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It had been there before her. Obviously Connel used it. Still, hearing others enjoy it somehow cheapened what they’d shared in there.
Maybe that was exactly his point. His way of demonstrating their association would be fleeting. That what they had was cheap. What they had wasn’t special. Of course it wasn’t. It was a bargain anchored in extortion and deceit.
Maybe they needed to have a conversation… or not.
Connel would have to take a ticket and get in line. Her to-do list was growing every minute.
She woke up alone in an empty club. Not for the first time.
No car waited on the curb either. Maybe some of last night’s women needed a ride home.
The Chronicler was her goal. After missing the previous day’s meeting and dodging Steeple’s calls all weekend, she needed to catch him up.
Good thing he had time because she’d barely paused for breath since entering her boss’s office an hour ago.
“She vanished,” she said, throwing up her hands before landing them on the back of the chair she’d only sat on for about thirty seconds on arriving. “Dorsey McDade was the apple of her father’s eye. They doted on her. All of them did. And then, bam, gone, never to be seen again.”
“Didn’t think the McDades were the type to let that sort of thing fly,” Steeple said. “What did the cops say?”
“I don’t know. Lachlan’s getting me into Records this afternoon.”
“You talked to him about it?”
“I didn’t get into details,” she said. “He got the call about Evander Manzani being in the hospital before we could get into it.”
“That’s one we should follow up on fast. Vex will talk to you. Is he still in the hospital?”
“I don’t know. I saw him last night,” she said. “He’s not talking.”
Not about who was responsible anyway. Thank God.
“That was quick off the mark, even for you,” Steeple said. “Who gave you the tip he was laid up?”
“I was out with Lachlan when he got the call.”
“Right. Sure.”
Looping the conversation back to the point, she wanted to avoid talk of Evander and get back to the mystery Strat fed her.
“So you know Errol McDade is the grandfather. He had a bunch of kids, but three of his sons took prominent positions: Burl, Alastar, and Clancy. The last being Dorsey’s father. Dorsey is the forgotten McDade child. Twenty years ago, one minute she’s there, the next minute she’s gone. I’m hoping the police investigation will give me more insight. The media barely covered it. It was headline news when there was no news, and then it just stopped. No one reported on it after those first days.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The police files should shed more light. Was it an abduction? An accident? Is she dead? Alive?”
“Was a body found?”
“Not that was ever reported. But here’s the thing, Clancy McDade, her father… he disappeared less than a year later.”
“He didn’t disappear,” Steeple said. “He’s in California or Arizona or some place like that now… I think he was in New York with Burl for a while.”
“The point is, he left the city. He was close to Silvio Manzani. But he walked away from Alastar to go to Burl… or wherever he went.”
“You think something went down between Alastar and Clancy?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I want to get into the police files. Most of the news reports were just about the family. Even back then reporters were worried about publishing the wrong thing and ending up in the family’s sights.”
“The Manzanis had a firm foothold in the Midwest then. Alastar and Burl were busy fighting the other Irish families.”
