Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“Did you know Brittanie?” Rus asked.
Rob shook his head again. “No. Seen her around. I’m married but I’m still a man. Girl that pretty, you notice. Not that way for me, though. I’m not a skeeve. She near-on could be my daughter. She came in, usually with her friend, buying the girl shit we got. Pots and plants and shelves and stuff.”
“You hear anything about her? From Dakota? Or gossip?” Rus asked.
More head shaking. “I wish. I wish I could lead you right to whoever hurt her. I know Dakota real well, but not in that way. He didn’t share about his family. He came to work, gave me a migraine, and left. That was Dakota.”
“Do you know if he had a girlfriend? Who he hung around with?” Rus kept at him.
“Nope,” Rob answered. “Though, I would be floored any woman would have anything to do with that pervy asshole. And he wasn’t about making friends with his workmates, so if he had any outside of work, that’d surprise the shit out of me too.”
Nothing.
All morning, except unicorn heads that drained all of the shoring up his girl Sabrina gave him, they got nothing.
Moran ended it. “We’ll stop taking your time. But thank you for talking to us.”
“I hear anything, Harry, you know I’ll call.”
“Appreciated.”
“Good luck to you,” he said, his gaze taking in both of them. “I mean it.”
Rob loped off, and Rus and Moran moved to the cruiser.
Once they were in, he asked Moran, “You got an address on Dakota?”
“Yeah, his mother’s house.”
Dead end.
Though, he suspected that pit bull had not been regularly fed for three weeks.
So Dakota loses his job, dumps his dog on his mother and skips town?
Moran started the cruiser up. “What about the dad?”
“We’re working it. Nothing so far.”
“Do you want me to punt that to McGill?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
Rus pulled out his phone.
“It’s slow going pinpointing those men and finding time to chat, but Dickerson says he’s going to have a short list of possibles by this afternoon,” Moran pointed out.
“Right. So how are we feeling about what we just heard?”
“We’re feeling like the brother was a piece of shit, and he could have wanted money and thought his sister was his cash cow, like the mother did, and got pissed she didn’t pony up,” Moran started. “But it doesn’t sound like he’s smart enough to try to put us off the scent by copycatting a serial killer’s MO to that degree. And I’ll need to buy a year’s worth of mints to deal with the epic puke I’ll need to unleash if he could do that to his sister.”
“Yeah, that’s where we are,” Rus muttered. “You want in on the staff interviews?”
“Absolutely.”
With that answer, once he texted McGill, he pulled up Lucinda’s name on his texts.
He’d gotten her number before he left.
Now, he had to touch base to ask her chef to make another sandwich.
NINE
Ever Created
“How was your reuben?”
“It was a damned fine reuben. But I’d drive all the way up here for just five of those chips.”
Lucinda smiled.
It was after the staff interviews, which she’d scheduled thirty minutes apart, but they’d only needed fifteen, and in some instances ten.
The intel they got ran the spectrum of what they’d already learned, depending on if Brittanie flirted with your man.
She was either loved or put up with.
Not hated. Unless someone was a really good actor.
They’d done the top six on Lucinda’s list, and one who Lucinda threw in to shake things up because she wasn’t Brittanie’s biggest fan: three dancers, a bouncer, the doorman to the theater, a waitress, and one of the sous chefs (Bon Amie had a full menu they served on the upper floor, and a tapas menu they served in the theater).
The six who were close to her were devastated she was gone. The one who wasn’t hip on her was shaken up, and being human, openly upset about what happened to a woman she knew.
Lucinda had invited Rus and Moran to come back and speak to other staff during breaks or lulls whenever they wished.
He didn’t yet know Moran’s plans, but Rus was returning that night.
Now, Moran was on the landing taking a report from Dickerson about possible leads.
And Rus was alone with Lucinda.
“I’m sensing things aren’t going well,” she prodded gently.
“I started my day with Melanie Iverson talking to me through a screen, then Moran and I rescued her son’s dog that she was slowly starving.”
Angry pink dots hit her cheeks, her eyes widened for a second, but she clamped down on her reaction before she asked, “How’s the dog?”
“He’ll be at the vet a few days.”
She nodded.
“Though, she has no interest in laying her daughter to rest, so you’re clear to go on that.”
Her face got soft.
Amazing.
Her voice was soft too when she said, “Thank you.”
Also amazing.
His turn to prod.