Page 47 of Torment

“She remembers you too. However, she told me you and Jolie aren’t friends at all.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe Jolie just didn’t tell her about me.”

“That’s what I assumed at first. So I pressed her for details. She told me that while she was having coffee with Jolie a couple of months ago, she specifically asked her if she’d heard from you in the last eight years. Apparently Jolie said no. She was very clear about it.”

“How strange.”

Beck smiled thinly again. “Yes. Very strange. I have no idea why Jolie would choose to hide her friendship with you. So I started to wonder if you two were really friends at all, and I went and checked her phone records from the last few months.”

I returned her smile. The phone records would help me. When I first started watching Jolie on a regular basis several months ago, I occasionally called her cell phone with my number withheld in the settings. I only did it when I knew she was too busy to answer or napping on the sofa at home. When she finally checked her phone, she would see that she had a missed call from a private number. She would have to shrug it off and assume it wasn’t important as the caller hadn’t left a message and there was also no way to call them back, given that the number was withheld. However, it would say on the records that my phone had called hers several times over the months, establishing some sort of basis for our alleged friendship.

At the time, I did it out of sheer paranoia that something like this might happen once I took her. I was glad I did, because it was paying off now.

Beck handed me a piece of paper with several dates and numbers highlighted in fluorescent yellow marker. “This is your number, isn’t it?” she said, pointing to the top one.

I nodded. “Yes. I called Jolie every so often, as friends tend to do.”

“It appears that way at first glance. But I looked deeper. It seems that while you called her, she never answered a single one of these calls. Every one of them went to voicemail.”

Jesus Christ, this woman didn’t quit.

“Detective, as I told you when we first met, Jolie isn’t much of a technology fan. She hardly ever checks her phone. I usually give her a call when I’m in town, and she almost never answers. That’s normal. She’s a busy girl. Work, friends, and so on. When she finally gets home and sees the missed call from me when she checks her phone, she walks across the road and says hi. No point in calling back when she can just come visit me, right?”

“I suppose so.” Beck had a strangely triumphant look on her face, as if I’d stepped right into a trap. “Speaking of your house across the road, I did some digging into that as well.”

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. “How resourceful of you.”

“You generally split your time between New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, don’t you?”

“Yes. My company has dealings everywhere, but our main branches are located in those places.”

She nodded. “So you own several properties in each city.”

“I do.”

“When I was looking into it, I noticed that the place you have listed as your primary residential address here in the city is a house in Audubon. Not the townhouse on St. Andrew Street near Jolie’s apartment building.”

I sighed. “So? I own a property financing company. It’s really not that unusual for me to own several houses in one city.”

“I know. But you only purchased the house on St. Andrew Street around seven months ago. You aren’t registered as living there officially, and none of Jolie’s neighbors remember seeing you there with her.”

I pointed to the scars on my face. “I don’t like hanging around my front yard and scaring the neighborhood kids away, if you can understand that,” I said in a frosty tone.

“Of course. I know you like to stay inside most of the time.”

I casually threw my hands up. “So what’s your point? I split my time between all my properties. That’s not illegal.”

She leaned forward, lips pressed into a taut line. “I know. But when I first spoke to the man who lives in the apartment across from Jolie’s, he said he got the impression that she had some sort of stalker.”

I stiffened. “Why?”

“He’s an old guy, and he hasn’t got a very good memory, so he couldn’t remember exactly why. Something she said to him, perhaps.”

I arranged my face into a troubled expression. “That’s very frightening. I really hope she wasn’t being stalked. Like I said before, I hope this is all a misunderstanding and she’s just flitted off to another state without telling anyone.”

Beck leaned back, twirling a pen in her left hand. “I don’t think there’s any misunderstanding. I think she had a stalker, and I think that stalker took her and did something to her.”

“That’s terrible if it’s true,” I said, knitting my hands together. “But I’m glad that Jolie has someone like you searching for her. You’re obviously very dedicated to the case.”

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