Unfinished Business by Jenna Bennett

Author:Jenna Bennett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Suspense, Family, wedding, Southern, Romance, serial killer, real estate, missing persons
Publisher: Jenna Bennett
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

I’d driven by on the road before, but I’d never made the turn around the building and into the lot. Now I looked around curiously while Detective Grimaldi slotted the car into an empty parking space and turned off the engine.

A half dozen big rigs were parked under roofs, their engines turned off, like sleeping giants. Several more were rumbling, filling the air with noise and exhaust. Burly men in jeans and ball caps stood in clusters talking, while three women with big hair and small clothes had their heads together on the other side of the parking lot.

Grimaldi headed for them. After a second, I scurried after.

Not too long ago, I had watched Grimaldi walk into a bar where a table of men scattered like cockroaches when she passed. Rafe had told me it was because she smelled like cop.

Obviously, that was a figure of speech, since as far as I could tell, she smelled more like Ivory soap and shampoo. But she had that flat-eyed cop look to her. The women saw her coming, and the youngest of the three looked like she was thinking of bolting. It took one of the others holding her back to keep her in place.

The oldest of the three raised her voice. “Something we can help you with, Officer?” She sounded like Harvey Fierstein, like her vocal chords had been exfoliated with sandpaper.

“Detective,” Grimaldi said, flashing her badge. I slid to a stop next to her and gave the trio a more thorough look.

One was around my age, or maybe a few years younger, but hardened by the life she lived. Dishwater blond hair, faded blue eyes, too much makeup, and lips that were already a lot tighter than mine. I might have looked something like that if I hadn’t grown up with the privileges I’d had, and it was a sobering thought.

One was older: a buxom fake redhead who must have been pushing forty, unless she, too, looked years older than she was. Which wasn’t unlikely. She had brown eyes and the roots of the burgundy hair were a faded brownish gray. No longer svelte, she had a roll of fat hanging over the waistband of the cutoff jeans she was wearing, and her breasts threatened to spill out of a flaming red halter top. It clashed horribly with the hair.

The last girl—the one who had tried to bolt—was really just that: a girl. She had soft, brown hair and round cheeks, and was dressed in a short skirt and flip-flops. She even had a backpack in lieu of a purse, and looked like she might have been on her way home from high school, instead of selling herself at a truck stop off the interstate.

She also looked like the girl Rafe had described; the one who had been walking through the parking lot at Gabe’s on Friday night with our dead redhead.

Grimaldi gave her a thorough look. “How old are you?”

The girl swallowed. “Eighteen.”

“Can you prove that?”

She dug into the backpack, and even I could see that her hands were shaking.

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