The Night Before - Wendy Walker Page 0,64

Rosie’s car, which was parked outside the diner. Gabe was right beside her.

The woman from findlove wouldn’t give her real name, though Gabe had already found her using her cell phone. Kimmie Taylor. Age thirty-seven.

She picked up after one ring.

“Hi,” she said. She’d been expecting their call.

“This is Rosie. The woman who emailed you. I’m here with a friend of mine. I have you on speaker.”

“Okay,” the woman said cautiously.

Then she was silent.

“This is the friend—Gabe. Sorry to be cryptic on the emails,” Gabe said now. “We actually have a good friend who went on a date with here4you. He told her his name was Jonathan Fields, but we know he’s also gone by the names Billy Larson and Buck Larkin. We haven’t heard from her for a while, so we’re a little worried.”

Gabe played it down. He told Rosie they shouldn’t say anything that might make this woman worried about the police getting involved. She could be married, or living with someone, or have a boyfriend—just like Sylvia Emmett, the woman who’d bought a round of drinks at the bar by the harbor.

“You’re right to be worried,” Kimmie said. “He lies about everything. He used Buck Larson with me, but his real name is none of those. His real name is Edward Rittle. Not exactly the name of a stud.”

Rosie clutched her phone so tightly, her fingertips were turning white. She did her best to soften her voice.

“What can you tell us about him? Anything at all.”

The woman let out one quick burst of laughter. “Where do I even begin?” she said, her voice laden with disgust. “You saw his profile, right? Said he was divorced. Said he made over $150k. Said he had no kids and worked in finance. Look—a lot of guys make shit up. They lie about everything from their weight to their height, and especially their income. Sometimes they say they’re divorced when they’re really just separated. I think they have secret meetings, these douchebags—to give and get advice on how to avoid being excluded from search lists. Seriously, I can hear them.… Don’t say you’re not divorced yet! You’ll never get laid that way! Makes me want to throw up.”

Gabe rolled his eyes and Rosie knew what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing. Kimmie was one bitter veteran of online dating.

“It’s horrible,” Rosie said. “Don’t they know that if they keep seeing a woman, she’ll find out they were lying from the start?”

Kimmie laughed again. “They don’t give a shit! Are you kidding me? Three dates. A fuck. And they’re out of there. On to the next. It’s an online free-sex buffet, that’s what it is. But this one—he knows how to find just what he wants.”

“So what exactly does he do? Maybe it will help us find our friend,” Gabe said.

“Well, he lies on the profile. That’s the first thing. Lies about his name. Lies about being divorced…”

“Wait—what do you mean?” Rosie asked.

“I mean he’s married! Married with two kids in middle school. Living in Mamaroneck. Working as a salesman for energy-efficient windows. Can you imagine? Goes door to door performing ‘energy assessments’ for the electric company, but then he tries to sell people new windows for his company. It’s all a scam, just like he is. Finds a way in the door and then fucks people.”

“How did you find all of this out?” Gabe asked.

“It took me some time, but things weren’t adding up about him. The car he was driving. How cheap he was when we went out. He didn’t seem sophisticated enough for finance, you know? He seemed blue-collar to me. And eventually he let his guard down, left the room without his wallet. So I looked. It was that simple. I flipped it open and there it was—his real name and address. I went home and Googled him and whoosh—a tidal wave of bullshit came pouring out.…”

Rosie got the picture, but she needed to connect the dots back to Laura. “How did it start? How did he contact you, where did you meet…?”

“Seemed benign at first,” Kimmie said. “He calls to make sure you sound okay—no annoying accents or speech impediments. He asks if your pictures are current, but he does it in a subtle way. He asks about where you were when they were taken and then asks follow-up questions. One of mine was at my niece’s graduation, so he asked where she was in college and what year was she in now. Things like