Page 87 of Last Seen Alive
Amanda turned. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Just twisted my ankle a bit when we were chasing Brianna. Nothing that’s going to kill me.”
“In our line of work, don’t even joke about that.” She grinned, and he smiled back.
Trent’s ankle hurt like a son of a bitch, but he wasn’t sitting out any bit of this investigation. He was invested. His top priority wasn’t to clear Logan’s name; he just wanted to solve the mystery. There was an incessant need in him to get answers, solve the puzzle. And after speaking to Brianna, he started seeing Claire as a young woman whose entire life course was charted for her from the age of sixteen. Just a child who an older man and woman saw fit to groom for their purposes. They were bullies and abusers, even if they offered Claire a world she no doubt found exciting—at least in the beginning.
It made him think of his Aunt Gertrude and how easily charm and luxuries could blind a person—even an intelligent, fully grown woman. His aunt had lost the love of her life and was won over by a charlatan who morphed into a woman-beater almost overnight. But there were always signs, red flags, if one was open-eyed enough to see them. His aunt hadn’t been, and he and his family had been too late. And if she’d succumbed to such scum, Claire hadn’t stood a chance. And once she was in, she was just running forward, trying to make the most of what she had to work with. She might have felt there was no other choice.
He knocked on the Flynns’ door. There were the same vehicles in the drive as the other day, so someone should be home.
Austin answered the door. “Detectives?”
“We’d like to ask you some more questions,” Trent said, shoulders squared.
“Is this about the accident?”
“If we could just come inside for a minute…” Amanda intercepted and spoke kindly to the man.
Austin stepped back to let them enter without a word. He shut the door behind them. The three of them stood there in awkward silence for a spell before Austin told them to come with him.
He took them to the living room and sat on the couch. Trent and Amanda dropped into a couple of chairs.
“Her accident wasn’t an accident, was it?” Austin’s chin quivered, and Trent felt for the man. It was possible he had no idea how much his wife had hidden from him.
“As you might remember, we’re investigating the murder of her friend Claire.” Trent swerved, thinking it was best to steer clear of Rita’s fate just yet. The truth was they didn’t know what Austin did, and for all they knew he was in on the heist ring too. Though Trent doubted that. He struck him as a strait-laced character who played by the rules.
“I told you, I have little to say on the topic.”
“Claire reported to Rita at a gallery in Washington,” he said.
“I’ll trust you on that.”
It would seem Rita hadn’t even enlightened her husband to the fact she and Claire had worked together. “You told us Rita hadn’t seen Claire in years.” Trent studied Austin, and his body language was slightly tense but not closed off.
“That’s right.”
“Then you have no knowledge that Claire was here, at your house, last Wednesday?” Trent asked.
“I know of no such thing.”
“Then you don’t have any idea what might have been said between your wife and Claire?” Amanda chimed in.
“As I said, I didn’t even know that they saw each other. Hey, maybe Rita wasn’t even home. What time of day was this?”
“One fifteen in the afternoon.”
“Oh.”
Trent angled his head. “Oh?”
“I tried reaching her at work. They told me she went home for the afternoon on Wednesday. She could have been here. I suppose.”
There was nosupposeabout it as the taxi Claire took from her hotel came straight here. Claire must have reached out to Rita and brought her home. But why not just go to her?
Trent’s eyes glanced to the mantle and the wedding photo. He and Amanda had to be missing something. Brianna had said the maid-of-honor gig was given to Claire as a manipulative tactic. But why was Claire’s photo still on the mantle? That would suggest a bond that Rita had felt toward Claire—even after her disappearance from Prince William County. Then again, maybe Rita was trying to keep up appearances. But the question was why and to whom? Her husband? If so, Trent would see that as a sign Rita had more to hide or in the least a guilty conscience to assuage. “We have reason to believe that your wife may have been caught up in something, as we brought up before.”
“Here we go.” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “She was a mother and art professor. Hardly some mastermind criminal.”
