KITTY LOOKED AROUND OLIVIA’S LIVING ROOM, THE LATEST DGM meeting place, and prayed that her teammates had been more successful in their investigations than she had been.
“Are we all ready?” she asked.
Ed the Head grinned at her. “Ready and able.”
Olivia nodded, her face grim.
John leaned forward and spoke into Kitty’s phone, which lay faceup on the coffee table. “Can you hear us, Bree?”
Bree’s voice crackled through the speakerphone. “Loud and clear.”
“Awesome idea to leave your phone with her,” Kitty said, smiling approvingly at John. As uncomfortable as she’d initially been to have him in on their little secret, she had changed her tune. They were going to need all the help they could get.
“Oh my God!” Bree’s heavy exhale rustled the speaker. “It’s so good to hear you guys.”
“I know how much you’ve missed me,” Ed said with a smirk.
Bree snorted. “Yeah, and I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.”
Kitty shook her head. “Chitchat later, kids. Olivia’s mom will be back from rehearsal in a few hours. We’ve got limited time.”
“When do we not?” Ed asked.
“Kitty,” Bree said, her voice full of concern. “I’m so sorry about your uncle’s warehouse. Will the insurance cover everything?”
The image of the fire came rushing back to her, the words “I’m back” glowing in the darkened alley as the warehouse burned to the ground. “The fire was ruled arson,” Kitty said. “If they prove my uncle set it, the insurance is void and he’ll probably go to jail.”
“Damn,” John said.
“We’ll find out who did this,” Bree said. From the harshness in her voice Kitty could picture the fierce look on Bree’s face. “And prove that your uncle is innocent.”
“Thanks.” It was sweet of Bree to say, but the last thing Kitty wanted to do right now was linger on her personal stakes. It wasn’t going to help them. “The medical examiner was pretty clear: Rex was murdered.”
Ed fidgeted in his seat. “And a DGM card was left on the body.”
Kitty stood up and walked behind the sofa. She needed to think, which meant she needed to move. “Rex Cavanaugh, Coach Creed, Ronny DeStefano. What do they have in common?”
Ed the Head snorted. “Other than being Grade A douche bags?”
“And connected to Christopher Beeman,” Bree said.
“I think the Beeman connection is overhyped,” Ed said. “We’ve found nothing tangible connected to him.”
“They’re also all former DGM victims,” John suggested.
DGM victims. “Speaking of,” Kitty said with a heavy sigh, “I overheard Sergeant Callahan say that Xavier Hathaway has been listed as a missing person.”
Ed folded his arms across his chest. “Good riddance.”
Kitty ignored him. “And according to Logan, the Gertler twins have also disappeared.”
“What?” Olivia cried.
Kitty nodded. “Logan told me and I confirmed it today. They disappeared from the surf shop last night. No trace of them.”
Olivia slumped in her chair. “Oh my God.”
“Logan thinks you might be involved,” Kitty continued, looking pointedly at Olivia. “But I told him it was just a coincidence.”
“I’ve got even worse news,” Bree said. She sounded alarmed. “Wendy Marshall is missing too.”
“What?” Olivia repeated.
“Yeah, I heard it on the radio.”
“Xavier Hathaway, Wendy Marshall, and the Gertler twins.” Kitty felt her breaths coming faster. She’d known it couldn’t be a coincidence when she heard about Xavier, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it. “Four missing persons, all connected to DGM.”
“And all people we personally investigated this week.” Ed the Head whistled. “That’s no coincidence.”
Kitty’s mind raced. She pulled a piece of paper from her duffel bag, the list she’d made with Ed and Olivia in the computer lab just days ago, and began to read off the names.
“Number one—Wendy Marshall,” she said. “Missing. Two—Christina Huang, East Coast. Xavier Hathaway, missing. The Gertlers, missing. Melissa Barndorfer, in Europe. Tammi Barnes . . .” Kitty looked up at her phone. “Bree, you saw her this morning, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And again tomorrow.”
“We’ll list her as not missing for now.” Kitty returned to her list. “Then we’ve got Ronny, Coach Creed, and now Rex Cavanaugh.”
“All DOA,” Ed added, stating the obvious.
“If our killer is a former DGM target,” Kitty said, looking at the phone on the table, “then Tammi is the only possible suspect.”
“It’s not Tammi,” Bree said quickly.
Ed snorted. “How do you know?”
Kitty bit her lip, waiting on Bree’s silence. She could almost see her flecking off bits of her nail polish on the other end of the line.
“I just don’t think it’s her,” she said at last.
“I’m so glad you’ve found this deep love for Tammi Barnes,” Ed said, sarcasm dripping from every word. “But may I remind you what she did to earn the scorn of DGM? I saw those blow job scorecards. Nasty stuff.”
Olivia scowled at him. “Yeah, and weren’t you taking side bets on which freshmen would score the highest?”
“I’m a businessman.” Ed snapped his fingers. “Oh, and how did Tammi attack her stepdad? With a baseball bat?”
“The same way Ronny was killed,” Olivia said slowly.
“She didn’t do it!” Bree repeated.
Ed shrugged. “You willing to bet your life on that?”
“Okay,” Kitty said. This bickering wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “If Tammi’s not involved, then she could be the next one to disappear.”
“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Bree said quickly, sounding somewhat placated.
“And don’t forget Amber,” Olivia added. “She’s a DGM target too.”
“Tammi Barnes and Amber Stevens,” Ed mused. “Victims or killers? News at eleven.”
“Hm.” John was staring at the ceiling.
“What?” Kitty asked.
He stretched a long arm behind his head and grabbed the back of his chair. “I was just thinking. There’s got to be some way we can use this to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, bouncing his head against the crook of his arm. “You’ve never known exactly where and when the killer was going to strike next, right? This might be our chance to set a trap.”
“You mean use one of them as bait.” Ed slid to the edge of his seat. “I like this plan already.”
Kitty saw both the positives and the negatives of this approach. On the one hand, they might be able to lure him out into the open. On the other, they’d be putting someone’s life in danger. “I like the idea of going on the offensive.”
“Yeah,” Bree chortled. “Cuz that worked out so well the last time.”
“Wasn’t it your idea last time?”
“Semantics.”
“I don’t think I can convince Amber to help us,” Olivia said. “Unless John asks her.”
“Oh, hell no,” Bree said.
“You got a better idea?” Ed asked.
Bree paused. “Tammi. I think I can get Tammi to do it.”
“I wish Margot was here,” Olivia whined. “She’d know what to do.”
“What would Margot do,” John mused. “I like it. We need wristbands or something.”
What would Margot do? It was a more helpful question than perhaps John realized. Margot always took the direct, logical route. Nothing crazy, nothing with a low probability of success. She weighed the pros and cons, evaluated the weak points, calculated the various pieces of each and every plan. Why couldn’t they do the same?
“Okay.” Kitty sat down, her body tense. “Bree, see what you can do with Tammi, but if it doesn’t work, we move to plan B.”
“Plan B?” Bree asked. “What the hell is that?”
“That,” she said slowly, “is where we put on a show.”
