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Have you felt anything at all? Like maybe there’s just something in the wrong frequency?
“Chloe, have you been getting mental messages from someone? More than what you’ve told me?”
“What are mental messages?” Chloe was walking toward their car, but looked back at Elizabeth.
“Like in your head. You said the man loves me, but you can’t see him.”
She nodded soberly.
“Does he say other things?”
“He says lots of things. He’s kinda mad now.” And with that she ran for the car.
“Chloe!” Elizabeth hurried after her. “That’s the wrong car!” she called as she realized her daughter had run to another vehicle that looked a lot like hers, only it was two spots away, closer to the exits and faced out.
Chloe had her hand on the door handle. “What?” “That’s not our car,” Elizabeth said, pointing to her own Ford Escape.
At that moment, a woman slid around the side of the vehicle in question and moved toward Chloe.
Elizabeth looked at her blankly, then at the vehicle, a dark Ford Escape, and then to the gun in her hand that was leveled at Chloe’s temple. “Nadia?”
“This is odd,” Rex admitted to Ravinia. He’d spent most of the day tracking down Elizabeth’s friends, the women from the circle she called the Moms Group and their husbands, though one of the women wasn’t a mother. He’d also contacted the Sisterhood group who were singularly unhelpful.
He thought back to the conversations.
Because Elizabeth didn’t want her friends to know she’d hired a private detective he told them he was with the police. He just asked them general questions, letting them think he was checking up on Elizabeth’s story.
Jade Rivers told him flatly that she had nothing to say and neither did her husband, Byron. Looking at the list Elizabeth had supplied with all their names, their husband’s names, and their places of work, Rex called Byron at work, but he wasn’t much more forthcoming than his wife.
Deirdre Czursky admitted that Elizabeth and her husband were having problems, but she staunchly insisted that the police were pretty much all pigs and that she knew he was just trying to railroad her. She told him he should call up her husband Les. “In fact, I’ll give you the number right now!”
When Rex put through the call, Les greeted him coldly, having been warned by his wife. He, too, told Rex he was barking up the wrong tree.
Tara Hofstetter said she was going to call Elizabeth up immediately after she got off the phone and tell her that the police were asking about her. And then she’d added, “She saved that family, you know. All of them. They would be dead if it wasn’t for her, so you just leave her the hell alone!” Her husband Dave was actually taking a workday at home and said that Elizabeth should be considered a savior, and it was just like the police, and in the larger sense, the government, to get everything back-ass-ward.
Rex couldn’t get hold of Vivian Eachus. Her husband, Bill, asked more questions than he answered but sung Elizabeth’s praises as well.
“What’s odd?” Ravinia asked, interrupting Rex’s thoughts.
“Nadia Vandell hasn’t answered her cell phone all day, so I finally decided to call her husband, Karl. He’s an investment banker, and though Elizabeth didn’t have a number for him, she knew where he worked. I just called his office, hoping he hadn’t gone home yet.”
“He wasn’t there?”
“He wasn’t there, but his boss still was. Looks like Karl hasn’t been there for six weeks. His wife called his boss and said he’d up and left her and that she hasn’t seen him since.”
Ravinia stared at him hard. She was so still for so long that Rex’s brows lifted.
“You okay?” he asked as he picked up his own cell and hit speed dial to Elizabeth.
When she didn’t answer, he returned Ravinia’s stare as he counted the rings for Elizabeth, staying on until the call went to voice mail.
“It’s him,” Ravinia said.
“Karl Vandell?” Rex’s pulse leaped and he was on his feet. “How do you know?”
“I can hear him. No . . . I can hear Chloe. . . .”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rex rasped.
