On the way over, Rob went through what he knew about the victim. Clark Faber was a thirty-nine-year-old, single, white male with no children. He had no arrests on record, apart from a speeding ticket in 2012 in San Antonio, Texas. He’d put in a request for military records, but it was the week of Christmas, so there was little hope of getting any information from the air force before the new year.
Rob parked near the alley behind Trinity Bar and Grill. The bar itself was closed for the holiday and wouldn’t be opening back up again until the twenty-seventh. The area between buildings was wide enough for delivery trucks to get through, and the poorly maintained asphalt had large cracks created by cold days meeting hot days and vice versa. Typical of Missouri.
I pulled the hood up on my coat and pulled the cinch string to keep the wind from stinging my ears. I worried that the cold would dampen any lingering odors in the area. Much like a refrigerator, winter had a way of keeping garbage from spoiling.
The whirring sound of a heat pump fan and the hum of a flickering sodium streetlamp gave the area a spooky feel. The yellow light from the lamp added to the eerie quality. Rob led us to the bar’s back door, then pointed up at the camera mounted about ten feet up on the building across the street.
“Does the owner of the bar own that building as well?” Ezra asked.
“No,” Rob said. “That’s Mega-shield Insurance. It’s owned by Darcy Adams, but according to Conroy, Ms. Adams gave him permission to mount the camera there, as long as he shared anything that might be relevant to her business.”
I crossed my arms over my chest as an idea struck me as more than coincidental. “How long has the camera been up?”
Rob came around the left side of me and put his foot on the concrete step at the base of the door. “Do you think it’s important?”
“Maybe.”
He gave me a skeptical look but pulled out his phone and hit a number already on his call list. He put it on speaker and held it out between us. After a few seconds, a man answered. “Hello?”
“Mr. Conroy, this is Detective Phillips from the Hillside PD. We spoke earlier.”
“Yes, Detective. What can I do for you?”
Rob cleared his throat. “How long has your security camera been up in the alley?”
“For four years,” Conroy replied. “I put it up after my bar was broken into.”
“And, just to clarify, your neighbor Ms. Adams is aware the camera is mounted on her building?”
“Yes, sir. She is fully aware.”
“Thank you for your time,” Rob said. After he hung up, he stared at me. “Well? Did that call tell you anything?” He gestured meaningfully at his head with a twirling finger.
I frowned. “If you mean did I have a vision, then no. That’s not how it works for me.”
“Then why did you want to know how long the camera has been up?”
“Something Lynn said this afternoon when she and Hal were talking about Penny working at Pike Manufacturing.”
“Oh, right,” Ezra said with a nod. “Penny worked at Mega-Shield Insurance. I’d forgotten about that.”
“Exactly,” I enthused, quite pleased I’d remembered. “And, if the camera has been up for a while, and Ms. Adams was aware, chances are good, Penny, as her employee, might’ve known about the camera too.”
Rob sucked in a breath, then coughed as the cold air hit the back of his throat. When he could, he said, “If you’re right, then Penny knew she was being recorded.”
Ezra cast a sweeping glance around the empty alley. “Which means she might have left some kind of crumb for us to follow.”
Rob chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment, then shook his head. “We searched the area after Conroy reported the video. We didn’t find anything other than her broken phone.”
“We should look at that video again,” I said. “You might’ve missed something, or some signal from Penny, without realizing.”
Rob took his phone from his pocket. Big, wet flakes of snow hit the glass and melted into fat drops. “Crap,” Rob said. “This snow is going to make the situation even more difficult.”
“Then we need to hurry before the trail goes cold,” I said. Both men stared at me as if I’d grown an extra nostril. I gave them a wry look. “You know what I mean.”
Without any fanfare, Rob opened the gallery on his phone and tapped the video folder.
“It’d be nice if there was sound,” Ezra mused.
“Would’ve made this a whole lot easier,” Rob agreed.
The snow doubled in volume, and I blinked as flakes hit my eyelashes. “We should hurry this along.”
“Here,” Rob said. We huddled over the screen to keep it from getting wet. “This is where she triggers the motion sensor.”
We watched Penny’s arm raise over her head twice at the beginning of the clip. It made me wonder if she’d done it a few times before the recording had started trying to trigger the camera into action.
“The Santa guy arrived right behind her.” I indicated the moving vehicle. “Do you think she had planned to meet him there? In the alley, I mean? It can’t be a coincidence, right?”
Ezra pointed at the screen. “What’s she doing there?”
While Penny gesticulated her anger with one hand, she waved the other at her hip. “I see it,” I said. “Did she throw something?”
“Her hand moved in the direction of that drainpipe.” Rob waved his hand at a six-inch diameter pipe strapped to the side of the building.
I handed Ezra a small pink flashlight I had in my purse. It had been a stocking stuffer gift from him the previous year. He gave me a crooked smile as he clicked it on and crouched next to the pipe to investigate its base and the surrounding area.
I took the opportunity to go smell garbage. Ick. I was correct about the cold weather dampening the stench.
“Anything,” Rob asked.
“Nothing,” we both said at the same time before we locked gazes.
“Jinx,” I said. “You owe me a Diet Coke.”
“Done.” Ezra stood up, and the flashlight beam caused something shiny on the ground to glint.
“What’s that?” I walked over to where I’d seen it, a few feet from the drain. “Shine that light back over here.”
Rob made his way over as Ezra swung the flashlight in my direction. I saw the glimmer of metal again. “Aha!” I dug a clean tissue from my purse and picked up the item. “It’s a key.”
“A key to what?”
I held it out to him. “It looks like my house key, but who knows.”
Rob took it. “The grooves have rough tool marks. I think this might be a duplicate of the original key.”
“What do you think it fits?”
“A house, a lockbox, a locker…. There are too many options,” Rob said.
Ezra brought the light closer. “Agreed. There are too many options.”
“If Penny threw it away to prevent her abductors from taking it, then it must be to something important. We should go see if this key fits anything there.” It would also give me the opportunity to investigate any lingering aromas.
“Apartment,” Rob said. “She lives in a one-bedroom apartment over on Grand Avenue. But I’ll need to get a warrant.”
“How long will that take?” I asked. “What if Penny doesn’t have that much time?”
“Whether Penny’s involved or not, it’s illegal to search someone’s home without probable cause, and her being missing isn’t enough to go break into her place,” Ezra said, agreeing with Rob. "However, a concerned family member with a key could go in and look around. And if he or she found something of importance, they could notify the police….” He let the implication lie.
“That’s walking a thin line,” Rob said.
Ezra nodded. “Really thin, but not illegal.”
Rob didn’t look happy about it, but he said, “Okay. Let’s do it. Where are we going to get a key?”
Ezra retrieved his phone. Hesitantly, he said, “I’ll call mom and see if Aunt Lettie has a spare.”