Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,49
Monday and she left about twenty minutes later, right before I got there.”
Diana dropped into a chair, and the room receded around her. “You’re sure?”
“We matched the plate numbers.”
“And you saw her coming into the building and leaving?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
“There’s a gap.”
Diana stood up. “A what?”
Gruder cleared his throat. “A gap in the footage. A power surge knocked it off-line for about thirty minutes. But we see her car pulling in. And when the power comes back, the car is gone.”
“How convenient,” Diana said. “Do you have any idea how easy it is to alter surveillance video?”
“The outage affected several buildings in that area,” he added.
“So all you really know is her car came back. But that doesn’t mean she was in it.”
“What else could it mean? And it’s not just that. Her mail was picked up. She changed clothes. There’s no evidence of a crime.”
“And that’s it? You’re done?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Well, I’m not.” She hung up the phone.
Pam rolled over to the bookshelves and grabbed a bottle and two glasses. She steadied the bottle of bourbon between her legs, pulled out the cork, and poured an inch of rich brown liquid into one of the glasses. She handed it to Diana.
Diana knocked back the contents. It seared her throat, cauterizing a residue of self-pity.
Pam refilled Diana’s glass and then filled her own. She sipped thoughtfully as Diana told her what she’d learned from Officer Gruder.
“So you’re thinking that this man, whoever he was, has Ashley’s car, drove it over to her apartment, and tried to make it look as if she came home?”
“I know it sounds improbable. But at least that would account for all the facts, and it explains why she hasn’t called me or returned a single one of my goddamned messages.” Diana choked up and her eyes misted over.
Pam laid a hand on Diana’s arm. “We should eat something. Okay if I order a pizza? Salad too? Oil-and-vinegar dressing on the side? After dinner, we’ll go over everything, step-by-step, one more time.”
Diana nodded, swallowing the hard lump in her throat.
“Can you shut everything down for me?” Pam said, shifting her laptop to the table. She put the liquor bottle on the coffee table and rolled off toward the kitchen end of the loft.
Diana drank the bourbon in her glass and shuddered. One by one, she closed the video windows. There was nothing more to see.
“Pizza delivery in fifteen minutes,” Pam called out.
Diana corked the bottle. Two shots on an empty stomach and she was already feeling it.
Her OtherWorld session remained open. Nadia still stood frozen in the middle of Copley Square. Steady as a rock. Diana flinched when a message popped up.
GROB: Hey? U OK? How’s your sister?
She had no idea how to answer those two simple questions. Knowing it was pointless, she found her cell phone in her jacket pocket and, once again, called Ashley. By now she had her on speed dial.
The line rang once. Twice. Another message popped up in OtherWorld.
GROB: Let me know if I can help.
The phone stopped ringing in the middle of the third ring. There was silence on the line. Had she lost the signal? She took the phone from her ear and looked at the screen. Still connected.
Pam rolled over toward her, giving her a questioning look. She mouthed, “Your sister?”
Diana nodded and put the phone back to her ear and her hand over her other ear to block out sounds around her. For a moment, she thought she heard something—or was that just static? Then: “Mmmm. I . . .”
“Ashley?” Diana focused on the voice on the other end.