“If the coffee grounds had been warm, that might have meant Velma was here this morning. I checked the coffee pot. It’s cold also. The ice cream container hasn’t molded yet, so it’s not that old. It doesn’t look like Velma was here today, if I had to guess.”
It sounded like good deductive reasoning to me.
“Could she have stayed with somebody last night?” I didn’t know Velma well enough to know if she had some type of secret boyfriend or not. But it seemed like a possibility we should explore.
“Velma isn’t the type to spend the night with anybody,” Michael said. “And she doesn’t have a boyfriend—unless he’s a total secret. But Velma’s never been that great at keeping those kinds of secrets.”
His words rang with truth. “So what do we do now?”
Michael pulled out his phone, his gaze fixed with decisiveness. “I’m going to call Oscar.”
I stepped closer so I could hear the conversation. I desperately hoped this was all a misunderstanding—even though I knew it wasn’t.
Michael put the phone on speaker.
“Anything?” Michael asked Oscar.
“Nobody has seen Velma since last night,” Oscar said. “She went to dinner at one of her friend’s houses. Her friend—Cindy is her name—said that she left her place at ten thirty to go home. No one has seen or heard from her since then. It’s like she vanished.” He said vanished with an accent, as if it were a foreign word when it wasn’t.
“She’s not here at her apartment,” Michael said. “It doesn’t look like she was here this morning.”
“Walk through the parking lot. See if her car is there,” Oscar said. “I’ll stay on the phone while you do.”
Michael and I stepped outside. From the second-floor walkway, I scanned the lot. On the third row back, I spotted the dark sedan Velma drove.
I pointed it out to Michael. “Her car is still here.”
His jaw hardened as he relayed the information to Oscar.
“I’m going to call the police,” Oscar said. “It won’t take them long to get to Velma’s place. Before they get there, look at anything else you need to look at in the apartment and look at her car. Understand?”
The serious tone of Oscar’s voice made my spine straighten. He was worried about Velma and thought something had happened to her.
Part of me wanted to remain in denial. I wanted to pretend that she was okay. That this was just a misunderstanding.
But I knew that would be naïve. I knew the implications of what was going on here, whether or not I wanted to acknowledge them out loud.
Velma was in trouble. If I denied it, I’d be in a bubble. I prayed she was fine, and that life would be kind, but I knew this was no time to be blind.
Oh, no. I was rhyming.
It was what I always did when I felt stressed and anxious. My father had taught me the technique as a means of distracting myself from otherwise overwhelming thoughts.
But no amount of rhyming was going to make this any better.
“Anything in the backseat?”
I stood, pulling myself from the back of Velma’s car. Michael had managed to pick the lock so we could search the inside.
But it appeared it was all for nothing. “It’s clean, and there’s no evidence that anything happened,” I told him.
Michael climbed out of the front seat, straightened, and let out a sigh. The sunlight hit his face, causing him to squint. He pulled his backward baseball cap off and turned it so the bill covered his eyes.
I knew what his body language meant. He hadn’t found anything either.
“She left her friend’s place at ten thirty last night.” Michael stared into the distance as if his thoughts had enveloped him. “Based on her car, it appears Velma made it back here last night. So what happened to her between the time Velma returned and this morning?”
The answer to that question was on the tip of my tongue, but I dared not say the words “Beltway Killer” out loud. Instead, I asked, “Do we need to look at anything else inside her apartment? Before the police get here?”
“I think we’ve looked at all we can. If Velma’s gone . . .” Michael’s voice trailed like he didn’t want to finish his sentence either.
But I knew what he was going to say.
He was thinking what I was thinking—that if Velma was gone, her disappearance could be connected to the Beltway Killer.
I thought we were in the clear. I thought that because nobody from the softball team had disappeared, that the rose and knot Michael and I had found had all been a misunderstanding or a bad joke.
But I might be wrong.
The killer could have had another target in his sights this whole time. I’d just never imagined that it might be Velma.
A sick feeling gurgled in my stomach at the thought of it.
Before Michael and I could consider more of our options, Oscar pulled up in his BMW. Immediately following him were two patrol cars.
He nodded at us before walking with the officers up to Velma’s place. As he did, another car pulled into the lot, an unmarked police car. I only knew because Detective Dylan Hunter was driving it.
The tension in me pulled tighter.
Hunter and I had been getting to know each other. Taking it slow. Unsure if either of us were ready for a relationship.
But then somehow Michael and I had happened. I hadn’t figured out the best way to tell Hunter that information yet.
Which made seeing him again right now feel a little bit awkward.
As he climbed from his car, he glanced over at Michael and me. Something changed in his gaze. His eyes widened, and I suspected Hunter knew something was going on between Michael and me, even though I hadn’t said a word.
Michael and I paced toward the stairway, knowing we’d cross paths with Hunter there. Sure enough, we did.
A knot formed in my chest as I came face-to-face with the man. He wore his typical black slacks and blue button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. I’d always thought the man had a Chris Evans vibe with his classic good looks and reserved manner.
“Elliot.” Hunter slowed his steps when he saw us. “Michael.”
“Good morning.” I tried to force a smile, but it wouldn’t come.
He didn’t tell us to stop when we followed him on his walk toward Velma’s apartment. But his formal tone when he said hello set me on edge. I couldn’t worry about that right now.
“I heard that a colleague of yours is missing,” Hunter called over his shoulder.
“She hasn’t been seen since ten thirty last night, best we know,” Michael said.
“I’m going to check out her apartment, but I’ll need to talk to both of you later and get your statements.” Hunter gave us a pointed look, no doubt used to Michael and me interrupting his investigations.
“Of course,” I muttered.
His gaze remained on me a moment longer before he paused several feet from Velma’s door. “I need to ask you two to stay here.”
“No problem,” I insisted, not telling him we’d already been inside. That would come up soon enough.
As he walked away, Michael turned to me. “Did you tell him about us?”
“Not yet.” I leaned against the wooden railing behind me.