Maggie rubbed her forehead in frustration. “Do I look like I care whose cat it is, Stig? Come on, we both know you’ve had your eyes glued to the parking lot while you had a Hollywood stunt man staying here. So tell me what you saw, okay?”
Stig snuffled loudly. “Lots of girls. It’s like a parade. Every night a different girl.”
Maggie dug in her pocket for a photograph of Rochelle Wahl. “What about this girl? Did you see her?”
“I don’t think so.”
Cab opened up his phone. “How about her?”
Stig leaned in and studied the photograph of Peach Piper. It was Cab’s favorite photograph of Peach. She’d been visiting him at his house south of Naples, and she’d gone out with him to walk on the wet sand. He’d snapped the picture of her before she knew he was taking it, while her freckled face was creased into an innocent smile and the wind was playing with her pageboy blond hair.
The man frowned and didn’t answer.
“Stig?” Maggie said. “Do you recognize her?”
“Yeah, I saw her hanging around here,” he replied.
“Hanging around? What do you mean?”
“I saw her sneaking through the parking lot. She was heading toward the cottages in the back. I didn’t like the look of it, so I went out to see what she was up to. She must have heard me coming and taken off, because I couldn’t find her. That was last Sunday night, I think.”
“Was that the only time you saw her?” Cab asked.
“No. She was back again a couple nights later.”
“Doing what?”
“Looked like she was spying on Jack’s place,” Stig said. “I figured maybe she was a wife or a girlfriend, you know? With all the action over there, maybe somebody got jealous.”
“What did you do when you saw her?” Maggie asked.
“I called Jack. If a guy rents from me, he’s got a right to know if somebody’s up in his business.”
Cab took a deep breath. “What happened after you called Jack?”
“He came out and rousted her. Sounded pretty loud, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then he dragged her inside his place.”
“What time did this happen?” Maggie asked.
“Somewhere around ten o’clock, I think.”
Maggie grabbed a notebook from her back pocket and flipped backward through several pages. She already knew the answer — she remembered details by seeing them in her head — but she wanted to confirm what she’d written down. “There was a call between John Doe’s phone and the burner phone at 10:10 last Tuesday night.”
“Jack found Peach outside his place,” Cab said, “so he called John Doe to figure out what they needed to do about her.”
“Did you see the girl and Jack again after they went inside the apartment?” Maggie asked the owner.
Stig nodded. “Yeah. About half an hour later, Jack and the girl left.”
“Where did they go?” Maggie asked.
“Back behind the cottage. They were headed for the woods. I couldn’t see them after that.”
Cab shook his head. “They were headed for the woods?”
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t do anything?”
“What was I supposed to do?” the man asked.
Cab stared at the apartment owner with silent rage. Then he spun away and marched across the plowed parking lot toward the lineup of spruce trees towering behind the cottages. The snow made a cloud around him like a white tornado. Maggie chased after him.
“Cab?” she called. “Cab, hang on.”
She got in front of him and stopped him with a hand on his chest. “What are you doing?”
“They killed her that night,” Cab replied. “Jack met John Doe back here, they took Peach into the woods, and John Doe shot her in the head.”
Maggie nodded. “I’m sorry. You’re probably right.”
“I want to find where he did it.”
“Cab, we’ll search the woods in the morning. It’s dark, and the storm is still dumping snow. We could spend hours in there and not find the crime scene. Guppo will get a team out here as soon as it’s light. If that’s where Peach was killed, he’ll find it.”
Cab stared into the black mouth of the forest, his body tall and stiff like a statue. His normally spiky hair was flat and wet on his head. Maggie could see snow landing on his face and couldn’t tell whether the melting snow was mixed with tears. He looked oddly elegant, standing there in his suit and tie, yet she knew his heart was broken.
“This is not the way it should have been,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“She spent her last few seconds right here in this pissant place. She knew what was going to happen to her.”
Maggie didn’t say anything, but she took hold of his hand.
“This was my case,” he went on. “It wasn’t hers. If anyone should have faced down that gun in the woods, it was me.”
“Come on, Cab. Don’t do this to yourself. There’s only one thing we can do for Peach, and that’s the most important thing.”
Cab stared down at her and nodded.
“Let’s go get Jungle Jack,” he said.
Stride found Serena sitting in her Mustang outside their cottage. She hadn’t gone inside yet. He parked his truck and walked across the snow to her car and climbed into the front seat. She looked cold. Her long black hair was mussed. He could barely see her green eyes in the shadows.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“Aimee’s locked up in a cage,” Serena replied. “She’s probably freezing to death. And I don’t know where she is or who did this or how the hell we’ll ever find her.”
“Believe me, I know what you’re going through.”
“Is it starting all over again? I mean, is it really possible that you were wrong about Art Leipold?”
Stride allowed doubt to creep into his mind for the first time. “I don’t know. Art didn’t do this, that’s for sure.”
“So what can we do?” Serena asked.
“I retrieved the case files from storage. All the notes, evidence, interviews, media reports, everything we gathered. We can go through it again together.”
“Looking for what?”
“To see if I made a mistake,” Stride said.
They both got out of the Mustang. Stride went up the driveway to the rear door of his Expedition and opened the back panel. He had several boxes inside. He stacked three of them together, then Serena took two more, and they climbed the porch steps to the front door of the cottage.
Inside, he dropped the boxes behind the red leather sofa. He checked his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock.
“Cat?” he called. “We’re home.”
There was no answer.
Serena went into the girl’s bedroom and came back out with a worried look on her face. “She’s not there. Did she say anything about going out tonight?”
“No.” Stride took a deep breath, and musk cologne filled his nose. His mouth screwed into a frown. “Curt Dickes was here. Cat’s car is still outside. She must have gone somewhere with him.”
He took out his phone and dialed Cat’s number, but the call went straight to voice mail. “Do you still have that tracking app on her phone?” he asked Serena.
“No, I disabled it. I wanted her to feel like we trusted her. I guess that was a mistake.”
Stride dialed Maggie’s number next. He had a brief conversation and then hung up the phone.
“Maggie and Cab are at Casperson’s rental house,” he said. “They were going to pick up Jungle Jack, but he’s not there. Neither is Casperson. There’s some sort of wrap party tonight up on the North Shore. They’re trying to find out where.”
“Do you think that’s where Cat is?” Serena asked.
“Don’t you?”
They turned back to the front door, but Stride’s glance strayed across the bookshelf near Cat’s bedroom door. He saw a yellow piece of paper with his name written across the outside.