CHAPTER 17
Dusk was settling over the city, thick fog rolling in off the ocean as Angie went up a small stone path to the door of what she hoped was Sophie Sinovich’s house.
Sophie was one of the “three amigas” pictured with Jasmine Gulati on a Hornby Island beach twenty-six years ago.
Angie had looked up both Mia Smith and Sophie Sinovich after dropping off Rachel Hart’s VHS tapes to be digitized at Mayang Photo Place, a specialty store run by Daniel Mayang, a guy used by Coastal Investigations for all manner of photographic restoration, enhancement, and old film advice in general.
Turned out there was more than one Mia Smith living in Victoria, and if Mia had married and was using her husband’s name, Angie was likely to hit several dead ends before making any progress. Sinovich, however, was a surname that narrowed the field, so Angie had focused on looking for Sophie first.
She’d found a social media profile for a Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum that named the University of Victoria as one of the schools she’d attended. The profile photos of Sophie Rosenblum showed a brunette in her early fifties. She looked like she could be a match.
As Angie raised her hand to knock, the door opened, startling both Angie and a tiny woman holding a Great Dane on a lead. The woman stepped back in fright, her hand shooting to her chest. The hound began to bark.
“I’m looking for Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum,” Angie said loudly over the sound of the barking dog.
“Oh, Bella, shut up. Hold on, please,” the flustered woman told Angie. She scooted Bella-the-Dane back inside and stepped out, shutting the door behind her. “Sorry about that. I was just about to take Bella for her walk. We didn’t expect to see anyone right at the door. You scared the daylights out of me.”
Disappointment flushed through Angie as she regarded this tiny black-haired woman with pinched features. She was not the Sophie in the photos.
“My apologies. I think I might have the wrong address,” Angie said. “I was hoping to find Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum who attended UVic about twenty-five years back.”
Hesitancy crossed the tiny woman’s features, followed by suspicion. Inside, the barking intensified. The woman looked back at the door as if reassessing the wisdom of locking her guard dog away.
“Here—” Angie quickly dug out her card and held it out to the woman. “My name is Angie Pallorino. I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking into a cold case that Sophie Sinovich might be able to help me with.”
The woman studied the card in the porch light, looked up. “You have the right address. Sophie is away with her family, trekking in Nepal. They’ll not be in cell range much until they return. I’m Lacey Richards. I’m housesitting, or rather”—she jerked her head back to the door—“Great Dane sitting.”
“When will Sophie be back?”
“Not for another few days.”
“Can you give her my card, ask her to call me when she returns?”
“Sure.”
Angie thanked the woman and started down the path to her car, but Lacey called out into the misty twilight. “Can I perhaps help? I was also at UVic with Sophie.”
Angie stilled. Hope flared. She turned and hurried back up the path, ducking under cover of the eaves out of the fine drizzle. She took out the photo she’d put in her jacket pocket. “Do you know who this friend of Sophie’s was?” She showed the print to Lacey.
“That’s Jasmine—” Her gaze ticked up to Angie. “Is this about Jaz? She disappeared the year after this was taken, presumed drowned in the Nahamish River. No one ever knew for sure what happened to her. There were all sorts of rumors.”
“Rumors like?”
“So thisisabout Jaz?”
“It is, yes. Her remains were recently discovered and positively identified. Her grandmother has asked me to paint a picture of Jasmine’s final months and days leading up to the accident. I was hoping Sophie could fill in some details.”
“Wow,” Lacey said, her attention returning to the photo. She fell silent. Inside the house the dog stopped barking, as if listening for her voice now. A foghorn sounded across the water. Darkness seeped in with the mist, wrapping the city in a claustrophobic cape of cold moisture and casting ghostly halos around the streetlights.
“What were the rumors?” Angie probed gently.
Her gaze still riveted on Jaz’s smiling image, Lacey said, “The usual stuff that comes up when people vanish without a trace. That she’d faked her own death. That she’d gone south, crossed the border into Mexico, had been seen in Puerto Vallarta. Someone claimed they’d seen Jaz in Oaxaca and that she was living with some man there.” Lacey peered up. “Where was her body found?”
“Next to the river, in a shallow grave where she likely washed up in a high-water event.”
“And all this time people thought she could be cavorting around the globe. Meanwhile she was lying right there ...”
“Was there any reason you’d be inclined to believe any of those rumors?” Angie asked. “For example, was there anything Jasmine Gulati might have wanted to escape?”
