Page 53 of 3rd Tango
I grab my file on the three women buried in Virginia, the notes Meg shared on the lighthouses and Marie, and the timeline I wrote up condensing Mom’s records on Gayle. I lug them all back and plunk them on the table. Haley has refilled my tea, steam rising from the mug.
“What do these two sides of the board have in common?” I ask, turning to point, and then regretting the sudden shift.
“Gayle,” she volunteers without pause.
I’ve never talked to him directly. “I wonder if he has any kind of accent?”
She perks up. “Do you have his number? I can call and act like a telemarketer.”
I search through notes until I find it. I rattle the digits off and she writes them down. “Do it,” I tell her. “Don’t be surprised if a woman answers It’s his girlfriend, and she’s home a lot during the day.”
She leaves, and Meg and Matt arrive. They bring me up to speed on the rest of what Taylor shared, and Meg shows me the picture of Evelyn.
While Marie’s portrait was hardly done by a master artist, I see similarities. I state the obvious. “Marie knew her. They were friends, isn’t that what she told you?”
Meg sets her bag on the table and sinks into a chair, using a hand to brush hair out of her face. The ends are a frizzy mess, thanks to the heat and humidity. “Which means Marie might have known Sven and the bank robbers.”
“She must’ve.” I shove the mug to her. I’ve had enough. Between that and the adrenaline in my veins now, my head is clearing. “Evelyn was Sven’s longtime girlfriend, right?”
“Yep.”
Did Gayle know Marie back then? Is he linked to this gang somehow through her? Is that why he’s kept odd hours through the years? Stayed in that cabin in Virginia?
It’s no coincidence, but… “Were all the London Fog Gang killed?” I ask Meg.
“Yes.”
“So Gayle couldn’t be one of them,” Matt adds, finishing my thought.
He moves to the whiteboard, feet braced and arms crossed, examining my lists. “We should cross-match the locations of the lighthouses against bank robberies in those areas. See if there’s a connection.”
Meg sips the tea and sighs as if it’s the best thing she’s tasted all day. “Taylor said Evelyn disappeared around the time Sven died. The money did, too. What are the odds Marie knows exactly what happened to both?”
I take a seat, liking where this is going. Out front, Haley’s on the phone and the alarm buzzes. “Taylor told you Sven had a fetish for strangling women, correct?”
My sister looks as excited as I feel. “Our unidentified woman could be Evelyn.”
“We should also cross-reference the identified women with Svenson,” I say in agreement. “All three were strangled. Maybe he’s our serial killer.”
At that moment, JJ arrives, looking like a thunderstorm as he slaps an envelope from Family Ties in front of me. “You should be at home in bed.”
There’s a part of me that wishes he’d whisk me away, take me to his apartment, and force me to stay in bed—with him—the rest of the day. I could use some sleep, some pain relief.
In his eyes, I see the idea is in his head as well. Truth be told, I’m a little surprised he isn’t going caveman on me, slinging me over his shoulder and carting me off.
I give him a genuine smile. “I need to figure out who shot at me, the unidentified woman, and what the hell Gayle and Marie have to do with it. After that, I’m all yours.”
He leans on the back of the chair next to me. “You don’t need to wrap all of this up today. I give you my word, we’ll figure it out, but you need rest.”
“Have you heard anything from the detectives yet?”
He checks his watch, an expensive Rolex that catches the overhead light. “It’s been less than three hours. You have to give them time to do their job, Charlie.”
Matt begins scrutinizing each of the items on the whiteboard out loud, cutting off further scolding from my boyfriend and bringing JJ into our discussion with smooth adeptness.
Thank you, Matt.
JJ reluctantly joins our think tank, taking the chair beside me as Matt draws lines between the characters in different colors to signify relationships. I throw out dates from my timeline that he adds to the hodge-podge.
