Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(26)

“I never keep them,” Stella said.

“How early did you go to bed?” Foster asked.

“About nine. A little after.”

A college kid in bed at nine. Foster narrowed her eyes but let it go. For now.

“And this Ashley?” Lonergan asked. “She wasn’t in on the pizza?”

“I didn’t ask her,” Stella said. “I just wanted to kick back alone.”

Foster had been a cop a long time. She knew when someone was lying to her, and Stella was lying. She glanced over at Wendy, who sat perfectly still, her face showing no emotion. Foster was sure she knew Stella was lying too.

Birch had likely been killed, according to Rosales, around midnight. Wendy was claiming to have been in bed by ten, Stella by nine. Of the two, Foster thought, Stella seemed less truthful. “In bed by nine. Here? In the dorm?” she pressed. “And before you answer, know that we will check.”

Stella slid back on the couch. She tried doing it subtly, like she wasn’t uncomfortable with the pointed questions, but Foster hadn’t missed the slide. Stella played with the hem of her shirt, twisting it, picking at it. “I was asleep in my room.”

Foster gave Stella one last long, unwavering look, then let up and made a note in her book. “Joe Rimmer.” She said his name and then let it sit there for a moment. “Let’s talk about him.”

“He’s an idiot,” Stella blurted out. “Peg dumped him.”

“He says it was mutual,” Lonergan said, “and you had a part in it.”

Stella smiled. “You have a problem with that?”

Lonergan lifted off the windowsill. “Look, kid . . .”

Foster interrupted him. “Rimmer seemed a bit raw over the breakup.”

“He was mad, sure,” Wendy said. “Called her like twenty times a day trying to get her to take him back, but she wouldn’t.”

Stella nodded in agreement. “All he wanted was a groupie. He thinks he’s going to be the next Dave Grohl.” She rolled her eyes. “Fat chance.”

“He been hangin’ around?” Lonergan asked.

“Too big of a wuss for that,” Stella said. “He’s all talk, believe me.”

Wendy pushed her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose, and her mouth clamped shut. She was definitely not saying something. She obviously found Stella intimidating. Foster could see how she would. Wendy was meek, a shy little mouse. Stella looked to be the kind of person who sucked up all the oxygen in a room, the kind you noticed and shied away from for fear of being swept into her vortex.

Foster stood, sliding the chair back under the table. “Wendy, would you mind showing me your room?” She looked over at Lonergan, whose mouth was hanging open in shock. “Maybe Stella can continue with Detective Lonergan.” She smiled. “We won’t be long.” She looked down at Stella. “We’ll talk again.”

Lonergan walked over and pulled Foster gently by the arm away from the girls, out of earshot, both turning their backs to them for privacy. “Ah, what gives?” he whispered.

“I think Wendy has more to add,” Foster whispered back. “But she’s not going to talk with Stella sitting next to her.”

“But I get the snippy bulldozer?”

Foster peeked behind him, noting that Stella had composed herself. “She’s a kid. You can’t handle a kid?” She could tell Lonergan wanted to say more, and loudly, but she didn’t give him the chance. “I’ll be back.”

Lonergan turned around to face his misery. “I’ll count the friggin’ minutes.”





CHAPTER 13


Wendy and Peggy’s room wasn’t much to write home about. It was small, crammed with personal things, and barely big enough to fit everything Peggy and Wendy had brought from home, let alone themselves. The space was stuffed with clothes, shoes, bags, makeup, hair dryers, and styling irons. The posters taped to the walls were for bands Foster had never heard of, and they held pride of place beside a collage of personal photos, presumably of the girls’ families and friends. She identified Peggy’s side by her wall of photos. Foster spotted several of Peggy and her parents taken at Christmas and birthdays and family vacations. Many of the photos were of Peggy with her friends—a lot of friends. It was true, then, that she’d been friendly, well liked. Looking, Foster could find no photos of Joe Rimmer. Either Peggy didn’t have any, or she’d taken them all down after the break. There were no photos of Keith Ainsley either.

“Did Peggy wear lipstick?” Foster asked, recalling the troubling discovery of lipstick around Birch’s wrists and ankles. If the lipstick wasn’t Peggy’s, that meant the sick SOB they were looking for had brought it with him. That meant he’d planned to kill, had prepared for it. Foster’s stomach turned.

Wendy eased down onto her bed. “No. Why?”

“How about you?”

Wendy shook her head. “Just tinted gloss, maybe, if I’m going somewhere nice.”

Foster lifted a sweatshirt off Peggy’s bed, folded it, and laid it on the side of her messy desk. She straightened the textbooks sitting there, noting the yellow pencil tucked between the pages of the abnormal psychology textbook on top. Peggy would never come back to her stopping point. Wendy’s desk was neater, her laptop sitting in the center. There was no laptop on Peggy’s desk. There hadn’t been one found in her backpack either. “Where’s Peggy’s laptop?” Foster asked.