shared the ice cream. She made life fun, you know? She made it possible to sparkle. She was wickedly smart to have selected those courses, but she wasn’t making a big deal about it. She just buckled down and did the work and could figure out hard things. She was kind of quiet, really calm, when the rest of us in the group had big highs and lows. I think that’s why she was a good fit with Steve. He had that steadiness about him too.”

“How were things with her boyfriend? Was there a former boyfriend still in the picture who might cause her to rethink matters?”

Robin shook her head. “It was Jenna and Steve all the way. He was working one of the sign-up tables on the quad when she was a newbie freshman going through orientation, and they struck up a conversation about the school paper and what he did. She didn’t sign up to join the newspaper, but she started hanging around there some to see what he was doing.

“They clicked the first time they met, and it was Steve and Jenna pretty much thereafter—at least once he decided she wasn’t too young for him. That first year he was playing it very safe, just a friend, but you could tell he liked her, and he was wise enough to come back around and ask her out on that first date just before the year concluded. It was”—Robin crossed her fingers—“like that between them after that.”

Evie appreciated the image Robin was sketching.

“By the second year, it’s ‘we’re dating.’” Robin put it in air quotes. “Steve had made a point to meet her parents, and you could tell when around them, this is a couple that’s going to be exchanging rings. I think he was the one making sure she got her degree without distraction before things progressed. She would have already been engaged if she could have made the decision.

“He wasn’t Mr. College trying out his wings, figuring out who he was and what he wanted. He was Steve Hamilton, solid guy, career figured out, plan in mind, and Jenna was part of the plan. They were cute together, happy, content.” Robin grinned. “That was so not a common thing on a college campus. Her friends were envious, me included, in a good way. She had a good thing and knew it. She wasn’t risking that by making a mistake, getting her head turned by looking at another attractive guy.”

“They were a solid couple,” Evie reiterated. She tried to word the next question carefully. “Was anyone else interested in Jenna? A guy wishing Steve wasn’t around?”

Robin thought about it. “Sure, there were guys who were interested in her. She was smart, but you could have a conversation with her. She was nice, and people noticed that. She had a relatively narrow course subject—maybe sixty people at most taking the same classes. There were guys she would have lunch with who formed a study group of sorts. Jenna mentioned a lot of them, but they were mostly tied to some class or another. She would occasionally connect two friends for a date. But if anyone was looking at Jenna with more than mild interest, she never mentioned it, and I never picked up on it.”

Evie thought there was a line there worth pursuing further. “Was Jenna interceding in a friend’s life? Someone got pregnant and was deciding what to do, a bad boyfriend breakup, someone not going to make the grades to keep scholarship money, that kind of drama coming into Jenna’s life via someone else?”

Robin smiled. “I would be most of that, with the exception of the pregnancy. My boyfriend and I were all over the map—together, then not, back together again. Or my roommates changed again and some worked out well, while others did not. College is about highs and lows when you’re twenty, emotions tended to run intense, and I wind up easily under stress. Add in finals week, the papers you had to write—there were pills floating around to keep you awake, others to wind you down. Jenna didn’t go there, but friends of hers would, creating its own unfolding mini-crisis. If you needed to chill out about your life, you ended up visiting Jenna and dumping your troubles on her.”

Robin paused, thought about it, then said, “I can give you the names of those who would’ve been in that circle of friends, but honestly it was typical college stuff. Tragedies at the time, but looking back, nothing out of the ordinary. Nobody was dealing with a violent ex-boyfriend or a suicidal depression or a body-image illness like bulimia. It was having to tell your parents you got a C or D on a test, seeing your ex-boyfriend now dating one of your used-to-be-girlfriends, that kind of tragedy. Not big-sized crises. No one getting arrested, or even getting particularly drunk and stupid. Jenna stayed above that churn, but she was there as a friend when you needed her.”

Evie was getting a good picture of her missing girl. “Jenna was a loyal friend.”

“Exactly. To me, with Steve, with others around her, Jenna stuck with you. She wasn’t a fair-weather friend.”

“Thanks, Robin. This was helpful.”

“Truly?”

“Yes.” Evie placed a card with her contact information on the table. “If you think of anything else that might shed light on what Jenna was like, or remember a particular friend she was helping around the time she disappeared, send me an email. Or just turn on a camera and chat about her, like you’ve done today, and send the video to me.”

Robin fingered the card. “You’ll let me know how your investigation turns out?”

“I will,” Evie assured her.

Evie added a few impressions of Robin to her notes as David drove them to Brighton College, where she would meet up with Ann.

“Jenna was a good kid,” David summed up. “Not the party girl or the leader, but a linchpin among her friends.”

“A good description.” Evie considered a conclusion, tried it out in words. “I think Jenna would have opened her door that night, even at midnight, even if it was a guy, if it was someone she recognized.”

“She’s thinking like a friend.”

Evie nodded. “A boyfriend of a friend of hers—‘We broke up again tonight, you’ve got to talk some sense into her, Jenna,’ that kind of pitch.” Evie rolled the idea around in her thoughts, but it didn’t want to settle anywhere. She knew names of Jenna’s friends, only they weren’t individuals with personalities yet, just names. She needed to talk with more of them to better fit her conclusion.

“Whoever did this likely shared her passion for music.”

Evie glanced over at David.

“She’s got the boyfriend in Steve,” David explained. “She’s not looking beyond him. Interested guy number two, how’s he going to get some of Jenna’s time? I bet he’s around when Steve’s out of town, sharing her interest in music. A guitar player, someone good on keyboards. Someone who could get Jenna’s free time by having the one thing she’s willing to let draw her out of her studies.”

Evie realized where David was taking this. “Jealousy.”

David nodded. “A tried-and-true motive for when a guy accidentally kills a girl. She didn’t attract a killer because she likes to study the human genome. It’s not just the Triple M concert. Music was the one avenue Jenna allowed in her life by her own choice. Music is how this guy found her. He knew her for years and wanted what Steve had—or he met her recently, but it’s the same drawing card. Music.”

Evie saw the leap he had made. “I’m not looking at music because it was Jenna’s passion. I’m looking at music because it’s his.”

“I think you’re looking for a music major, a music student.”

“Someone who would hear her voice and think That’s lovely, share her passion, and think That’s my soul mate.”

David nodded. “There’s your thread. If he’s on the campus with her, you’re going to find him through his music.”

Evie lifted her backpack from the backseat to look for the provost’s office number, found the card, and made a call. While she got bounced around getting to the person who could find her the student rosters from that time, she glanced over at David. “You probably just set me on the track that’s going to solve my case.”

He simply smiled. “If so, you can buy me dinner, then help me find my missing PI.”