Chapter Nine – Molly

 

Luke pulled up in front of the house just as I pulled into the driveway next to my old wreck of a Scion. I’d had to sell my other car, a Cooper Mini, when I got laid off. Luckily, I’d been able to find something more fitting for my current lifestyle.

Heh. Luckily.

I sat there for a moment, staring at Luke’s car in my side mirror, just thinking.

Thinking about how much I’d screwed up my life.

About the boxes of my belongings stacked in the room I was renting from Heidi. About my clothes that had all been sold off to secondhand stores. About the mounting debt from my student loans and the piece-of-junk car I could barely afford.

And him, too. How he seemed to have his shit together. How he seemed like a nice, caring guy who knew what he wanted in life. Who had a decent job that he was good at. Where he helped people.

What was I? A nanny. A fill-in mother for people too rich to be bothered with raising their own children. Here was a man who’d traveled, seen the world.

How did I travel? In the SUV I’d borrowed from my missing friend.

Sighing, I climbed out of the car as he began to come up the driveway.

“Nice place,” he said, nodding to the one-story house. Like all the other houses in the area, it had that distinctive southwestern flair the HOA required.

“Thanks,” I said. “Belongs to Heidi—I’m just renting a room.”

He nodded. “You mentioned that.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Should we go in?”

I chuckled a little, shaking my head as I cleared my thoughts. “Yeah. Sorry.” I turned and led the way up to the front door, keys in hand. “This whole thing’s just got me, I don’t know. Out of sorts?”

“Perfectly understandable, ma’am. Your friend’s missing, after all. No one’s saying you shouldn’t feel a little weird about this.”

“It’s just all so sudden,” I replied as I slid my key into the lock. “I guess I’m just having some problems processing it. It doesn’t even feel real, you know?” I glanced back over my shoulder at him. “Like she’s not even gone. Wait. What are you doing?”

His head was cocked a little to the side, like he was listening to some tune I couldn’t possibly hear, a look of intense concentration on his face. “What?” he asked, giving me a look. “I’m not doing anything.”

I raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly. “Right.” I turned around and let us both into the house. “Here, let me show you her office.”

Together, Luke and I headed back into the small side room Heidi had converted into an office. It wasn’t much more than a desk, a PC, and a little file cabinet. But it was more than she needed to manage her finances. After all, most of her work was done outside the home.

“I think I remember them being in here,” I said, going over to the file cabinet, one of those three-drawers-tall, nondescript metal ones you could buy at any office supply store. I pulled open the top drawer and began to go through the manila folders hanging inside.

“Heidi ever bring any of her clients home with her?” Luke asked from behind me.

I glanced up, realizing he’d moved behind her desk and was looking out the window and into the backyard. “If she did, it wasn’t while I was around. I don’t judge her for what she’s doing, and it’s nothing against her, but I don’t want those guys near me.”

“Ever get gifts from them? Tokens of their affection or anything?”

I snorted, rolling my eyes as I found her tax information for the previous year. “All the time,” I replied, pulling out the bundle of documents and taking them over to the desk.

He came around the desk and stood next to me, close enough that the smell of mountain cedar and aftershave filled my nose. He flipped open the folder and began to go through everything with practiced care. “What kind of things do they tend to give her?”

“Jewelry, perfume, shopping sprees. Flowers and chocolates, of course. That kind of thing.”

“Nothing really stands out, then?”

“Not particularly, no. Why? Think whoever took her might have given her something?”

“Maybe. Not sure yet. Files indicate some of the other women may have received something.” He paused, like he was uncertain of his next phrase. “Gold coins, by any chance?”

I nearly burst out laughing, despite how serious all this was rapidly getting. “Think she got kidnapped by someone who discovered Cortez’s lost treasure, or something?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

“But, something like that would be weird enough that she might not tell me about it,” I admitted. “Because, that’s pretty out there.”

“Agreed.” He kept flipping till he got to one of her paystubs. “Where would she keep something like that? A safety deposit box?” he asked as he took out his phone and prepared to snap a picture of it.

I tilted my head a little, tapping a finger to my chin. “No, no safety deposit boxes that I know of. But she doesn’t tell me everything.”

“Chance it’d be in the house, then?”

I thought about the set of diamond earrings I’d found on the bathroom sink a week prior. Just sitting there! She was lucky they hadn’t ended up going down the drain.

“Oh, there’s definitely a chance.”

“Her room, maybe?”

I nodded. “Probably. Don’t get me wrong, Heidi’s smart, but I don’t think she’s really started to think too far into the future about how to protect all her belongings.”

“Makes sense. People who’ve never had money before tend to outspend what they think they have. Look at lottery winners, for instance.”

“Well, she isn’t exactly in that range, but I see your point.”

“So sure about that?” he asked, picking up the paycheck stub and holding it out to me.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I took the offered stub. I fought the urge to look down at the number, knowing full well that I was invading her personal privacy and her confidence, but ultimately lost.

“She may not be in Powerball range, but she’s not exactly hurting, either.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed as I looked at the number of zeroes after the one. “Wow. If I’d known she was pulling down this kind of money…”

He chuckled. “Believe me,” he said. “Money isn’t exactly everything. Got a job offer when I first got out of the service, doing private security for a shady company. I’d heard rumors about the kind of work they’d be asking me to do. Not exactly savory. Paychecks would’ve looked a bit like that, though.”

“What’d you do?” I asked, glancing up at him.

“Turned it down, of course.”

“Could’ve fooled me with your car out front.”

“Come on, that’s a rental. Why the company sprang for it’s beyond me, but they did. I’m not complaining, of course.”

I bit my lower lip a little, thinking about all the bills I could pay off as my attention shifted back to the stub. Or, more precisely, to the number. No more debt collectors coming after me. My own place. A new car. Maybe even enough to do some good in the world, like donate it to the local library or something. My money problems would be gone. Evaporated, just like my dreams already had what seemed like a lifetime ago.

“She says she can get me a job,” I said, nodding a little. “Doing what she does, you know.”

He sniffed a little.

“Think she’ll want to after this, though?”

“Was it a hard choice for you? To turn it down like that? To walk away from this kind of money?”

Luke shrugged. “There wasn’t much choice, really. I wanted to do something I believed in, not just do something for a paycheck.”

I smiled a little. “My only problem is, I don’t think I have anything like that.”

“No?”

I shrugged. “Well, no, not exactly. I mean, I’ve always kind of wanted to work with kids.”

“Isn’t that kind of what you’re doing now?”

“Not exactly. I was thinking more along the lines of nonprofit work. Reading programs, child literacy.”

“You’d be good at it,” he said, nodding. “You’ve got that caring disposition. You don’t wanna do something like this, like your friend’s doing.”

“Think I couldn’t?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You could. I think anyone can do anything, at least for a little while. Eventually all those life choices, though, they catch up to you. Life’s a marathon, not a sprint. And after a while, you can’t even look yourself in the mirror. And, believe me, being able to look yourself in the mirror is definitely underrated.”

I laughed. “Guess vampires got the short end of the stick on that, didn’t they?”

His eyes widened a little, and his jaw noticeably clenched.

Right. Guess I struck a weird chord with that one. I glanced back down, pausing for a moment to take in that number again. “Ever hear that joke about never being able to frown on the back of a jet ski?”

This time, he did laugh a little, and it was like the sun passed over his face and dispelled whatever cloud had come down. “But, listen, time’s ticking. Her room back this way?”

“Her room?” I asked, setting aside the check stub. I didn’t like the idea of some stranger just looking through my friend’s room. Because, even if Luke didn’t exactly feel like a stranger, he actually was one. “Why do you need to go in there?”

He stood there, halfway in the office, and half out in the little hallway. Even though he wasn’t a giant guy, he still blocked most of the door. “Need to see if there’s any of those gifts we were talking about.”

“Why?”

“Well, if this is our guy, we want to verify he’s connected to the others. We can do that, we can maybe anticipate his next move.”

“And we can stop him?”

“That’s the plan.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay,” I said, crossing over to him. Before it even registered what I was doing, I was moving through the door to take him down to her room. With the way he was standing, my front practically brushed against his as I squeezed through the door and out into the hallway.

The heat from his body was like a furnace, and I suddenly remembered I hadn’t been this close to a man in ages. And definitely not a handsome, capable one like Luke. I looked up at him, without even realizing what I was doing.

He straightened up a little and took a sharp breath as he sucked his already flat stomach in further.

And that was when I realized I’d basically just shoved myself into this guy’s personal space! The heat from his body quickly translated to heat in my face. Beet red, I darted down the hallway towards Heidi’s room. “This is her room down here!” I squeaked back over my shoulder at him.

A few seconds later, he was following behind me, his heavy bootfalls sounding on the tile with every step.

I stepped inside the room, and he followed right after me, his eyes searching and taking in every aspect like some kind of human surveillance system.

Clothes were draped everywhere. A lacy bra hung from the corner of her vanity, a silk dressing gown lay crumpled on the floor at the foot of her bed like a lovesick man, and shoes had been kicked off in the corner in an ever-growing pile. Her bedding was pushed down to the foot of the bed in a mountain to rival the one Illuminati House crouched atop, her pack of pillows crowded together and seemingly ready to hibernate for winter together. Meanwhile, castoff dresses and blouses and slacks had begun to colonize the exposed sheets.

“Surprised her finances were in such good order,” Luke said, taking it all in. His eyes settled on an out-of-sorts jewelry box on one of her chests of drawers, and he crossed over to it.

I frowned a little, and couldn’t help but wonder what he’d think of me with my room piled up in boxes the way it was. “Part of it’s because we played dress-up last night.”

He kept rummaging through her jewelry. “The other part?”

Somehow feeling like I needed to defend not only my friend, but myself, too, I crossed my arms in front of me. “She’s a hot mess, sometimes. So sue her.”

Luke just grunted. “Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Guess we all need to fall apart once in a while. Makes us remember what being together feels like.” He turned to me. “Any idea where she would’ve kept something like this?”

I nodded to the box in front of him. “Where you’re looking right now.” Suddenly, I felt like a complete idiot for just standing there. I needed to be helping him! He couldn’t do all this by himself. I crossed over to her nightstand, with folded red and black satin panties stacked on top next to the little teal lamp with its matching cylinder shade, and began to pull open drawers.

Condoms, cuffs, and, ahem, toys. “Silk neck ties?” I asked aloud as I pulled one out.

“They’re easier on the wrists,” Luke mumbled from across the room.

I glanced back at him as I made a face, but he’d already buried his own back in the jewelry box.

More panties, leggings, and stockings. Nothing of interest. I closed the drawer, moved on to the next.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I replied as I plunged into the next, my fingers brushing against latex and rubber as I went, silently mouthing the whole time my thanks that I was the one to search this spot.

“Nothing here, either,” he said, his words nearly an exasperated growl. “Sure there’s nowhere else she could have kept it?”

I glanced back up at him from where I was on my knees beside the bed, still elbow-deep in the bottom drawer of my roommate-slash-landlord’s makeshift toy chest. “Closet, maybe?”

He grunted as he glanced down at his wrist watch, which he wore flipped around so the face was on the bottom side of his wrist. “Yeah. Good idea.” He crossed over to the walk-in closet, threw open the door, and began his excavation. In earnest. Clothes were yanked aside on their hangers, slacks and shoes and dresses came flying out onto the bedroom floor.

I got up from my spot beside the bed and went around to the other nightstand. I bent myself to the task, glancing up every now and then to the growling, frustrated investigator.

This continued on for another five minutes or so, till I spoke up.

“Luke?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, upending a laundry bin at the back and spilling its contents.

“Really?” I asked, rising to my feet. I crossed over to the closet, put one hand against the wall as I leaned in, and stared at the veteran manically searching through her clothes.

“Nothing,” he said, checking his watch again. “There’s just nothing here. Nothing that would fit as something from him.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay. Well, we’ve got time, haven’t we? Like you said, maybe we can use the angle with the people she works with, find out if she told them anything.”

He winced a little. “You don’t understand, though. I’ve got to meet a contact in just under two hours, to see if they have any additional information.”

Arms folded, I stepped into the closet and leaned against the doorframe, my hip almost butting up against the wood. “A contact?”

A little hand wave of dismissal on his part. “Someone who knows people on the police force. Said they’ve got some new information for us, but the meeting has to be at that time.” He swallowed hard. He let out a long sigh, one of those kinds that tell you the person’s just about had it up to here with the world. A sigh I knew too damn well from past experience. “My boss told me I can’t show up in my travel clothes, and I still need to check into my hotel room and everything. They just sprang this on me, and I’d hoped I’d have enough time to search here, and get out of your hair.”

“Well, where’s your hotel?”

“Downtown. Place I’m going, though, is just on the north side, less than five miles from here.”

“I see your problem. Even with afternoon traffic, you’re going to be spending all your time on the road.” I paused, nodding at the idea I’d just had. “Unless, of course, you just change here.”