The third, around eleven forty-five: Starting to freak out. Not sure if you’re mad at me or still passed out. Text to let me know you’re alive, and I’ll leave you alone.

Maverick walked in front of the video screen and faced Caitlin. “Then the phone calls start. Lakshmi tries Chapman’s cell, her roommate, Amireau, Michelson, gets no answers, so she drives over to Chapman’s at two. Angela’s car is in the lot, but no answer at the door. She goes to the boys’ place, knocks, Amireau answers. Lakshmi said he had a black eye and a swollen nose and wouldn’t let her in. He told her Chapman walked home last night, slammed the door in Lakshmi’s face. You’ve met the girl. Think she took no for an answer?”

“Not at all.”

“Right, she walks around the place, peeps in the windows.”

“Did Lakshmi see anything?”

Maverick placed both palms on the edge of the table and leaned in. “Only Michelson cleaning up the main room with several big trash bags and a shop vac. So she knocks on the window. Michelson looks up—she says shocked—then opens the back door. He gives her the same answer, Chapman left last night. Lakshmi dials the Bloomington PD and shits this sordid mess into our laps.”

Maverick leaned back, resting her case.

Greenwood unhooked the laptop and turned on the lights. “Any questions, Caitlin?”

They’d given a polished presentation of a solid narrative. Had they tailored it for the big-city reporter? Probably. Was she going to take their word for it? Definitely not.

She stopped her voice recorder and gathered her things. “How late does happy hour go at Bear’s Place?”

Chapter 14

CHAPTER

14

LAKSHMI SETTLED INTO a corner booth beneath tin ads for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Style. “We used to sit here every Friday, our French Fry Club. Did you come to Bear’s Place with your friends as well?”

“Oh yes.” Caitlin saw a waitress en route. “Here’s an opportunity to repeat those mistakes.”

She ordered a bacon cheeseburger, steak fries, and a Hairy Bear—the local bastardization of a Long Island Iced Tea. Lakshmi substituted hot wings for the burger, but matched starch selections.

Once the server left, Lakshmi called Caitlin’s bluff. “I want to hear everything about your meeting with Greenwood, but first, why suggest the place Angela and I ate together the night she disappeared?”

The waitress returned with two pint-sized plastic pitchers filled with light peach liquid.

Caitlin took a sip. Gin, rum, tequila, vodka, whiskey, and fruit juice all wanted her black-out drunk as soon as possible.

“If you’d said, ‘anywhere but there,’ I would have learned something.”

“Which would be?”

“That you’re so traumatized by Angela’s disappearance, you can’t retrace the steps.”