He’d have snapped his fingers and made a lot go away if he could.
“So he hadn’t sold it, even though at the time he’d very much needed the money. But then he did sell it eight years ago.”
She nodded. “Mr. Baudelaire’s assessment had to be correct. He needed money badly. But why? What made him even more desperate for money than he’d been after my mother died? Because from what I witnessed, that was level-ten desperation.”
“I’d say an even higher level of desperation made sense if he knew you were missing. Maybe he’d think he needed ransom money or something like that. But he didn’t know you’d been abducted at the time he sold the ring. No one did.”
She sighed, adjusting the vent so the air blew more directly at her face, lifting the tendrils escaping from her braid. “It had to be something to do with Dow, then,” she said. She chewed at her lip for a moment. “I’m not saying Dow wasn’t a decent guy and a longtime friend, but . . . I don’t know, I don’t see my dad desperate about him being potentially missing. For one, like I said, you couldn’t exactly set your watch by the guy, and for two, they just weren’t that close. And it was only a couple of days until the police found his body anyway. My father would not have panicked over two or even three days. Hell, I can’t even imagine him panicking over Dow not returning his calls for a few weeks.”
No, it didn’t make sense. Evan tapped on the steering wheel, thinking. “Okay. Is it possible that Dow’s disappearance had something to do with yours?”
She seemed to think about that for a minute. “If it did, why didn’t he call to check on me? There were no voice mails on my phone later. I hoped there would be . . . just to hear his voice at that time would have been . . .” She sighed, leaving the rest of that thought unspoken. “But he hadn’t called my work, either, to find out if I’d been showing up. And Paula said that when she called him he sounded horror stricken. From what we can piece together, time wise, he died very soon after that phone call. I’ve even wondered if the news itself was what caused his heart attack.”
Evan rubbed the back of his neck. There was something here, within all this Dow-ring-selling-Paula’s-phone-call confusion, but what, he couldn’t begin to say. There simply weren’t enough pieces. He thought for a minute. “Wait, the money,” he said. “Considering the price of the ring and a markup, André Baudelaire had to have paid him at least ten thousand dollars. There must be a record of it in his bank account. Maybe it also shows where it went. Would you have access to old bank records?”
She frowned. “There was nothing like that in his account when I closed it. He didn’t even have enough for a cemetery marker. Paula’s family paid for that, and for the memorial service too. I paid them back later from the sale of some of his things. He was dead broke when he died. But maybe there’s another box of receipts or bank statements or something in storage. He had a laptop. I think it was one Dow refurbished and then sold to him for cheap. I don’t remember packing that away, but I wasn’t in the best of spaces at the time. My memory is hazy on some things.”
And overly sharp on others. Yeah, he related. “Okay.” He put the car in gear and looked over his shoulder before pulling onto the road. “I forgot to mention I found Dow’s sister online last night and made a call. She said she could meet with us tomorrow after work.”
Noelle nodded, looking out the window distractedly. “Okay. I’ll make another trip to the storage container later and look for the bank statements.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, thank you. I think this time I’d like to go alone. But I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”
He nodded, though he wanted to press the matter. But she’d been doing things on her own for a long time now, and he didn’t want to act overbearing. The problem was, he’d started thinking of her as a partner again. They just worked. They had from the get-go. And that reminder made his mind wander. To other ways they might work as a team. Those thoughts scared him, because he had no reason to believe she’d even entertain the idea. He’d let her go once for a similar reason. And it had hurt like hell. His instinct was to shun any avoidable hurt ever again, especially because he didn’t function well with a broken heart, and Noelle Meyer was the only one capable of giving him one.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The next day, Noelle removed a pair of sunglasses from her bag and slid them on her face before turning to Evan in the driver’s seat. “I found a couple boxes last night of what looks like paperwork. There was a file full of job quotes at the top and a stack of other things. I brought them back to my room. I’ll start going through some of it later tonight or tomorrow.”