AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She pulled her phone from her pocket and answered. “Kierland Prime Condominiums, Cora Mannigan speaking, how may I help you?” She listened intently, and then said, “Oh, lovely! I can arrange a tour, and we have six units currently for sale. They go quickly—oh. Yes.”
I motioned for Cora to move again so I could get a different angle, then pulled a tape measure from my pocket and started measuring.
“One moment, Mr. Washington.” Cora turned to me, a bit flustered. “I need to go to my computer, but it won’t take long. Are you okay for a couple minutes?”
“Yes,” I said. “I should be done in twenty minutes or so. I’ll see you on my way out.”
She nodded, clearly distracted, and left the condo.
Score another one for the PI, I thought.
I kept my camera around my neck and my tape measure in my pocket just in case she came back sooner than I expected.
Jennifer White was a tidy minimalist. The furniture was high-end, but basic. The condo had a large master suite and a small den. Her desktop was empty—no computer, but I didn’t expect to find one. Many people only had laptops these days. I looked through the drawers—tax forms, food flyers, a lot of computer magazines, spec sheets, software documentation. A bookshelf was filled with mysteries, history books, and computer books. No photographs of friends or family—not one.
I was looking for any clue as to where Jennifer might have gone to hide out for a few days, and nothing at her desk jumped out at me.
I walked through the condo, searching for something, anything, fearing that my brilliant idea was a dud. I found her hobby pretty quickly—video games. She had two different gaming systems and dozens of disks. I had played many of them. I wasn’t as into gaming as my younger brother and sister, but I could hold my own, and a few of my Army buds and I played Warzone a couple times a month. It was a good way to have fun and keep in touch.
Jennifer had all the Call of Duty games, which I understood, and a bunch of games I’d never heard of. The games got me thinking about communicating online, and then I had an idea.
I called Logan Monroe as I searched her bedroom. He answered on the first ring. “Are you on Discord?”
“Of course.”
“Is Jennifer?”
“Yes! My teams use it all the time. I’ll reach out and—”
“Not yet. Add me and I’ll reach out. She’ll see we’re connected and might respond.”
“But she doesn’t know you.”
“And she hasn’t returned your calls in two days.” I paused. “We’ll do it together, at your office, thirty minutes.” I was only a few minutes from his office. I gave him my Discord name and ended the call when he agreed to meet me. I hoped he didn’t jump the gun. Jennifer was agitated and scared and I needed to find the best way to convince her to trust me.
I went through Jennifer’s bedroom. Her bed was made. On her nightstand were several books—all nonfiction, including a book on the history of Arizona, and another on Arizona historic places. I picked it up. A bookmark had been inserted at the chapter about Bisbee, a historic mining town near the border with a population of five thousand. That might mean nothing, but I’d seen a shelf of books in her den by J.A. Jance who wrote a series set in Bisbee.
Here, too, there were no pictures of people. I went into the closet.
Gold mine.
On the top shelf above her neatly hung clothes (she even hung up her T-shirts) was a large metal lockbox. I took it off the shelf and brought it to her bed. Less than ten seconds later I had the wimpy lock opened. With one ear listening for Cora Mannigan, I opened the box and looked inside.
Clippings from the disappearance of Virginia Bonetti. Articles about Vincent Bonetti that had been printed from the computer—about the explosion on his yacht, his recovery, his business. Nothing jumped out at me other than Jennifer had been tracking her father since she faked her death.
But there were also articles about the fire that killed Jennifer White, presumably the girl whose identity she had assumed. Plus a file folder with an arson report.
I didn’t have time to read it all, so took pictures of every page with my phone.
Under it all was a faded Polaroid photograph of two girls—one blonde and one brunette, wearing the same soccer uniform with pigtails and ribbons. They were about nine or ten. On the white part under the photo was written in ink:
Jenny and me, BFF.
Little hearts had been drawn on either side of the words.
One other thin folder revealed an autopsy report for Abigail Bonetti, dated twenty years ago. I took a picture to read later. A photo under the single page was of a very young Jennifer—or rather Virginia—and a toddler with a woman who looked so much like Jennifer now that I suspected it was her mother. Nothing was written on the back, but there was residue as if it had been ripped from a photo album.
I was carefully putting everything back when I received a text from Theo.
