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“Not too far a trip, at least.” I wonder if Seri really wants to go and how she would feel about my rooting for Margot’s team.
“Let me grab my bag.” Margot slips into the back room and comes out carrying her laptop case. She sits at one of the tables off to the side and stares up at me.
“Well?” I ask when she keeps looking at me. “What did you find?”
“You might want to sit down,” she says. “Do you still smoke?”
“Sometimes.”
She tosses me a pack of cigarettes and sits on the other side of me.
“Really?” I raise an eyebrow at her as I pull the plastic off the new pack. “You’re encouraging this? You always gave me shit for smoking.”
“I think you might need one or two.” She places a plate next to me to use as an ashtray and then leans down. She pulls some papers out of her bag and places them in front of her.
“You’re killing me here, Margot.” I resist the urge to bang my head against the table. “Will you just tell me what you found?”
“I know you,” she says, “and we’re going to do this my way—one step at a time.” She waves her hand at me. “Light up!”
I glare at her for a moment, but I know she isn’t going to budge. She’s a stubborn thing, and if I don’t play by her rules, I’m not going to get what I want. I sigh loudly and fish a cigarette out of the pack.
“First off, I think you should know that Iris McGuire is her married name. The man looking for her is her husband, Kyle.”
“Yeah, I figured that much out.” I light the cigarette, take one puff, and then set it down in the makeshift ashtray.
“She told you?”
“Yes.” I stare at her darkly. “She’s not lying to me about this, Margot. It’s just…Seri doesn’t know everything. Iris told me she was married but that she filled out divorce papers.”
“Yes, I found a record of those. Filed on her side, but he never signed them.”
“I assumed that.”
“He’s been charged multiple times with drug dealing, money laundering, and extortion,” Margot says. “Never convicted, but it doesn’t seem like he’s a nice guy.”
This is also not new information.
“I know about this,” I say. “I really want to know about Seri.”
“I’ll get to that in good time.” Margot shifts the papers around. “I want to talk about Iris first. Iris McGuire, maiden name Haugen. Born on June twenty-fifth in Indianapolis, Indiana, twenty-nine years of age. Her father Torsten emigrated from Norway as a child and enlisted in the US Marine Corps after high school, where he met and married her mother, Alyssa.”
“Are you trying to torture me?”
“Be patient.” Margot shuffles papers again. “It’s helps to understand the background here. Iris definitely has a troubled past, a handful of misdemeanor arrests but never any time in jail. She definitely hung out with a bad crowd though I think Kyle McGuire had a lot to do with that.”
“Yeah, and he threw her off a bridge in the end. Seri told me about that.”
“Did she?” Margot raises an eyebrow at me. “I couldn’t find anything about that, but I did find a missing person’s report on her.”
“There has to be more than that,” I say. “Her body was found on a riverbank by two kids. There was an investigation, but they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest anyone, but Seri knows it was Kyle.”
“I couldn’t find anything about an investigation,” Margot says. “Just the missing person’s report. It was filed by her landlord.”
“Right.” I nod emphatically, glad to hear something was falling into place. “That’s what Seri said.”
“No one has any information on her whereabouts since the report was filed.”
“That’s because she’s dead!” I slam my hand on the table as my patience wears out.
