Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(103)

Wyatt nearly growled in frustration. He’d gone almost forty-eight hours without sleep. Combined with a sense of his own stupidity, the night was wearing on him.

He picked up Tessa’s sketch of the woman, held it up. “We take this picture to the press, we gotta tell them why.”

“Police have some questions for her regarding the disappearance of a child thirty years ago,” Tessa provided immediately. “Don’t call her a suspect, but imply she’s a witness. People feel better about ratting out their neighbors when it won’t get them in trouble.”

“Excellent plan for the morning news cycle. Problem is, we need answers now, and press conferences don’t work well at two A.M. Mostly because the target audience is asleep.”

“Maybe you should take a nap,” Tessa informed him.

He nearly growled again. “I want the dollhouse. Thomas, Nicky, our answers. All at the dollhouse.”

“We have that sketch.”

“Fed it to local Realtors this afternoon. No hits. Kevin ran specs through a New Hampshire property tax database, too many hits. Historic homes, even grand old Victorians, are lousy in these hills.”

“What about Marlene’s hubby?” Tessa asked now. “If Marlene’s safe at home, what about him, because I bet he has opinions about a long-lost daughter appearing from the dead.”

“Except Nicky’s not Vero. No threat to him or the new family order.”

Tessa frowned, plopped down in the office chair across from Wyatt.

“Nicky and Thomas are both connected to the dollhouse,” Tessa stated. “We can’t prove it, but that makes the most sense.”

“Agreed.”

“Meaning their relationship didn’t start in New Orleans, but here. Meaning both of them most likely know things about a former brothel that plenty of people wouldn’t want known.”

“Agree times three,” Wyatt assured her. “Unfortunately, it leads us back to the same conundrum. Dollhouse holds the key. Except we can’t find the dollhouse.”

“Track down Nicky-slash-Chelsea’s real identity?” Tessa asked him.

“No hits off her fingerprints as of yet. Assuming Chelsea is a runaway or was sold to Madame Sade, it’s possible her prints aren’t in the system at all, meaning we may never get that answer.”

“Thomas Frank’s real identity?”

“No prints to run. The fire destroyed such evidence from his home. Latent prints attempted to work his car, hotel room, et cetera, but recovered nothing usable. Guy’s either that lucky or that good. You can guess my vote.” Wyatt expelled heavily, wrapped his knuckles against the top of the office desk. “Case is starting to piss me off.”

“Not your fault,” Tessa said mildly. “You started with a single-car accident. Who would’ve guessed it would lead to an old child abduction case and Victorian brothel?”

“November is the saddest month,” he muttered. Then paused. Repeated the phrase out loud: “November is the saddest month. That’s when Nicky escaped. Must’ve been. November. The saddest month. When she had to kill Vero in order to save herself.”

“Okay . . .”

He looked up at Tessa, feeling the first traces of excitement. “That’s a variable. We’re not just looking twenty-two years ago. We’re looking for something that happened in November twenty-two years ago.”

“Would Madame Sade have filed a missing persons report?” Tessa asked. “I mean, if she was pretending they were family, or even needed to keep up pretenses with the neighbors after her teenage ‘daughter’ disappeared . . .”

“I doubt she’d want the police on her property, especially given another girl had just died.” Wyatt paused, reconsidered the matter. “That’s a good question, though. One night in November, two girls from the same home vanish. One dies; one ostensibly runs away.”

“Maybe three kids disappeared,” Tessa prodded. “What about Thomas? Assuming he was part of it, maybe he bolted with Nicky.”

They regarded each other thoughtfully.

“Madame Sade would have to smooth it over somehow,” Wyatt mused. “Explain the new world order to her neighbors, maybe even local authorities. Otherwise people would get suspicious.”

“She could declare them runaways.”

“Three kids. From the same house.” Wyatt gave her a look. “Speaking as a former officer, wouldn’t you definitely check that out?”

“Definitely.”

“But no one did.” He said it with more certainty now. “Because if she had filed a report, D.D. would’ve run across it as part of her search, right? She just explored all missing-kids cases from the past thirty years. No way three teenagers from New Hampshire wouldn’t have made her radar screen. It’s too odd a case not to call attention.”

Tessa picked up his train of thought. “Madame Sade never said a word. Maybe the situation spooked her. I mean, first she thinks Vero is dead and buried in the woods. Except, of course, eventually she must’ve figured out it wasn’t Vero’s body that was carried out, but the roommate’s instead. Now she has at least one missing girl, not to mention one dead girl. Maybe that was too much. She bolted herself. Makes some sense.”

Wyatt agreed. Given the intensity of that night, the fear and uncertainty for all concerned, it made sense the madam might have panicked and shut down operations. It came to him, the new variable to search: “What about the house? Girls are gone, owner has bolted, what happens to the house?”