Page 48 of Dying to Meet You
There’s a jewelry box on top of her dresser, and I look there next. Under the lid is a mess of beaded friendship bracelets and clunky baubles from her dangly-earring phase.
No medallion, though. Hell.
Feeling frantic, I get down on my knees and begin poking through her desk drawers, looking for a flash of silver.
There’s no abyss as deep as a teenage girl’s bedroom, and panic begins to claw at my throat. Her desk drawers reveal nothing except a vast collection of cute office supplies.
She must be wearing it. She has to be.
I’m making myself ill trying to think up reasons it could have ended up in Tim’s car—without Natalie herself being in Tim’s car.
Unless Tim took it. I can’t think of why he’d do that. But neither can I imagine why he’d take photos off my phone.
Taking a deep breath, I try to recall if Natalie was wearing the medallion the night Tim was killed. I remember our argument outside my bathroom. Pesto pasta. A warm night. She was wearing a cute little white top.
If I try hard enough, I can picture the medallion around her neck. But I’ve seen it there a thousand times before, so I don’t know if it’s an actual memory or just an easily conjured desire.
So where is it? I get up and rifle through the dresser drawers. But I come up empty. Leaving Natalie’s room, I head for my own. Lickie whines when I pass by. She can’t understand why I’m home midday and not showing her some love.
But a terrible thought has occurred to me. Natalie loves to help herself to my jewelry without asking... I’m weak with relief when I find two pearl earrings inside my jewelry box.
“Okay,” I tell the dog. “Okay. There could be two identical medallions in the world, right?”
Lickie wags her tail.
“All right. Let’s go for a walk, then.”
She’s out the bedroom door and down the stairs before I can finish the sentence.
Outside, I scan the street for Natalie. While Lickie sniffs a tree, I take out my phone and debate texting her. I’m not sure what to ask. If Tim searched her room and took the medallion while I was in the shower, that’s one conversation. But if she’d been in Tim’s car herself...
Shivering, I open the FriendFinder app and check her location. But her avatar doesn’t pop up on the map. Beside her name it says:No location found.
I send a text.
Rowan: Call me. I need to speak to you.
I wait a polite thirty seconds or so, but when I call her, it goes right to voicemail.
There was a murder not four blocks from here, and my daughter can’t answer her phone when I call?
I march Lickie around the block and then try her phone again.
No answer.
16
Coralie
“Mr. Wincott’s office, this is Coralie speaking...” She has to stop in the middle of the sentence and swallow the extra saliva in her mouth. Sudden nausea is a new and unwelcome sensation in her life. “How may I help you?”
“I need to speak with him,” the caller snaps without identifying himself.
She takes a steadying breath and a sip of water. The fact that Mr. Wincott’s older brother has to wait is just a side benefit. The man issuchan asshole. He always rings in this way—overbearing and in a big hurry.
“One moment,” she says eventually. “Let me see if he can be interrupted.”
“It’s important.”
