Mendez leaned his elbows on the table and looked at her, puzzled, thinking of the B&Es they’d had in town recently. Nothing had been taken, but someone had broken in. He’d thought maybe it was a kid’s prank. Maybe not.

“Did anyone see him coming or going?” he asked.

“No.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“It was him.”

“Was he questioned?”

She laughed without humor. “For what? For being a ghost? I couldn’t prove anyone had been there at all. The police weren’t interested. Nothing had been taken. And it turns out it isn’t against the law to do someone’s laundry without asking. That was when I got the lecture for wasting the department’s time, manpower, and resources.”

“They didn’t even talk to him?”

“No. By then he had already threatened to sue for harassment—the police department and me personally. How’s that for nerve? He was stalking me and threatening to sue me for trying to do something about it.”

The injustice of that made him angry. Like Mavis Whitaker had said, sometimes it felt as if the bad guys had more rights than the people they preyed upon.

“Do you have a friend you can call to come and stay the rest of the night with you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I have a Walther PPK.”

Cold comfort, that, Mendez thought. And dangerous.

“Guns and alcohol aren’t a good combination,” he cautioned. “I would hate to see you hurt yourself.”

She laughed at that. “Clearly you haven’t known me long enough. Before you know it, you’ll be wishing I would put that gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.”

“I doubt that, ma’am.”

She bobbed her eyebrows as if to say We’ll see, and took another long drink of her vodka.

Chapter 20

20

Lauren waited for a long time after Mendez left. She sat at the table in the great room, drinking and looking at her photograph of Leslie the night before she was taken.

She was a beautiful girl. Leah was pretty. Leslie was beautiful. There was such a fire in her, and it glowed out of her blue eyes and shone in her long dark hair. That spirit had been a force of energy everyone in the room would feel when she turned it on as part and parcel of a strong emotion.

Leslie would have done something extraordinary with her life.

Sometimes Lauren wished she could feel that energy when she thought of her daughter or when she looked at her photograph. Sometimes she thought that would be a sign to her that Leslie was still alive somewhere. Sometimes she feared it would mean she was gone and her spirit was visiting in an attempt to offer her mother some kind of comfort. It was a torment either way.

God, why can’t this ever be over? she wondered for the millionth time.