a gift from Giovanni. I considered setting the major distraction on the floor until I noticed it looked like it hadn’t been mopped for a while. Apparently, store cleanliness didn’t extend to personal offices. I held the bag securely with both hands in front of me, tight against my legs to avoid contamination.
“My name is Sloane,” I said.
“Jim.”
Jim sat behind a beaten up metal desk that quite possibly had been around since his father owned the store. I sat opposite him on a chair that had a price tag dangling from the side. At least it was clean.
“I’m looking into the kidnapping of a couple girls over the past two years,” I said. “I understand Olivia was kidnapped from your store.”
He cleared his throat—twice. “I told everything I know to the cops, and then to the investigators that showed up after the cops, and then to the agents who showed up after the investigators. Why are you interested?”
“I’ve been hired to look into a few things.”
“Are you new?”
“New?” I said.
“Did they bring you in because the last two guys didn’t find anything?”
I shook my head.
“I’m not a cop.”
“Then what are you?”
“A private investigator.”
His eyes widened as if shocked people like me actually existed. “You shittin’ me? Olivia’s parents don’t got much money, so who hired you?”
“I can’t say.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “Can’t or won’t?”
I smiled.
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
I’d smarted off, maybe a little too much for Jim’s liking, but his body language had already told me that while the store was open, he was closed.
“I’d better not talk to you.”
“All I want to know is what happened the day Olivia was taken,” I said.
“It was in the paper. Look it up.”
“I have,” I said. “I’m interested in hearing about your side of things.”
“It’s no different.”
“So there’s nothing you didn’t tell police—not one detail you left out?”
He raised a brow.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I haven’t called you anything,” I said.
Yet.
He stood, hovering over me with his arms spread out over both sides of the desk like he expected it to produce a dramatic and lasting effect. But he wasn’t the first bully I’d gone up against, and he wouldn’t be the last.
“I want you to leave,” he said. “And don’t bother my daughter on the way out. People in this town are protective of each other. They won’t take kindly to you poking your nose around where it don’t belong. I’d move on if I were you.”
I left the store like he asked, but when I got in the car and shut the door, it miraculously opened back up again. Jim’s daughter and her teeth stood in the doorway. She glanced around the parking lot and hunched over.
“My name’s Jenny, by the way.”
Jim and Jenny. I wondered if all the names in their family started with a “J.”
“Sloane,” I said.
“I’m sorry I opened your door without permission. It’s just—I overheard you talking to my dad.”
“How?” I said. “The office door was shut.”
“The air vents in my dad’s office are connected to the ones in the next room, and well, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop—”
“But you did,” I said.
“There’s someone you should talk to while you’re in town.”
“Who?”
“His name is Todd Anderson. The day Olivia was kidnapped, he was here.”
“Working?”
She nodded.
“We were dating at the time. At least, we were trying to, but then my dad found out.”
“He didn’t approve?” I said.
She shook her head no.
“Why not?” I said.
She poked her head over the roof of my car, looked around, and then ducked down again. “Todd was in a band, only it wasn’t even a band, really. I tried to tell my dad that, but he didn’t care. He fired Todd to keep him from seeing me.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Why do I need to talk to him?” I said.
“Because on the day Olivia was kidnapped, he saw something.”
CHAPTER 9
Maddie and I sat in a car across the street from Todd’s house the next morning. A group of misfit boys belted out a “pitchy” tune in an open garage with an oversized piece of green and orange shag carpeting on the floor. From where we sat, I couldn’t determine what type of music it was exactly, but it sounded like the yelling kind.
When I had spoken to Jenny the night before, she admitted she’d tried to get Todd to tell her what he saw the day Olivia was abducted. But every time she brought it up, he acted weird about it, always changing the