Sylvie stepped toward him. “You were at Diana’s wedding?”
“Of course. She’s my neighbor. I might not have agreed with her marrying that Baraboo cop, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to show for the wedding if she wants me there.”
“You weren’t a big fan of Diana getting married?” Sylvie asked.
“She was too good for him.”
“Why do you say that?” Sylvie asked. “What do you know about Bobby?”
“Nothing. Just that he’s a cop.”
Bryce remembered Detective Perreth’s suspicions where Bobby was concerned. Suspicions Sylvie had written off as ridiculous but might be worth checking out. “Did Bobby and Diana fight often?”
Even though Bryce kept his focus on Red, he could feel Sylvie’s glare burn a hole just in front of his ear.
Red slid out of the van. Hitting the ground, he shifted one of his Reebok runners in the gravel. “You’re thinking the same thing that detective at her apartment was thinking. That he beat her up.”
“Did he?”
“If he had, I would have killed him.” He balled his hands into fists.
Bryce didn’t know Bobby Vaughan, but he would have to be pretty small to be overpowered by Red. Posturing aside, Red still hadn’t answered his original question. “Did they fight often?”
Red’s hands went slack by his side. “I never even heard them argue.”
“Did you tell that to the detective?” Sylvie asked in a righteous tone, shooting Bryce a glare.
“He didn’t seem to care.”
So maybe Sylvie was right about her sister and Bobby Vaughan. Maybe. Bryce had to admit that whatever the truth was, the longer he was around Sylvie, the more he wanted to believe her version. “So why do you think Diana is too good for her fiancé?”
“Do you know her, man? Have you ever met her?”
“No.”
“She isn’t just beautiful, she’s smart. You know, like lightning smart.” He stared dreamily, as if picturing Diana in front of him now. Only he was staring at Sylvie. “And she has this smile that seems like it’s only for you.”
Bryce hadn’t had much chance to experience Sylvie’s smile, but he could imagine what it felt like way too vividly.
He pulled himself back from that thought. “So you have some kind of puppy-dog crush on Diana?”
Red lifted his chin, defensive. “She was my neighbor. And my friend.”
Now he’d made the guy defiant. A great way to get him to open up. He needed to keep his head straight, remember what he was trying to do, not go off on mental tangents like pondering Sylvie’s smile.
Next to him, Sylvie focused on Red, nodding understandingly. “It sounds like you would know everything that went on in her life.”
“Not everything.”
“Maybe enough to help us find her? To help us save her?”
The kid drew himself up. Like any red-blooded guy with a crush, he liked the idea of being a knight in shining armor to Diana Gale’s damsel in distress. “How can I help? What do you need to know?”
With just a few words, Sylvie had tapped into Louis Ingersoll’s vulnerabilities immediately. Bryce stood back and watched, letting her take over.
“You said Bobby wasn’t good enough for her. Why?”
“He was there in the room where she disappeared, right? And he didn’t protect her. I would have protected her.”
“How did you know Bobby was there?”
“The detective. He told me.”
Perreth hadn’t been overly eager to share information with them. Why would he have confided that detail to Diana’s next-door neighbor? A next-door neighbor nursing a serious crush?
The uneasy feeling resumed its creep up Bryce’s spine. Thanks to Tanner’s penchant for helping abused and vulnerable women, Bryce had seen more than his share of injured male pride and thwarted male desire. This kid had it bad for Diana. And Diana was to marry another man. All the elements for disaster. “You could have done a lot of things for Diana Gale, couldn’t you?”
The kid stuck out a freckled chin. “Yeah.”
“But she wouldn’t let you.”
The chin hardened. “Hey, it’s not my fault if she was fooled by that whole man-in-a-uniform thing.”
“You think Bobby fooled her? You think that’s why she wasn’t interested in you?”
“Diana and me… we were close. We talked all the time. I knew things she didn’t tell anybody else. Not even that cop.”
“Like what?”
“You think I’d repeat them to you?”
Sylvie stepped forward and laid her hand on his arm. “Will you tell me? Will you help me find my sister?”
Bryce watched the kid’s defiance fall apart like a bad court case. First the chin receded. Then his eyes softened to the consistency of that sweet creme inside fancy chocolates.
“Did Diana ever mention the name Ed Dryden to you?” Sylvie asked.
“Sure. I used to save clippings for her from the newspaper. She was fascinated with him.”
“Did she say why?”
“She didn’t need to explain. We have always been on the same wavelength.”
“Can you explain it to me?”
“Ed Dryden is…” He shrugged. “A lot of people find serial killers interesting.”
Sylvie shook her head as if she couldn’t understand the comment and refused to accept it would include her sister. “Do you think he has anything to do with her disappearance?”
“He’s in prison.”
“Do you know why he would want to hurt Diana?”
“Why do you think he wants to hurt Diana?” Shaking his head, Red offered Sylvie a reassuring smile. “No one would want to hurt her. Everyone loves Diana.”
The unease encircling Bryce’s throat gave a squeeze. Maybe everyone didn’t love Diana, but this kid sure did. To the point of obsession. And judging by the way he was looking at Sylvie, after this little chat his obsession might just include her too.
Sylvie
Fortunately, parking on the university campus was easy to come by on a Saturday night. But amidst the university-wide construction, finding the psych building was another matter. As uneasy as Sylvie felt about Bryce accompanying her, she couldn’t help but be grateful; at least he knew Madison. Had she been trying to negotiate the campus alone, she probably would have been walking aimlessly all night. Instead, Bryce led her through the maze of buildings with confidence, finally locating the temporary offices serving the psychology department while it appeared the psychology building itself was being torn down and rebuilt.
It was so quiet in the building, she was surprised to find the door unlocked. A glance at the directory inside the door told them which professors’ offices were being housed here and how to find them.
“No Risa Madsen. She must not be at the university anymore.”
Bryce tapped the glass covering the directory board. “But Vincent Bertram is here.”
They climbed the stairs to the second floor and wound through a narrow hall until they found his office.
Bryce knocked on the door.
No answer.
“We must have missed him.” They couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Since Diana had disappeared this afternoon, alarm had been blaring in Sylvie’s ears nonstop. She had to find her sister now.
“Are you looking for someone?”
Sylvie whirled toward the quiet voice.
A man only a few inches taller than she, but with the wide shoulders of a bodybuilder, strode down the long hall toward them. His blond hair was liberally sprinkled with white and tapered into almost fully white sideburns that matched his goatee. But the most striking thing about the man was his brown eyes. The dark irises were almost completely surrounded by white, making his gaze very intense. “Diana?”