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“Of course I don’t mind. I’ll be fine with Spence.” She tilted her head. “What are you looking for?”
Nico frowned. “Not sure. But something about Carole is nagging at my brain. Maybe checking out her place will shake it loose.”
Fifteen minutes later, Nico sat in a window seat in the coffeeshop. He tried to figure out what had stirred his subconscious, but couldn’t put a finger on it. But a tiny itch niggled at him. And he always paid attention to that sensation. So he sipped his coffee and pretended to be checking his email.
An hour after Nico arrived, Kent Dawson walked around the corner and opened the door to Carole’s building. What the hell was he doing here? Dawson must know Carole was in jail.
Nico set his coffee on the counter. He hoped Carole’s daughter wasn’t home.
That was it. Carol’s daughter. That’s what had been bothering him. Had Carole made arrangements for her? Where was she living? Surely she wasn’t living by herself at this apartment.
He glanced at his watch. Two-thirty in the afternoon. The kid was probably still in school. Thank God. But what did Carole have in her apartment that Dawson wanted?
Five minutes later, a teen who looked a lot like Carole came around the corner, a cellphone in her hand and a backpack bouncing on her back. Shoving the phone into the pocket of her jeans, she opened the door to the apartment building with one hand and dug into the front pocket of the pack with the other.
Oh, my God. If Dawson was in Carole’s apartment, what would happen when the girl walked in on him?
He had to get the kid away from that apartment. Yanking out his phone, he dialed Julia. When she answered, he said, “Does Carole have a landline? And if she doesn’t, do you know her daughter’s cell phone number?”
“Let me look,” she said.
“Please make it quick,” he said, estimating how long it would take for the girl to get up to the apartment and get in the door.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Nico said. “Just do it fast.”
He heard computer keys clicking, then Julia said, “She has a landline. Here’s the number.” She rattled it off, then said, “I’m going to be terrified until you can tell me what’s going on.”
“I’ll tell you as soon as I’m done here,” he said. “What’s her daughter’s name?”
“Harper,” Julia said.
“Thanks, bae,” he said, clicking off his phone. Then he froze. Bae? What the hell was wrong with him? A lover’s nickname was exactly the wrong thing to call Julia.
Glancing at his phone again, he saw that five minutes had passed. Harper was probably in her apartment already.
Taking a deep breath, he dialed the phone number Julia had given him. Let out his breath when a young woman answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Is this Harper?” he asked.
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“I’m one of the bussers from Madeline’s,” he said, counting the cash in his wallet. “We have about fifty dollars in tip money your mom never got. I’m on my way to your apartment. Do you want to come downstairs and pick it up? I can meet you in the coffeeshop across the street.”
“Fifty bucks?” Harper said. “Really?”’
“Yeah,” he answered. “She took off without collecting it.”
“Oh, man, I really need that money.”
“I just walked into the coffeeshop. Why don’t you come over and I can give it to you.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Nico dumped his coffee cup and got a fresh one. Less than five minutes later, Harper re-emerged from the apartment building, looked both ways and dashed across the street. Yanked open the coffeehouse door and hurried inside.
Nico stood up. “Harper?” he asked in a low voice.
