“Sure. I’d say anytime, but I’ll be out of job in a few weeks,” Debra said. “But don’t worry about me. My kids are delighted, my husband is delighted, and my aging mother is really delighted.” She smiled. “My former housekeeper and my former personal trainer, who were paid from my salary…them, not so much.”

AS THEY WALKED through wooded pathways, Eliza scanned the batch of parking tickets. “Some of them don’t have license plate numbers.”

“Probably during a busy time and he got a little careless.” Decker shrugged. “Nothing we can do about it.”

“Hey, Lieutenant.” Eliza was enthusiastic. “We’ve got two time stamps per ticket. One coming in and one going out. That’s a break. If we find Donatti’s Lexus, we’ll know when he came in and when he left.”

“If the attendant was smart enough to mark it as a Lexus with paper plates.”

“If Donatti was going to do something bad, would he have parked his car in the parking lot? Much more likely he’d be noticed.”

“Unless it was an unplanned thing, although Donatti isn’t usually rash,” Decker said. “But he did beat up his wife…using only an open palm…he was quick to tell me that. Like that was supposed to impress me.”

“What a scumbag.”

“A scumbag and a psycho,” Decker said.

“How’s the kid?”

“Quiet…unobtrusive. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. My daughter seems to have developed a rapport with him.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” Decker said. “He’s a good-looking kid. But she’s seventeen and has a boyfriend and will be out of the house in several months. He’s only fourteen.” A pause. “If he were a couple of years older, I know I wouldn’t have let him stay with us.”

“Genetics, huh? Sins of the father.”

“Especially when it comes to my daughter. Hannah is smart but naive. I don’t know much about Gabe, but I suspect he’s way more streetwise than she is.”

They walked a few more moments in silence until they arrived at the maintenance office. The door was open and they crossed the threshold. The space inside was hot and confined. A swarthy man at the desk was sweating profusely. “Yes?”

“We’re looking for Gregory Zatch.”

“That’s me.”

Decker brought out his badge and identified the two of them as homicide detectives.

“Homicide?” Zatch said. “Someone got killed?”

“Someone is missing,” Eliza explained. “Sometimes we’re given those cases. We’re here because a couple of weeks ago, maintenance was called for a plumbing problem in suite 229. A leaky toilet.” She fanned herself with a handful of parking tickets. “We’d like to know who serviced the unit.”

“The missing someone was in 229?” Zatch said.

“Yes.”

“How long has the person been missing?”

“Since Sunday night,” Eliza said.