Page 109 of Call Back

“Belinda,” I said louder. “Wake up. We’re here.”

Her eyes opened and she struggled to focus on my face. “Magnolia. What are you doing here?”

Great. “We’re at Roy’s office. We were going to look through Bill’s office, remember?”

She squinted her eyes. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Are the keys to the office on the car fob?”

“No.” She sat up, and it took her three attempts to pick her purse up off the floor. After she got it into her lap, she dug around until she pulled out a plastic name tag with a magnetic strip on the back. “This. We need this.”

I took it from her and turned it over in my hand. JS Investments and Roy Steele were printed on the front.

Belinda reached for the door handle, missing it the first time and nearly falling out of the car.

No matter how much I wanted this to work, there was no chance it would. Not tonight. “Belinda, I think we need to try this another night.”

“No. No.” She righted herself and waved her hand at me. “Tonight’s the only night. I have a wedding tomorrow night, and the ball is Saturday.” She spun around to face me. “Wait until you see your dress. It’s beautiful. You’re going to love it.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Forget about the dress. I’m sure the one you picked out is perfect.” But that didn’t help us right now.

“It has to be tonight, Magnolia,” she said, staring into my eyes. “If he killed Emily, I’m scared he’s going to target you next.”

I was scared of that too. Part of me considered calling Brady, but I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything he could do. He was a Franklin detective who had no jurisdiction in Nashville. Besides, Belinda was right—the files she’d seen weren’t grounds for a search warrant. I knew Brady suspected Bill James of something, though he hadn’t exactly been loose-lipped about it.

Maybe we were we overreacting. Those files could have some innocuous purpose, although I wasn’t sure what. But I couldn’t forget the look in Momma’s eyes when she’d told me about her suspicions about Bill James’s wife. Nor the fact that the serial killer had recognized me that long-ago night. He’d known my name.

Even if Bill hadn’t killed Emily and Amy and all those other women, I could still look for a connection to the shady business deals he’d brokered with my father, although I suspected those records were at the house in Leiper’s Fork.

I was definitely going there next . . . with or without Belinda. I was having serious doubts about taking her upstairs right now.

Belinda took a deep breath and pushed it out, then gave me a serious look. “I can do this. Now let’s go.”

I frowned. It still seemed like a terrible idea, but I wanted her to come along. “Okay. Let’s give it a go.”

She got out and I met her at the back of the car. When she wobbled, I reached out for her, but she pushed my hand away.

“I can do it.”

Belinda seemed to gain more coordination by the time we got to the entrance to the building. I swiped the name tag and the door popped open. “Okay,” I said. “We’re in.”

We rode the elevator up to the floor for JS Investments. I glanced through the glass door to see if we had any witnesses, but it was after eight on a Thursday night. No one was around the reception area, and all the lights were dimmed, a good thing since Belinda had to slouch against the wall while I swiped the card on the pad beside the door.

Once we were inside, I turned on my phone’s flashlight and led Belinda past the reception area and into the hallway behind it. “I noticed Roy was using Daddy’s office,” I said, pointing the beam of my flashlight that direction. “Is Bill still in his old one?”

For some reason, Bill had always had the big corner office, even from the beginning. Daddy had never seemed to care, but it had bugged Momma plenty. I couldn’t see Bill giving it up.

“Yeah. In the back. But we need a key.” Thank God she seemed to be becoming more alert.

“Do you have a key?” I asked.

“Roy has a key. He’s not supposed to, but he keeps one in his desk.”

“Do you have the key to Roy’s office?”

She dangled a small key chain and single key in the beam from my phone flashlight, casting giant shadows on the wall. I had to wonder if we were playing this right. If we were caught, we’d look far more suspicious wandering around in the dark than we would if we turned on a few lights. But I preferred no one knowing we were here at all, and the overhead lights would be a dead giveaway.

No lights.

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