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WAITING FOR HER TAKEOUT order, Morgan swept her gaze around The Wagon Wheel’s dining room, letting it slide over the table where Cole sat with his friends. She didn’t want to interrupt and deal with awkward introductions, so she pretended to study the takeout menu. When the hostess returned with Morgan’s meal, she grabbed the bag and hurried to her car.
Before she lost her nerve, she pointed the car away from the inn and toward Elm Street. She could do this. She would do this.
Morgan parked by the porch, then grabbed the two lamps she’d bought at the thrift shop in town from the backseat. Inside, she plugged one into a living room outlet and turned it on, clicking the three-way bulb to its highest setting. She went back to her car for the bolt cutters she’d bought at the Tool Shed and carried them and the second lamp upstairs.
She could do this. She would do this.
Once she got the trunk open, she’d go back for her dinner.
Using her phone’s flashlight app, she went to the attic and found an outlet. She plugged in the lamp, setting it as close to the padlocked trunk as she could, then shoved the trunk toward the light, which seemed far too feeble in the gloomy attic. Her plans to eat her sandwich while going through the trunk’s contents needed revising.
If anything in this house had belonged to Uncle Bob, she suspected she’d find it in the trunk. Why would renters bring a trunk of their belongings and leave it behind?
She positioned the trunk. It wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected.
Not heavy enough for a body.
Stop that. Be glad it’s not in the basement.
She picked up the bolt cutters.
“If you try to cut through the padlock, you might damage the cutters. Locks are usually case-hardened steel, and most bolt cutters aren’t designed to handle them,” the clerk at the Tool Shed had said. “Try them on the hasp first.”
Bolt cutters. Tatiana Morgan would never break into a steamer trunk. Hell, Tatiana Morgan would never have been allowed to venture into a hardware store. Didn’t matter. Tatiana Morgan had ceased to exist when she was seventeen, and Morgan Tate could do whatever she wanted to.
She positioned the blade of the cutters on the hasp behind the padlock and squeezed. With a clunk, the latch on the old trunk gave way and flopped forward, secured padlock and all. Morgan cut the other side of the hasp and set the locking mechanism onto the floor. Sucking in a deep breath, she pried the lid open.
Interrupted by a pounding on the front door, she dropped the lid. Who could be here? She hadn’t locked the door behind her. She heard it creak open.
“Anyone here? This is the Pine Hills Police. Please show yourself, hands where I can see them.”
“I’m coming,” Morgan called down the stairs. “I live here. This is my house.”
She left the attic, hit the darkness at the top of the stairs and backtracked for her phone. “I’ll be right down,” she called again.
The light from her phone bounced in her trembling hands as she made her way down the two flights of stairs. Why was there a cop in the house? She had every right to be here. With no way to prove it.
She paused at the bottom step. A woman in a Pine Hills Police uniform stood in the middle of the living room, eyeing her with a scrutinizing stare.
“Hello, officer. I’m Morgan Tate. This is my house.”
“Good evening, ma’am. I’m Officer Nolan, Pine Hills Police. Do you have identification?”
“In my purse.” Morgan chinned toward the couch where she’d left her bag, then stepped across the room. “It’s not going to show this address. I inherited the house from my uncle, and I’m trying to make it habitable.”
“You don’t have anything in the purse I need to worry about, do you?” Officer Nolan said.
“Like a gun? Absolutely not.” Morgan fished out her wallet.
“Please take the license out,” Officer Nolan said.
Morgan complied, the officer looked at the license, then at Morgan, and handed it back with a polite thank you.
“What brought you here?” Morgan slipped her license into its slot.
“Routine patrol, ma’am. We’ve been instructed to keep an eye on this property. I saw the lights and came up to check things out.”
Morgan estimated the officer was in her late thirties, early forties. Had she lived in Pine Hills when Uncle Bob lived here? When she asked, she got the same answer she’d been getting since she’d arrived. Nobody knew Uncle Bob.
~~~
COLE’S BACK WAS TO the door, and he wasn’t going to turn around. If Morgan noticed he was here, it was her decision to come say hello. Which he doubted she would, given her reply that she’d see him tomorrow.
“Out of luck, Patton,” Brody said. “She’s doing takeout.”
“I told you, there’s nothing between us other than me offering to help her with house repairs.” Cole didn’t mention they had plans to meet in the morning.
“Right,” Connor said. “Construction worker turned cop.”
“I hung around after high school to help my dad out.” Cole felt no obligation to reveal his entire history. He wasn’t lying. Just withholding bits of the truth. “There’s no law that says you can’t change career plans.”
Connor grinned. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve wanted to be a lab geek since I was eight and my uncle gave me a chemistry set.”
Scott Whelan hid behind his beer mug. Cole recalled he’d been forced to change careers after an on-the-job injury. As far as Cole could tell, Whelan had made the adjustment and was always available and willing to answer questions, and he did it without sounding superior. None of the belittling this is how the big boys do it attitude.
The door chimes tinkled. Connor’s eyes lit up. Cole didn’t need to turn around to know that Officer Nolan—Faith—had come in. Seconds later, she pulled out the chair next to Cole and sat, exchanged hellos.
Will came by and Nolan ordered a Diet Coke and a chicken sandwich. On duty, food that could be grabbed and carried if you got a call while on a meal break worked better than pizza or wings, a reality Cole had learned the hard way.
“Thought I had a prowler at the old Tate place,” she said. “It was the new owner. No excitement.”
Cole’s ears perked up. Morgan had gone to the house, not the Castle? What was she doing? Why hadn’t she wanted his company?
Because she lives in a different world. Get over her. You’re blue collar. She’s got money.
“Back to my question,” Cole said to Whelan. “Strictly as an intellectual exercise, how would you determine if the message referred to a crime or was just a prank?”
“I’d look for missing persons reports first. Won’t be easy. Without a clue as to whether you’re looking for a male or female, with no idea as to age and a timeframe as long as five years, you’d be hunting for a hamburger patty in a McDonald’s warehouse.”
“Where would you start?” Cole asked.
“Looks like somebody wants to score points with the new owner,” Brody said.
Cole flipped him off. “Intellectual exercise.”
“I’d start in close, then move out,” Whelan said. “Since it’s not ringing bells with Pine Hills, I’d look at the county level. Look for missing persons cases in the cold case files. See if you’ve got any homicides, recovered John or Jane Does—look at the NamUs database. There’s nothing to say—if this was somebody boasting about killing someone—that he didn’t kill his victim someplace far afield, but it makes more sense that it was someone local.”
Cole made mental notes, since he had no cause to be searching police databases for the information. NamUs, the database of missing persons and unidentified bodies, wouldn’t be much good if he didn’t have the slightest idea who he might be looking for.
“So, you’d be looking at a whole lot of McDonalds’ warehouses,” Nolan said. “Major distribution centers.”
“Like I said, start close, spiral out. Same as walking a crime scene.” Whelan stood, fished some bills out of his wallet, and dropped them on the table. “Enjoy your evenings.”
Cole gave a pointed glance at Brody and pushed back his chair. He added enough money to cover his share. “Laundry beckons.”
Brody snagged one more wing and added money to the pot. “Yeah, I’d better be going, too. Early shift means early to bed.”
“Nolan’s a good cop,” Brody said when they were outside. “I don’t get what Connor sees in her. She’s got to be at least five years older than he is, and on the hot scale, relative to your recent lady friend, she’s lukewarm.”
“Which is a problem because?” Morgan was three years older than Cole, and it didn’t bother him. He didn’t know if it would bother Morgan if he told her—which brought things back to moving from friends to close friends, and then maybe into relationship territory. A long way off, and Cole feared the money thing might be a bigger obstacle than a few years of age difference.
Of course, he was jumping ahead of himself on that, too.
Get some groceries. Finish your laundry.
“You’re right.” Brody dug his keys out of his pocket. “I come from a long history of stay-at-home, put Dad through college moms.”
“Times change,” Cole said. “It’s good that there are more options today.”
As he drove to Thriftway, Cole pondered Brody’s words. He’d let whatever was going to happen between himself and Morgan play itself out, money be damned.
After putting his groceries away and dealing with the dreaded laundry folding chore, made more palatable by streaming The Matrix, Cole considered Scott Whelan’s words. Sounded like a search that had more tentacles than a school of squid. Knowing more about Robert Tate might narrow things down. What had Morgan said the housekeeper’s name was? He closed his eyes, tried to recall everything he and Morgan had talked about, a technique he’d found helpful with witnesses.
Most of what surfaced in his thoughts was Morgan. Her smile, the way she played with her curls, her scent, a blend of unidentifiable fruits and flowers. He pushed his way past that, to their conversations.
Phyllis. No last name. How many housekeepers named Phyllis would be working at the Castle?
The grouch at the front desk answered Cole’s call. The good side of dealing with the grouch was that he didn’t ask for details.
“Jessup,” the man said.
Cole thanked him and disconnected.
He set up his laptop at his desk and started a new search.