Page 8 of House of Lies

They have to reopen my mother’s case.

Chapter 3

Cassidy

Detective Lewis looks up from his desk where he’d been craning over a manilla folder, and regards me with narrowed eyes like he’s wondering what sins he committed in a previous life to deserve me bursting into his office on a Sunday morning.

The detective is average in every way. Average height, average weight, brown eyes, brown hair in a standard issue crew cut. If it wasn’t for his cleft chin and one eyebrow arched in permanent skepticism, I wouldn’t have been able to pick him out from a lineup.

I took a chance coming to see him without an appointment. That he’s here, and not at home or out on an investigation, must be a sign. I’m hopeful for the first time in months…until he recognizes me.

His face falls. He’s on his feet a moment later, hand outstretched. “Miss Monroe, I told you to?—”

“I found it!” I wave the Filofax at him, and he frowns like I’m threatening to bludgeon him to death with it.

“Found what?”

“A new lead.” I plop down on the creaky chair positioned on the other side of his desk, keeping my eyes on his messy table as I mentally will him to sit down and listen to me.

He sinks into his chair, and I swear I hear him let out a faint groan, but maybe it’s just my imagination. “Do you remember what I told you the last time we spoke?”

I refuse to look at him. Jaw clenched, I shrug. “That you had limited resources, and working on a missing persons case with no new leads after three months wasn’t top priority,” I ramble. “Or something like that.”

“Close enough.” He flips closed the file he’d been working on and props his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his meshed fingers. “I also told you we haven’t stopped looking. We’ll revisit your mother’s case every chance we get, but you can’t keep coming in here?—”

“New lead!” I interrupt, shoving the black leather organizer over the table at him. It hits his coffee cup on the way, but it’s one of several, and thankfully one that’s empty. He really needs to clean up this place. “Guess it’s time you ‘revisit’ my mom’s case.”

He shakes his head. “We found that the night of your mother’s disappearance.”

“Oh.” My eyebrows draw together. “And you did nothing about it?”

“If there’d been anything helpful in there, we’d have admitted into evidence, Miss Monroe.”

“So you just dismissed it?” I’m trying not to get angry, but the thought that they had this evidence in their hands and didn’t even bother following up makes me want to scream.

He glances to the side, a tic in his jaw. “We called all of those numbers.” He taps the Filofax. “Most of these numbers have been disconnected. Of those that still worked, none of them had heard from your mother recently.”

“She contacted one of them recently though. Which you’d have known if you’d done a thorough search.”

His already arched eyebrow cocks even higher at my tone, but he sits back in his chair as he drags the organizer closer to him and flips it open.

“E. Remington.” I shuffle to the edge of the chair, leaning over the desk and gesturing for him to flip to the contacts section of the organizer. He sends a stoic look my way and then obeys. I’m standing now, leaning on the desk with one hand so I can stab at the page with my other.

“There.”

“How do you know she contacted this person?” He keeps his eyes on the Filofax, paging idly through it while his index finger keeps the place I’d pointed out.

“I found this.” I dig in my purse and take out the folded piece of paper, opening it up and smoothing it out. He glances over and then gives the paper a double take. As soon as he picks it up and brings it closer to the organizer, I tap my finger on the desk. “See? It looks like she tore it out of here.” When he says nothing, I add, “She was going to meet Remington the day she disappeared.”

He studies the paper again. “Where did you find this?”

I don’t like his tone of voice. Not one fucking bit. I shrug. “In one of her purses.”

“A purse she used regularly?”

I drop my gaze. “Not really.”

“So this appointment could be as old as this organizer.” He taps the Filofax.

---