Page 49 of The Last Straw

“Yes, of course. I was just getting in the car to head to the precinct. What’s up?”

“Wyrick was running searches last night and made quite a discovery. Something you may not be aware of.”

“Like what?” Floyd asked.

“Rachel Dean isn’t the first woman to go missing from the Detter House. She’s the fourth. The first one was eleven years ago.”

“No way!” Floyd said. “We would have picked up on this ourselves if—”

“Let me finish,” Charlie said and laid out what Wyrick had told him, giving him the names of the women and the dates they went missing. But it was the inactive social security numbers for all three of the women that made the case for Wyrick’s theory.

“Oh, man. This isn’t good,” Floyd said. “I’ve only been with Missing Persons three years. I was in Homicide before that, so I had no personal info on any of these other cases. I’ll pull them immediately. I need to see why they closed the cases and start verifying the inactive numbers.”

“We’re going back to Detter House soon. Wyrick strongly believes there has to be some kind of hidden passage built into the old structure, and I learned a long time ago not to doubt her instincts.”

“Is she really psychic?” Floyd asked. “Don’t get me wrong...I’m not discounting her. But I’ve also never known anyone like her.”

“That’s because there is no one else like her,” Charlie said. “If we find out anything new, I’ll call.”

He disconnected, then laid the phone aside and was getting up to make himself some breakfast when Wyrick entered the kitchen.

“Going in low-key today, I see,” he said. “Want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I’m gonna make myself one.”

She ignored his dig about the silver cat suit and red knee-high boots she was wearing.

“Do we have grape jelly?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Then, yes, I will have a PBGJ, but just one, thank you.”

He grinned as she went to make coffee.

PBGJ. Peanut butter and grape jelly. Perfectly Wyrick being perfectly specific.

“I called Detective Floyd. He was understandably shocked and is going to pull the old case files today. I told him we were going back to Detter House,” Charlie said.

She nodded as he spoke, but she was watching him making sandwiches, too.

“Uh... Could I have the grape jelly on one side, and the peanut butter on the other?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said and never missed a beat.

“Um, you’re using creamy peanut butter,” she said.

He paused. “Yes.”

“If we have crunchy, I would prefer that,” she added.

Charlie took a deep breath. “I’ll check.”

She nodded, then retrieved her cup of coffee from the Keurig and sat down at the table to watch the final construction, knowing full well she was aggravating Charlie Dodge’s last nerve.

Finally, the sandwiches were finished, and Charlie plated them up and carried them to the table.

“You didn’t cut mine,” Wyrick said.

Charlie turned, grabbed a paring knife from the knife block and stabbed it into the center of her sandwich.

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