Page 35 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

Bree grabbed a wad of tissues from a box on the counter, went to her boss’s side, and rubbed her back while she cleaned her lips.

“Can I go to a restroom, please?” Martin choked out.

“Of course, of course,” Ryder said. “Right across the hall. I am so sorry. And don’t worry about the mess. We have someone who takes care of these things.”

Bree took her boss to the door of the bathroom. “Need help?”

“No,” Martin said. “I can handle it.”

She went inside and shut the door. Bree closed her eyes and tried — and failed — to will the image of the dead woman out of her mind. She had seen her share of death, of course, but she’d never seen anyone that broken.

Several minutes later, Bree heard the toilet flush, and her boss reemerged, looking somewhat put together and, oddly, smiling.

“Why are you smiling?” Bree asked as they walked back to the clerk’s desk.

“I can’t identify her,” Martin said. “No one could identify someone like that.”

“They’ll fingerprint her or get DNA samples from her house,” Bree said. She looked at Ryder. “Where are her clothes? Effects?”

The ME’s clerk typed, then said, “We bagged them yesterday evening. The FBI took them late last night along with the effects of ten others who came in whole.”

Bree said, “Any pictures of what she was wearing?”

Ryder frowned. “I’m sure there are but it doesn’t look like they’ve been uploaded to her file yet. I can try to track down who took those —”

“How about a list of what they took from her?” Bree asked.

The clerk brightened. “That I can do. Here it is: ‘White blouse, bra, panties, denim jeans, hotel key card, large diamond engagement ring.’”

“That’s it?” Bree asked.

“All she wrote.”

Elena clapped her hands, threw back her head, and laughed. “It’s not her.”

“How do you know that?”

“Leigh Anne, Maggie — whatever you want to call her — hated jeans because they made her butt look big. Rolf never gave her an engagement ring, and my bestie was most definitely not engaged.”

CHAPTER 33

ALTHOUGH BREE THOUGHT ITwas possible that Elena Martin was right, that the woman who’d been in seat 2A on the downed jet was not Leigh Anne Asher, she wasn’t completely convinced.

Martin had work to do at the office, and Bree wanted to learn the unknown woman’s identity so she could put the Maggie Fontaine inquiry behind her and start looking for Leigh Anne Asher somewhere else. The two women parted ways, and Bree went to a coffee shop and made a list of questions on a notepad:

-Does TSA have a digital image of Maggie Fontaine’s ID?

-Where is the FBI keeping other logged evidence from the wreckage?

-Was Fontaine’s ID among the luggage retrieved from forward fuselage?

-Are there images of her body in situ?

Bree was a civilian now; she no longer had the authority to get information about the investigation. But she knew Ned Mahoney and Alex could answer her questions.

She checked her watch. Alex was probably still working on the Dead Hours investigation, and she did not want to interfere. She’d wait until he was back on the FBI side of things and ask him discreetly to see what he could find out.

Bree got back in her car and was heading across the Fourteenth Street Bridge into DC when her cell phone rang. Jannie’s name came up on the dashboard caller ID.

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