Page 18 of Already Lost

That was the time they knew Dakota Hensonhad left home and walked down the street towards the store, only to be abductedby her killer.

“I was here,” Oreyo answered immediately.“I always am, on weekdays. From nine in the morning through to six at night.When I don’t have customers, I work on cleaning and restoring my new finds.”

“Did you have any customers yesterday?”Nate asked, and Laura knew he meant ‘witnesses.’

“No,” Oreyo admitted slowly. “We’vestarted to do a bit of online business, you see, so people don’t have to comedown here anymore.”

Laura almost rolled her eyes. He wastrying to defend his business, but she couldn’t care less whether he was makingenough money or not. “Is there a camera anywhere in here?”

“No,” he said again. “I told you. I don’tlike to have modern equipment near my antiques.”

“Mr. Oreyo, you’re making it a littledifficult for us to confirm your alibi,” Nate said, folding his arms over hischest.

“Oh, I was here!” Oreyo replied, his eyeswide. “There’s a camera across the street that covers the door. You could checkthat. You’ll see the store was open all day long and I never left.”

A camera covering the door wouldn’t bemuch help if he needed to accuse someone of theft. Laura narrowed her eyes,wondering. Was he trying to hide something going on inside his business? Or wasit just that a business like this didn’t make enough money to install a camera?Or – the reason he’d given – was he really so old-fashioned he didn’t want acamera in the store?

“We’ll be checking,” Nate promised, makinga mark in his notebook. Laura made her own mental note to ask one of the localcops back at the precinct to check it out so they could focus on other leads.Watching footage was the kind of job that could take hours, and you had to keepup your concentration the whole way through – not the best task for the leadagents on the case to take on. “Now, your customer records. Do you recallanyone who bought multiple gramophones in one transaction? Or even anyone whopurchased multiples across different purchases?”

“I can answer that question for you rightnow and take my books back,” Oreyo said, eyeing them in Nate’s hand. Laura wasbeyond convinced now that there was something funny going on with the business.Some kind of tax evasion, most likely. “I have the customer information off thetop of my head, because it only happened last week. And it’s the only instanceI can recall in the last ten years of a customer buying more than one. Younormally only need one to play your records, so it’s rare to sell two, letalone three.”

“Three?” Nate asked, his eyebrows shootingup as he glanced at Laura. Three was good news and bad news. Good, because itwould make it very simple to track down a good, strong suspect. Bad, because itwould mean there was one more gramophone left that hadn’t been used.

“Do we have a deal?” Oreyo asked, lookingat the book in Nate’s hand expectantly.

Nate hesitated for just a moment, clearlyweighing up the risk and reward. Laura wished she’d had a vision to help, butnothing in the dusty shelves of the store had stirred a reaction in her mind.“Fine,” he said, at last, handing the book back over. “But you better have anaddress for us.”

“Address, name, and telephone number,”Oreyo said. He opened the book to one specific page and spun it around to showthem the notes scratched on the paper – a scrawled receipt, it looked like, withall the customer’s information. “Yvan, that was his name. He paid in cash, so Idon’t have a credit card record, but I remember his name. It was unusualenough. And I took his address so that I could deliver the items to his home.”

“Did you take them personally?” Nateasked.

“No, I ordered a specialist courier,”Oreyo said. He tore out the page of the book with quick, precise movements,taking it so neatly it didn’t even look as though there had been a page thereto start with. Laura looked down, but he closed the book smartly enough beforeshe could see what was on the page behind it. “They package everything verycarefully and make sure there’s no damage in transit.”

Nate glanced over the piece of paper withthe address – it was blank on the other side, as if Oreyo only used theright-hand pages of the book – and then folded it into his pocket. “How did youorder that?”

“Over the internet,” Oreyo said, and thenstopped abruptly. He colored, his cheeks shading in red.

“If you’re prepared to stretch to Wi-Fi,maybe consider stretching to a security camera,” Nate said, shaking his head.“You’ll thank me if you ever get a thief in here.”

He turned to Laura who nodded. “We’ll bein touch if we need anything else,” she said, figuring it wouldn’t hurt tostick a pin in Oreyo and come back to him later. After all, if the gramophonesand the record continued to be important, an antiques dealer who specialized insound would be a good expert to come to.

For now, though, they had a much morepressing matter. This Yvan, whoever he was, seemed like a very good suspectalready, and they didn’t even know anything about him. And the quicker they gotto him, maybe the quicker they could stop him taking that third life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Right,” Laura said, putting the phonedown. “The detective found him. His full name is Yvan West. He doesn’t have acriminal record, but he’s been registered at that address for a couple ofdecades.”

“No record,” Nate nodded. “That explainswhy we couldn’t find a match for the prints.”

“Maybe,” Laura said. She was feeling anabundance of caution, for some reason. Maybe because it was very early in thecase, and they’d gone from no leads at all to suddenly having a viable suspect.She was probably just being paranoid, she told herself. Looking for thedownside. No, he was going to be their killer.

Maybe she just wanted this to be wrong sothat she wouldn’t have to go back home and face the whole Zach/Chris dilemmaagain.

“Well?” Nate asked. “You want to getbackup, or go straight in?”

Laura bit her lip, looking down the streetat the home they were staking out. Watching the place while they checked outthe details of the registered homeowner meant they could be sure he hadn’t leftto go and kill someone else while they did what essentially amounted topaperwork.

The street was quiet as the day stretchedinto evening. Most people had come home from work already, a few of them evenwhile Laura and Nate watched from their car. There was already a vehicleoutside of the property registered to Yvan West, the place where thegramophones had been delivered, and it hadn’t moved.

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