security camera in the hall that’s aimed straight at her door, and it hasn’t opened once since I installed the camera.”
Blaine’s heart skipped a beat. Could he be so lucky as to hope she’d become despondent and offed herself?
“Do you think she’s still there?” Blaine asked.
“I have no way of knowing that,” Rand said. “All I know is that I saw her go in weeks ago, and her car is still in the parking garage.”
Blaine frowned. This was not what he wanted to hear.
“Do a follow-up and see if she booked any trips. Check airlines for overseas flights. Check cruise ships. She might have gone on vacation somewhere—and get back to me on this ASAP.”
“Yes, sir,” Rand said.
Frustrated, Blaine disconnected. He was too impatient to wait for Rand to run all those traces, and thought about checking in with the apartment manager and having them do a welfare check. Then he tried to think of who he knew at her bank that might break FDIC rules for him and see if she’d withdrawn a large amount of money.
He had a meeting later in the afternoon, but it would freaking make his day if someone found her dead in her apartment. He knew the manager of her complex and made a call to the office. He was put on hold just long enough to tick him off, and then the call was picked up.
“Good morning, Mr. Wagner. This is Eric. How can I help you?”
“Morning, Eric. I have a favor to ask. I know it’s a little unorthodox, but I’m a bit concerned about my ex-wife, Cathy. I’ve been out of town for a while, and I come back to all kinds of messages from her old friends that are concerning to me.” It didn’t faze him one bit that he’d just lied, as long as he got the answers he wanted. “She’s in one of your apartments and hasn’t been seen anywhere for some time. Her friends have called without getting answers. Her car hasn’t been moved in weeks, and now they have me concerned. She could easily be vacationing, I suppose. But we’d all rest easier knowing she hadn’t suffered a fall or taken ill and is unable to call for help. Is there any way you could do a kind of welfare check? You surely have spare keys to the apartments, right?”
Eric Mitchell was immediately on alert. The last thing he needed was for someone’s dead body to be rotting in one of the apartments. It would cost a fortune to strip the place down and fix it after something like that.
“Yes, yes, I can do that for you. I’ll check my records to get the building and apartment number and get back to you soon.”
“As soon as possible, please,” Blaine said. “I have meetings this afternoon and can’t be disturbed then.”
“Yes, just give me about thirty minutes and I’ll call you back.”
“Thank you so much,” Blaine said, and then disconnected. He glanced up at the clock. It was a quarter to ten. He wasn’t in the habit of drinking before noon, but he set aside his coffee and headed for the wet bar, while on the other side of Vegas, Eric Mitchell was scrambling for pass keys.
* * *
Eric wasn’t looking forward to this. He could have sent someone else to do it, but Blaine Wagner had asked him personally, and he was stuck.
He jumped in his car and drove down to the building, then headed inside, rode the elevator up to the eighth floor, and walked down to 802. He paused outside the door and inhaled, but didn’t smell anything resembling a rotting body, so he rang the doorbell and waited. And then waited. Then he rang it again and waited. And waited some more.
Satisfied there wasn’t going to be an answer, he put the key in the lock and turned it. Only afterward did it occur to him that it could have set off a security alarm, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he was met with silence.
The air-conditioning was on, so there was no musty smell as he called out.
“Cathy! Cathy Wagner! Anybody here?”
Silence.
At that point, he began walking through the rooms, choosing the kitchen first and going straight to the refrigerator. There were a couple of leftover cartons of moldy food and a partially full bottle of milk that was almost two months out of date. He closed the door and went through the living room and into the office. There