Cool? Are you kidding me?
He dragged his eyes up from the spot where her breast nearly spilled out of her sheer push-up bra. “Hey, Mia, look. I need a favor.”
“A favor?” she repeated.
“Yeah, I’ve got something I need to do. And I need a car. I thought I’d borrow yours.”
“You want my car?” She was stunned.
“Yeah, babe, just for a little while.”
Babe? Had he just called her babe? Like they were that familiar? “Why?”
“Errands. Hey, I’ve been locked up for a long while. I just need the car.” He lifted a shoulder and she found herself digging in her pocket for her keys. “I’ll drive you,” she offered. “Wherever you want to go.”
“No worries. I got this.” He snagged the keys from her hand. “This is something I have to do alone.” He was already striding—almost jogging, though limping just slightly, as he headed to the door. “I’ll be back.”
“When?”
“Don’t know.” He opened the door and didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder. “Don’t fuckin’ know.”
It wasn’t until Mia drained her beer and walked back to the kitchen to leave both bottles in the sink when she noticed a knife was missing. She told herself she was imagining things, but no, the closer she looked, the more sure she was that a knife was missing from the block that sat next to the stove—the set had been a hand-me-down from her mother and she knew without a doubt that the largest knife was gone. She looked at the counters and in a nearby drawer, her heart turning to ice. It was gone. The carving knife her father had used to slice the Thanksgiving turkey at every Thanksgiving dinner she’d ever sat through as a child was definitely missing, its slot in the block empty.
CHAPTER 29
“Our bird has flown,” Johnson said, stepping into Thomas’s office in the late afternoon.
He was on the phone, just ending the call from the assistant ME. He held up a finger, stopping Johnson, and listened to what he already knew: Margrove had died from blood loss due to a wound that had severed his carotid artery and sliced his jugular on the left side of his neck. “I’ll look for the report. Thanks.” Then he turned his attention to his partner. “What bird?” he asked, but he had a bad feeling he already knew.
“Just got a call from the deputy charged with watching Jonas McIntyre. His attorney, ‘Just Alex,’ as she so proudly wants to be called, did her legal magic and worked with the hospital staff to get him released. He’s already on his way to Portland. The excuse was that he needs to be seen by ‘specialists.’ ”
“For what?”
“Who knows? It’s bogus! According to an ‘anonymous source,’ ” she said, making air quotes, “but someone on staff. An aide probably. Anyway, the word at Whimstick General, Jonas wasn’t that bad off. The doc was probably going to discharge him today anyway. But his attorney swooped in and off they went.”
“Shit.”
“My thoughts exactly. As soon as he heard about it, the deputy assigned to McIntyre called, but by then it was over. Pisses me off.” Obviously agitated, she plopped down in one of the visitor’s chairs.
“Portland’s not that far.”
“Out of the jurisdiction.”
“Margrove’s homicide is in ours. The Portland PD will work with us.”
“If you say so.” She wasn’t convinced and let out a long, hard sigh. “You find anything more on Marlie Robinson?”
“Not yet.” He shook his head, feeling his eyebrows pinch together as he studied some of the shots. “But I pieced together some of the people who showed up at the hospital and connected them to individuals online.”
“And?”
“And there are the usual suspects, people who’ve been vocal about claiming Jonas got a raw deal.”
“Like Mia Long?” she suggested.
“Among others. McIntyre’s got other pretty rabid fans. Brenda Crawley, she’s always got a comment online. The same goes for Simone Hardesty. And there’s even a guy, Aiden Cross. I checked the noisy ones out. Simone went to school with Jonas and so did Cross. Brenda, she’s involved in any and every cause that comes along.” He leaned away from the screen with the pictures on it.
“So?”
“Well, then there’s a lot of people who are in the group who don’t say a word, probably have given up.”
“Yeah? Is there a point to this?”