—
After Steve left, a server came to take my order. I glanced at Rhonda. There was a cup of tea in front of her, along with two pieces of rye toast she’d yet to touch. I ordered coffee and a blueberry muffin.
When the server left, Rhonda opened her purse and took out her wallet. She removed a picture and slid it across the table to me. I looked at it. It was a class photo of a girl in a cheerleading outfit. She had wavy brown hair, rosy cheeks, a dimpled smile. Blue eyes identical to Rhonda’s. “This is Daisy,” she said.
“Beautiful girl.”
“Does she look frail or unhealthy to you?”
I cleared my throat. “No,” I said. “Not at all.”
“She doesn’t look that way to me, either,” she said. “But that’s how those lawyers talked about her. They made it seem like she was hooked up to an iron lung and I should have been watching her at all times. Not letting her see friends. They made it seem like it was my fault she died.”
“That isn’t fair,” I said.
“Daisy wasn’t aware of it, and neither was I,” she said. “We had no idea she had a heart condition. How would we know to check for that? She was active in sports. She was akid.”
The waitress returned with my coffee and blueberry muffin. I wasn’t hungry anymore. “I assumed you knew,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Even if you did know about her condition, it wouldn’t make any difference,” I said. “No one should lose a child like that. I’m so sorry.”
She cringed. “That’s what they said. The lawyers. That little COO. ‘We’re so sorry for your loss, ma’am,’ but they’re not sorry. They’re liars. I could burn their offices to the ground. They still wouldn’t be sorry.”
She said it all in that same measured tone, but there was adifferent look in her eyes—a hardness when she’d saidthat little COO. It nearly made me ask Rhonda where she’d been today between eleven and noon, when Sky had been shot. But instead I sipped my coffee and bided my time. When all was said and done, Sky’s shooting was police business. I was here to find out what Rhonda might know about what happened to Dylan Welch.
She carefully put the photo back in her wallet. Then she drank her tea, that hardness in her eyes slowly dissipating.
“So,” I said, “what questions do you have for me?”
She placed her cup back on the saucer. “Okay, first of all,” she said, “who hired you to find Dylan Welch? Was it anyone involved with Gonzo?”
“Sort of.” I picked at my blueberry muffin.
“What do you mean?”
“It was his mother who hired me,” I said. “She’s a primary shareholder in the company and I believe she’s chairman of the board of directors. But she didn’t hire me in…um…that capacity.”
“She wants her child back.”
“Yes.”
“I understand that feeling.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said. It was, after all, why I’d relayed that information about Lydia.
She sipped more tea. “Do you know where he is and if he is alive?”
“Those are the questions I wanted to ask you.”
“So you don’t know,” she said.
“Not yet.” I swallowed my coffee. I wasn’t going to tell her about the audio messages and texts he’d sent Elspeth—though, thinking about them now, I felt a little sick. In a way, Dylan was like Gonzo—there were good people who loved him, but that still didn’t mean he wasn’t disgusting.
“I hope he’s alive,” Rhonda said.
I blinked at her. “What?”
