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Jackie stopped walking. We were at the junction of the hallway, where the main fork led back to the set. “Could I ask … Would you mind looking at her things, Dexter?”
“I didn’t know her at all,” I said.
Jackie sighed. “I know,” she said. “I just … it’s hard enough not to burst into tears every time I think of Kathy, and I …” She put a hand on my arm, and blinked back a few tears. “Please? Would you?”
The way Jackie looked at me with those wonderful violet eyes starting to fill up, I would have juggled flaming chain saws if it would make her happy. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll take a look.”
Jackie smiled. “Thank you,” she said. She took a deep breath, sniffled, and straightened up. “Right now I really do have to find Sylvia.” She leaned close to me and bumped her forehead against mine gently. “Thank you,” she said. “See you later.” And she strode away down the hall.
I watched her go for a moment. I had never before realized how much fun it can be just to watch somebody walk. Jackie was very good at it—not just because she didn’t fall down or walk into a wall, although that was true, too. There was just something about the way she put one foot in front of the other that made me think of how I felt waking up next to her naked body. It didn’t make any sense, but it was true. So I watched Jackie until she vanished through a doorway opposite the set.
I turned around and headed back toward Jackie’s dressing room. I didn’t see Anderson, which seemed odd. He certainly hadn’t gone past us. He might have gone out the door at the far end of this hall, but a sign on it clearly said that an alarm would sound if the door was opened, and I hadn’t heard any alarm. That seemed to mean that he was still in the dressing room, and that was very odd.
The door was ajar, and I peeked around it and into Jackie’s dressing room. Anderson was still inside. He was standing at the far end, at the rack that held Jackie’s costumes. He had the sleeve of one of her shirts held up to his nose, and he was apparently sniffing it. I didn’t know why he was doing that, but it made me want to break a chair on his face. Still, a little good humor is almost always a better way, so I stifled the urge and stepped into the room.
“Looking for a clue?” I said cheerfully, and he jerked around, practically flinging the shirtsleeve away from his face. “Because I’ve heard you totally don’t have one.”
“Don’t have— I was just … What do you mean?” he said.
“I said, you don’t have a clue,” I said. “It’s common knowledge.”
His forehead wrinkled, and I could probably have counted to five or six as it dawned on him that I had insulted him.
“Listen, ace,” he said. “I am running a homicide investigation here—”
“By sniffing Jackie’s clothing?” I said. “Is her armpit a suspect?”
Anderson turned bright red and stuttered at me, until it was very clear to both of us that nothing coherent was going to come out of his mouth. He looked around for a way to escape, and saw nothing except the toilet. So he cleared his throat, muttered something I couldn’t hear, and pushed past me, giving me one last glare from the doorway before he disappeared.
I closed the door and went to look at the box of Kathy’s stuff. I took the suitcase out and put it on the floor. I really doubted that there would be anything significant stuck in with her socks and underwear, and even if the urine stains had been washed out, I would rather not have to look at Kathy’s underwear. The purse was a more likely place to find something, so I dumped it out on the makeup table and poked through it. There was the usual clutter of coins, gum wrappers, receipts, coupons, a large clump of keys, a packet of tissues, lipstick, a small mirror, three pens, and a handful of paper clips. A wad of one-dollar bills, wrapped around a valet parking stub. Two tampons in a bright pink plastic case. A large packet of cinnamon-flavored sugarless gum. A wallet with several credit cards, license, a few business cards, forty-three dollars in cash, three paycheck stubs.
I frowned at the heap of useless junk. Something was missing. I am not an expert on what women carry in their purses, but a tiny nagging something tugged at the edge of my brain and whispered that this picture was missing a piece.
I looked in the box, lifting out the black nylon laptop case and unzipping it. There was nothing inside but the computer, with its ubiquitous half-eaten Apple logo on top. I poked through the Velcro-sealed pockets: a power cord, a flash drive in one pocket, and nothing else—and still the whiny little voice niggled and prodded at me that there should be something else. So I opened the suitcase and, as I had feared, found only underwear, socks, clothing, a baggy bathing suit, and a pair of sandals.
I snapped the lid shut and put the suitcase back on the floor, and as I straightened up I knew what was missing: her phone. Kathy’s all-important always-present phone, the one that had all her contacts and appointments. Her signature accessory, the one thing she was never without. The phone should have been here, in her purse or separate, and it was not.
Of course, it was possible that the phone was still in the lab, maybe because it was a blood-soaked mess, unfit to be released into the world. It was also possible that somebody—probably Vince, in my absence—was checking the call log, the calendar, and so on, for any hint of the killer’s identity.
And it was also possible that the killer had taken it. Not for a souvenir, which was easy to understand—for me, at least—but because he was in a rush to escape the scene and wanted to make sure that no memo or note on the phone could implicate him. No time to look, so just grab the thing and dash away into the night. That’s what I would have done: Get safely away, and discard the phone later, throwing it off a bridge, or into a handy canal.
It made sense, and I was sure I was right. If Kathy’s phone was not still in police custody, the killer had it.
Easy enough to check, of course. All I had to do was ask—not the officer in charge of the investigation, of course.
That was Anderson, and I was reasonably sure he didn’t want to say anything at all to me, unless it was, “You’re under arrest.” But one quick call to Vince ought to clear it up.
I pulled my own phone from my pocket and sat in the chair in front of the mirror. I heard six rings, and then Vince said, in his Charlie Chan voice, “Hung Fat Noodle Company.”
“I’d like some cat lo mein to go, please?”
“Depends, Grasshopper,” he said. “How far you want it to go?”
“Quick question,” I said. “Podrowski. The victim at the Grove Isle last night. Do you still have her phone?”
“Quick answer,” he said. “Nope.”
“Was it found at the scene?”
