“Nothing at all in her paperwork. She probably keeps everything important on her laptop or phone.”

“What about phone bills?”

“I did a heavy-duty search. She gets statements from the electric company, but I didn’t come across phone bills.”

“She probably pays basic bills online.”

“And we’d need a password to get them.” I told her about the voice mail messages waiting to be picked up.

“You know she can access them remotely and probably will the minute she thinks of it?”

“From wherever she is.”

“So it would be good to get those messages before they disappear. As soon as they come in, but—”

“I’d need a password,” I finished for her.

“Usually you dial your home number with area code and put in anywhere from a four-to a six-digit code. You could try her birth date, the girls’ birth dates, the year she was born.”

“What fun that will be.”

“I live for those moments.”

Most of the research I’d done in my career had been for cases that had gone down before the technology explosion. No one carried phones in those days or used voice mail, and before the mid-1980s, answering machines weren’t even in use. I knew this particular tidbit because I’d just looked into a cold case that hinged on a degraded tape in one of the first analog models. But most of the time, Sophie researched and I interrogated.

I went to the heart of the discussion. “Where are we on Wendy? Since her phone calls seem to be a dead end.” I reconsidered, got up and closed the bedroom door and told her about Holly’s phone.

“Let me know what you find. I’m sending links to two cases in California for you to look over. But honestly? Neither one is the least bit promising. Coverage on the first indicates the cops are already close to solving it. So if your sister is involved, law enforcement will either be calling in the next few hours, or she’ll be on the next flight home.”

I clutched the phone to my ear. “The second?”

“It looks like something to do with the Russians. Maybe espionage?”

“I can’t see Wendy in a trench coat.”

“The possibility stayed with me because her husband commands a nuclear sub. He might have secrets they want.”

I pondered but dismissed it. “Bryce wouldn’t share secrets with Wendy or anybody else. He’s Commander Straight Arrow. And Wendy told me once that he doesn’t bring paperwork home, that he does all his work in the office to keep everything confidential.”

“Did that bother her?”

“Au contraire. She sounded delighted. The sub stuff doesn’t interest her. She likes the officers’ spouses’ club and climbing the social ladder. She likes the prestige, but that’s it. Sub talk bores her.”

“Okay, but even if this doesn’t pan out, and I doubt it will, her husband’s job is an angle to keep in mind. So that’s where I am. The mostly solved murder was in LA, but the second was out in the boondocks.”