Page 47 of Guess Again
“It’s your office,” Maddie said.
Blake pulled the long, thin cigarette from the pack and held it up.
“Saratoga 120s. Terrible habit I started in high school and haven’t been able to break. They don’t even make these anymore,” he said as he lit the cigarette and took a deep drag. “I have to order them off the Internet, and they cost a fortune.”
“You’re not a Marlboro man?” Maddie asked.
Blake lifted the hand that held the cigarette. “These are the only ones that taste decent to me. Probably just be easier to quit, but that ship has sailed. What can I help you with?”
“You know someone named Nicholas Brann?” Maddie asked.
Blake exhaled a stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth. “No. Who is he?”
“A gentleman who lives down in Milwaukee. He reported his fiancée missing a couple weeks ago. You know who his fiancée is?” Maddie asked.
Blake’s eyebrows raised. “How would I know that if I don’t know who the guy is?”
“Portia Vail,” Ethan said, studying the man carefully when he revealed the name.
Blake Cordis paused as he was about to take another drag.
“Yeah, I know Portia.”
“We know you do,” Maddie said. “You met her back in April.”
“Yeah,” Blake said with a shrug. “We were dating.” He took another pull from the cigarette. “But I didn’t know she was engaged.”
“She wasn’t,” Maddie said. “She and Nicholas were on a break. Until recently, when they decided to give it another go. You know anything about that?”
Blake squinted his eyes. “Asked and answered, detective. I didn’t know she had a fiancé, which means I didn’t know she’d gotten back together with him.”
“When was the last time you saw Portia?”
“I, uh . . . it was, I guess a month ago. Beginning of summer, anyway. She broke things off and told me she needed some time.”
“Time for what?” Maddie asked.
Blake shrugged. “It was just her way of telling me that she wasn’t into me anymore. We were pretty casual.”
“From what we know, you two were anything but casual.”
“Look, for the first few weeks after we met, everything was great. Pretty normal stuff at the beginning, right after you meet someone and start hooking up. But then things cooled off and we were trying to figure out if we wanted a real relationship.”
“As opposed to what?”
“Just hooking up. But when I told her I wanted a little more than that, she sort of put on the brakes.”
“Did that upset you?”
Blake looked briefly at Ethan before returning his gaze to Maddie.
“Yeah. I was disappointed because I was into her.”
Ethan chimed in. “But then she told you she was getting back together with her fiancé.”
Blake calmly shook his head. “I can keep saying it as many times as you need to hear it. Portia never told me she had been engaged. And she never gave me a reason for wanting to break things off. She just stopped returning my calls. After a week or two, I got the point.”
Ethan looked at Maddie. This made sense from what they’d seen in Portia’s phone records.
