My own laughter died, and I tipped my head.
If Mrs. Haggerty was a mama bear, then Brendan was the closest thing she had to a cub. Which made me wonder how far she might go to protect him.
I reached for my phone.
“What are you doing?” Vero asked as I scrolled through my contacts.
“I’m calling Cam.”
Vero frowned. “Why?”
“We need to find Brendan,” I said in a low voice. “Mrs. Haggerty has been very cagey about where he went and why he’s not returning my calls. I feel like she’s hiding something. She could be covering for him. And if she’s covering for him, there’s probably a reason.” If he was involved in any way in Gilford Dupree’s murder, then the sooner we found him, the better.
Cam picked up on the second ring. “What’s up, Mrs. D?”
“I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“It’s really important that I find someone. Today.”
“How important?”
“I did save your life, you know.”
“Which is why I’m willing to offer you a generous discount. A hundred bucks. That’s half my usual rate.”
I was surprised he hadn’t already Venmo’d it to himself. “Fifty.”
“And dinner?”
“Chicken casserole.”
“Send me everything you’ve got on your missing person. I’ll be there in an hour.”
I texted Brendan’s name and address to Cam, along with a brief description of the few things I knew about him—approximate age, line of work, his vehicle make and model, and a link to the article about his run for office, which also contained his photo.
I gave my phone to Vero. “See what you can find about Penny Dupree. Look for any connection between her and Brendan. While you search, I’ll start working on dinner.” I dug around in the pantry, the fridge, then the freezer, cobbling together a hodgepodge of ingredients for a casserole.
Vero opened a search engine and began scouring the internet for information about Gilford and Penny Dupree. For a few minutes, the kitchen was quiet except for the scrape of the whisk against the mixing bowl, the clatter of Vero’s computer keys, and Mrs. Haggerty barking out orders in the playroom.
“Look at this,” Vero said, zooming in on one of the articles. “According to the news, Gilford and Penny had purchased a vacation home in Boynton Beach and were planning to retire there beforehe went missing. Didn’t you say you’d found a Florida area code in Brendan’s call log?”
“Just some vacation company. Probably a marketing call. Why? What else does it say?”
“Penny sold their house in Florida later that winter. She decided to hold on to the house in Ashburn because the police were still searching for Gilford here.”
“Did they have any leads?”
“Not according to the news. All the articles say the missing persons case went cold pretty quickly. No witnesses. No signs of foul play. Nothing missing from Gilford’s car or his home. No enemies or conflicts his family was aware of. And according to police, no known ties to any of the Haggertys.”
The part aboutno conflictsdidn’t sit right with me. Every murder was rooted in conflict. Conflict was the engine that drove every story. It’s what propelled a thriller forward. Murders didn’t happen by accident to anyone other than me. There was always a motive: greed, self-preservation, jealousy, money, revenge… there had to be a conflict in Gilford’s past that no one had uncovered yet.
“There must be a tie to Brendan in all this. We just need to find it.”
Vero resumed her search and I returned to my casserole. At some point, Mrs. Haggerty puttered out of the playroom and turned on the television. I had just popped dinner in the oven when the doorbell rang. I hurried to answer it, pulling Cam and Arnold Schwarzenegger with me into the kitchen.
“Did you find anything?” I whispered as Arnold Schwarzenegger ventured to the oven and sniffed.
