“Whoa, hold on. That’sverycreepy.”
“I know.”
“I don’t get the church stuff. Are we supposed to think her disappearance is related to her being a Catholic?”
“I have no clue. And there was no way to tell if the person really knows anything about Shannon’s whereabouts or if it was just a crank call.”
“It could actually be the killer, you know.”
“Yes. Or someone who knows the killer.”
“You going to let the sheriff in on this?”
“Not yet. I want to wait until I gather more information and make sure it isn’t a hoax.”
“That makes sense, I guess.”
“And that brings me to my question. Do you have any idea what the caller was referring to? I searched online for anything related to the Catholic church in Sunset Bay but there’s not even a chapel there.”
Alice leaned forward and took a sip of her coffee. Even in the dark of the car, I could see her brow furrow.
“There’s a chapel a couple of miles away, in Hague. Though if the person meant Hague, he would have said so.”
“My conclusion exactly.”
“The only other thing I can think of is that thereusedto be a place around there that was affiliated with the diocese. It was called Sunset Bay Retreat Center, so that might be why it didn’t turn up when you searched under the wordCatholic. They stopped operating at least ten years ago, maybe a little more, but the building’s still standing.”
“And it’s abandoned?” Even through my jean jacket, I could feel the goose bumps sprouting on my arms.
“To my knowledge, yes, though I suppose it might have been sold and is now under development.”
“How do I find this place?”
Alice sighed. “That’s gonna be tricky to explain. It’s at the end of an unpaved road that heads down to the lake, but there’s a bunch of those, and I’d have to be there to remember which—” She paused. “You want me to show you, don’t you?”
“Yes. First thing tomorrow... And if we turn up anything related to Shannon, we could both use it in our posts, okay?”
“Okay. And yes, we have to go really early. I have a lot of ground I want to cover tomorrow.”
“Early it is,” I said, and savored a last sip of coffee.
Maybe the callhadbeen from Matt Wong trying to mislead me. But something in my gut told me it had been significant and I’d had good reason to feel shaken by the sound of that eerily altered voice. The caller knew something.
The question was what.
Chapter 6
IHAD A RESTLESS EVENING AFTER LEAVINGALICE, WIREDfrom a combo of caffeine, the fact that Beau was temporarily incommunicado, and, needless to say, the mystery caller’s message replaying in my head. What if the retreat center actuallywasthe place the person was referring to? And what if there was something, or someone, waiting there for me?
I managed to find an open take-out food place close to the Breezy Point, and while eating a soggy chicken Caesar salad at the desk in my room, I toyed with the idea of alerting Killian about the call but decided to wait until I’d secured more info. Hoping it would calm me, I closed out the night with a hot bath, using the so-called “massage” soap bar that had been placed on the rim of the tub. It featured raised dots that I assumed were supposed to soothe my weary arms and legs, but rubbing them along my skin felt about as close to a massage as having my body licked by a puppy.
Right before crawling between the sheets, I shot my moman email, checking in. Mentioning her to Alice had made me realize it had been a few days since I’d reached out.
The next morning, I was headed toward Sunset Bay by seven thirty, stopping briefly for coffee and a muffin along the way. As soon as I pulled into the hamlet, I spotted the red MINI parked in front of the diner where Alice and I had agreed to meet. She lowered her window as I approached the car.
“I showed up on the early side and did some reconnaissance,” Alice said. She was wearing the same black beret from yesterday. “I had a hard time figuring out the right road after all this time, but the guy who runs the diner told me which one it is. You want to jump in with me or follow in your car?”
“Why don’t I drive us both? If something weird is going on there, it’s probably best not to show up in a convoy, and my car is less conspicuous.”
