The Girl on the Boat by Danielle Lincoln Hanna

Author:Danielle Lincoln Hanna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: Hearth & Homicide Press, LLC
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

MONICA

Shit!

I called into the handset—“Hello? Hello?”—but the girl was gone. So I hung up and dialed the Communications Center. While it rang, I rapped a pen and stared at the wall of my cubicle. Nothing but a fuzzy gray backdrop, it was utterly devoid of photos, sticky notes, or (God forbid) succulents in tiny hanging vases. A clean space fostered a clear mind.

“Angie,” I said when the telecommunicator picked up, “what’s the phone number on that call you sent up to me?”

“Just a sec.” Angie was silent while her computer mouse clicked in the background. “Oh… Oops.”

Oops? What did oops mean? “What?”

“Um… I must have picked up too fast. The number didn’t have a chance to register.”

I braced my elbow on my desk and pinched the bridge of my nose. Angie had been working here for nine years. What was she doing making rookie mistakes?

“Sorry, Steele,” she said, and I could hear her bracing for a tongue lashing.

“It’s okay,” I sighed. It wasn’t. But I didn’t have time for tirades. “Thanks for checking.”

“Of course.”

I hung up. “Shit!”

Lehman rolled away from his desk and peered around the divider between our cubicles. His, I knew, was littered with pics of his kids at various ages—his ex conveniently excluded—and magazine clippings of sports cars he’d never be able to afford. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“We’ve got a lead.” I flipped open my portfolio and scribbled notes from the all-too-brief conversation.

Lehman spread his arms. “What’d I tell you! Someone had to know something.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have the PR’s contact info.”

“Oh. Well, shit,” Lehman agreed.

I ripped the sheet from my notebook and handed it to him. “Call D.C.I. and pass that on to them.” I turned to my computer and pulled up our driver’s license database, clacking my keyboard furiously.

Lehman stuck on a pair of reading glasses and stared at my note. “So, our anonymous PR could provide evidence that this—” he frowned at my note “—Baron Hackett was the one who broke in?”

“No. She didn’t even accuse him of anything. She just said, ‘He knows stuff.’” I lifted my hands from my keyboard long enough to make air quotes. “But she was hella nervous. I think she was afraid of saying too much.”

“Hmm. Well, I’ll pass it on.” He pushed off and rolled back to his own desk. His phone clicked out of its cradle.

“Wait,” I said.

“What?”

I was staring at the info I needed. A search for Baron’s driver’s license had brought up his home address. From there, I’d hopped over to the county’s database of properties and found the owner.

“Tell D.C.I. they might want to be careful,” I said. “Looks like his dad’s Richard Hackett.”

“Who?” Lehman demanded from the other side of the divider. Most of our conversations took place with a wall between us, and I liked it better that way.

“Richard Hackett,” I said. “He moved his family here about a year ago.” I studied the map provided by the county property database. “Apparently they have one of the big houses on the South Shore.

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