Page 15 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“What about math?”

“I finished.”

“How long will you be gone?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of hours. I wanted to stop at Lonnie’s house at some point to go over the English homework.”

“Have your phone with you,” she said.

“Promise,” Ali said. He got his jacket and cap from the front hall and went out the back door, then he got his bike from the shed and rode down the alley. He stopped out of sight of his house and locked the bike to a chain-link fence.

As he walked away, Ali called up the Uber app on his phone and entered the address in Marlow Heights. It wasn’t that far. He’d be there in twenty minutes, tops.

I’ll slip in, take a look around. Get a feel for the crime scene. Slip back out.

CHAPTER 15

ACROSS THE POTOMAC INAlexandria, Bree Stone made Elena Martin and Jill Jackson put on blue paper booties, head coverings, and latex gloves before they entered the apartment Leigh Anne Asher was staying in while her Rosslyn apartment was renovated.

“I don’t know why we’re wasting time here,” her boss complained as she put on the blue head covering. “I told you, I’ve already been through the place.”

“I have too,” Asher’s personal assistant said.

“But I haven’t,” Bree said. “So humor me, and if anything is going to be disturbed, let me be the one disturbing it. If this is a crime scene, we don’t want to contaminate it any more than it already is.”

She stood aside as Elena used her electronic key to open the missing entrepreneur’s flat. It had none of the raw grandeur ofthe apartment under renovation in Rosslyn. In fact, the place struck Bree as surprisingly ordinary despite the building’s tony address. The furniture looked rented. There were very few personal objects to make it homey.

“I get the idea Leigh Anne wasn’t here a lot,” Bree said.

“She lived at the office and on the road,” Jackson said.

“Start calling every hospital in the area,” Bree said. “See if she or someone fitting her description has been admitted since Friday.”

Then she started methodically going through the apartment, beginning with Asher’s bedroom. In one closet, Bree found a business suit and a dress. The rest of the clothes were jeans and white button-down shirts. Even her shoe collection was limited. The other closet held a stack of moving boxes and several large pieces of high-end luggage.

“Something missing?” Bree asked Jackson. “Her overnight bag?”

Asher’s assistant’s right hand traveled to her mouth. “I didn’t see that. You’re right. That is where she usually keeps it.”

“Okay, then,” Bree said. “Something that supports the new-boyfriend angle. Or at least the idea that Leigh Anne left here with an overnight bag, heading somewhere specific.”

“Rather than what?” Elena asked.

“I don’t know. Rather than being abducted?”

“Oh, dear God,” Jackson said. “Thanks for that.”

“But it still doesn’t explain the radio silence,” Elena said.

Bree nodded and crossed the hall to Asher’s home office. While the entrepreneur had skimped in the rest of her apartment, she’d spent freely on powerful Apple computers, cameras, speakers, and the kind of overhead microphone you’d see in a radio studio.

“Does Leigh Anne use an iPhone?” Bree asked.

Asher’s assistant nodded. “Yes, she’s got the latest one.”

“You have the passwords to her computers?”

Jackson looked over at Elena, who hesitated and then shrugged. The PA sat in Asher’s desk chair and typed something on the keyboard.

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