Authors: Suzanne Brockmann
What were the odds of
that
happening? Especially now, with Sam’s broken rib. Cracked. Cracked rib. Funny how his ribs were always cracked, not broken.
“You said she took a bag.” Alyssa asked, “Could she have brought a change of clothes with her to the gym?”
“Yes, she usually did,” Miss Endercott replied. “She didn’t always shower and change there, in fact, more often than not, she didn’t. But she liked to have that option.”
“A bag that size”—the doorman put in his two cents—“could have fit changes of clothing for the entire week.”
“But to leave without specific instructions for me to get a sitter for Lulu, or to cancel the chef,” the personal assistant argued, “is
most
unlike her. I assumed she’d be back, so I put the dog in her crate. Which she soiled because no one attended to her until I came in again this morning.”
“Wait a minute.” Sam spoke up for the first time since they’d arrived. “Are we on the same page here? Margaret Thorndyke was last seen leaving for the gym
this
morning. Right?”
The doorman and the assistant exchanged a look.
“No, sir,” Mr. Jackson said.
“It was
yesterday
morning,” Miss Endercott informed them.
“Okay,” Alyssa said, sitting forward. “We’ve definitely got our wires crossed. The police detective helping with this case told me that Ms. Thorndyke was seen by the doorman, leaving for the gym around 9
A.M.
today.”
Mick Callahan had left a monotone message on her voice mail, obviously only because he’d been ordered to do so by his lieutenant. “Could someone else have seen her? Is there another doorman—”
“There is,” Mr. Jackson interrupted her. “But the detective spoke to me. Our conversation was very brief, though, and he put me on hold in the middle of it.”
Alyssa glanced at Sam again. Clearly Mick Callahan wasn’t interested in doing them any favors—let alone doing his job. She was going to have to call his lieutenant, get someone else assigned to the case. Even though the FBI was taking charge of the investigation, they’d still want the help and cooperation of both city and state police.
“Did a police detective named Callahan get in touch with you?” she asked Gwen.
She nodded. “He called about an hour ago. He didn’t seem overly concerned. He said he’d be by in the morning, if Ms. Thorndyke hadn’t shown up before then.” She looked to Mr. Jackson. “It was Ms. Bonavita who called to say that you and Mr. Starrett would come by with some questions.”
Jackson nodded. “I got a call from Miss Maria, too.”
“Let’s start over,” Alyssa said. She looked at the doorman. “The last time you saw Margaret Thorndyke was
yesterday
morning.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And it was yesterday that you arrived at 10
A.M.?
” she asked the assistant.
“I arrive at ten every day, including weekends, so yes. That’s correct. At 2
P.M
.—yesterday—I called Ms. Thorndyke’s cell phone, but went right to voice mail. So I called the gym,” Miss Endercott continued, “to see if she’d left a message for me at the front desk, which she sometimes does. But she hadn’t. I inquired—had they seen her that morning—which was yesterday—and they had. She signed up for her usual spinning class, which ends at eleven-fifteen. Which doesn’t mean she didn’t stay longer. I knew the young woman to whom I was speaking, and she … bent the rules and checked their computer system. And told me that Ms. Thorndyke had left the gym just after noon.
“At 6
P.M.
, I still hadn’t heard from her, so I called her cell phone a second time. Again I went right to voice mail, so I crated Lulu and left for home.”
“She’s basically off the map,” Sam’s voice was loaded with his incredulity, “and you only call her twice before just… going on home?”
Gwen Endercott looked at him with a smile of condescension and barely concealed disdain. “Clearly you don’t move in Ms. Thorndyke’s circle.”
“That’s true,” he said. “So enlighten me. In your little circle here, when a friend disappears you just—”
“She’s not a friend, she’s my employer.”
“Did you call her later that night?” he asked.
“I absolutely did not,” she said, her pinched mouth looking as if it were going to purse itself into oblivion. “Ms. Thorndyke has given me specific instructions forbidding me to pester her with phone calls. I had already pushed the boundaries—and risked my position—by phoning her twice in one day.”
“And you didn’t think it was unusual, or cause for alarm,” Sam asked, “when you arrived the next day
—this
morning—to find that she hadn’t been home last night? Does she do this all the time? Maybe hook up with one of her
gentlemen friends?”
Gwen Endercott now looked at Sam as if he were something nasty she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. She clearly disapproved—of her employer’s vanishing act, of the current sheer tastelessness of this situation, and particularly of Sam’s blunt questions. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”
“I can,” the doorman chimed in. “It’s been a while, but yes.”
“A
long
while,” Miss Endercott said sharply.
Alyssa looked at Sam, who received her silent message and nodded. Divide, and get more accurate information—at least from Robert Jackson, who didn’t share Gwen Endercott’s inclinations to hide the truth about her employer’s love life.
“Miss Endercott,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “Perhaps you and I could go upstairs. I’d like to get a current picture of Ms. Thorndyke, and take a glance at her appointment schedule, if I may … ?
The assistant rose to her feet with a sniff and led the way to the elevators as Alyssa glanced back at her husband, who was shifting his position again on the couch, and wincing because he’d thought she wasn’t watching.
Miss Endercott wasn’t the only one soft-pedaling the truth.
Sam was definitely hurt worse than he was pretending. Although getting him to admit it, or even take a few days of bed rest, was never going to happen.
“And she goes,
His name is Fwed.”
“Oh, my God,” Jenn said as she gazed into the black button eyes of the stuffed rabbit that Dan had pulled from his bag to show her. “That’s so cute. Fwed.”
“Yeah, she was unbelievably adorable,” Dan told her as he zipped his bag back up. “I tried to give it back, but her brother said she’s got, like, duplicates and the real Fred stays safely at home. She told him to give me
wotsa kisses in Anastan.”
“Anastan?” Jenn asked, but got it as the word left her mouth.
“Afghanistan
. Wow.”
It was easy to forget that the too-handsome, too-charming man who was going to spend the night sleeping on her kitchen floor was a battle-hardened soldier. A highly trained commando type, who regularly risked his life for their country. A skilled and deadly operator who was staying here with her tonight, to make certain that she remained completely safe.
So why did she feel this sideways-slipping sense of impending danger every time she met his too-warm brown eyes?
Because he was funny and smart and nice, and the very fact that he had shown her Fred-the-bunny, that he’d chosen to share that story with her gave her the biggest case of warm fuzzies that she’d fallen victim to in a long time.
She’d thought she was tougher and more cynical than that, but apparently not.
“Her mom was Army,” Dan told her as he straightened back up. He was tall, too. Taller than she would be, even if she got crazy and wore heels. And dressed as he was in a snug-fitting T-shirt and standard green army pants, clunky boots on his big feet, he looked like
he belonged in some fictional TV-show-world like
Battlestar Galactica
or
Army Wives
, where everyone was beautifully Hollywood-perfect. “She was in the hospital in Germany and …”
He shook his head and took his empty plate and went into her kitchen to get more of his General Tso’s chicken. He raised his voice so she could hear him from her seat on the sofa, where they were tray-tabling it. Not that there were other options. Jenn didn’t have a dining room table, let alone a dining room.
“I mean, she gave me the rabbit because she somehow knew—Mindy, the little girl. I don’t know how, but she somehow knew that I, you know, don’t get a lot of packages when I’m over there. I mean, it’s no big thing. I’m fine with it. It’s actually better that I don’t. We move around so much anyway, it can be a pain in the ass to track a package when you’re out there and …”
He came back out with his plate reloaded, a charmingly sheepish expression on his face, his eyes filled with chagrin. “Jesus, listen to me. Did you believe
any
of that?”
Jenn silently shook her head, no, as she hugged Fwed to her chest.
Dan nodded. “Yeah, I thought I’d gotten really good at lying about it, but… Somehow this kid knew it was crap, too.” He forced a smile as he put his plate on the tray table and sat back down on the other end of her couch. “You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even fool the toddlers, right?”
“Your girlfriend doesn’t send you packages?” she asked, inwardly wincing because her words sounded like exactly what they were—a fishing expedition.
She’d caught him with his mouth full, and as he chewed and swallowed, he looked at her with those eyes that were the color of really expensive chocolate. He took a slug of his Coke before saying, “I’m not very good at long-term or long-distance, so … I’m kind of… perpetually between girlfriends when I’m over there.”
“Ah,” Jenn said, even though she wasn’t quite sure exactly what
he’d just told her. There had definitely been a message in there, but she wasn’t sure how it fit with the fact that any minute now he was going to ask her for sisterly advice.
It was going to be about Maria. It always was. He was going to confess that he’d fallen instantly in love with Maria’s beauty and intelligence, and could Jennilyn take her friend’s pulse, see if Maria even noticed whether or not Dan existed.
Being friends with Maria meant spending her life locked in Limbo’s torturous eighth-grade-room. She’d had more phone calls start with the man on the other end saying, “So, what’d she say … ?”
“How about your family? Don’t they send care packages?” she asked Dan, because the conversation was lagging. That, plus she really couldn’t believe he didn’t have
some
one sending him
some
thing while he was overseas.
“Highly dysfunctional,” he said. “Trust me on that one. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but… In a nutshell, it’s a nightmare.”
“Do you really know anyone,” she asked him, “whose family
isn’t
dysfunctional? And what’s functional, anyway? The Cleavers? The Huxtables? I think real life for most people is probably closer to the Sopranos.”
He laughed, flashing his gorgeous white teeth. “Should I be worried about that? LeMay doesn’t sound like a big Mafia name. Although it’s clear you’re living
way
beyond your means in this palace.”
She laughed, too, as she narrowed her eyes at him. “Mock me all you want. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“In a steam box,” he teased as he sipped his soda again. “If this is
really
where you want to be … ? I’m pretty sure that in your past life you were a microorganism on Mars.”
“Oh, please,” she said. “The heat
just
clicked on. If you think
this
is a steam box, wait an hour.”
He laughed, but then realized, “Are you serious? It
just
went on … ?
She nodded. “But I didn’t mean
this
is where I want to be,” she said, gesturing to her apartment around them. “This is temporary. This is unimportant. What I
mean
is working with Maria. Doing something that matters.” She smiled at herself, rolling her eyes and adding, “She said to the Navy SEAL who recently returned from a war zone.” Talk about doing something that mattered.
But Dan was still focused on the heat. She could already feel it getting even warmer in there, and she shrugged out of the sweat shirt she’d pulled on when she’d first come home.
“You know, this is something I’ve definitely never said before while having dinner for the first time with a nice-looking woman,” he told her, “but… when it hits eighty-five, I’m going to
have
to take off my pants.”
“I told you to bring shorts,” Jenn said, laughing. “And let’s keep the conversation bullshit free, okay?”
“What, you don’t think you’re nice-looking?” he asked, glancing at her before shoveling more chicken into his mouth. “God, this is delicious.” He filled his fork again and, cupping his hand beneath it, held it out to her. “It’s awesome. You gotta try it.”
“No,” she said, holding her own hand up to stop him. “Thank you. I
still
don’t want any. It’s too spicy.”
“For you,” he said. “But not for me.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah. Right. I get it. It’s subjective. You like General Whoever’s chicken and you think I’m … whatever. Like I already said, let’s keep this conversation bullshit free, SEAL-Boy.”
“Fair enough. Tell me about your daddy, the mafia hitman.”
Jenn laughed. “He wasn’t.”
“So what was he?” Dan asked with his mouth full. “An alcoholic?”
She looked at him. How could he possibly know … ?
He correctly interpreted her incredulity and smiled. “I was checking out your bookshelf before. You have some of the same books as I do. That, plus an Al-Anon handbook …” He shrugged. “Raise your hand if you have a family member who’s been through rehab.” He lifted his hand, too, adding, “That’s good that he’s, you know, gotten through the denial stage.”
“He’s done better than that,” Jenn admitted. “Was
your
father
…?”
“Sister,” he told her. “My older one. Sandy. Although my father might’ve gone to rehab, too. I don’t know. He definitely needed to, but he dropped out of our lives a long time ago, and hasn’t bothered to drop back in.”
“Not a twelve-stepper, then,” she said.
“Sandy is,” Dan said. “She tried to do that… whichever step it was. I forget. The making amends thing. She came to Vegas, to visit my mother and husband number four. That’s where they’re living now. It used to be New Orleans. Sandy and
her
husband—ex now-had a sporting goods store, but then Katrina happened, and—”