Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

framed by short black hair. She had high cheekbones, a strong nose, sculpted lips barely parted, and peach-colored nails recently done.

“Honey, this is the investigator looking for Keisha,” Dr. Markham said, closing the door. “Mr. Rimes, my wife Loni.”

Loni Markham rose to her full height—she was almost as tall as her husband—and smoothed her russet pantsuit before shaking my hand. Bright and engaging even without makeup, her hazel eyes held mine for a heartbeat longer than I would have expected. “I am so pleased to meet you, Mr. Rimes.” Her voice was deep but too smooth to be the by-product of cigarettes. Her smile was even more radiant than her husband’s, though she offered it for barely an instant as if she were embarrassed by perfect teeth. For a moment I wondered whether they kept their dentist on retainer or chained in the basement.

“The pleasure is mine, Mrs. Markham.”

Dr. Markham took the high-backed leather chair behind the desk and gestured to the armchair on his left. Mrs. Markham sat back down. Unzipping my jacket, I took out my pen and notebook before I took a seat.

Dr. Markham pushed aside a few file folders, closed the open laptop computer, and put his palms flat on his desktop. “Now, how may I—we—help you, Mr. Rimes?”

“At the moment I’m just gathering background information on Keisha, something to point me in the right direction. Her parents tell me she’s the church secretary, so that’s where I’d like to start.”

“All right, but she resigned from that post a few months ago. I think it got to be too much with her job and her parents getting older.”

“Maybe she was seeing more of that young man,” Mrs. Markham said.

I considered the edge in her voice before I spoke. “How long was she the secretary?”

“About ten years, I think.” Dr. Markham turned to his wife.

“Closer to eleven,” she said. “I remember Mother Smith died in our ninth year here and we just celebrated your twentieth as pastor.”

The minister nodded. “That’s right. Keisha took Mother Smith’s place.”

Keisha had taken the position while in her early twenties. Relevant? Maybe, maybe not. I jotted a note before continuing. “What were her duties?”

“Mainly to type up and put out the weekly program and monthly newsletter. To keep minutes at major meetings like the quarterly congregation meeting, the monthly church board meeting, the monthly deacon board meeting, and sometimes the building committee.”

“Was she good at fulfilling her duties?”

Dr. Markham shrugged. “Excellent, especially since she was a volunteer. I had no complaint with her work and I can’t think of anybody who did.” Again he looked at his wife.

Peripheral vision told me Mrs. Markham had been studying me across the chair that separated us, her expression a blend of curiosity and tension. Now she narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t understand how her secretarial duties are relevant to her disappearance.”

“Loni, I think Mr. Rimes is just trying to get a feel for Miss Simpkins—a picture.”

“The more pieces I have, the clearer the picture.”

Mrs. Markham leaned forward, frowning. “Obviously, she fell in with the wrong crowd and was led astray.” She paused as if gauging my reaction. “You’re never too old to be led astray. Isn’t that where you should start? Find those people and you’ll find Keisha.”

I almost asked her to identify someone in that crowd, but then I stopped and took a deep breath. “Ma’am, I don’t mean to be difficult, but this is how investigations work. You start with nothing and build scraps into a pile. The bigger the pile, the better the chances of success. So far nobody has been able to point me toward people who might have got Keisha into drugs, which means I have to poke through the pile and hope I uncover a name.”

“Williamson,” she said, her lips pressed into a tight line.

“Odell Williamson is dead.” I let that hang in the air for a moment. “His parents are as convinced Keisha led him off the straight and narrow as her parents—and, I presume, you—are convinced it was all his fault.” I held her gaze as I softened my voice. “Even if it was, we know Keisha didn’t run away with him, so I have to find someplace else to start. Did either of you know Odell?”

“Keisha brought him to Sunday service a few times. Said he was a teacher and might be willing to get involved in our academic summer camp for kids.” The minister sighed and shook his head. “He seemed like such a nice young fella.”

His wife sat back, her lips pursed. “Drug overdoses. Police. Keisha disappearing. This all casts the Mount in a very bad light.”

“I don’t recall any mention of your church in newspaper articles about the overdose,” I said. “So far there’s been no news story on Keisha’s disappearance.”

She swallowed hard. “Publicity or no publicity, we know, Mr. Rimes. We know. Our whole church family.”

“Who are Keisha’s closest friends in the congregation?”

“When she was a teenager it was Bianca. One of my first duties when my husband got this posting was to run the youth group. Bianca was like a sister to Keisha.”

“Bianca Dawkins?”

“Yes. A strong-willed girl, as I recall. She hasn’t been to church in years, not since her mother died and she went off to college. I have no idea where she is or what she’s up to.”

“What about Fatimah Howze?”

“I remember the name, not the face. Sometimes she came to youth group but she went to a Catholic church. Keisha may have mentioned something about a flower shop?”

I scratched something into my notebook. “What about Sonny Tyler? Does that name mean anything to you?”

The Markhams exchanged looks as if each hoped the other might have an answer. Then Dr. Markham said, “We have a Tyler family in the congregation, Malik and Sherry. They’re in their mid-twenties and have twin girls about two. We don’t know a Sonny Tyler.”

“Anybody else? It doesn’t have to be somebody in her age group. Maybe somebody older who was like a