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The woman whirled around. “Yes?” Then she smiled with recognition. “Oh, you’re Eric’s girlfriend.”
Bree let Jillian believe what she wanted. “I’ve been trying to reach him. But there seems to be some trouble with the phone, and he’s not answering his cell.”
“He’s probably in the courtroom,” Jillian said. “You get in big trouble with the judge if your cell phone goes off during some proceeding.” Jillian looked slightly guilty, as if she might know this from experience. “He was supposed to appear this morning for some reason or other. You can probably still catch him down there if you hurry. You know where it is?”
“Oh, sure,” Bree said breezily. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I’m just glad to see Eric has someone in his life. I don’t know him very well, but he seems like a really nice guy, and he deserves someone nice.”
As she hurried back to her car, Bree felt slightly guilty for having perpetrated the white lie on unsuspecting Jillian. But extreme circumstances called for extreme measures.
Ten minutes later she was lurking on the courthouse steps like a lovesick teenager or an ambitious paparazzo, ready to pounce if she saw any sign of her target. It wasn’t as if he would be hard to spot, with those wide shoulders and the glint of gold in his hair. Although he’d cut it ruthlessly short, she bet it would turn beach-boy blond if he let it grow and spent a little time in the sun. Might get rid of that prison pallor, too.
Yeah, she’d done some research on him. It wasn’t hard—he’d been convicted of stabbing his pretty socialite wife to death, and his trial had been reported and analyzed ad nauseam in dozens of newspapers across the state. It had even been on TruTV. He had indeed been pardoned and then his conviction overturned when the real killer had tried to kidnap Eric’s future sister-in-law.
Bree hadn’t known anything about the original crime, because she’d been in her medical residency then, oblivious to anything but her patients and the few hours of sleep she could grab. Plus, crime news had never been something that interested her. She’d had her fill of it during Kelly’s arrest and trial.
It was a wonder she’d survived that period of her life, fighting for Kelly’s freedom and getting through med school.
“Bree?”
She whirled around, nearly tripping and falling down the stairs. Eric grabbed her elbow to steady her, then quickly released it, as if touching her had burned him.
“How did you get past me?” She tamped down the ridiculous pleasure she felt at seeing him again. Something about him was so reassuring. Maybe that was a glamour he’d developed to deal with skittish clients. “I’ve been watching that door for the past twenty minutes.”
“I came out a side door. I just happened to glance this way on the way to my car.... Bree, what are you doing here?”
“I needed to talk to you.”
“A phone call wouldn’t have worked? Not that I’m not happy to see you,” he quickly added. “A man would have to be crazy to... Never mind.”
He was flirting with her, though she was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to. And why did she care? She’d come here for a reason, and it wasn’t to set her hormones all aflutter. “I tried calling, but your overzealous watchdog refused to put me through.”
“Overzealous... Celeste?”
“She said once an application had been rejected, there was nothing I could do to change Daniel’s mind, and policy was to not put calls through from people like me.”
“That’s Celeste. She doesn’t bend the rules for anyone. How did you know to find me here?”
“I saw that woman, Jillian, coming out the front door and she steered me here. I’m sorry, I know I’m acting like a stalker, but I really needed to talk to you.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Philomene. She really is missing. When I didn’t hear from her by the next day, I called her at work. Her boss said she hadn’t shown up for work in two days.”
Eric’s brow furrowed. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“No, it really doesn’t.”
“Did you call the police?”
“For all the good it did me.” Bree’s legs were suddenly tired. She sank back down to sit on one of the steps. “They said I had to wait seventy-two hours. And even then, unless there’s some evidence of foul play, they won’t look for her.”
“As I said before—”
“I know. It’s a common-sense policy employed by most law enforcement agencies—I get that. But they were so... They just dismissed me! They already think I’m a kook, I’m afraid. I didn’t exactly make a lot of friends at the sheriff’s office when Kelly was arrested. Now they think I’m overreacting. But I’m not. Something doesn’t feel right. I think Philomene’s in trouble. We have to find her before it’s too late!”
“We?”
“I don’t know who else to turn to.”
“I’m not a cop. I’m not an investigator of any kind. I’m just a lawyer—a real-estate lawyer, if truth be told. This job with Project Justice is a temporary deal, filling in for an attorney on maternity leave.”
She slumped and rested her elbows on her knees. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.” Oh, God. She hoped she wouldn’t humiliate herself further by crying.
Bree fully expected Eric to walk away. But instead he sat down beside her, heedless of getting his expensive suit dirty. “Bree. What is it you think I can do? I’d like to find your friend. How is it you think I can help?”
“I figured you knew people. Given your job....”
“This is my first week. I’ve met some of the people who work at Project Justice, but truthfully, I don’t know any of them very well. But I could try to help. Maybe if I talked to the sheriff.”
“You’d do that?”
“I have tomorrow off. They’re fumigating the building. Sometimes just seeing a new face could shake someone out of complacence. And the fact that I’m a lawyer won’t hurt. People are afraid of lawsuits.”
“I’d be really appreciative. I’ll pay you—”
“That’s not necessary. But have you considered hiring a private detective?”
“I thought I would talk to you first. Do you know any good private detectives?”
“No. But I could find you one. Project Justice uses them from time to time for surveillance and such. But let me check a few things first.” He took his phone out of his jacket pocket and opened the notepad. “Do you know Philomene’s full name?”
“Philomene Switzer, that’s all I know.”
“What’s her approximate age?”
“Late twenties, I’d say.”
“With that and her address, our data analyst can probably find out a lot. But it’s not exactly kosher to ask him to work on something that’s not foundation business.”
“It would be foundation business if you’d taken on Kelly’s case.” Her muscles tensed as she remembered the casual way Eric had dismissed her. The way he was so sure Kelly was guilty, when he couldn’t be.
“But we didn’t. And the foundation isn’t in the business of randomly looking for people.”
“Philomene’s disappearance is connected, though. Think about it. On the very day she’s about to unburden herself to someone who might be able to get Kelly out of jail and prove the real criminal is still at large, she inexplicably goes missing. I feel the wrongness of that in my bones, Eric.”
“Then why don’t you come with me to talk to Mitch. Maybe he’ll work on the problem on his own time.”
“Of course I’ll come. Can we do it now?”
Eric stood and offered his hand. “Let’s go.”
His hand felt incredibly warm and reassuring. Bree had been alone for so long, the solitary crusader on Kelly’s behalf. No one had stood by her—not Kelly’s family, certainly not her family. They’d hated Kelly since he and Bree were teenagers, and his arrest and conviction had delighted them because they could say “I told you so.”
And now, after all these years, Bree had Eric.
Granted, his support was grudging. And could be withdrawn at any point. But even though he had his own reasons for disliking Kelly, Eric saw something in what Bree had told him. She’d gotten through his bias, or she’d at least opened a small crack. Now she was going to stick her foot in that crack and make sure he couldn’t close it back up. For Kelly, she told herself. All this is for Kelly.
She waited until they were in Eric’s car and on the road before she made a confession. “You should probably know—I sort of gave Jillian the idea that I’m your, um, girlfriend.”
Eric slammed on the brakes. “What?”
“Sorry, it was just the most expedient way to... You’re getting honked at.” He’d stopped in the middle of a busy road.
Eric pulled over to the curb. “I can’t believe you did that. Do you know how long and hard I worked to convince Jillian that you and I weren’t...” He seesawed his hands back and forth. “The whole office thought we were having sex in the break room. On my second day of employment.”
“Well, I’m not the one who ripped my shirt off.” She wasn’t going to take all the blame.
“Now everyone is going to think I’m a liar as well as a sexual deviant. Why did you do that?”
“She assumed, and I thought it would take too long to explain, and I needed to find you.” He seemed far more distressed at the thought of her being his girlfriend than he ought to be. “I’ll explain it to her. I didn’t mean to cause you so much grief, really.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” he muttered, putting the car in gear and slowly easing into traffic.
“If it makes you feel any better, Jillian didn’t seem at all judgmental. She thinks you’re really nice and that you deserve to be with someone. Nice.” Not that she qualified. Other than buying Eric a meat loaf dinner, she’d done nothing but cause a giant pain in his butt since the moment they met.
“Whatever.”
Now Bree felt bad. She really hadn’t meant to diminish Eric in his coworkers’ eyes. But she wouldn’t like it if her coworkers thought she was boffing her boyfriend in an empty exam room. Her professional reputation mattered to her, and it appeared Eric’s did to him. She’d do what she could to fix things.
By the time they’d parked Eric’s car in the Project Justice garage, Eric seemed to have shaken off his pique. She caught him smiling when she stopped to pet a small dog on a leash held by someone exiting the building.
“They let people bring their pets to work here?” Bree asked as Eric used his security card and a PIN number to gain entrance to the building. She was glad they were coming through the back rather than having to face the grim Celeste.
“You can pretty much do anything you want here so long as you get your work done and you don’t impede anybody else’s ability to work. I actually never met that woman with the dog, so I’m not sure she works here. She might be a client or someone’s personal trainer. You just never know.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine working under such...friendly conditions. I’m used to being abused at my job—long hours, dinner breaks too short to do anything but grab a candy bar from the vending machine, not even a comfortable chair to be found.”
“Yeah, but you get compensated well, I’m sure.”
“At County? Not as well as you might think. And I have student loans to pay off.”
“What would you do if you were out of debt?” he asked.
She thought about it for a moment. “Probably keep doing what I’m doing,” she confessed. “I hate the bureaucracy of the place, hate my boss, but I love my work. I can’t think of any other job where you can have such an immediate and dramatic impact on someone’s life. They come in dying or thinking they’re dying or wishing they would die, and by the time I’m done with them, they’re better. I ease the pain, I sew up the cuts, set the bones, reassure them. It’s...gratifying.”
“What about when they die?”
“Well, there is that. I try not to dwell on those losses. They’re inevitable in most branches of medicine. Except maybe dermatology.”
He smiled again, though he tried not to let her see it.
The first place they went was a large room at the end of a hallway that housed a number of desks and file cabinets arranged in a rather haphazard fashion. The place was buzzing with activity. Men and women, mostly in their twenties and thirties, talked on the phone, tapped away on computers or spoke with each other in voices that were subdued but full of energy. Their clothing ranged from formal business attire to jeans and T-shirts.
“This is the bull pen,” Eric explained.
“Like at a police department?”
“A lot of the people who work here are former police officers. This arrangement seems to make them feel comfortable. Though the dress code here is pretty lax.”
“Apparently so.”
Eric led her to a far corner, where a man with longish curly blond hair and big black-framed glasses sat at an impressive array of computers. Three monitors, two laptops, a tower and a couple of cell phones sat on his desk. Around it were various peripheral gadgets she couldn’t come close to recognizing.
“Mitch,” Eric said. “Do you have a minute?”
The man named Mitch quickly blanked his screen and swiveled his chair, simultaneously whipping off his glasses, revealing a pair of hazel eyes. He was quite good-looking in a wild and lawless way. She wasn’t too surprised to see a crash helmet tucked under his desk.
“Sure,” he said. “What’s up?” He eyed Bree up and down, not in a sexual way but with idle curiosity, before inviting them to pull up chairs.
“This is Bree,” Eric said.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Bree blurted out. “I told Jillian I was, but it’s not true. We barely know each other.”
As Eric stared at her as if willing her to shut her mouth, Mitch quirked one eyebrow at her. “Ooookay.”
“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Bree went on, wanting Mitch to understand, “but he only took off his shirt to show me a...”
Eric was shaking his head, looking alarmed.
“Well, never mind,” Bree finished lamely.
“Hey, makes me no never mind whatchall been up to,” Mitch said in a lazy drawl that could only have come from Cajun country. “What can I do you for?”
“A friend of Bree’s is missing,” Eric said. “The police won’t look into it because... Well, you know how the police are about missing persons.”
“I take it you think something bad happened to your friend?”
Bree explained as briefly as she could, without mentioning specifics, that Philomene was connected to a crime, and that she was in a position to identify a possible serial murderer, and that they’d come across some kind of intruder in her apartment. She gave Mitch everything she knew about Philomene, which admittedly wasn’t much.
“Her name can’t be that common,” Mitch said. “I’ll find her. Give me a few minutes, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Eric looked at Bree. “You want lunch?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said automatically. She ought to pay more attention to her diet and stop living on coffee and jelly beans, but she couldn’t imagine putting food into her knotted stomach right now. “I’ll just sit here and wait.”
“Oh, Bree, I see you found him!” Jillian entered the bull pen with a flourish. Bree suspected it was hard for the woman to appear inconspicuous.
