Page 50 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

Jannie shrugged. “I just told them what I knew, which was not much. They wanted to see our texts and I showed them. They seemed frustrated that Iliana hadn’t had her phone with her.”

“I’d be frustrated too,” Bree said, opening a message from Alex. “Huh. Your father is on his way to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with Ned. Something to do with the downed jet.”

“Does he sleep?”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Bree said as the door to a room opened and Tina Dawson came out. Her eyes were puffy and her voice was thick when she thanked the detective.

“All I want to do is sleep,” Tina said. “And I haven’t eaten a thing since, like, breakfast.”

Bree glanced at her watch. It was getting late. “We’ll get the cars and go straight to our house,” Bree said. “Nana Mama’s cooking up a storm, I’m sure.”

“And you can use my brother Damon’s room tonight,” Jannie said. “He’s down at Davidson.”

“Thank you both,” Tina said as they exited the police headquarters. “I don’t know what I would have —”

“Tina!” a man called as they went into the parking lot.

Bree turned to see a tall, lean, balding man in his late thirtiesand a seriously fit brunette of roughly the same age hurrying toward them. They both wore Paxson State windbreakers.

Tina burst into tears and ran at them. “Coach!”

The man slowed. The female coach went to Tina and held her tight as she sobbed. “It was … she was just dead, Marie. Just lying there dead.”

CHAPTER 47

EVENTUALLY TINA AND THEcoach broke their embrace. Tina went to the other coach, hesitated, then hugged him too.

“I’m Bree Stone,” Bree said, shaking the female coach’s hand. “This is my stepdaughter, Jannie Cross.”

The woman did a double take. “Jannie Cross?”

“Yes, Coach,” Jannie said.

“Marie Neely,” she said, pumping her hand. “I’m the women’s cross-country coach at Paxson. This is Rick Leclerc, men’s track coach at Paxson.”

Leclerc’s big hand swallowed Bree’s, but like Coach Neely, he seemed more interested in Jannie than what had happened to one of their top athletes. Bree found this odd enough to study the coaches closely.

Shaking Jannie’s hand, he said, “Coach Neely and I both thinkyour race to tie the high-school four-hundred-meter record was one of the best performances we’ve ever seen.”

“At any age or level,” Neely said, nodding. “You have some future ahead of you, young lady. Howard is lucky to have you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Bree said, “Don’t you want to know what happened to Iliana Meadows?”

Both coaches paled. “Of course,” Coach Leclerc said, holding up his beefy hands. “Please.”

Before Bree could reply, Coach Neely said, “I’m sorry. I’m confused. How are you and Jannie involved in this?”

Tina said, “They were both there with me, Coach. In the woods. We went there together to look for her. Iliana.”

“Okay?” Leclerc said.

Without giving away certain details, Bree explained that earlier in the day, Iliana had arranged to meet her and Jannie in DC. When she didn’t show, they’d come out to the Airbnb apartment Iliana had rented for the George Mason race and found it empty, her running gear gone.

Tina explained about the text she’d gotten from Iliana, describing a route for a light workout. She said, “We went in there because they had waited more than an hour for Iliana in DC, and she’s not like that, Coach.”

“No, she isn’t,” Coach Neely said.

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