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The Bone House - Brian Freeman [119]

By Root 1421 0
not adding up. Enough to think we have a problem.'

'Go on. Tell me.'

'I started thinking about Glory on Friday night,' Lala continued. 'When she ran into our bartender friend, Ronnie Trask. I tried to nail down the exact time it happened. Trask said he took his break before stopping at the hotel restaurant to stock up on wine for the bar. Then he went straight from his near-collision with Glory back to the pool bar. He figures he served a drink within two or three minutes of getting back. I checked the invoices and was able to calculate what I think was his first sale. Based on that, I have a window of about five minutes or so when Glory came running from the event center.'

'Good work, but I'm not sure where you're going with this,' Cab told her.

'Hang on. I called the woman who coordinated the entire dance competition and had her check that time against the performance schedules. Here's what I found. Tresa Fischer would have been in the line-up immediately before that time window. Makes sense, huh? Glory would have been in the arena to watch her sister.'

'Sure. Mark Bradley was there, too, so Glory could have bumped into him during the break.'

'Yes, but the next scheduled performance after Tresa's team was the team from Green Bay. So there were a lot of people with Wisconsin connections hanging around the event center. I started calling people from Green Bay who were staying in the hotel to see if anyone remembered Glory freaking out. I talked to a parent of one of the dancers, and damned if she didn't tell me she remembered a girl losing it outside the event center and go running off.'

'Did she know why?'

'No. She said that Glory was standing in front of a window in the corridor and suddenly she screamed and bolted.'

'What's on the other side of the window?'

'A patio.'

'I don't suppose we have any idea who was out on the patio.'

'Actually, we do. This woman's daughter was out there, along with the whole Green Bay team. They were getting a pep talk from their coach, who happens to be Gary Jensen. Ring a bell?'

'Oh, shit,' Cab said. 'Our witness?'

'That's him. Call me cynical, but I don't like the coincidence.'

Cab didn't like it either. 'Are you digging into Jensen's background?'

'I'm doing that right now.'

'Could there be a connection between Jensen and Glory?' Cab asked.

'That's the million-dollar question.'

'Could Gary Jensen be this missing fugitive from Door County? Harris Bone?' 'That was my first thought, too,' Lala said, 'but no. Unless Bone managed one hell of a sophisticated identity theft, Jensen's got a paper trail that goes back for years. Of course, there could be some other connection between him and Harris that we haven't found yet.'

'Keep at it,' Cab said, 'and keep me posted. That's great work.'

'Thanks.'

'You've earned the wine,' he said.

'I thought so.'

'Listen, about what you said,' he began. 'Before.'

'Forget it.'

'Lala, you took me by surprise. It's not that I don't—'

'Forget it,' she insisted. She added, 'Why did you call, Cab? You obviously wanted something.'

I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to bear your voice. He didn't tell her that; instead, he explained where he was and what he was doing. The map. The key. The roads that led nowhere. What he didn't say was that he was tired and lonely, and he'd run out of ideas, it's dark,' he said finally. 'There's no point in doing anything more tonight. I'm heading back to the apartment. I'll call you in the morning.'

Lala didn't let him go. He wondered if she wanted to hear his voice, too. 'Have you checked property records in the area?'

Cab glanced around at the dark parkland. There were no houses to be seen. There were hardly any houses anywhere among the roads he'd travelled here. He hadn't thought about people owning the land, because there seemed to be nothing to own. 'No, I don't have a laptop with me.'

'I can run some searches for you. Give me a second.' He heard the clink of crystal as Lala put down her wine glass, then seconds later, the tapping of keys. 'OK, hang on a second. Here we go, Door County Real Estate Records.

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