Cut & Run (A Rachel Scott Adventure) - By Traci Hohenstein Page 0,40
remember Moses from the night of the incident? As the homeless guy who asked you for money, but you didn’t put two and two together as him being a former client until Krapek told you about his fingerprints on your truck?”
“Correct.”
“And you don’t have any idea why Moses would be connected to your wife’s death?”
Matt nodded. “There’s more.”
Rachel felt her heart kick up a few beats. She waited for him to continue.
“There’s something that I did remember that I left out when I was talking to your friend Michelle. You see, I was afraid that you might think that I did have something to do with Erin’s disappearance if I told you. Even though I don’t have all my memory back, I know deep down that I had nothing to do with what has happened to my family. I love my wife and kids. I would never do anything to hurt them.”
“I’m not here to judge you, Matt. I only want to help you find them. Everything that you can tell me prior to the incident is helpful. You never know when that one little detail may make a difference between finding them or not.” Rachel paused to take a sip of her beer. “You can trust me. So let’s hear it. Tell me everything you’ve remembered.”
Matt told her the story about seeing Erin at the Flora Gallery and Coffee Shop with another man. He paused for a second before revealing the part he wished he could forget—the moment when he’d spotted the man kissing his wife outside on the patio.
Rachel took a minute to digest that information. “Well, I guess I can see why you would withhold that information. What did Erin say when you asked her about it?”
“I never told her that I saw the kiss. I just asked her how her day was. She told me everything except for her coffee break at Flora. Basically, she lied to me.”
“That happened approximately two months prior to the incident?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, that’s about right.”
“So in those two months, you could have found out more about her affair or confronted her and just don’t remember it?”
Matt shrugged. “Anything is possible. I’m still getting it all back in bits and pieces.”
“I can see why you’re hesitant in revealing that to the police. You would be giving them a possible motive. But in order to find your kids, you have to tell them everything.” Rachel faltered at the worried look on Matt’s face. “No worries. I’m not going to say anything. Do you have any idea who the man was who kissed your wife?”
“No. I don’t.”
Rachel got out her notebook and jotted down the name of the coffee shop. She’d have Red check it out later if Matt was okay with it. The waitress brought over their food, and Rachel waited until she left to continue.
“Do you mind if I share this with my team? Red is one of the best private investigators around, and he may be our best shot at finding this man. You have my word that he’ll keep it under wraps.”
“I’ve already called in a favor with a PI that we work with. I called him the day I met with you and Michelle,” Matt said. He picked up another oyster. “I haven’t heard anything back yet. So I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple people on this.”
“What about your brother? You think you might have discussed this upsetting situation with him?”
Matt thought about it for a minute. “Chris and I have always been pretty tight. That would’ve been something I may have shared with him.”
“I would ask him, Matt. You trust Chris, right?” Rachel thought back to her discussion with Red, who wanted to look into Chris’s background in more detail. He wanted to see if it was possible to connect the dots—and find something that would point to a motivation.
Matt did trust his brother. But lately, something was off with Chris, and he wasn’t sure what it was. Clearly, Chris’s marriage was on the rocks. Was anything else amiss?
He finally answered her. “Yeah, I trust him.”
“Then you need to ask him if he knows about Erin’s affair.” Rachel tried to collect her thoughts and digest all the information Matt had just given her. She put a baked oyster topped with spinach on a cracker and then doused it with hot sauce. When she finished eating it, she nodded her head in approval. She loved the food in New Orleans.