“Nothing yet.” They talked a few minutes and she told him she’d had dinner with Lydia Kane, a friend she’d met while in grad school. He gave her the name and number of his motel and promised to call her the next day.

“Be careful,” she said. “To be honest, I don’t know what to wish for. That you find Jennifer is dead and that someone is just playing a sick game with you…or that she’s really alive.”

“Either way will be messy.”

“I know. I mean it, Rick. Don’t take too many chances. We need you.”

“We?”

She hesitated just a second. “Yeah, all of us. Kristi and me, well, and Hairy S and Chia, too.”

“I’ll be home soon,” he promised, but they both knew he was just placating her. He had no idea when he’d return to New Orleans.

“Just let me know how many wild geese you catch.”

“Funny girl.”

“Sometimes,” she said.

“Most of the time. I’ll call you.”

He hung up and considered taking the next plane east. Why not? She was right. He was still chasing a ghost and he was either being set up or losing his mind.

He bet on the first.

And knew he was going to ride it out.

He had to.

CHAPTER 7

For Bentz, dinner consisted of the prepackaged cheese and crackers and diet Coke he found in the vending machine in the breezeway leading to the pool area.

He bit off the cellophane as he walked back to his room, then went to work. He’d already made lists of the people Jennifer had been closest to. He would start trying to track them down while munching on the oily crackers and processed cheddar.

He figured some of Jennifer’s nearest and dearest might still be in the area, so he could set up meetings. That was, if anyone was willing to talk with him. No doubt he’d be considered persona non grata with most of them. As for the acquaintances who had moved, he’d have to hunt for them and make an attempt to contact them by phone.

And what will you say to them? That you think you’ve seen Jennifer even though you buried her twelve years ago?

He didn’t have an answer for that one, he thought. He set up his laptop with its Internet card on the scarred Formica desk, cracked the blinds so that he could view the parking lot, and settled into the straight-backed chair.