have to do with Frankie?”
“I’m trying to get a connection between him and a guy who had an AMG serviced that day.”
“An AMG S63?”
“Yes, you remember it.”
“We don’t sell many AMGs here. They’re pretty expensive. It’s basically the same model and wheelbase as the S560, but with a lot more power and torque under the hood.”
“Do you remember the man, Myron Pringle? In his fifties, really tall?”
“No, I don’t remember anyone like that. But she was really nice to Frankie. Even bought him a candy bar from the vending machine.”
“‘She’?”
“The lady who brought the car in. She saw Frankie and asked about him. I told her about us taking him in. She was nice to him, bought him the candy bar and all, like I said.”
“Wait a minute, you’re telling me a woman and not a man brought in the S63 for service?”
“Yeah.”
The image of Lauren Graham flashed through her mind. “Describe her.”
When he was done, Pine thanked him and pulled back onto the road and sped off to a new destination.
It wasn’t Lauren Graham. The description he had given her fit Britta Pringle exactly.
Chapter 70
ON THE WAY Pine phoned Laredo and told him what she had learned and also about being nearly blown up.
“I didn’t wait for the first responders. I know that’s not how we do things, but there was no way around it.”
“I think you did the right thing,” replied Laredo. He promised to meet her at the Pringles’ and also to loop in Wallis.
She drove fast down the tree-shrouded lane and soon reached the fantastically modern house. She stopped, got out, and surveyed the property, her mind going a mile a minute.
Britta had taken the car in. Britta had met Frankie Gomez and even bought him a candy bar. Why would she have done that? Were both Myron and Britta involved in this? Or was it just her? If so, where the hell was Myron? She was about to head up to the front door but then changed her mind.
She went around back and stared, not at the rear of the main house, but at Britta’s Cape Cod. She looked around but neither saw nor heard anyone about.
She pulled her gun, skirted by the side of the pool, hustled up the steps to the Cape Cod, and peered through the window into the room overlooking the pool.
She tried the door adjacent to the window and it opened. She moved through and closed it behind her. The only illumination was from the sun coming through the glass.
She swiftly made a search of the house. It was decorated beautifully and looked totally unlived in, which surprised her. This supposedly was Britta’s thinking place. She wondered where Britta really did her thinking.
On the top floor and in a room at the back of the house facing away from the pool, she found it. She knew that because it was the only door in the place that had been locked.
She shot the lock off with her Glock.
When Pine stepped into the room, she noted that all the shades were drawn, casting the room into near total darkness.
She found and turned on a light. It was a sterile environment. Plainly furnished, with not a trace of warmth in the place. And then she noticed the bureau. She opened it. Inside was what could only be described as a shrine to her dead children.
Along with numerous mementos from their childhood and lives as young adults, there were multiple pictures of Mary and Joey Pringle. Pine recognized them from the photos Britta had shown them earlier.
One showed them sitting next to the pool. Mary was wearing a bikini and Joey was shirtless and in jeans. Pine peered closer at Joey. She picked up the photo and took it over to the window, where she drew back the drapes to let the light in.
The next moment Pine confirmed what she thought she had seen.
Joey had a St. Christopher’s medal around his neck.
He’d died by gunshot. An accident, Britta had said. The St. Christopher’s medal found on Frankie Gomez had been damaged by a gunshot. Blood and remnants of a buckshot found there by the ME.
Now Pine was certain the medal had belonged to Joey. He’d been wearing it when he’d died from a gunshot wound, apparently a shotgun. Now the question was: Had it been an accident, as Britta had said? Or had he been murdered or committed suicide? And if so, why?
There was a TV housed in the cabinet. And in a drawer