“What do you want me to do?”
“Make it stop!”
“How?” Vero asked, covering her ears.
“I don’t know.” I’d never owned a pet besides Delia’s goldfish, and at least Christopher had been quiet.
I knelt and tried talking to the dog in a calming voice, the one my sister referred to as my hostage negotiator voice. “What’s your name?” My brow furrowed as I squinted at the tag on his collar. “Kevin?” The dog went silent. His ears cocked.
“Seriously?” I asked.
He lunged at me.
I quickly shut the door, raising my voice over his shrill barks. “Maybe he’s hungry. Check the kitchen and see if you can find him something to eat.”
Vero scurried out, returning a moment later with a box of dogbiscuits. The barking stopped as she tore it open. There was a snuffling sound. The shadow of his nose darkened the gap under the door.
Vero turned the knob and we peeped inside. The dog’s ears shot up as she wedged a treat through the opening. Kevin took a tentative step toward it, reaching out with his teeth to snatch it from her.
She tossed in a few more treats, shut the door, and shook the crumbs off her gloves. We sagged against the wall, relishing the silence as the dog ate.
“You think Javi could have killed them?” I asked after a thoughtful pause.
Vero shook her head. “There are no signs of a fight. No broken glass. No toppled furniture or duct tape. If Javi managed to free himself, I doubt he would have left the place so neat.”
My laugh was dark. “There are two dead men in the other room. You call this neat?”
“Fine, maybe not neat. But Marco was obviously strangled, and the other guy looks like he got pushed and hit his head. The Javier I know would have come out swinging.” She smiled to herself as she stared up at the ceiling. “Did I ever tell you about my teeth?” she asked, turning toward me. I shook my head, intrigued. “They’re not real,” she said, tapping her bright white incisors with her fingernail. “I broke my real ones when I was nine. Mikey Bouchard pushed me off the jungle gym at school. I hit my face on the way down and split my two front teeth clean in half,” she said, running her tongue over them. “I didn’t tell my teacher. Instead, I locked myself in a bathroom stall until dismissal, too embarrassed to let anybody see me. It was awful,” she said with a shudder. “I got on the school bus that afternoon and Javi knew something was wrong. He snuck up to the front seat and scooted in beside me. I turned my face away and crossed my arms over my chest, pretending to be mad at him, hoping maybe he’d go away so he wouldn’t see my mouth. Instead, he told me knock-knock jokes the whole way home, trying to get me to smile.”
“Did it work?”
She laughed softly, revealing her perfect veneers. “Not until he tried whispering a dirty one in my ear. My jaw dropped. I was so shocked, I forgot all about my teeth. Javi took one look at my mouth and asked me who did it. He promised me that no one at school was going to make fun of the way I looked. He swore it. The next day, I bumped into Mikey Bouchard at the dentist’s office. He had two black eyes, a broken nose, andhissmile looked a whole lot worse than mine. I know Javi,” she said, sniffling and swatting at her eyes. “If he was here and he managed to escape, he wouldn’t have left this suite without cracking some skulls. And I didn’t see a black eye or a broken tooth on either of those guys.”
I pulled her head to my shoulder as a tear slid down her cheek. “He’s going to be okay,” I promised, hoping I was right. “We’ll search every inch of this suite for clues, and we won’t leave Atlantic City until we find him.”
With the exception of Kevin’s bathroom, we’d searched Marco’s entire suite, including the pants pockets of the dead man on the floor, which had contained nothing but a pack of breath mints. Our best bet for finding Javi was to locate the car that had brought him here. All we needed was a bread crumb—a valet ticket or a parking receipt. Some clue to where they were hiding the Aston Martin.
“Nothing here,” Vero said, slamming a kitchen drawer shut.
“Hey, I think I found something.” Vero hurried to look over my shoulder as I rummaged through the pockets of a suit jacket hanging in the foyer closet. I handed her a key fob for an Audi. “And here’s his wallet,” I said, flipping it open to show her the driver’s license inside. According to his ID, the name of Marco’s associate was Louis Delvecchio. “His home address is in Trenton.”
“That’s almost two hours from here.”
I slapped her fingers away as she reached for the stack of hundreds in the bifold. “His business card says he’s a private investigator.” I passed her the card.
“That would explain his fancy camera and all those photos he was taking of us last week.”
“And how Marco knew so much about you and the rest of his clients. Marco probably had this guy on retainer.” I searched the rest of the pockets. “The key to the Aston Martin isn’t here.”
“Whoever killed them probably stole it.”
“But left the key to his Audi? And his wallet?” I asked doubtfully. The wallet had been full of cards and cash.
“Any sign of his phone?” she asked.
“It’s not in his coat. Check the sofa. Maybe it fell out of his pocket.” We started at opposite ends of the sectional, lifting pillows and feeling under the cushions. My fingers closed around a slender cord that snaked over the arm of the couch and plugged into an outlet on the wall. I followed the length of it to a slim silver tablet hidden under a throw pillow. “What about this?” I asked, handing it to Vero.
She tapped the screen. “It’s locked.” She thought for a moment. Then her eyes skated toward the master suite. She launched herself down the hall with the tablet before I could stop her.
