CHAPTER 23 JESSALYN
JESSALYN
“I guess you can look through her room,” Sophy said when she answered the door. Her hair was mussed, and the dark smudges under her eyes spoke of a sleepless night. “But the police already did that.”
Ari followed her inside. “Does Amie have a computer?”
“They took it. They took a whole bag of stuff, and they left the place in a real mess.”
“Did they give you a receipt?”
“There are papers on the coffee table. I knocked on every door in the building, and nobody’s seen Amie. Some people didn’t answer, though. And I tried the buildings on both sides as well, and I saw all the posts on social media. Did you guys set up the ‘missing’ page?”
“The page and the phone number. The police don’t seem as worried as they should be.”
“I heard them talking after they found the pregnancy test. The officer in charge figured she went somewhere with Brett.”
“She didn’t. He ran home to Salt Lake City in order to shirk his responsibilities.”
“You found him?”
“Found him, spoke with him, eliminated him from our inquiries. He’s a deadbeat asshole, but he didn’t harm Amie.”
Sophy pressed both hands over her mouth. “Oh my… Then…then…”
“Then what?”
“The other officer… She didn’t use the word ‘suicide,’ but that’s what she was thinking. She kept asking about Amie’s state of mind, and her finances, and whether she wanted to be a mom. And…and I didn’t know the answers. I should have known the answers.”
I was all too familiar with that little sniffle. With the tickly feeling, with the tears that followed.
“Nobody knew Amie was going to disappear. For whatever reason, she preferred to keep those things to herself.”
Of course, I had tissues. These days, I never went anywhere without them, and I fished the package out of my purse and offered it to Sophy.
She wiped her eyes as I took a look around the apartment.
The place was small and untidier than it had been on my last visit.
Part of the mess might have come from the police search, but the sink full of dishes and the overflowing laundry hamper I glimpsed through the bathroom door said Sophy had been focusing on Amie rather than herself.
Out of habit, I squirted dish soap onto the flatware and began running the water. Ridge hated a messy home. A small part of me wondered how he was coping when he didn’t know how to run the dishwasher or do laundry, but the bigger part of me didn’t care. I was making a new life for myself now.
“You want me to make coffee?” I asked Sophy. “Have you eaten breakfast?”
“How can I eat? I should have started looking for Amie sooner. I should have realised something was wrong.”
Ari slipped out of the room, and although we hadn’t discussed an exact plan, I’d watched enough cop shows to realise she wanted me to keep Sophy busy while she checked out Amie’s room alone. Which I felt a little guilty about, but if it got us closer to finding Amie, then I’d do it.
“You need to keep up your strength. You’re not working today?”
“Sundays are the worst. The after-church crowd leaves Bible quotes instead of tips, and who can pay the rent with those? I need to try calling Amie’s parents again, but even Amie could never get ahold of them, so…”
“Justin spoke with her sister in Colorado.”
Sophy groaned. “He didn’t think this whole situation was bad enough already?”
“She lives close to their parents, and she agreed to drive over there.”
“Amie will hate that he called her. They were yelling at each other through the phone last weekend.”
“They had a fight?”
“It started eight years ago, and they haven’t let up since. When I asked if she was okay, she just laughed and said she had bigger things to worry about at the moment.”
“She meant the baby?”
“I guess. Why didn’t she tell me about it?”
Thankfully, Sophy didn’t seem to expect an answer to that question because what was I supposed to say? “Do you have coffee for the drip machine?”
“No, only instant. I meant to go to the store yesterday, but by the time I finished knocking on doors, I was so freaking tired.”
“Instant is fine.”
“And you don’t have to wash the dishes—Amie and I always take it in turns, and…and… I just want her to come home. I get that having a baby is a big deal, but she doesn’t have to handle it alone.”
“You have a big family?”
Sophy broke into a smile. “My brother has two little girls, and I just love being an auntie. Do you have children?”
“Not yet.”
The answer was automatic. I’d said it a hundred times, even as I tried and failed to get pregnant, even as the doctors poked and prodded me, even as Ridge berated me for having a defective uterus.
The tests had never pinpointed the problem.
My failure to conceive had been devastating at the time, but now…
now I felt relief as well as sadness. Leaving Maine with Shiro had been hard.
Leaving with Shiro and a baby would have been impossible.
“I guess there’s still plenty of time for you and Justin, huh?”
“Oh, no, no, we’re not dating. I just…well, I work for him.”
Sophy’s brow furrowed. “At Norquist Construction?”
“No, I’m more of a personal chef.” There, that sounded better than “he took pity on me and lent me his guest room.” “But with Amie missing, I’m helping out in whatever capacity he needs.”
“Really? But you’re so… Never mind.” Sophy picked up a dish towel and began drying a plate. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but secretly, I hoped Amie would do the Hallmark movie thing and hook up with her boss, but she always falls for assholes.”
“Brett isn’t the first?”
“Before Brett, there was Jayden, and before Jayden, there was Maddox. And also Connor, but I’m pretty sure Connor’s still in jail, so I don’t think he had anything to do with anything.”
Jail? Whoa. And should I be writing down those names? “How long ago was Amie involved with them? Do they live around here?”
“It’s at least a year since she broke up with Jayden. Is that important?”
“Maybe?”
“Jayden worked at the movie theatre. I’m not sure if he still does. Probably not, because he used to give out free popcorn when the manager wasn’t looking, and he’s also a bum.”
“Do you know his last name?”
“Bentley. Jayden Bentley.”
“And Maddox?”
“I’m not sure if that’s his real name. He was a singer in a rock band, but I went to one of their gigs, and…” She pulled a “yikes” face. “I doubt they landed a record deal.”
I wanted to call Ari back, but I worried about interrupting whatever she was doing. So I just repeated the names over and over in my head, trying to get them to stick. Jayden Bentley, Maddox, Connor.
“Do you remember the name of the band?”
“No, but it was one word. Stones? Or Bones? Something like that. Maddox had a whole bunch of groupies and a weirdly long tongue, which I think might have been the reason for the groupies.”
I stacked the last of the dishes in the draining rack and fished around in the water for cutlery. Other than a ten-minute mistake in college, Ridge was the only man I’d been with, and I didn’t really get the tongue thing.
“What happened with Connor?”
“He got pulled over for speeding, and the cops found drugs in his car. Amie didn’t do drugs, though. Never. She was horrified when Connor called her from jail asking for bail money.”
“Did she give it to him?”
“Amie was too nice. She didn’t know how to say ‘no.’”
A shiver ran up my spine because hadn’t Saylor said the exact same thing about me? But I was trying to change. I’d taken the first step by leaving Maine, and today, I’d accidentally taken another when I changed plans on Justin. He hadn’t blown up. He hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t even been upset.
His reaction—or the lack of one—had been a revelation.
Growing up, it had mostly just been me and Mom.
Dad was never around much, even when they were married, probably because he’d been too busy working his way onto the sex offender registry.
Until Ridge showered me with attention, I’d never really had a man in my life, and I’d had no frame of reference for his behaviour.
Now, I was beginning to realise that he hadn’t so much swept me off my feet as kicked my legs out from underneath me.
“So she bailed him out?”
“Bailed him out and then dumped his ass when he didn’t pay her back the money.”
“Do you think she might have turned to any of these men if she needed help?”
Sophy shook her head slowly. “I just can’t see it.”
“How about a hookup?” Ari asked from the doorway. “Was she the type to have a one-night stand?”
We both turned to look at her.
“Nuh-uh, no way,” Sophy said. “She couldn’t even ditch Brett properly. ‘Better the devil you know,’ that was her motto.”
“For real?”
“I mean, she never used those exact words, but when I suggested trying a dating app, she groaned and said she’d end up with someone even worse. Why are you asking? Do you think she went on a date on Wednesday?”
“Honestly? No, I don’t think she ran off with a man.
She didn’t run, period. There’s four hundred bucks in a paperback on her nightstand.
I can see her panicking over pregnancy and wanting a fresh start.
At a stretch, I can even see her dumping her purse so nobody could follow.
But she wouldn’t have left the cash behind. ”
Sophy’s voice shook as she spoke. “You think…you think she killed herself?”
“No. My money’s on her running into the wrong person in the parking lot at work, and now we have to get the police to take this seriously.
They need to launch a manhunt, not perform a half-assed search of her apartment and call it a day.
Do you recall the name of the female officer? The one who suggested suicide?”
A sob burst out of Sophy’s throat. “N-n-no.”
“We’ll find out. Before Amie disappeared, did she have any specific worries? Other than the pregnancy, I mean.”
“No, nothing.”
“There was Saige,” I prompted. “You said they were yelling at each other.”
Ari raised an eyebrow. “Recently?”
“Last week,” I filled in.
“She said Saige was up to her old tricks again, that’s all. But she’d had plenty of practice at dealing with it, so…”
“I heard Saige stole money from Amie?”
“Not just money—Saige stole her identity and trashed her credit score. Did you know she has a shopping addiction? She buys stuff constantly, even things she doesn’t need, and she was supposed to go to therapy, but Amie said it didn’t help much. Even now, she still gets letters asking for payments.”
“How does Amie handle that?”
“She calls the companies and explains. Most of them leave us alone now.”
“Any trouble with the neighbours?”
“We don’t spend much time with the neighbours.”
“Did she mention any issues at work? I’ll ask there as well, but if there was trouble with a colleague, she’s more likely to have told you.”
“No, she loved working at Norquist. Uh, you should maybe try talking with the other private investigator.” Sophy covered her face with her hands. “She made me promise not to tell anyone about him, but I guess under the circumstances…”
Ari glanced at me, then turned back to Sophy. “What other PI?”
“There was a thing a few years ago with one of Justin’s roommates?”
“Do you mean the murder of Ruby Costello?”
“I’m not sure of the name, but she died, and a guy went to prison for it.”
“Yes, Levi Sykes.”
“Well, his parents always swore he was innocent, so they hired a PI to prove that, and he gave Amie a hundred bucks a month for information.” Sophy chewed her lip. “Do you have to mention this to Justin?”
“Let me get this straight… A private investigator was paying Amie to dish the dirt on him?”
She’d betrayed Justin? He’d trusted her, and she’d sold his secrets to a stranger? This whole time, I’d been feeling sorry for her, but now I wasn’t sure what to think.
“She was in a real bad financial situation a while back, and that hundred bucks was the difference between her affording food or not. I tried to help, but I was struggling too, and…and… She hated it, okay? She said the idea of Justin being involved in a murder was ridiculous.”
“When did Amie last speak with this investigator?”
“Like, a month ago?”
Ari’s eyes widened. “They’ve been paying her the whole time she’s been working for Justin?”
“Yup. It was weird—she didn’t hear from him for years, but the money kept coming, as if they had an endless supply. And he always contacted her. She couldn’t get in touch to quit.”
“And then suddenly he came back?”
“We were watching a movie when he called. She told him to stop the payments and not to contact her again, but I saw her talking on the phone in the parking lot a couple of days later, and she looked pissed, you know? So it was either Brett or Saige or the sketchy PI guy who called back. She wouldn’t have told him anything much, but if there was a problem at work, maybe she mentioned it to get him off her back? ”
“What was his name?”
“Amie never said. I’m not even sure she knew. Don’t you have, like, a PI network you could ask?”
“It doesn’t work that way. Did she seem worried about the investigator?”
“No, just annoyed. Like, he was seriously calling her now? You don’t think he did anything to her, do you? He’s been there in the background forever, and he only used to ask random questions sometimes.”
“Do you know what those questions were?”
“He mostly just asked what Justin was saying about the dead girl. But Justin hardly ever mentions her. Okay, so he started that foundation with her name on it, which seems kind of extra, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s guilty, right?”
“No, it means he cares.”
“That’s exactly what Amie said. And she only took the money because she really needed it after the Saige thing. Like, she couldn’t even get a credit card.”
“Did Amie ever meet this investigator in person?”
Sophy shrugged. “She never said. Maybe in the beginning? Should I tell the police officers about this?”
“You know what? Let me take a look into it first. If it turns out to be nothing, we don’t want to distract the police from the investigation.”
Sophy bobbed her head in agreement. “But what can I do to help? What can I do to find Amie?”
“We’ll give you some flyers to hand out.”
Back in the car, Ari leaned her head on the steering wheel. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The Costello case is closed. Why is the Sykes family trying to reopen it after all this time?”
“Could it be connected to Amie’s disappearance?”
She paused for a long moment, considering.
“Yes,” she said finally. “The baby is a red herring. Nothing else feels right. Out of the blue, Amie disappeared, and now we hear this asshole wouldn’t leave her alone? The only question is, did she leave of her own accord, or did he help her?”
“What do you think happened?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer. She’d left all that money behind. Shiro found her purse in a bush.
“I think she wouldn’t cooperate anymore, and he took her.”