“Yes. Each of the stores has so many parking spots allotted for their employees, but occasionally a customer will park back there. It’s not a private lot, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Mia thanked her again for her help, and left the store. Danielle was huddled with a coworker near a display of beach bags, discussing, no doubt, her interrogation by the FBI.

Mia got into her car and drove to the back of the shopping center. Behind the stores, parking was a narrow strip, two rows deep, with an entrance and exit a mere one-car width. Each store had a solid metal door opening out to the parking lot, but none had a window. Unless someone else was leaving their store at the same time Colleen had left, no one would have seen if she’d met up with someone when she left work that day. According to the statements taken by the Ballard police, no one saw anything.

She thought it might be worth a shot, so she drove back around to the front of the center and went store to store, but learned nothing new. No one had seen Colleen leave that day.

On her way into St. Dennis, she called information and got a number for Jessica Flynn’s parents’ home. Jessica was at home, and agreed to meet with Mia immediately.

“Anything that can help,” she told Mia.

Following the directions Jessica gave her, Mia arrived at the Flynn home in less than fifteen minutes. Jessica was waiting for her on the small front patio. When Mia pulled into the driveway of the split-level home, Jessica walked to meet her. She was tall and pretty, a confident looking young woman with a mane of light brown hair and a tan she must have been working on for several weeks.

“Hello, Jessica,” Mia said after she’d gotten out of the car. “I’m Agent Shields. Thanks for agreeing to see me right away.”

“I don’t really know what I could tell you that might help, but you can ask me anything.”

“I just have a very few questions, Jessica.”

“Call me Jessie, please.” The girl pointed toward the house. “We can sit up there, if you want.”

“That would be fine, thank you.” Mia followed her to the patio and sat on one of the cushioned chairs. “Jessie, I heard you had lunch with Colleen shortly before she disappeared.”

Jessie nodded. “I drove over to the store on Monday, the day before…before.” She swallowed hard. “I had to give her money for the place we were renting on this trip we were taking. We were leaving on Friday for Ocean City for the weekend, and Colleen was going to see the guy who owned the property to pay him.”

“Was she meeting him that day?” Mia bit her bottom lip. This wasn’t reflected in the police file she’d read.

“No, I thought she was going to see him Wednesday.”

“Do you have a name? Do you know where she was supposed to meet him?”

Jessie shook her head, “No. It was someone Colleen knew who had a place to rent. She was handling everything. I just gave her my share of the rent at lunch. She was going to meet the owner and give him the money and get the key to the place.”

“Do you know the address of the place you were renting?”

“It was someplace on the beach.” Jessie toyed with a strand of hair. “She said it was right on the beach, and the owner was giving us a real good deal on the rent.”

“Condo? Single home?”

“Condo,” Jessie said. “It’s in one of those high-rises right on the beach, that’s all I know.”

“And she never mentioned the name of the person she was dealing with?”

“No.”

“Do you know how she found out about the place?”

Jessie hesitated and made a face, as if trying to recall. “I think she said he told her about it.”

“So it was someone she knew?”

“Maybe. Or maybe someone she called. I know for a while there, she was checking some places online.”

“Any particular website?”

Again, Jessie shook her head. “No. She called and told me she’d found a great place that was still available for the following weekend and did I want in, and I said sure.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

“A few days before I met her for lunch. The end of the week before, I think.”

“So you met her and gave her your share of the rent.” Mia looked up from the notes she’d been taking. “Was she planning on paying the owner in cash, did she say?”

“She said she’d put it in her account and write a check to the owner.”

“Do you know if she did that? If she wrote the check?”

“I have no idea. I never saw her again.” Jessie’s bottom lip trembled. “Do you think it’s him, the condo guy? Do you think he killed her?”

“I think we need to speak with him,” Mia said, “just as we need to speak with anyone who might have seen Colleen or had dealings with her that day.”

“I wish now that I’d asked more questions,” Jessie told her. “I wish I’d made her tell me who he was.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I asked her, she just said it was someone she’d met, and he was giving us a special deal, so he didn’t want his name passed around, because he usually charged more and he didn’t want anyone to know he’d given it to us for so much less. Do you think that was why it was such a deal?” She started to cry. “Because he wanted to kill her?”

Beck had just walked into the kitchen at the station when he looked out the window and saw Mia pull into the lot. She parked in the same spot she’d parked in the day before. He watched as she got out of the car and slammed the door, locked it with the remote, and dropped the keys into her bag. It was hard for him to look away, same as it had been the day before. Mia was one of those women that you couldn’t help but notice.

And Beck had noticed pretty much everything.

He’d noticed the thin gold band she wore on the middle finger of her right hand, her gold hoop earrings, and the small diamond set in a gold circle that she wore around her neck. Hair so dark it was almost black, worn straight down around her shoulders, neat but not fussy. Eyes as green as emeralds. She dressed conservatively in tailored linen, but then there were those mile-high heels. She was slender and not too tall, and feminine in the same way his sister Vanessa was feminine. Girly, he thought, but knew she wasn’t as much of a cream puff as she appeared. A cream puff wasn’t likely to make it through the rigorous FBI training.

And there’d been that odd comment about the one brother who was dead…

Overall-that odd comment aside-the package was pretty nice.

Still, he had a bone to pick with her.

He realized his mind was wandering. He snapped back to the task at hand-getting a cold drink for the FBI profiler who sat in his office. He grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and a paper cup and went back into his office.

Mia arrived seconds after he’d handed the water and cup to the profiler.

“Hi, Beck,” Mia said as she entered the room with a perfunctory knock on the door. “Hi, Annie. You made it.”

“Your directions were great, thanks.” Anne Marie McCall smiled as Mia dragged a chair closer and hung her bag on the back.

“I had a very interesting morning,” Mia told them.

“So I heard.” He replied dryly from behind his desk.

“From…?”

“From Chief Daley over in Ballard. He got a call from the parents of Jessica Flynn asking about the FBI agent who’d interrogated their daughter less than an hour ago.”

“Yes, that was me. So?”

“So he wasn’t happy, thought I’d done an end run around him by sending you over there.”

“I’m trying to find a common link between the victims, so I followed up on some witnesses his department interviewed. And, by the way, picked up a bit of information his people missed. So what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is he’s pissed that he wasn’t informed first.” Beck sat in his chair and returned her stare. “Look, most of the communities around here are covered by the state police, but there are a few that have retained their own departments. St. Dennis is one, Ballard is another, Cameron…there are a few more. The point is, we try to stick together, work together-”