to burn and ache in my dress boots. I think I even limped a little.
“What’s up, Darlin’?”
I filled Ray in on Maury Boor’s old job and my quest to learn more about him. “It’s a dead end. Have you had better luck?”
“He drives a white Honda Prelude, not a Camry.”
“That’s good news, I guess. Right?”
“It means it isn’t likely that he parked a white Toyota Camry with a woman’s arm on ice in the trunk outside the psych center, if that’s what you mean.”
It was. “But everyone keeps saying he’s creepy.”
“I talked to the arresting officer about the stalking charge. He was leaving roses for a girl on her doorstep nightly. She asked him to stop, but he didn’t.”
“Not such a big deal, right?” But it was. It was. I knew it was.
Ray must have agreed. “I don’t like it. I’ll call the HR department at In-house Textiles and see what they’re willing to share with me. I’ll see you at home later.”
He hung up before I had a chance to ask him if they’d gotten any more leads on Jessica James’ body.
I checked the clock and realized I had just enough time to get over to the school for dismissal. I hopped in the car and hightailed it over there, successfully inserting my Lexus sedan into the last parking space behind a rainbow assortment of minivans.
While I watched for Danny to appear in the stream of children exiting the school building, I tried to make sense of what we knew so far. A Camry had been stolen from a used car lot outside Geneseo. That same car, based on the VIN, had been parked outside the psych center with Jessica James’ arm inside the trunk. Danny claimed the keys had been in the ignition when he took it. He also claimed the keys belonged to his dad, until he saw the woman’s arm and changed his mind. Ray said they hadn’t been able to get any clear prints from the keys to match Danny’s father’s prints, so maybe his father had stolen the car, maybe he hadn’t. But from what Danny said, his father had been driving a Camry with all their things in the trunk. So, where were all their things? Had someone removed them from the car and replaced them with Jessica’s arm in a cooler? What for? And what happened to their things?
The psych center or the doctor’s office building figured into this somehow. Had the person who had stolen the car been in an appointment with their doctor or visiting a patient when Danny spotted the car and took it? If so, Danny’s father couldn’t be that person. He’d been in the county jail at that time. Were we blaming him for a car theft he hadn’t committed? Were we looking for another car thief? Maybe one in treatment?
That seemed like a bit of a stretch. Car thieves didn’t get treatment like kleptomaniacs. They got jail time. But I’d bet stalkers got treatment. Maybe Maury Boor had been required to seek treatment. Maybe Maury Boor had been at the psych center that day, driving a stolen Camry instead of a Prelude. He’d worked as a deliveryman. Maybe he had a customer close to the used car lot from which the Camry had been taken. He wouldn’t want to mess up his own car with a dead woman’s body, but he might have a preference for cars like his own. If so, was my sister in the hands of a murderer?
I squeezed my shoulder blades together to stop from trembling. My imagination was getting the best of me. Lots of people were in and out of that doctor’s parking lot and the psych center every day. Even Leslie Flynn said she was a patient there.
I kicked myself mentally for not asking her about the nature of her treatment. But she didn’t drive a Camry. She didn’t live in Geneseo. In fact, I got the impression that prior to now she’d stayed pretty close to the farm most of the time. But she had been at The Cat’s Meow—supposedly to pay off her brother’s bounced check. Her brother had been there, too, talking with my sister on Tuesday before she disappeared. I’d forgotten to ask Leslie whether her brother had admitted to meeting Erica or not. I wondered what kind of car he drove. Maybe Ray could look it up.
The back door of my car flew open. Danny dropped onto the seat, his head bowed.
“Hi, Danny. How