Against the Night. Kat Martin

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       He cast her a glance that said he wasn’t convinced. “Let’s start at the beginning.” His intense gaze held hers. “First off, as long as you’re in this, you’re Angel. Amy Brewer is still in Michigan as far as this investigation goes. You want answers, you’ve got a helluva better chance of getting them if you’re Angel Fontaine, not Rachael’s sister. Just an acquaintance. The thing is, I don’t want anyone finding out you’re playing detective. All you’ll do is piss someone off, and if it happens to be the guy who…had something to do with her disappearance, you could be next. You got it?”

       “All right.”

       “I’ll need one of these photos.”

       “Take whatever you need,” she said as he opened the portfolio. “I had some extras made.”

       He slid a four-by-six glossy out of the plastic sleeve, the photo of a beautiful girl with shoulder-length mink-brown hair and pale green eyes. The angle of her head gave her smile a hint of mischief.

       “Pretty girl,” Johnnie said, examining the picture.

       Amy felt a tightening in her chest. “Rachael’s beautiful. She was homecoming queen in high school. She always had her pick of the boys.”

       Johnnie studied the photo as if he were trying to see deeper than the pretty smile and glossy dark hair. “How long since you last saw her?”

       “Not since my dad’s funeral. About three years. Rachael’s twenty-eight. She left Grand Rapids when she turned twenty-one, right after she finished city college. She came back to visit a couple of times, but it always ended in a fight with Mom. Rachael was smart. My parents wanted her to finish her education, but all Rachael wanted was to be onstage. She got the lead in a couple of high school plays, then did some local theater, and that was it. She believed she had found her calling. She was determined to become an actress.”

       “Well, she was onstage,” Babs drawled, “but the Kitty Cat Club isn’t exactly what your sister had in mind.”

       Johnnie’s mouth edged up, then he returned his attention to Amy. “How about phone calls, email, that kind of thing?”

       “We talked on the phone a few times a year, but it was mostly about superficial stuff. I didn’t know she was working as a…a dancer until I talked to Babs. There’s a computer in the office downstairs. The girls use it for email. She said she had a job as a cocktail waitress. I guess that was kind of the truth.”

       “What about boyfriends?”

       “She never mentioned anyone special. She never talked to me about her boyfriends or anything like that and I never talked to her about mine.”

       Johnnie sliced her a glance. “You got a guy back home?”

       There was more to the question than it seemed; she could see it in his eyes. Amy shook her head. “We broke up a couple of years ago. I’m not seeing anyone now.”

       Johnnie seemed to relax. “Any other family members out here?”

       “No, just me, and I’ve only been here the past couple of weeks.”

       “How about friends of hers from the past? People she knew back home?”

       Amy shook her head.

       “Anything about her you can think of that might help me find her?”

       “I don’t know…we drifted so far apart over the years.” Amy smiled sadly. “Rachael could really sing… A voice like a songbird, you know? Only she wasn’t interested in a singing career. She wanted to be a serious actress.”

       Johnnie was making mental notes, she could tell. “Anything else?” he asked.

       “Only that she wasn’t the type to just go away and not tell anyone.”

       “I’m sure you believe that, honey, but as you said, you don’t really know your sister that well—not anymore.”

       It was true. Sadly. She should have come out to California sooner, tried to rebuild the close relationship they had once shared.

       The waitress arrived with their food, her coffee and two glasses of iced tea. Johnnie stuck the photo into his back pocket, picked up his pastrami sandwich and dug in. Babs slathered her toasted bagel with cream cheese and jelly, tore off a bite and began to nibble. Amy added a little cream to her coffee and managed to take a sip.

       “Who’ve you been talking to in the department?” Johnnie asked around a mouthful of pastrami and rye.

       “A woman detective, Lieutenant Carla Meeks. I talk to her pretty much every day. She says they haven’t come up with anything new.”

       “Sometimes making a pest of yourself works. Sometimes it’s just a distraction.”

       She glanced down at the table. “I know.”

       Johnnie turned to Babs. “What did Rachael do before she started working at the Kitty Cat Club?”

       “She was a waitress down at Milt’s Coffee Shop. But working at the club paid a lot better, and she wanted to save some money.”

       “What for?”

       “I think she was hoping she’d get an acting job and if she did, she wanted to have enough put away to get a place of her own. I know she did casting calls whenever she got the chance. As far as I know, not much ever came of it.”

       “She dating anyone you know of—besides Kyle Bennett, I mean?”

       “I knew about Bennett, but she was only seeing him because she thought he might help her get a break. I know she and her mother never got along. I think she wanted to prove something to her.”

       That was probably true, Amy thought with a pang. Rachael had desperately wanted her parents’ approval, but it never came. After their dad’s funeral, the split with her mother had only gotten worse.

       “What about Bennett?” Johnnie asked.

       “I told her he wasn’t for real,” Babs said, “but Rachael had a lot of ambition. She did what she thought she needed to do.”

       “So she was sleeping with him.”

       “I’m not really sure. I think she might have been playing him the same way he was trying to play her. The month before she disappeared, she kind of clammed up, you know? I figured she was seeing someone else, but she wouldn’t talk about it. She only went out with Kyle a handful of times. She rarely mentioned where she was going or who she was going out with.”

       “Any problems with any of the customers? Anyone she blew off who might have had a grudge?”

       Babs shook her head, her dark, chin-length hair sliding around her cheeks. “Rachael kind of kept to herself. She and I were pretty good friends, but she didn’t tell me everything. She was popular with the customers. Her stage name was Silky Summers. Everyone called her Silk.”

       Babs had told Amy that. Still, hearing it now made her see her sister in a way she hadn’t before, as a woman who СКАЧАТЬ