Page 74 of Bad Mother

She was lifting her phone to text Gavin and tell him she was leaving and that Mirabelle wasn’t home when she saw the pad of paper on the edge of the counter with Mirabelle’s handwriting.

She approached it, her brow furrowing as she looked down. “What the hell?” she muttered.

They werehernotes, only... rewritten by Mirabelle.

Vanadium, Iodine, Oxygen, Lithium.

And then beneath that, she’d added to Sienna’s brainstorming with apparentEandTwords from the periodic chart.

Europium?

Erbium?

Einsteinium?

Titanium?

Tantalum?

Thallium?

Tellurium?

Thulium?

VIOLET

Sienna stood there for several moments, trying to understand. Mirabelle had obviously seen the notes from the periodic table at her condo. That was why she’d rushed out of there looking peaked? And then she’d come home and rewritten them with her own additions. Why? Mirabelle had gotten theEright, even though there was no way she could have known about the company Harry Lockheed’s body was facing or the clues the killer had left that had led them to the same letter. And why did Mirabelle think the word would end up beingViolet?

Her eyes moved downward, to the bottom of the page, where Mirabelle had written three names.Reva (Lilly) Keeling, Bee Murray, and Harry Lockheed.The three strangled murder victims who’d been elaborately posed.

Below that was a rough sketch of a crown, done in red ink, almost as if Mirabelle had been doodling while going over the notes.What the hell is going on?

Something occurred to her, and she brought her phone out to call in to the station. Kat was long gone, home to get a good night’s rest, but maybe Xavier was still there, despite the late hour. She used the automated system to type in the extension of the phone at the desk where he was working, and he answered right away.

“Hey, Xavier. You sure are burning the midnight oil. But I’m glad you’re still there.”

“I was actually just packing up. What’s going on?”

“Ingrid said that you’re pulling information about Roger Hastings and his son’s abduction?”

“Yeah. I’m still working on it, though. There’s a lot.”

“That’s okay. I just need to know his wife’s name, if you have that. The one who reported their son’s abduction in the first place.”

“Ah, hold on.” She heard rustling as though he was going through notes or printouts. “Violet. I thought so but wanted to confirm. Violet Hastings, former cocktail waitress turned homemaker, reported that Roger left with their son, Daniel, aged seven, in the back seat of his carand never returned. According to police, she claimed it was a spousal disagreement and he’d taken the boy to punish her.”

Punish her?

Sienna’s heart was beating rapidly, her stomach suddenly queasy.

“Does it say where she waitressed?”

“Um.” She heard papers rustling again. “Yeah. Casino Royale? That’s the one that closed last year, right?”

Casino Royale.She couldn’t picture any casino with that name. She stretched her brain, trying to picture it, but came up short. It’d been so many years since she’d lived there and known every building in every corner of the city. “I don’t know,” she said distractedly.

“It was a classic casino close to downtown but more off the beaten path,” Xavier went on. “I mostly remember it because of that giant red crown on top of the building.”

---