Chapter 25
All during the twenty-minute ride to the car wash, Lainie dreaded the moment she would get there. Her thoughts returned to the time she’d spent in the kayak in A-Bay.
I wondered what I would do if I found Evie’s body.
Am I facing that scenario now? What if Evie is dead in the car wash?
Before she left home, she’d called Ben. She wanted support, but she didn’t want to put her brother or her parents in the position to have to see Evie in death—if this woman was Evie.
Though the more Lainie thought about it, it wouldn’t make sense that it was Evie.
But the mere possibility was enough to rattle her.
Ben answered quickly. “Detec— Lainie, what a surprise. What’s on your mind?”
“They found a body at Stan’s car wash.”
“What?”
“You hadn’t heard?”
“No. We haven’t been keeping tabs on LBPD’s investigation. Do they have an ID?”
“I’m heading there right now. No ID on the body. It’s female.”
She thought that she heard a sigh of relief.
“Do you mind if I join you there?”
“Not at all.”
Lainie wasn’t sure how far away Ben was.
When she reached Sudsy Place, it took her a minute to get out of the car.
Shea had closed the business, so the big roller brushes were immobile, and the normally bustling business was quiet.
About half a dozen employees loitered around—some sitting on the small wall that encircled the wash.
Some walking around, talking on their phones.
They must have arrived thinking the wash would be open for business. Now they were at loose ends.
Suddenly the fear was real that it would be Evie, and that thought made Lainie sick to her stomach. She’d only ingested coffee, and it came dangerously close to coming up again. As she swallowed and took deep breaths, her stomach settled down and she got out on shaky legs.
“Oh, Lord,” she breathed a quick prayer, “please keep me standing if this is Evie, please.”
She joined Shea, who stood just under the awning before the entrance to the place with lab tech Bryce Parker.
“Glad you could make it,” he said. “Here’s the deal, Lainie.
The wash had been running, the workers you see hanging around said that it was unlocked, so they proceeded with business as usual.
None of them went back to the office because they didn’t need to.
We shut everything down, went inside, and found the body.
Coroner is not here yet. No one in your family has heard from Stan? ”
“Not that I know of. You think he’s on the run now?”
“He might have seen us searching his house, or someone might have told him about the warrants.”
“If Stan contacted my folks, they would tell him to talk to you. And they’d tell you. Right now, their big concern is for the boys. Stan has proven himself to be dangerous in their eyes. I would be the last person he’d contact.”
Shea nodded. He paused to run a finger between his collar and his neck.
“One way or another, he got tipped off. As for the scene in there, it appears as if the woman got here, opened things up, and walked in on someone because the office was trashed. Cameras are placed everywhere, but they were all disabled.”
“How long ago?”
“Within the last twelve hours.”
Lainie frowned as her nerves mellowed and her shoulders relaxed. “That doesn’t make sense, not if it’s Evie. Stan was just in Hawaii telling everyone that she was killed by a shark four days ago. If she were here and alive the whole time, surely she would have tried to contact someone.”
Bryce shrugged. “I can’t give an exact TOD, coroner will have to, but whoever she is, she hasn’t been dead long.” He handed her a pair of booties and gloves.
Another car pulled up.
“Who is this?” Shea asked.
“FBI Agent Isaacs. I called him. He’s the one who noticed everything was off in Hawaii. I just thought he should be here.”
“Good,” Shea said. “The Feds have been helpful. They briefed us on their investigation.”
While Lainie put on the booties and gloves, Shea explained to Ben what was going on.
Ben put on gloves and booties as well, and together they followed Bryce into the car wash office.
“We found her in a back-office closet,” Shea said as they walked through the business.
While it was bright with sunshine outside, inside the business the light was low.
In the darkness, they walked past a gloomy, silent wash area.
A closed car wash was certainly a creepy place to be in, Lainie thought.
“From the drag marks, she was shot in the doorway and then pulled back to the office. Her purse is missing, maybe so we would think theft or burglary.”
“There was blood leaking under the door,” Bryce told them as they reached the office.
He pointed to an open door. Shea went in first, Lainie followed him, and Ben brought up the rear. Bryce hung back; it was a tight space.
The office was dimly lit, and it was a mess.
Drawers were opened; papers were strewn everywhere.
The closet was shaded. Shea stopped short of the blood puddle and shone a flashlight into the space.
The light illuminated the body. Lainie saw a hand first, fingernails painted green.
Red hair spilled out like tendrils from a mop. She stepped closer and bent down.
Relief swept over her. “That’s not Evie.” She straightened up and stepped back.
Ben leaned in. “It’s Moffit’s payroll person, Taylor Abbott. She was only hired a month ago. Most likely she was here early to open the place up.”
“She must have had something on Moffit,” Shea said. “He certainly shut her up.”
Lainie shot Shea a side glance, not sure that what she was seeing indicated Stan was the perpetrator.
She stepped back and surveyed the office.
It had been torn apart, as if someone was searching for something.
She remembered a conversation with Stan from years ago.
“There’s gotta be a floor safe somewhere. ”
“How do you know?” Ben asked.
“I’m guessing. Years ago, when Stan tried to get a YouTube channel off the ground, he found a sponsor who sold floor safes.
He wanted to install one in his house, but it’s on a concrete slab so he couldn’t.
He settled on a wall safe, but I remember him often saying that he thought floor safes were the most secure. ”
Ben stomped on the floor, and it sounded hollow. “He could definitely put one somewhere in here.”
Lainie and Ben moved back to the doorway while Shea and Bryce began inspecting the floor. It wasn’t long before Shea found the safe.
“Unfortunately, whoever tore up the office found it first.”
The safe had been under a carpet. When he exposed the opening, it was obvious the lock had been broken. Removing the lid exposed an empty container.