THIRTY-TWO

Erin Haney stood in front of me. She wore a full-skirted dress with matching ballerina flats. Her highlighted hair was held back by a low ponytail, and her eyes were wide. “Madison? You scared me! What were you doing down there? Why are you holding an arm?”

Erin was in Dallas to research a part in a movie. But was she? Erin had told no one about her trip to Dallas. In her own words, she’d wanted to stay off the radar. Her agent didn’t know. Her family didn’t know. Her older brother John, who died in this very building, didn’t know. Or so she’d said.

I shook my head. Erin had been noticeably upset when Tex had delivered the news about John at Alice’s house. But Erin was an actress. She’d been trained to fake things like that.

I stepped into the inventory cage and closed the basement door behind me. Erin had hired Nasty and shadowed her around Lakewood. She’d been at the police station and knew about Live Scan, and had left before any of us could question her interest in what we were doing. She had been keeping watch on Alice’s house. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have noticed my car sitting there overnight, leaving, and then coming back. Calling the police out to investigate would have given her an excuse to enter and hide the evidence that she’d recopied the letter from Alice. And for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a reason for her to be at the pajama factory now.

I studied her expression. She looked so innocent that I doubted my suspicions. “I was looking for something.”

“What?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the key that Rocky had dug up. “I found this out front. I have no idea how long it’s been buried there. There’s a number on it, and I know this will sound silly, but I was hoping to find a key log so I could see who it belonged to.”

If she recognized the key or worried how much I knew, she didn’t let on. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should just tell her—confide in her about the guns I’d found and the evidence Tex had said they’d found on the upper floors of the factory. If I was wrong about my suspicions, having her on my side would give us a better chance of survival should someone come after us. But still, I was wary.

“There’s a key log right over here,” she said. She turned, picked up a large leather book from the desk behind her, and hugged it to her chest. “It gives me the creeps back here. Let’s go out front, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. We walked side by side, the skirt of her dress flouncing out around her knees, my floral jacket and pants making a thwik thwik sound as the crinkle crepe fabric brushed against itself. Nothing about the moment felt threatening.

I needed a way to find out if I was completely wrong. And then I got an idea. “Did you get my message? Is that why you’re here?”

“How could you leave me a message? You don’t have my number.” She set the ledger down on the corner of a sewing station and waited for my explanation.

How, indeed? “I called Nasty. I mean Donna,” I said. “She knows how to get in touch with you, right? I asked her to relay it to you.”

“What was the message?”

“To meet me here tonight.”

“Donna knew you were coming here tonight?”

“Sure,” I lied. Come on, Erin, say something that will tell me if you’re the crazy one or if it’s me. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you. To be honest, I thought she might come with you. I know how badly she wants to get in here.”

Erin set down the book and flipped it open. She ran her finger down the numbers on the ledger until she reached the last line that had been filled in. “Here it is,” she said. “According to this, your key belonged to Suzy Bixby. Do you know her?”

“Suzy? She was the model who died in the factory. That’s strange, though. I heard she never worked here. Can I see that?” I asked. I reached for the book and spun it toward me. The name Susie Bixby was written on the last line of the ledger next to the number 42.

The name had been misspelled.

The entry had been written in a slightly different pen than the others.

The handwriting was a match for the address on the envelope I’d found in Alice’s kitchen.

It took all of five seconds to confirm my suspicions about Erin. Unfortunately for me, it took Erin less time than that to pull out a gun.