“Is that what he told you?” Sheraton walked into the conference room. “Am I hearing right that you had a conversation with Cliff Beamer today?”
“This morning at the diner. A flirtation really. I accidentally bumped into him, and he recognized me as the reporter who did the story on Sandy Cranston. I asked him to give a quote about her, and that’s when he said he couldn’t because his father doesn’t like him talking to the press. But we kept chatting.”
“Flirting, you mean,” Grimm said.
She took a deep breath, grinning. “Yes, he was charming at it, and I did my best to appear interested to keep him talking. I even gave him a glance as we left the diner.”
“You minx!” Grimm said and swatted at her. “You left me, but was making eyes at another man.”
She laughed and sidestepped before he caught her with his hand. “Hey now.”
“Looks like the two of you have been having some fun,” Sheraton said.
“If you mean spending the night together in the ER, then yeah, we’ve had a ball,” Grimm said.
It was Quinn’s turn to swat him on the arm.
“Ow!”
“What happened?” Sheraton asked.
“Toxic fumes coming out of my shower head. A threatening message left in red lipstick on my bathroom mirror that no officer found when they searched the place,” Quinn explained.
“Detective Phillips called before we came here and said his CI unit was testing the toxin to determine if it was life-threatening or not, and should have the results in a few days, and it was good we went to the ER for treatment,” Grimm added.
“Good lord. No wonder you’re just now getting here. I thought maybe you had decided to take the whole day off, and I was feeling proud of you, Quinn, but then you came through the door,” Sheraton said. “I’m not even going to be upset that you didn’t call me last night when this happened.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but I had to come by to add these details once we finally woke up. We ate breakfast at the diner and then crashed. It was after noon before we both woke. Then we had to fix lunch before we could come over. We’ve been moving slow I guess.”
“And rightly so,” Sheraton agreed. “Okay. So, you’re going to follow up with a call to Trish Creswell about whether she can recall if Barbie ever mentioned dating Cliff Beamer while at Pembroke State. When do you think you will be ready to start running the features on each of the missing women?”
“In a day or two.” Quinn raked her bottom lip with her top teeth, thinking for a moment. “I’ve got to find some way to connect Heather Randall to Barbie and Sandy other than being the third missing woman. There has to be another connection.”
“I’m sure there is, we just haven’t come across it yet. Maybe we need to take a drive out to Lewistown tomorrow and talk to her family like we did the Cranston’s,” Grimm said.
“I think you’re right. With Heather it’s all fresh, having just happened. We’ll get a better response if we go now. I know Logan said he’d check, but we can’t wait around too long. We need to get on this as fast as we can, especially if I’m going to do a feature. I will need to get photos and background info on Heather.”
“Do it then,” Sheraton said.
A knock at the conference room door had all three of them going quiet and turning to look to see who could be there. But no one opened the door. Sheraton walked over and opened it, taking a brown envelope from the reporter.
“Quinn, this just came for you. It looks like the previous package that was delivered.”
She swallowed. “Does it have a return address on it this time?”
“No.” Sheraton shook his head.
Taking a hesitant step, she reached for it and tore into it, finding inside three photos, a key, and a laser-printed letter.
I wantto make sure you believe me. Here is proof of what I said before. The trophies that are kept. The missing jewelry was taken from each woman. I can’t continue posting these messages to be delivered, it’s too dangerous. I have rented an anonymous mail drop box at the place on Chestnut Ave. and here is your key. We can correspond through it, and you can ask me questions. I’ll be waiting.
“Oh my god,it’s pictures of the trophies. This guy has sent us proof that he is for real and wants me to correspond with him through a PO box he’s rented,” Quinn said, showing them the letter and the photos.
“You better call Agent Street and let him know about this,” Grimm said.
“But what if he tries to prevent me from reaching out to this guy? Or he wants to set up a sting operation for him to lure the killer out? I don’t know. Maybe I should write back and see what happens first, and then contact Agent Street,” Quinn said.
“We have to be cautious whichever way you decide to go,” Sheraton said.
