Have Yourself a Merry Little Witness - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,35
face.
“Well, it wasn’t me. Was it you?”
He looked me in the eye. “I’d have my skin peeled off at high noon first. So no. Is there an origin to the post? Some proof?”
I didn’t believe Hobbs was capable of telling anyone. I mean, who would he tell anyway? He hardly knew anyone. “It says here they heard it on the afternoon news. A leak in the department sounds about right. I sure hope Stiles doesn’t think it was us.”
“You know what this does, though?”
“What?”
“Gives us a reason to talk to Westcott Morgan.”
I leaned back against the coffee shop’s brick wall and looked up at his handsome face. “I don’t get it.”
“What was the reason we were going to give about why we wanted to talk to him about his article? Why would he give two strangers any secret information he might have about the missing girls? But now we can explain we wanted to talk to him about the connection between a missing Kerry, a murdered Gable Norton, and our concerns about the killer coming after Uncle Monty.”
That hadn’t even occurred to me. That Westcott might want a reason we were so invested in the disappearance of the girls.
I twirled the ends of my hair and batted my eyelashes. “You, Cowboy, have a pretty devious mind. It never occurred to me I’d need a reason to talk to him. I thought he’d just spill all his secrets to me because I’m so cute. What was your plan?”
“You are very cute, and I was going to wing it. Maybe pretend I was writing a book on serial killers.”
I poked him playfully in the chest. “You? Write a book? That’s funny, seeing as you’ve only read one book in your entire life.”
“He doesn’t know that, silly. And that’s not entirely true. I’ve read other books, but I was forced to read them for school.”
Flapping my hands, I rolled my eyes. “I, for one, am glad we don’t have to lie. I stink at it,” I said before I sneezed.
Hobbs looked at me as though he were affronted at the notion and handed me a tissue. “We weren’t going to lie. Only pretend.”
“I’m not a very good pretender. Either way, I’m glad we don’t have to. Now, are you ready to go find out if Westcott has anything that can help us?”
Hobbs grinned. “Every day, all day.” He pulled the door open and motioned for me to go ahead.
I made my way through the rows of tables and booths on either side of the shop, spotting the man who looked like the picture online.
“Westcott Morgan?” I asked of the attractive-looking man, wearing casual jeans and a T-shirt that read, “All Dogs Go to Heaven.”
He smiled warm and wide as he rose from the table at Heathrow’s Coffee Haus, our local spot for a caffeine fix. “’Tis I,” he said with grand flourish. “You’re Hal Valentine and Hobbs Dainty?”
“That’s us,” I said with a return smile as he offered us a seat in the tan vinyl booth with a gesture of his hands.
We slid in, sitting side by side as we looked at this nice-looking guy of about thirty or so with round, black-rimmed glasses, a thatch of curly dark hair, and a bright-white smile.
“Can I get you anything, m’lady? Or you, sir?”
Holding up my hand, I shook my head before pulling a tissue from my pocket to wipe my stuffy nose. I sure hoped I wasn’t getting a cold. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Hobbs agreed. “Thanks, but I’m good, too.”
“So what can I do for you?” he asked before he took a sip of his coffee from a big green mug with snowflakes painted on it.
“We’re just curious about the opinion piece you wrote on the missing girls and the connections you made.”
He winced. “Yeah, I really stirred up a hornet’s nest there, didn’t I?”
With a wry smile, I agreed. “Yeah, you really stepped in it. Over fifteen hundred comments and counting.”
Westcott gave me a sheepish glance. “Well, what is a journalist without adversary? It’s the nature of the beast.”
“So what made you choose these cases and question whether the police were picking and choosing importance based on their backgrounds?” Hobbs asked.
“Truthfully? It sort of just fell into my lap, and all I did was spin.”
I put my elbow on the table and cupped my chin in my hand. “But tons of people go missing all the time and these girls hardly made a splash, their disappearances didn’t even make it to the local news