Page 138 of Liar's Point

He nodded.

“You’re certain of this?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “She was getting in her car. The lady in 110 was out here, too, with her dachshund. You can ask her.”

Nicole glanced back at the parking lot. According to this neighbor, Cassandra had a white Mustang that she typically kept parked at the corner of the lot, under the shade of a tree. She almost never drove it, he said, but she’d been getting into it this morning.

“Is that all?” He tossed his cigarette on the ground, and she gave him a pointed look.

Nicole’s phone chimed, and she pulled it from her pocket. Emmet.

“One moment,” she told the guy.

She crutched to the end of the sidewalk to answer the call.

“Hey, what’s up?” she said.

“We’ve got a problem.”

Her stomach tensed.

“Cassandra and Alex were supposed to come in so she could give us a statement,” Emmet said. “She didn’t show.”

“Cassandra... and Alex Breda?”

“Yeah.”

“A statement about what?”

Muffled noise on the other end of the phone. It sounded like Emmet was in a car with the windows down.

“Emmet?”

“Turns out you were right. Cassandra believes her husband may have something to do with the murders, so she went to Alex for legal advice.”

A chill went down Nicole’s spine. She moved a few more steps away from Cassandra’s nosey neighbor.

“What exactly did she say?” Nicole asked.

“Nothing, yet. All this is from Alex. And he’s been pretty cagey about it since this woman’s not here to tell us herself.”

“Well, where is she?”

“We don’t know. Alex convinced her to come talk to us, but she never came in for the meeting, and now she’s MIA. We’re on our way to her place—”

“She’s not here.”

“What?”

“I came by the apartment to interview her again, and she’s not here. Her neighbor says he saw her getting into her car—”

“Fuck.”

“That was around nine fifty.”

Nicole glanced over as an unmarked police unit pulled into the parking lot. She slid her phone into her pocket as Emmet whipped into a space and got out.

He shot a look at Cassandra’s neighbor before walking over to her.

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