Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

room, he spotted Fia on the floor scooping up papers. She had her cell phone to her ear.

“Because I can’t say for sure I can make it,” she said curtly. “Next week would be better.”

Glen set the tray on the end of the dining room table and went around the other side to help Fia collect her notes on the floor. She shook her head at him, but he ignored her.

“I really can’t talk right now.” On all fours, she glanced at Glen. “See what you can do for next week.”

“Who was that?” he asked when she hung up. They were both still collecting the papers scattered on the floor.

“Um…hair appointment.” She gave a little laugh, not looking up. “Standing appointment. Forgot all about it.”

She wasn’t a very good liar. Why would she lie about the call?

Glen watched her out of the corner of his eye.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “I’m such a klutz.”

He got to his feet, two folders stuffed with notes in his hands. “Fee, what’s going on?”

“Going on?” She frowned. “Nothing’s going on. That’s the problem. I’ve been going over my interviews and not a single person seems to have seen Shannon after she left work. Not until she was walking up the driveway to her house before she was murdered.”

“You think she was with someone?” Glen didn’t want to make accusations and certainly didn’t care who the waitress did or didn’t sleep with, but she’d come on pretty strong with him a couple of times. Surely it had crossed Fia’s mind that she was probably having sex with someone, a pretty girl her age. Maybe more than one guy. Maybe it was someone’s husband or boyfriend. “Someone who doesn’t want to admit to it?”

“It’s possible. But that kind of stuff usually comes out pretty quickly in small towns like this.”

There was no small town like this one, except in a Stephen King novel, Glen wanted to say. But, following Fia’s cue over the last couple of days, he kept his mouth shut.

“I brought you some tea. Brownies. I know how you are with your chocolate. Want me to pour you some?” He set the folders on the edge of the table, resisting the impulse to glance at her handwritten notes. She wasn’t really sharing much of what she’d learned from her interviews with him. But his notes were half the volume, no, a third of hers. He wasn’t getting much more than name, rank, and serial numbers from the men and women he’d been talking to, the people who had been at the pub the night Shannon died.

So what was Fia writing down? And what were the lists of names he’d seen her stuff into one of the file folders?

“Tea? Ah, Glen, that was nice of you.” She picked up her cell phone, glancing at the screen. “But I have to run. I’m meeting Kaleigh and her friends for breakfast at the diner.”

“Breakfast? It’s almost noon.”

She grabbed the folders and stuffed them into the side pocket of her laptop bag. “But breakfast time for teenagers. I imagine the girls are just now dragging themselves out of bed.”

“No school?” He grabbed a brownie. Someone had to eat them.

“In-service day or some such nonsense.” She shut down her laptop.

She seemed eager to go. Way too eager to have fried eggs and hotcakes with a bunch of teenaged girls. He wondered who the phone call had been from. If Fia really was going to meet Kaleigh.

Then he felt guilty. What was making him so suspicious? Fia had done nothing that wasn’t aboveboard. So maybe she was acting a little strangely. He would too, if he were investigating a murder on the block where he grew up.

He chewed on his brownie, not quite sure where to go from here. Fia was so different from Stacy. So much harder to get a fix on. So much more intense. “So you’ll be back later?”

“Yeah. That cook is back in town. The guy from the Hill who went to his cousin’s wedding in Connecticut. I’m going to talk to him after I see Kaleigh. Then…I don’t know. I’ve got a couple of other things I want to do. Want to just meet me at the Hill tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“Like eight?”

That was a lot of time. What things did she have to do? “Sure. See you at the Hill at eight. I’m just going to go over my notes, make some phone calls. Maybe watch some soaps with Mary Kay.”

“Catch you later.”

Fia didn’t smile, but what bothered him more was that he didn’t either.

“That all you’re going to eat?” Fia asked as the waitress walked away.

Kaleigh, dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, looking as if she had just rolled out of bed, sipped her black coffee. She appeared hungover. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them and she looked haggard. Tired. Not her usual pretty self.

Fia wondered if she’d been out drinking with “the guys” last night, but decided this wasn’t the time or the place to lecture Kaleigh on the dangers of vampires overindulging in alcohol.

“So neither Katy nor Maria could make it, huh?” Fia folded her hands on the table. Even though it was lunchtime, there were only a few patrons in the diner; all sept members. The hostess, Mary Ann, who was also the waitress this time of year, who was also the owner of the diner, had seated Fia and Kaleigh in a booth on the far side of the room. From their vantage point, it seemed as if they were the only ones there.

Kaleigh stared into the coffee mug she cupped between her hands. “They had stuff to do.” She lifted a thin shoulder inside her sweatshirt. Let it fall.

Fia studied the teen across the table. “I guess you already know why I wanted to see you. Why I wanted to talk to all of you.”

Kaleigh didn’t respond.

Fia’s phone vibrated. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket, looked at the ID screen and tucked it away. It