track of when the different girls come on.” She heard him pull on a cigarette. “Probably around twelve, one. Something like that.” Above the clink of glasses and laughter, music throbbed in the background. An old Aerosmith hit, the bass rumbling out with a downbeat rhythm.
He was lying, of course. He kept track of everything at the club, down to the last penny and the closing minute. She ignored his prevarication and concentrated on finding out more. “I thought April was more than just one of the girls to you.”
He hesitated for a moment, then his voice went into an even lower-pitched growl. “Your sister’s a nutcase. I’m trying to stay away from her, and if you had any sense, you would, too.”
Elizabeth tensed. “What are you talking about?”
“April’s gettin’ into some bad shit. She don’t watch out, she’s gonna be in some serious trouble.” Again he drew on the cigarette, the sound harsh in her ear. “The kind of trouble that hurts. Permanently.”
Elizabeth’s fingers stilled, her pen clattering to the desk. “What are you saying? What’s going on with April?”
“She’s your sister. Ask her if you wanna know.” He paused and drew yet again on the cigarette, this time even more deeply. As though she were standing in the darkened club beside him, Elizabeth could almost feel the music, almost smell the smoke.
When he spoke, his voice was so full of warning Elizabeth shivered. “But don’t wait too long to ask her, or you might lose your chance.”
SHE WORRIED until she could stand it no longer. Late that night, she gave in and called the police. The woman who took the information was polite, but just barely. They covered the basics—name, address, age—then she asked a few more questions.
“How long has your sister been gone?”
“I saw her last night. She slept at my place, but this morning, when I got up, she had left.”
“Less than twenty-four hours….” The woman spoke as if to herself, obviously filling out some kind of report.
“Does that matter?” Elizabeth asked anxiously. “Does she have to be gone a certain length of time before you’ll start looking?”
“No. That’s just on TV. We’ll start looking immediately if it’s a serious report.”
“And what makes it serious?”
“Suspicious circumstances, primarily. Do you have cause to believe something’s wrong?”
Elizabeth bit her bottom lip.
“Ma’am?”
“I don’t know for sure that anything’s happened to her, but I’m worried. I mean Houston’s a dangerous place, right?”
“But do you have a specific reason to believe she might have been harmed?”
“Well, her boss—he’s an ex-boyfriend—told me she might be getting into serious trouble. He wouldn’t say more.”
“And he is…?”
Elizabeth spelled out Greg Lansing’s name, then in a halting voice, told the woman where he worked.
“He runs the Esquire Club? And your sister works there?”
“What difference does that make?” Elizabeth heard the defensiveness in her voice.
The woman on the other end of the phone hesitated. “Well, it does put a different spin on things, doesn’t it?”
“You mean if she ran an oil company, you’d start looking for her, but since she’s an exotic dancer, you’ll give it a few days first?”
“I mean, Ms. Benoit, some people have more stable lifestyles than others. It’s more significant when they disappear because of that. Has your sister ever done this type of thing before?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said quietly. “About two years ago. She went to the Caribbean for a week without telling me.” With a man she didn’t know. She’d sent Elizabeth a postcard, but then at the end of the week, she’d called Elizabeth collect. Crying and desperate, she said the man had abandoned her. He’d turned out to be different than she’d thought was her only explanation. Elizabeth had sent her money for the fare home, and April had assured her of one thing—she would never disappear that way again. She promised she’d tell Elizabeth if she was leaving town, and she had done so faithfully.
Until now.
Elizabeth tried to explain but she could almost hear the investigator’s mind slam shut.
“Why don’t you give it a few more days, Ms. Benoit? If you haven’t heard from your sister by Tuesday or so, then call us back. That would probably be the best way to handle this.”
Elizabeth thanked the woman and hung up. There was nothing else she could do.
CHAPTER TWO
JOHN STOOD in the breezeway of the town homes Wednesday evening, by the mailboxes, and watched old Mrs. LeBlanc totter away, a polite smile plastered on his face as he asked himself, for the umpteenth time, why he didn’t just move. The place had a few people his age, but most of the residents were ancient tiny women who were constantly trying to fix him up with divorced grandnieces or granddaughters who had five kids. Before he’d come here—after Marsha had gotten the house—he’d lived in an apartment, an anonymous place where no one spoke to anyone. Then his mother had passed away and left him the town house. It’d seemed easier to move in than to sell the place, and it was in a safe neighborhood. He never worried about bringing Lisa over.
There were the little old ladies, though, and women like Elizabeth Benoit to contend with. He took two steps and was tossing the junk mail from his box into the nearest trash container when the woman in question came around the corner.
She had her briefcase in one hand and her purse in the other. Tucked under one arm was a dark blue folder with the words “Benoit Consulting—Personal and Confidential” printed on the outside in silver script. His eyes went to Elizabeth herself. Her dark gold suit, like the black one she’d had on the last time he’d seen her, looked as though it’d been made for her, the jacket hugging her figure—but not too tightly—and the skirt ending at a tantalizing point just above her knees. The color was just right for her, her ivory skin glowing from its reflection, reminding him of his mother’s translucent plates still sitting in the china cabinet in his dining room. Everything about Elizabeth Benoit was polished, perfect and gorgeous—except for the ferocious frown marring her forehead.
Seeing John, she pulled up short. Her frown vanished and was replaced with studied politeness.
Normally he would have nodded, turned on his heel and left, but instead he stood and stared at her. She was the first to break eye contact. John told himself to walk away, but his feet seemed fixed to the sidewalk. She leaned past him and unlocked her mailbox. Her key ring, he noticed, had a Mercedes-Benz symbol on it. She reached inside but her fingers came out empty—she hadn’t even received the junk mail he had. When she straightened, she looked so crushed he spoke without thinking.
“No
