“Anything else?” Marlow asked. He walked over to look at the safe for any sign that the door had been forced or tampered with. Nothing he could see, but the carpet lined interior of the metal box stank of musky, pine-themed perfume. When there was a pause before Farnham answered, he turned to look at her. “I don’t care what else Mr. Macroy kept in here, ma’am. I just want to know if the card was all whoever opened it wanted.”
Farnham pursed her lips for a moment and then shook her head. “There was some money and… personal items in there,” she said. “As far as I could tell, they were untouched. I just moved them for security. The keycard was all they took.”
Marlow took his phone back out of his pocket. He pulled one of Sun’s pictures onto the screen and enlarged it until it just showed the dead girl’s face. Farnham was obviously prickly about her boss’s reputation. The minute she heard the messy details, fellow null or not, she’d clam up.
“Do you recognize her at all?” he asked. “Maybe an old employee or…?”
Farnham blanched and pushed herself up from the desk. She reached for the phone, but aborted the gesture as Marlow apologetically moved it out of reach.
“Oh,” she said. Her voice dropped in a regretful sigh, filtered through her fingers as she raised one hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. Not her.”
“You know her?” Cade said.
Farnham kept her eyes on the screen as she nodded. “For years,” she said. “Since she was a little girl. You don’t?’
She finally looked up from the photo to give them both an incredulous glance. When they didn’t react with any sort of recognition, she gave a thin slice of a smile.
“Ah, no kids, then? Or sisters?”
Cade’s face closed down like a slammed door. He wasn’t a particularly open and approachable man anyhow—except when naked in an elevator—but the sudden freeze was so brutal it was unmissable. It made Farnham flush and look flustered, not sure where she’d misstepped.
“Only child,” Marlow said. He shrugged crookedly in an invitation for sympathy. “And working Night Shift makes it hard to find a date.”
For a beat, Farnham couldn’t decide what to react to, but Marlow’s was easier. She nodded as if what he’d said made sense to her.
“Of course,” she said. “Her name’s Haley Jenkins. She was the star of one of Wallace’s first big shows.”
Farnham pointed to one of the posters on the wall. A girl with white flames for hair stood on rocky letters that spelled outHaley’s Cometagainst a backdrop that looked like a ruined New York skyline.
“I haven’t seen her in years,” Farnham said. The shock had faded from her face, and her voice was steady again, though there was a deep scratch of sadness in it. “After the show ended, she had some problems, and she blamed us, the company, for them. She cut ties. We’ve not had any dealings with her since. I have no idea how she got the keycard or why she’d want it.”
“Do you have her contact details?” Marlow asked.
Farnham closed her eyes and swallowed, a wet, slow click in her throat. “I think they’re probably out of date.” All of a sudden, she sounded as tired as Marlow felt. “But Parker will have them at the desk on your way out.”
Marlow nodded. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “SDPD appreciates it.”
She nodded.
“I’ll get an operative to check the house and reset the security system,” Cade said as he led the way to the door. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The cell phone number that Parker had given them was dead. The other number connected to an answering machine for an Adelaide Jenkins, who had the warm, happy voice of someone that should bake pies and knit baby blankets.
Marlow left a message for them to contact the station. Night Shift didn’t have to do death notifications often—usually only on the scene if they needed people to understand why they had to leave the dead—and Marlow didn’t want to start on Adelaide and her warm Montana voice.
He went over to take his coffee from Cade.
“I don’t know how you drink that stuff,” Cade remarked as he popped the lid on his cup and breathed in the salt and beef steam. “It’ll stunt your growth.”
“It’ll keep me awake,” Marlow said, although interest in the case had counteracted some of his weariness. “So how did Haley go from child actress to dead girl?”
Cade left the beverage cart behind and headed down the road to where he’d parked his car.
“Haley Jenkins starred as Haley Comet, a teenage null girl given superhuman powers by… Haley’s Comet.” Cade paused to roll his eyes as he read the synopsis from his phone. “It was popular and ran for four seasons but was reputedly canceled over a contract dispute with Haley. That was six years ago. Since then, it’s been bad boys, booze, and a bed in rehab.”
“When?”
“On the bad boys or the rehab?”
