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Howard shook his head. “Maybe we should pay another visit to her family. Ask any of them if she mentioned an acting scholarship.”
“He might have used a different lure,” Connor said.
“Quite possible,” Kit agreed. “Howard, please contact the Wattses again and ask them. But be gentle with them. They fell apart when they identified Jaelyn’s body at the morgue. And then Tamsin Kavanaugh swooped in on them like they were prey, just so she could get a story.”
Howard winced. “They didn’t deserve that.”
Kit sighed. “No, they didn’t.” She turned to Connor. “Did you find Daryl Chesney? The metal detector kid?”
“Yes and no.” Connor took out his phone and brought up a photo. “Is this the kid you talked to?”
Kit studied the photo. “That’s him, but he’s a little younger and neater in this picture. His hair was longer when I saw him and his eyes were slyer. This kid in the picture looks happy, but on Sunday he looked more... opportunistic, I think. I figured he’d try selling his story to the paper. I’m surprised Kavanaugh hasn’t interviewed him already. What did he say?”
“I didn’t talk to him. I went to the address you gave me, but Daryl Chesney’s gone missing.”
Kit gaped at him. “You should have led with this,” she snapped.
Connor looked genuinely taken aback. “You were going down your list in order. You like things in order. I figured we’d get to it.”
Kit felt bad. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have bitten your head off. What do you mean, he’s missing? Since when and from where?”
“He didn’t come home Sunday night. His mother’s been worried sick and she filed a missing-person report yesterday evening. She thought she had to wait twenty-four hours.”
“So, Daryl Chesney leads us very conveniently to a body and then he disappears?” She didn’t like the sound of that. “Does he disappear often?”
“Not according to the mother. But she also said he’d gotten mixed up with some kids that hang on the corner. I talked to them, too, and they claim that he’d bragged about earning some cash but wouldn’t tell them from where. He didn’t want to have to share it with them.”
Kit rubbed her temples. “Shit.”
“He’s probably dead,” Howard murmured.
Connor nodded. “I mean, I hope we’re wrong, but I don’t think we are.”
“Let’s check his records to see who contacted him,” Howard said.
“Cheap pay-as-you-go cell,” Connor said. “I asked. His friends were cagey about their phones. Said none of them had nice phones, that they all used cheap ones from Walmart. Nobody could afford a plan. I think they were dealing and using burners. I got surveillance video from the grocery store across the street and it showed a mud-splattered black Mercedes slowing down to talk to the boys Sunday morning. Daryl was with them.”
Kit’s smile was so big that her cheeks hurt. “Bingo. Plates?”
Connor made a face. “Covered in mud. Couldn’t see the numbers.”
Her smile dimmed but didn’t disappear. “But we know that he’s still driving a Mercedes.”
Connor nodded. “And that he’s bold AF. It was a low-risk way to hide his plates. If he got stopped by a cop, he’d just promise to wash his plates and no one would be the wiser.”
“This is coming together,” she said with satisfaction.
“We still need to canvass the Little Italy bars to find out where Skyler Carville was taken from,” Howard said, sliding pieces of paper to her and Connor. “This is the list of bars in the vicinity of where her car was towed from. I split the places into three groups of five bars. We can all take a group and message back if we find one that remembers Skyler.”
“Good work,” Kit told him. “I’ll take the first five—” She was cut off by her cell phone’s ringtone and her heart stuttered before beginning to pound.
Sam Reeves was calling.
“McKittrick,” she answered, not putting it on speaker.
“Detective. I’ve got some information that you need to see.”
He’d said that he was never telling her anything again. She wondered what had changed. “What is it?” she asked, conscious of Howard and Connor watching her.
