Page 30 of The Vanishing Wife

As a souvenir. Another flash of the pendant, in her own hand, charged forward. Opportunity knocked at the back of her mind. “Do you mind if I take a look at those messages?”

“Poppy’s phone is in her room. Right where she left it that night. The police have already been through her accounts. They weren’t able to identify where the messages came from, but I’ve long suspected whoever she was seeing had something to do with her murder.” He pointed down the hall. “You’re welcome to try. Second door on the right.”

“Thank you, and please, know how sorry I am for your loss.” Elyse took advantage as she heard the sound of a garage door opening from the other end of the house. Had Ruby Davis taken a page out of Poppy’s book and started seeing someone she didn’t want anyone to know about? Was there a connection? She stepped inside a lavender bedroom with a white chair rail installed midpoint along the walls. The same color as Ava’s room.

She tried to ignore that small detail as she located a phone on a makeup-ridden white vanity. Everything in this room had been perfectly preserved. Waiting for the day its owner might return. Except Poppy would never step into this room again. It’d become nothing more than a shrine for the living.

A sticky note scribbled with six numbers fell back to the faux-wood surface. Most likely left for the police. Elyse flipped the phone screen up, but nothing happened. No power. Locating the charger on the vanity, she plugged one end into the wall and the other into the phone. It took a couple of minutes, but the screen finally came to life. She tapped the numerical sequence on the note in, and the screen lit up with Poppy’s Instagram profile. Automatically connected to the home Wi-Fi. The Slaters had kept their daughter’s cell phone, even knowing she’d never use it again.

A message exchange between Poppy and an unknown profile—no longer in existence from what she could tell—detailed personal, sexual questions no fourteen-year-old should’ve been asked. John would’ve been right to put an end to whatever this relationship was. Had most likely been right in the sender’s age as well.

Elyse caught the low sound of voices from the kitchen. Mrs. Slater had come home. She had to work quickly in case this mother decided to make her leave.

And she slipped the phone beneath her clothing.

TWENTY-ONE

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Sunday, September 22

10:32 a.m.

The Fuentes home wasn’t like the others Leigh had noticed in Gulf Shores.

A single-level colonial off Wedgewood Drive with white siding, manicured hedges, and a red brick path leading to the front door. Something Leigh might see back home rather than in an ocean-tourist town churning out missing teens. The house itself was far enough away from the overpriced ocean front properties but close enough to be included in Gulf Shores High School’s boundaries. The antique wood door held on to two elongated panes on either side. Giving visitors a blurry view into the home. The door was open now, with an officer posted to keep unwanted guests from entering.

Detective Moore nodded to the uniform acting as gatekeeper, Leigh close behind. Just as a news van pulled up to the curb. The detective stopped short of crossing the threshold. “Shit. Who tipped them off?”

The vultures were already descending. Eager for that first pound of flesh. The news woman Leigh had clocked at Ruby Davis’s death scene slipped free of the van’s passenger seat, wobbling on impossibly high heels before checking her hair in the side mirror. Caroline. That was what Detective Moore had called her. She wore a different outfit now, though the basics were the same. Skirt, heels, hairspray. Guess a night in jail hadn’t been enough to curb Caroline’s curiosity about this case.

The last thing a mother wanted when her daughter had gone missing was a camera shoved in her face. It was the last thing Leigh had wanted as a surviving member of her family for a long time. Reporters, true crime authors, interview requests, podcast hosts, documentary directors—they’d all followed her to college then become reinvigorated when she’d joined Concord PD. Leigh, do you still believe your father’s innocence? Do you talk with your father in prison? Are you joining the police department in an attempt to reopen the case? Why did your mother kill herself?

Her move into the FBI seemed to ward them off. But the investigation in Lebanon two months ago had brought it all back.

Her face had graced newspapers she’d never read. National coverage had spilled details she’d always kept to herself. More interview requests, more journalists leaving messages on her voicemail. Literary agents had come out of the woodwork, all vying to work with her to pitch her story to publishers. Her entire life had been displayed for public consumption. But there was one secret they’d never have. Her brother, Chandler. They would never know he’d survived Chris Ellingson, or that she and her brother had set a plan in motion to reveal the monster hiding behind that manipulative smile.

It was the thought of someone else profiting off her loss—of attempting to insert themselves into the protected memories of her life—that had been too much to take. And no one, not even a cheating, gutless spouse like Wesley Portman, deserved that kind of pain. Leigh turned to the uniformed officer at the door of the Fuentes home. “They do not step one foot on this property. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The officer nodded. A nervousness laced his voice, like he knew exactly who she was and what she was capable of if he failed to live up to the order. “I understand.”

Leigh waited for the detective to show her into the Fuentes home. Though she wasn’t exactly sure, again, why she’d offered Detective Moore her insight into a missing teenage girl in the first place. The FBI didn’t actually like getting involved in cases where it hadn’t been invited, but there was something about these disappearances Leigh couldn’t quite grab on to. Something familiar and terrifying and compelling at the same time.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side.” Detective Moore kept one hand on the butt of her sidearm to prevent jostling as she hiked up the single step through the front door. “I looked you up, you know. Read about your last case.”

Her gut suctioned to her spine in preparation. For the questions. For the criticism and the disregard. She’d fortified herself against them since she was seventeen years old, mostly from other law enforcement officers, but that didn’t make her any stronger to fight off the urge to prove her worth inside an investigation.

“You never gave up.” Detective Moore slowed, coming to a full stop in the middle of an unfinished, two-story entryway. In that moment, she wasn’t a detective. She was the aunt of a murdered teenaged girl. Henrietta, the woman who’d adopted and raised and loved her fifteen-year-old niece for the past decade. Who’d considered that girl her very own. “This case… It’s personal for me. I don’t have children of my own. I’m the only female detective in Gulf Shores, and it took everything I had to prove I deserve to be here like the rest of the detectives in my department. Longer hours, double the caseload, sucking up to the brass, but then this five-year-old girl shows up on my doorstep, and… something changed. I wasn’t just a detective anymore. I had to learn how to be a mom, and I thought I was doing a pretty damn good job of it.”

It was clear then. That while Henrietta Moore had been content with letting her career rule her life, she loved harder than anyone Leigh had ever met. “I’ve spent the past decade trying to shield her from the bad things in this world. From my job, especially. I kept her away from the department and the cases I worked. Nobody even knew she was mine because I thought if she got even a glimpse of what I did, she’d be taken from me. Just as easily as my sister and her husband had been. I should’ve been able to protect her. I should’ve taught Ruby to protect herself better, and that’s something I will have to live with for the rest of my life. But all I want now is to find the son of a bitch who did this to my child.”

The detective shifted her weight, shaking off the vulnerability and letting that controlled rage peek through her eyes. “Will you help me? Please.”

Leigh hadn’t expected that. This other side to the hard-edged woman who’d wanted her as far away from Elyse’s case as possible yesterday morning. It was a monumental shift from the approach that usually welcomed her in the field, and that part of her that had joined Concord PD to reopen her brother’s case surged to answer. “I’ll do everything I can to help you find Ruby’s killer.”

It was only after the words were out of her mouth that Leigh remembered she wasn’t actually in Alabama on official duty. That her medical leave didn’t end for another three weeks. That she didn’t have a say in which cases she was assigned. And that the chances of recovering Elyse alive were quickly running out.

Detective Moore nodded her gratitude. And headed through a dining room complete with sideboard, fresh flowers, and an antique chandelier to the living room on the other side. “Annalea, I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. Have you heard anything from Saige?”

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