Chapter 9
Nine
By the time I got to the office to check on poor Edwina—and Zachary—it was after eight. Honestly, I expected them both to be gone, but when I pulled into the lot, Zachary’s little car was parked in the corner, and the light was on inside.
I unlocked the door and raised my voice. “Hello?”
There was a scramble from the back of the office. Then the sound of nails scrabbling on the floor, and furious, high-pitched barking as Edwina rounded the corner and came for me, bat ears flapping. I took an involuntary step back.
She recognized me, though, and by the time she ran into my calves—because although her feet were no longer moving, she couldn’t stop in time—her stubby tail was wagging and her jaws were split in a delighted doggy grin.
“Hello, sweetheart.” I bent and gave her a scratch as she danced excitedly in front of me, her hind quarters wiggling in delight. Running my nails through her short fur was a little like scratching a Persian rug.
Zachary burst around the corner a second later, and took several steps down the hallway before he recognized me. “Oh.”
He slowed down, and then collapsed against the wall. “It’s you.”
I nodded. “I have a key. Didn’t you hear me let myself in?”
He looked sheepish. “Guess the TV was up too loud.”
“We have a TV?”
“I was streaming Jessica Jones on the computer,” Zachary said.
Of course he was. I decided not to say anything about it. It was after business hours, and he had stayed behind to take care of my dog. Or the dog Mendoza had given me responsibility for. Who cared if he was using the wifi? He could be watching much worse things than Jessica Jones.
“I came to relieve you,” I said instead. “Of the dog. I can’t believe I forgot about her. But I went from Franklin directly to Diana’s house, and she just slipped my mind. Thanks you for staying to take care of her.”
“It was no problem.” Zachary looked like he thought about saying something else, but then he thought better of it.
“I saw Detective Mendoza,” I said. “He came by to show Diana the drawing you helped him make. Of the Russian girl.”
Zachary nodded. “I only saw her for a minute. I’m not sure the drawing is a hundred percent. But it’s close. Did Mrs. Morton recognize her?”
Mendoza had shown the image to both us before I left, and we’d both said we didn’t know the girl.
I was reasonably sure I’d never seen her before.
I’d only followed Steven that one afternoon—yesterday—from the college campus to the house in Crieve Hall.
She’d already been there when he arrived, and I hadn’t gotten a look at her, and then I’d followed Steven back to the university.
Zachary had gone to the door alone with the pizza last night, and this morning she’d been gone.
There was no reason for me to have seen her, unless it was in passing, on the street, and if so, I hadn’t realized it.
Diana had said the same. She was probably telling the truth.
“Her name seems to be Anastasia Sokolov,” I told Zachary, and watched his eyes open wide.
“The detective found her already? That was fast!”
I shook my head. “Sadly, no. I found the name.” I told him about my trip to Franklin and Araminta Tucker. “She rented the house to Steven and his ‘daughter.’”
I left out the air quotes around the last word. Zachary snorted anyway.
“You’re too young to be so cynical,” I told him.
He grinned. “You forget. I saw her. And she looked like a stripper.”
Had she really? It’s hard to tell that from a drawing of a face.
Although she’d certainly been very pretty, at least the way Zachary had described her.
Blue eyes, long blond hair, Slavic cheekbones, plump lips.
If she had the body of an exotic dancer on top of it, it was no wonder he’d been dazzled when he came back to the car last night.
“Did you happen to mention that to Mendoza?” I asked.
Zachary nodded. “We did a full-body sketch, too. I guess he didn’t show you that one?”
He hadn’t. Trying to protect Diana’s feelings, perhaps.
“She didn’t just have the body,” Zachary said, and added, pensively, “although boy, did she have that…”
“But?”
His eyes cleared. “She dressed like a stripper. Like she does her shopping at Fredericks of Hollywood or Hustler. Cut down to here and up to there—” He demonstrated, “and like it was painted on. Four inch heels with platform soles. The kind girls use when they hump poles.”
Mendoza had definitely been trying to spare Diana’s feelings.
“So…” I said. “You’re saying she might actually be a stripper?”
He shrugged. “She dressed like one. Or like I figure a stripper might dress. Not like I hang out in those places.”
No. He wasn’t old enough, was he? And looked younger than he was, with his freckled face and red hair.
“I’m old enough,” Zachary said. “They let you in when you’re eighteen, as long as they don’t serve alcohol.”
“Don’t those places always serve alcohol?”
He shook his head. “A lot of them don’t. Less chance somebody’ll try to touch the merchandise, I guess.”
Perhaps. “So you’re familiar with the Nashville stripping scene?”
He squirmed. “I wouldn’t say familiar…”
“Could you take a guess as to where a Russian girl might take her clothes off for money? Is there a Russian, or maybe an East European, part of town?”
“There’s a Russian grocery on Thompson Lane,” Zachary said, “near Nolensville Road.”
“Would they have strippers?”
He shook his head. “Although I’ve heard the owner’s a former ballet dancer.”
Really?
“The girl I saw was not a ballet dancer. Too well endowed.”
No doubt. I was familiar with the type of girls who appealed to middle-aged, married men, and young, perky breasts seemed a big part of it. “Nolensville Road and Thompson Lane is sort of on your way home, isn’t it?”
Zachary shrugged. It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either.
“Maybe you could drive slowly and take a look around for places the girl might frequent. And if you happen to see a Russian strip club, and they’ll let you in, maybe see if anyone knows her?”
His eyes opened wide. “You’re asking me to go talk to strippers? On duty?”
“I’ll pay you,” I said. “I mean, it’s part of the job. If we can figure out where the girl is, maybe we’ll find Steven, too. Diana’s pretty worried.”
And she deserved to know something solid one way or the other. Even if it was that Steven was leaving her for a twenty-year-old Russian stripper. It had to be better than this deafening silence from a man who, for all intents and purposes, had just dropped off the face of the earth with no warning.
The least the coward could have done, was tell his wife the truth. After fifteen years of marriage, didn’t she deserve that?
“I’ll see what I can do,” Zachary said.
“Overtime pay,” I told him. “Time and half.”
He grinned. “I’ll go now.”
“Take your time.” The strip joints, if there were any, probably didn’t start kicking until later.
“You’d be surprised,” Zachary said. “A lot of husbands like to stop in on their way home from work in the afternoon.”
Ewww. “Maybe that’s how Steven met the girl.”
“Maybe.” Zachary hesitated. “If I find a place, I guess I can ask whether anyone’s seen him. I can probably find a picture of him on the internet, that I can flash around.”
“I’m sure the university website has one,” I said. “Just be careful. You don’t want anything to happen.”
“If I get arrested, Detective Mendoza will get me out of jail,” Zachary said. “He owes me.”
He did. If Zachary hadn’t interceded last month, Mendoza and I would both be dead.
I bent and scooped up Edwina. “I’ll take the dog home with me.”
“I’ll help you carry,” Zachary said. He reached for the bag of dog food beside the door.
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. You fed her tonight, right?”
He nodded.
“Then she can wait until tomorrow morning. We’ll see you then.”
“I’ll go turn off the TV and grab my coat,” Zachary said. He headed down the hallway again while I carried Edwina out to the car and put her in the passenger seat. Then I watched as Zachary came back out, shrugging on his jacket, and made sure he locked the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here,” Zachary said, and headed for his car. I reversed out of my spot and drove to the street, where I took off in one direction, down Music Row toward the roundabout and the Gulch, while Zachary went in the other, up Music Row toward Belmont University and the interstate.
When the phone rang, I was pretty sure it was the middle of the night. It felt like the middle of the night. A quick glance told me that it was actually twenty minutes after six, though.
Which isn’t exactly the middle of the night, but might as well be.
I fumbled the phone up to my ear. “’lo?”
“Gina!” Diana’s voice practically pierced my eardrum. “Gina, you have to come here!”
I guess I ought to say that I assumed it was Diana’s voice. It was Diana’s phone number. And the voice was female. Pitched so high that Edwina’s ears twitched, all the way on the other side of the king size bed.
But I wouldn’t have recognized Diana if I hadn’t already had her number plugged into my phone. She sounded frantic, hysterical.
“Diana?” I ventured.
“You have to come here!”
I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. It was almost a month since I’d chopped it off, so it had had time to grow out a little, but I could still pretty much wash it and go. This morning, it looked like I wouldn’t even have time to do that.
“What’s wrong?”
“Steven!” Diana shrieked.
“Is he back?” Was he dead?
I stopped myself before asking.
“He’s been kidnapped!”
Kidnapped? “What do you mean, kidnapped?” How could he be kidnapped? Who’d want to kidnap Steven?
“Just get over here!” Diana told me, her voice so high and shaky I could barely understand the words. “I’m calling the police.”
She hung up in my ear. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and picked up the pair of jeans I had dropped on the floor when I went to bed last night. If I wasn’t going to have time for a shower this morning, I might as well wear them again.