“No one can find my body.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Yes, yes!” She grabbed my arm. “I do. It’s under that old bridge on 57, like the ones they make for trains. Metal and rusting.”
I patted her hand. “Okay, an old bridge on Highway 57. Got it. Can you give me more?”
“My family can’t find it. They have been searching and searching, and they can’t find my body. My sister is – She’s so upset.”
“I’m sorry, hon. What’s your na —?”
Before I could ask for her name, she disappeared. Darn it. All I got off her ID was Nic. Perhaps she was a Nicole or a Nicky. If she’d have crossed through me, I would have gleaned more info about her, but apparently this was going to be a game of cat and mouse. I could only pray I’d be the cat this time. I hated being the mouse.
After dressing in a cream-colored sweater, jeans, and my favorite boots, I started for my handy dandy office, which sat about fifty feet from my handy dandy apartment. I took another look at Reyes’s door and felt an odd urge to use my key again. God, that man was talented. Still, honing my skills in self-control was good practice for later in life when dementia set in and I would try to take everyone’s meds off the cart at the home.
I called Uncle Bob and got only a garbled hello for my efforts.
“Hey, mister. I need you to check something for me.”
He cleared his throat and said, “It’s Saturday.”
“And?”
“I’m off.”
He did sound a bit groggy. “Did I wake you?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he growled at me.
“So, has there been a rash of murders lately? Perhaps something in a blonde? Petite? Strangled?”
“What? Did you get something?”
Uncle Bob, always asking if I got something, like I got messages from the great beyond. “No, but I do have an apartment full of women who were strangled to death.”
I heard a rustling sound as though he were fighting sheets to get out of bed. I understood. Sheets were tricky. Losing the fight, he cursed. And dropped his phone. Twice. Ubie had never been a morning person. “Okay,” he said at last, “give me the details.”
I broke it down as I had for Cookie. “Okay, I have no less than nine women in my apartment ranging in age anywhere from seven to thirty-five, all blond but not all natural blondes. Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, and at least one Asian. Ring any bells?”
“Not offhand.”
“I don’t think these women died recently. And I think their deaths were spread out over an extended period of time, possibly with long gaps in between.”
“Could be the killer did a stint in jail. Any names?”
“No, but they’re scared, Uncle Bob. Terrified. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’ll check around. How are you?”
“Okay, I just have no idea why they would show up now. Something had to trigger their appearance.”
“I don’t know either, pumpkin. But how are you?”
Uncle Bob. Always worried about me. Or, well, his ticket to solving case after case, thus his immaculate rep.
“I’m okay. A little weirded out, actually, and the departed never do that to me. They are just so terrified, Uncle Bob. It’s like they’re reliving their deaths. I need to solve this fast.”
“We will, hon. I’ll get on it today. Let me know if any new missing women show up or if you get any more information from them. Maybe another death is what triggered their appearance.”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, and I wanted you to know that our arsonist struck again.”
I stopped halfway up the stairs to my office. “What? When?”
“Last night around midnight.”
My free hand flew to my mouth. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Reyes. He was with me at midnight. Unless… “Was it on a timer like the others?”
“Yes, but we have a witness.”
Suddenly strangled with worry again, I asked, “Can the witness identify the arsonist?”
“No, but we did get a pretty good description. An odd one, actually. If I didn’t know better, I’d say… Never mind. I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“No, what?” If he didn’t know better, he’d say it was Reyes Farrow? Was that what he was going to say?
“Well, it’s kind of crazy, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say the arsonist was a woman.”
I paused a moment, then asked, “A woman? That’s kind of rare, right?”
“It happens, but yes, it’s extremely rare.”
Slowly, and with infinite precision, awareness crept over me. It couldn’t be. “Can you describe her?” I asked, almost not wanting to hear.
“Tall, willowy, painfully thin. The witness said he, or she, was shaking, like she was scared.”
I closed my eyes in regret. If anything would come between Reyes and me, it’s the fact that I was about to put his only relative, his nonbiological sister, Kim Millar, in jail. Earl Walker had obtained Reyes through nefarious means. I didn’t know the details, but I did know that Reyes had been kidnapped as a baby and later traded to Earl. Kim had been dropped on Earl’s doorstep. Her mother, a habitual drug user and prostitute, was dying, so she left Kim with her biological father. The fact that her father was Earl Walker was a cruel twist of fate for Kim and a way to control Reyes for Earl.