Page 61 of Accidental Murder
“What the heck?” Megan searched under the bed. No intruders. No dead bodies. She glanced at her watch and her heart sank. The mayor’s ball was in full swing. Her golden opportunity to dance with Tom had disappeared.
Nudging aside frustrated thoughts about her personal life, she weighed whether or not she should put out an APB or a search-and-rescue alert for Ashley Macintyre. She decided against both. Rodrigo could be wrong about an escape out the back. Ashley’s absence could be a case of her feeling lost without her sister and going to a friend’s house for comfort. Megan would give her disappearance twenty-four hours.
Before leaving the townhouse, she checked the cat’s water and food. All was good.
When she was halfway to the exit, she heard Rodrigo call out, “Hey, partner, come back! You’ve got to take a look at the computer.”
An hour later, Megan was standing behind a tech expert, watching as the woman tried to pry information from the search Ashley Macintyre had instigated.
“This is complicated,” the tech said. “Even I couldn’t have come up with this string of commands, and I’ve been doing this stuff a long time.”
“Meaning?” Megan asked.
“A fellow techie created it.”
A chill ran through Megan. A techie like Kayla Macintyre? Was Kayla alive and her sister dead? If so, why keep the secret? Why pose as her twin?
The cell phone on the bed rang. Megan didn’t answer. She waited as long as she believed it would take to leave a message and handed the phone to the techie. “Can you access the voicemail?”
“I’ll try.” After typing in a variety of codes and landing on one that opened the mobile, the woman gave it back to Megan. “There are two messages.”
Megan listened to the first: “Ashley, it’s Jacob Feinstein again. I need to talk to you.” The second: “Ashley, it’s David. I have to see you. Call me.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
A crisp windcut through Fitz’s shirt and slacks. He’d neglected to put on a jacket before storming out of the building, but he didn’t mind the cold. It soothed him. He spewed the juice from his chewed cigar into the bushes and raised the cell phone back to his ear, prepared to hear the remainder of his subordinate’s update. “From the beginning,” he ordered, wanting to strangle the man. “You lost her where?”
“The Policeman’s Ball.”
Fitz swore under his breath. How had Ashley Macintyre known to run into a crowded building? Where had she learned evasive tactics? Okay, she spoke four languages. Perhaps she was a spy working undercover as a model. Yeah, right. He laughed at the notion.
“You screwed up,” he said into the phone.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it.” Fitz had hired the man because of his war record, but the guy had no discipline. “Go to the lab. I have to finish something, then I’ll meet you there. We have work to do.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
From a safe distance,Kayla surveyed the street outside her townhouse. The area didn’t seem to be under surveillance. No one was walking a dog or sitting in a parked car. Mrs. Tennyson wasn’t on her porch or peeking out a window.
Keeping to the shadows, Kayla stole to the rear alley. She sneaked to her storage unit, entered the code, and pushed open the unit’s metal door. Remnants of rainwater dripped from the lower rim. The familiar smell of grease and grit comforted her. So did the sight of the Yamaha YZ450F.
“Missed you, baby,” she whispered.
The keys to the motorcycle were in the townhouse. She didn’t need them. She hot-wired the ignition as her uncle had taught her and straddled the bike as it revved up. After releasing the brake, she eased out of the unit. If the police investigated, they would figure someone else—not her—had stolen it.
Kayla sped to Lombard Street and searched for Eve. She was gone. No sign of a struggle. No purse tossed aside.
Eve is fine,she told herself.Fine.
An hour later, idling on the street outside Mary Dorman’s parents’ home, she peered into the living room, its drapes partially open. A sobbing woman and man were sitting on thecouch consoling one another. The grief pouring out of them cut Kayla to the core. After a few minutes, when she still couldn’t find the nerve to approach the front door, she sped away.
Where was she going? Not to the other clients’ homes. She would face the same nagging doubt. She pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore. Inside she purchased a burner phone and a bottle of water. Back in the lot, as she activated the phone, she landed on the idea of contacting Peter. He was the obvious choice. He had no reason to want her dead. He had accepted her as Ashley.
While battling the pluses and minuses of her decision, she headed to his neighborhood. Once she arrived, she hid the Yamaha in a stand of pine trees and proceeded on foot. She smiled ruefully when she saw Peter’s white bungalow was desperately in need of paint. His parents, who were driven by money and power and whose assets were mostly real estate investments, supported their son’s artistic endeavors and provided him with a terrific home, but he and they were nothing alike. Kayla recalled one occasion when Ashley had teased Peter, telling him to ask his parents for something bigger to live in. Peter argued the bungalow was perfect. The sound of crashing waves and keening seagulls inspired him, he said, and the light in the bungalow was incredible at all times of the day. Oddly enough, living by the sea hadn’t motivated him to paint seascapes. When he wasn’t painting Ashley’s face, he created social statements with haunting images. The poignancy of his work never failed to move Kayla.
She caught sight of Peter inside, standing at an easel by the bay window, and hesitated. His arm moved up and down as he made bold strokes on a canvas. Through the windows, cracked open to release paint vapors she assumed, she could hear the strains of Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” one of her all-time favorite pieces of music.
