“Hang on,” she said, and went into the bedroom for her purse and grabbed a couple of recent photos.
They lined up the three women’s photographs. All were petite redheads with gorgeous skin. They looked like sisters. Dena felt the room sway and sat down. Zeke pulled his chair close and slung an arm around her shoulders.
“Damn,” Stanton said, and pushed back his chair. “Seeing them lined up like that is weird. Can I take these to the station?”
“Yes,” Dena said, but her voice seemed to come from a distance.
“What does it mean?” Zeke asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out.” Stanton stood. He shoved the little chair under the table with such force it made the china clink. “After high school, Susie went to college in Florida. She took a job there.”
“I vaguely remember her saying that,” Zeke said.
“Yeah, she came back after she heard you were home. She’d started dying her hair red as she got older. She’d always…you know…had a thing for you.”
“That was a long time ago, Dave. We were kids,” Zeke said.
Stanton held onto the back of the chair and stared at the floor. “I never really stood a chance.”
“Don’t say that,” Zeke said softly.
“How come her parents never reported her missing?” Dena asked. She’d do anything to prevent a discussion of rivalries between the two men.
“They said they were worried. She’d told them earlier that day that she was going to meet some guy. He’d offered her a high paying job in New York—”
“What? Wait.” Dena gripped the table. “It’s the same story as Carli’s. That’s what she’d been told…” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she grabbed for her paper napkin.
“I’m sorry, Dena,” Stanton said. “Susie didn’t say who the guy was, not that her parents could remember. She must have been, you know, sleeping with both of us.” His eyes got all watery again. He shrugged, pressed his lips tight for a moment. “We had sex in the back of my car that night, up at the top of the cove.”
Embarrassment crept up Stanton’s jowls and stained his cheeks. “I was on duty, on a dinner break,” he said softly. “I thought everything was great, but then she said she wanted to break it off. She told me to drop her on the edge of Old Town, that she was going to the Sandbar. I did.”
“And then she got intoxicated and belligerent,” Zeke said, nodding. “She made a ruckus and Rocky and Manny and I tried to quiet her down. She wouldn’t have any part of that.”
“Then what happened?” Dena asked. She picked up her coffee mug and took a couple of sips.
Zeke scratched his jaw and squinted. “Far as I remember, we tried to ignore her, but she kept goading me. She threatened to climb my wall that night and see Susie Q. for the last time.”
“I was dispatched to the disturbance,” Stanton said. “Call came in there was an intoxicated woman throwing rocks at a vehicle in the parking lot.”
“Your car?” Dena asked, and turned toward Zeke.
He raised his eyebrows, nodded.
“Zeke had requested a restraining order on Susie earlier that week. It hadn’t quite been processed,” Stanton said. “At the time I’d thought it was out of line and—” He grimaced. “—I was guilty of holding it up.”
Zeke shot Stanton a look, but kept his mouth shut.
“But she knew about it?” Dena asked.
Both men nodded.
“Did you take her in to the station?”
“Wish I had,” Dave said softly. “I just gave her a warning and—”
“I didn’t press charges,” Zeke said. He pushed a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t. I felt bad enough that I’d requested the restraining order. She’d rambled on about being glad to be getting out of this hellhole once and for all. To tell the truth, I didn’t pay much attention.”
“So what happened to her then?” Dena asked.
“I’m not sure,” Zeke said. “I remember the owner came out and said he’d get her sobered up. Said he had coffee. Dave left on a back-up call, a shooting in Indio. I went home.”
“So, she went back inside the Sandbar?” Dena asked.
“Far as I know,” Zeke said.
“And Manny and Rocky, what did they do?”
Zeke gave her a blank stare. “I’ve no idea. We all met there in separate cars.”
“Did Manny sleep over that weekend?”
Zeke frowned. She waited while he went back in time to re-enact that evening.
“I doubt it. It would have been the wrong time of year, you know, no harvest,” Zeke said.