Page 14 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

“Yousaid you were twenty-five.” The old guy looked her up and down. “Anda man!”

“Well, that’s just the oldest rule in the book: Don’t let strangers on the internet know you’re a young woman. How dumb do you think I am?” Baby dropped a hip, challenged him with her eyes. He didn’t flinch.

“I wanted a man’s help,” the old guy said. “Not a little girl’s. How old are you really? Twelve?”

“Sixteen.”

“Well, call your mama to come pick you up. Right now.”

“Too bad! You got me. So let’s do this.” Baby flicked her hands at him, shooing him out of her way. He didn’t budge. She stepped around him. The house was old, huge, the foyer dusty and bare. She turned and saw Arthur was holding a sawed-off shotgun down by his thigh. “What the hell? Are you this friendly to everyone who comes to your door?”

“You’re one to talk. I saw you from across the way.” Arthur jerked a shriveled, crooked thumb toward the street. “Either you got some hundred-dollar lipstick in there or you’re packing heat too.”

“Packing heat?” Baby had to laugh. “I like that. That’s gangster.” Her assessment of the old guy and his house was shifting, softening, as the seconds ticked by.

Arthur shut the door, marched past her into a spacious but cluttered kitchen, and dumped his shotgun on the counter. The floorboards creaked and popped for the entire journey.

“You said you wanted a man’s help.” Baby put her hands up. “I get it. I can see this isn’t the nicest neighborhood. Looks like the apocalypse just hit outside. But let me try to sell you on my capabilities. I’m handy, okay? I can fix things. I can garden. I can cook. I can keep an eye on things around here.”

Arthur wrinkled his nose, sucked air through his dentures. Baby’s phone pinged in her handbag. She reached in and silenced it, annoyed. Rhonda chasing her again.

“Give me twenty-four hours,” Baby said to Arthur. “How ’bout it? If you think I’m cramping your style after a one-day probationary period, you can tell me to beat it. But this place looks like it could use a woman’s touch.”

Something flickered in the old man’s eyes. He didn’t answer.

“Great.” Baby grinned. She dumped her bag on the floor, went to the kitchen sink, and picked up a glass. “Let me get some water and we’ll get started right now.”

She put her hand on the faucet and felt an electric charge hit her body in an explosive wave.

CHAPTER16

I STOPPED AT Acafé in Silver Lake to do some research on Daisy and Troy Hansen while I waited for Baby’s latest tantrum to blow over. The café’s aesthetic had attracted me — indoor plants, tattooed staff, and polished concrete. Regret hit when I saw that the menu was wall-to-wall rabbit food. I opened up the app that monitored the tracking device I’d had Baby place on Troy Hansen’s truck, and checked where it was. Still in front of the house on Bonita Drive. Good. At least Troy was staying put. I opened my laptop in unison with three other people in the big sprawling room and looked up Daisy Hansen’s socials.

Troy’s wife did look like the type of woman who went to the gym right after work. In her Instagram profile picture, Daisy posed with her toned arms behind her head, a big toothy grin on display. Her blond ponytail was thick and lustrous, and a twinkle in her eyes saidWe’re friends!in a way that probably got people to take her advice on nutrition and forget the price tag. More prettily filtered shots in the feed: Daisy on her laptop in bed brandishing an oat-milk coffee in an ethically made mug, Daisy’s feet on early-morning grass with two similar but unmatching sneakers on with the hashtag#whoops.

I scrolled. There were no photos or mentions of Troy.

A gentle fluttering sound drew me away from the screen. I turned and saw on the wall above me a big flip clock with black-and-white flaps that fell as time passed. I watched the2in5:42fold itself into a3and wondered where Baby was.

Dave Summerly had suggested that the Hansens’ marriage had changed recently. I endured my depressing bowl of grains and grass and tried to catalog the number of ways a relationship dynamic could change so badly that it resulted in a disappearance. Had someone else come into the equation? Had there been a big fight in the Hansen household? Had someone been given an ultimatum? I tried to be more creative. Maybe money had come in — or gone out? Maybe Troy had an addiction? An illness? A love child? MaybeDaisyhad one of those things?

In the comments section of Daisy’s online world, most people — predictably — were screaming that Troy must be having an affair. But as I scrolled, I saw that it was Daisy who had begun exhibiting the classic signs. Starting about three months ago, she’d lost a noticeable amount of weight, changed her hair, and begun posting cryptically about learning and growing and being true to herself “no matter who it upsets.” I wondered if Troy had never been shared on her feed or in her stories, or if he had, but she’d recently scrubbed all traces of him.

I searched public records for a divorce application by either of the Hansens and came up empty. I did learn that they owned their house and hadn’t defaulted on any mortgage payments, and neither one had a criminal record. Daisy’s Instagram nutritionist business was registered and solvent. I trawled a few popular dating sites for profiles that featured either Daisy or Troy, explicitly or in disguise. Nada.

My phone pinged. Hoping for Baby, I bristled when I saw the text from Dave Summerly:Stop wasting your time with Troy Hansen.I gave such a dramatic sigh, several other laptop jockeys looked over. I’d been told “Just stop!” many times in my career, almost always when I was chasing hopeless cases.

Then I noticed the video attached to Summerly’s message.

A surveillance video of a sprawling, recycled-brick driveway lined with hedges. There was a slice of road and neat houses beyond it. The yellow time stamp at the bottom of the footage gave the date: the same Wednesday that Daisy had gone missing. I watched Daisy Hansen’s little red Honda Civic, a car that presumably police had not yet recovered, cross the screen. The time was 5:37 p.m.

The video jumped to 7:40 p.m. I watched Troy Hansen’s work truck cross the screen in the same direction as the Honda. The video jumped again. Now the truck was heading in the other direction, presumably away from the Hansen house. At 10:39 p.m.

I put the phone down and held my head. The footage made two things painfully clear: Troy Hansen had lied to me about what time he’d returned home on the night of Daisy’s disappearance, and he’d lied to me about not going out again that night.

Flap. Flap. Flap.I held my head for three minutes, counting them off against the flip clock’s gentle automated sounds. Why would Troy lie about something so easily proven false?

I opened my eyes. I looked at the clock. Then I looked back at my phone, at the yellow numbers at the bottom of the video screen.

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