Page 67 of After Midnight

“Dear God,” Ashton said, and Jeffrey hooted with laughter.

Olivia got a contemplative look on her face, then asked, “Uncle Ashton, were you the mean troll?”

“Pfft,” he scoffed and went into the kitchen without another word.

I couldn’t help laughing out loud, which seemed to reassure Olivia that all was well with Ashton’s reaction to my tall tale. It was just the distraction we all needed.

“We don’t want you girls turning into pumpkins. Off to bed with you, but brush your teeth first,” Miss Rita said. “I’ll be up in a moment to tuck you both in.”

“Can Dillon tuck us in too?” Alli asked.

“Of course, we’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said reassuringly.

When the girls were upstairs, Miss Rita came over to the couch and put her hand on my arm. “Thanks, we all needed a laugh. Even if it was at my poor brother’s expense.” I winked at her, feeling glad to have lightened the mood, if only for a moment.

After the girls were tucked in, the adults all sat around the dining table and the atmosphere grew serious again.

“So, we’ll each take turns,” Miss Rita said. “Let’s try to remember everything we can from right before Dominicdisappeared. Where we were, what we saw and heard, who we were with.”

I listened intently as the three of them went into detail about what they remembered from that day. Jeffrey and Miss Rita had last seen Dominic early on, before he’d gone to work, and Ashton had seen him working at the club until his shift ended. The only other details of note were Jeffrey hearing sounds while inside the house and finding Dominic’s car smashed up in the garage, but I’d already learned that from the police.

When the conversation came around to me, I recounted everything I could recall about the night we’d spent together, from when I’d picked up Dominic at the club to when we’d returned there and I’d watched him drive away. I did, of course, leave out all of the finer details about our hotel stay, other than mentioning we’d only seen the front desk worker there.

“Did you recognize anyone at the diner?” Ashton asked, and I shook my head.

“No, although I wasn’t really paying attention. For the most part, I was staring at Dominic.”

“Nothing suspicious at the club?” Jeffrey asked both Ashton and me, and both of us shrugged.

“We all know who’s behind this,” Miss Rita said decisively. “It’s just no one seems able to tie the woman to the scene of the crime.”

“What about the text from Olivia’s phone?” I asked quietly, just in case the girls might be listening. “The cops told me it’s not even hers anymore.”

Miss Rita glanced toward the stairs and whispered, “She doesn’t know Margarette used her phone, and we’d prefer she didn’t. As far as we know, the police still haven’t found it, and they came to a dead-end trying to trace it. They told us they thought it’d probably had the SIM card removed.”

“The cops aren’t telling me much, either. Of course, I’m just the boyfriend.” I sighed as my frustration flared. I shook it off and asked, “Did they get anything from his phone?”

“No, just said they’d found it on the floorboard of the car and other than various messages from the three of us in the past week or so, the last read text was from…well, you know,” Jeffrey said.

We all sat back in our seats, everyone looking as despondent as I felt. This had clearly not yielded any new information. If anything, it left me feeling less hopeful we’d find Dominic.

With nothing else to say or do, I stood to go. “I’m going to get out of your hair. Miss Rita, please let me know if you or the girls need anything, okay?”

She nodded, and before I left, said, “If you can stop by even for a moment in the evenings while you’re still in Denver, your presence really helped the girls tonight. If we can give them any comfort…” Her voice broke, and I was overwhelmed by seeing the powerful woman’s emotional reaction.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll come for dinner, if that’ll help. I could bring dinner tomorrow?”

“No, I’ll cook, it helps for me to be busy,” Miss Rita said.

“Bring your dads, if you want,” Jeffrey said. “It would be good to see Allen again, and maybe a small party will help keep our minds off… things.”

The sadness on his face made me realize the distraction he was talking about was as much for him as anyone else.

“I’ll see what I can do. If they can’t come, then we’ll shoot for another night soon,” I said. “Either way, I’ll see you for dinner tomorrow.”

Chapter twenty-nine

Dominic

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