“I wish I knew,” I said, careful to keep my voice low. Delia had little ears and a really big mouth, and I’d been surprised by the conversations she had delighted in repeating lately. “Vero still hasn’t texted or called. Javi’s worried about her. And so am I.”
Nick nodded. “How long are you planning on staying?”
“No more than a couple of days. I’ll pack a bag for me and the kids and find us a hotel somewhere close to her mother’s house.”
Nick took my coffee mug from my hand and set it on the counter. He towed me gently into the next room where the kids wouldn’t hear us. “I have a better idea. Why don’t I stay with the kids for a few days. Then you and Javi can visit Vero without any distractions.”
I looked past him to the syrupy melamine plates on the counter, then to the living room, which had been ransacked with toys. He was right. It would be easier but only for one of us. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You don’t have to ask. I already offered.”
“But you have work.”
“They can come with me. I’ll stick close to my desk.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not?” he asked. “You work with them all the time.”
“I work from home. It’s not the same thing.”
“It’s not any different either,” he argued. But I wasn’t so sure.
I glanced back to the living room. Zach threw a wet Cheerio at his sister. In a moment she would fire one back. It would inevitably escalate to hair pulling and biting. I could easily picture the trouble they could get into at the police station—the trouble they could getNickinto. He was already in hot water with his commander afterwhat had happened when he took personal leave to keep an eye on us all in Atlantic City.
He leaned down to look me in the eyes. “Let me do this for you. Iwantto do this for you.”
“It’s harder than it looks.”
“Then I’ll ask your sister for backup. Sam and Roddy can help, too.”
I chewed my lip. My sister was competent and responsible, if not entirely skilled in the childcare department. Zach and Delia adored her girlfriend, Sam, and Officer Roddy had two teenage children of his own, which probably made him more qualified than the rest of us.
“Vero’s mother’s house is less than two hours away,” Nick assured me. “If anything goes wrong—and it won’t,” he rushed to add at my uneasy look, “I’ll call you right away if there’s anything you need to know.”
“You promise?” I asked.
“I promise.”
Delia’s voice called out from the living room, “Can we pleeeeeeease go to work with Nick, Mommy? We want to see Officer Roddy and Sam!”
I had been so preoccupied with Nick’s offer, I hadn’t realized how quiet the kids had become, or that Delia had been listening to part of our conversation. “Where’s Zach?” I asked her.
A giggle came from the pantry.
Nick took my face in his hands. “It will all be here when you get back, including me,” he said, as if he knew that scared me most of all.
“Okay,” I relented. Delia cheered. I surrendered the keys to my minivan so Nick could move the children’s car seats into his Impala. Then I went upstairs to pack.
CHAPTER 4
Javi was quiet for most of the drive, but I felt his impatience in the drum of his fingers on the armrest. In my periphery, I could see him shake his head and mutter to himself every time I tried to accelerate, when my wheezing, geriatric minivan took a moment to catch up with my foot. It had taken me longer than I’d expected to shower, pack, and get myself organized before I’d been ready to go. I’d picked out clothes for both kids for the week, written down their daily schedules for Nick, took a few preprepared meals out of the freezer, and left him with all the important phone numbers he might need in the event of an emergency. By the time we loaded ourselves into my minivan, I thought Javi might kill me. Thankfully, we had managed to make it through the bottleneck at the Potomac River bridge and across the state line well before afternoon rush hour. Lanham, Maryland, where Vero’s mother and aunt lived, wasn’t horribly far from my house in South Riding, but over the last three weeks, it had felt an ocean away.
Javi held Vero’s photo album in his lap, poring over old pictures of her as I drove. “You really think these photos are going to help us figure out who took the money?”
“No,” I admitted, “but I think they’ll give us a good place to start. If we can get Vero to tell us about her sorority sisters, maybe something will click.” At the very least, it would get her talking, which was more than she’d been doing. “Do you know much about her case? Maybe between the two of us, we can fill in the gaps.”
Javi shrugged. “You and Ramón probably know about as much as I do. She gets moody when I ask her about it. Guess I can’t really blame her. I know it all started around the beginning of her senior year. Vero was on the executive board of her sorority with these two other girls, Ava and Mia. The three of them got it in their heads that they could make some money hosting underground poker nights. They got away with it for a few months, but they didn’t know what to do with all the cash. Mia and Ava told Vero the money was her responsibility because she was the treasurer. They made her keep it in her room. Vero went out to a party one night. When she came back from the party, the money was gone. Everyone thought she took it.”
