Save Your Breath (Morgan Dane #6)(13)

His chest tightened, and he pressed a hand to it.

“Sharp!” Lance grabbed him by the arm.

“I’m OK.” He gestured to the fingernail.

Lance examined the caulk, then straightened, his face grim. “Morgan will be here soon. Stella didn’t answer her phone. I left a message. Do you want to call the SFPD?”

“And tell them what?” Sharp asked. “That Olivia missed one appointment, didn’t make her bed, and broke a nail on her way out of the house? We both know that’s not enough to launch a missing persons case.”

He ran out to Lance’s Jeep for a flashlight. He would touch as little as possible, but no one could stop him from searching for clues.

When he returned to the laundry room, Lance had marked the locations of the blood and the broken fingernail with yellow sticky notes.

He tested the garage door. “The dead bolt is locked, which means it was either locked from the inside or the key was used.” He turned the dead bolt and went into the garage. It was as tidy as the rest of Olivia’s house. Her bicycle stood in a rack near the wall. Opposite the empty space where she parked her car, some basic tools were organized on a pegboard over a small worktable. The concrete was swept clean. Sharp shone the flashlight on the floor. No footprints.

“I thought she liked to garden.” Lance scanned the space. “There isn’t even any dirt in here.”

“There’s a potting shed out back where she keeps the messy stuff.” Something shiny caught Sharp’s attention. He bent down.

“What is it?” Lance asked.

Sharp recognized the small diamond stud as one of Olivia’s staple pieces of jewelry. “An earring.”

Lance stuck a note to the concrete near the earring.

Checking the floor before setting each foot down, Sharp searched in a spiral pattern. He spotted a glint of metal near the base of the overhead door, where the hatchback of Olivia’s Prius would have been located. “Here’s the second earring.”

“Maybe she was getting something big out of the back of her car and knocked her earrings loose,” Lance suggested.

“I don’t know.” Sharp didn’t like it. “I could buy her losing one earring, but two? And breaking a nail on the doorjamb?”

They went back into the house. Sharp rubbed his solar plexus. Behind it, fear coiled itself into a tight ball.

Where is she?





Chapter Six

Morgan watched the tow truck drive away with Mrs. Olander’s vehicle secured on the flatbed. The Scarlet Falls patrol car pulled away from the curb and followed.

She stared at the empty space where the minivan had been parked. The wind blew, and a few dead leaves tumbled along the gutter. The street showed no sign that a woman had taken her life there just a few hours before.

I am not responsible.

She knew it wouldn’t be easy to shelve Mrs. Olander’s desperation and despondency. But finding Olivia took priority, and Morgan was relieved to lock up the office and leave. She arrived at Olivia’s bungalow a few minutes later. When Sharp opened the front door, she followed him back to Olivia’s kitchen.

Lance crossed the room to give her a quick kiss. “Any luck with the hospitals?” He didn’t ask about morgues, even though he knew she’d have called those as well.

“None,” she said. “I checked with all the hospitals within a hundred miles of here. No sign of Olivia or any Jane Does that fit her description.”

“I’m going to check the outside of the house.” Lance went out the front door.

Sharp paced the kitchen like a trapped animal. Morgan’s heart bled for him. Sharp kept his world small, but he’d fallen hard for Olivia, even if he hadn’t wanted to admit it.

Stella arrived. Morgan let her sister in and led her to the kitchen.

“You have a key?” Stella asked Sharp.

“Yes,” Sharp answered. “And the codes for her alarm system. Thanks for coming. I know a detective wouldn’t normally be the first responder.”

A uniform on patrol would have taken the initial report. A detective would have been summoned only if the uniform found evidence of foul play.

He walked Stella back to the laundry room, pointed out the broken fingernail, and explained the call from Olivia’s mother. He showed Stella the earrings in the garage. Normally athletic, his movements were jerky and agitated as he identified the small bits of seemingly random evidence.

Stella wrote on her notepad. “Was the alarm set and the house locked when you let yourself in?”

“Yes,” Sharp answered. “The alarm had been turned off and reactivated at 2:13 a.m. this morning.”

“Olivia was supposed to meet with us at the office this afternoon as well,” Morgan said.

Stella walked through the house. She checked doors and windows and then returned to the kitchen. “I don’t see any signs of a break-in or struggle. The most obvious explanation is Olivia left the house to meet someone. Maybe a contact for a story she was working on.”

“Jenny Kruger already pinged her cell phone. Nothing, and Olivia’s last call on her cell was with me at eleven. I didn’t check the house phone.” Sharp reached for the handset and checked the call log on the caller ID screen. “Two missed calls from a market research company today. No calls came in last night.”