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  Now she was facing a dilemma. She had done all of the paperwork necessary to get a concealed-carry permit in California. She’d had to go to classes with theory and practical lessons and had taken an exam. She’d had to do extra because she was a PI, first getting an open-carry license, which made her laugh thinking that she would carry a pistol on her hip like a cowboy, and then jumping through more hoops to get a concealed-carry. She had gotten the permit. She was allowed to carry a gun in her purse. However, she had never actually done it.

  On the first day of gun class, the instructor had said, “If you can’t conceive of taking someone’s life, then don’t carry a gun.” Madison had thought long and hard about that. If she was confronted with a situation where she felt it warranted pulling her gun, she would have to answer certain questions: Did the person actually intend to seriously harm her? Was she willing to actually kill someone, take them away from their parents and children and friends, and was this the moment? Despite having good aim, she had to consider what would happen if the shot went through the person she intended to kill and hit a child or other innocent victim standing behind the target, killing them as well. She would have killed two people, one of whom certainly didn’t deserve to die. She could never live with herself. And she couldn’t have this conversation with herself while she pulled a gun out—this all had to be figured out ahead of time. Once you pulled the gun, you’d better be ready to shoot.

  Madison had decided that she would rather get herself out of dangerous situations than stay and shoot it out. She would rather run than take the chance that she would kill an innocent person. So she went to target practice once a month, kept her skills up, and kept the gun in a safe by her bed.

  But things were different now. She had people threatening to kill her, and they likely meant it. This wasn’t carrying a gun on the off chance something might happen; this would be carrying a gun in case the person threatening her made good on their threat. She lifted the carpet, put her code in, opened the safe, and took out the gun and a box of bullets. She put the gun in her purse and the bullets in her surveillance bag. The gun was already loaded. The good news was that since it was a revolver, the trigger had to be pulled quite hard to get it to fire, unlike the antique gun she’d found at a gun show—that one would be staying at home.

  With everything set, she carried her purse and the surveillance bag out to the landing. She locked the door and walked down the stairs. Ryan came out of his house at that exact moment.

  He raised his head and saw her at the top of the landing. “Hey, what’s up?”

  He really was a nice guy, Madison thought. She was just so consumed with everything going on right now that she didn’t have time to pay attention to him. But it was things like this that caused her to be in her midthirties and alone. She always let her work and what was going on in her life interfere with relationships. Or else she was picking the wrong guy. One or the other, and likely both.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “I was going to text you.” Ryan was bouncing from foot to foot. “But you seem like you’ve been really busy.”

  “I have been.” Madison got to the bottom of the stairs and paused before turning to walk to her car. “I’m actually heading out to work for the rest of the night right now.”

  “Wow.” Ryan took a few steps on the path toward her and stopped. “On a Friday? What kind of work do you have to do on a Friday night?”

  Madison kept her life compartmentalized, almost to a fault. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust people, it was just that … okay, she didn’t really trust people. “A private investigator’s job is never done.” She took a few steps toward her car, hoping he’d take the hint, but he started to follow her. So she kept talking. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going.” She decided to just continue walking the rest of the way to her car.

  “You will probably be tired tomorrow after working all night. Maybe Sunday night, do you want to get something to eat?”

  Madison’s inclination was to immediately say no. And that is why I’m alone, Madison thought. She stopped and turned to him. “Sure. Just text me the details.”

  Ryan blushed. “Sounds good,” he said. He turned and went back into his house as Madison walked away. She realized he’d had no reason for coming out of his house other than to talk to her. So did that mean he’d been watching her door?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Madison knew which table she was aiming for the second she walked into PB Cantina. The ultimate surf-shack Mexican restaurant, it had sand-covered cement floors, rattan wall decorations, and colorful surfboards hanging from the ceilings that let you know exactly what you were in for: tacos, strong margaritas, and a good time. The girls Madison had come to see were definitely having a good time; they were screaming with laughter as Madison walked in. Three dark-haired girls wearing cut off shorts and tube tops or tanks, their lightheartedness was a welcome palate cleanser to Madison’s recent activities. Maybe she could have one margarita as long as she ate something with it.

  She walked up to the group and said into the center of the table, “Amanda?”

  The tallest girl smiled at her. “Madison! Grab a stool.” She turned toward the bar, where a group of waiters were standing. “Camarero! Get this girl a glass!” She looked back at Madison. “We’re drinking to Elissa! You have to join us.” She picked up an empty pitcher and looked into it, sticking her nose a little farther than needed in order to see inside. “What the …? Camarero! Mas margaritas!”

  “It’s okay.” Madison sat down at a stool one of the girls pulled up. “I really shouldn’t drink. I still have work to do tonight.”

  “Well, I should!” one of the other girls said. “I’m Ana. And this is Andrea. We’re the three As!” They all thought this was hilarious.

  Andrea had golden skin that had deepened with a summer tan and light eyes. She was striking. “Your eyes are beautiful,” Madison said. “They’re an unusual green … or are they blue?”

  “Who knows,” she said. “It depends on the lighting. Andrea Cohen; pleased to meet you. I know I don’t look Hispanic, but I swear I am!”

  “Oh, I wasn’t —”

  “And she’s Jewish! Have you ever heard of that? A Hispanic Jew!” Ana said.

  “Yeah, I’m a Hispanijew!” This caused all of the girls to gasp for breath again.

  “Are your ancestors from Andalusia?” Madison asked, naming the region in Spain that at the height of its power in the Middle Ages had included the entire Iberian Peninsula.

  “They totally are!” Andrea said. “I’m named after Andalusia!”

  Madison loved studying different cultures, and if she hadn’t become a private investigator, she thought she might have been a historian of some kind. Both professions required an investigative mind-set, so they appealed to Madison for the same reasons. But she had the current matter at hand to address; she could stalk Andrea later.

  “Okay,” Madison said. “Before you guys get even more drunk than you are now—”

  This raised a chorus of “Woohoo!” and “Yeah, we are!”

  “Let me ask you the questions I came here to ask you, okay?”

  “Sounds good,” Amanda said.

  “Let me first ask you this: do you guys know what happened to Elissa? Do you have a theory or an idea?”

  The mood at the table quickly became somber. The girls all looked at each other. Andrea spoke first.

  “We think her boyfriend had something to do with it.”

  “I don’t,” Ana said. “I think it was a random stranger.”

  “That’s because you’re in love with Frank Bronson and you always have been,” Andrea said.

  Wow, Madison thought. This took a turn.

  While it certainly couldn’t be said that family members and friends always knew what had happened to a missing or murdered person, Madison felt like the people closest to a victim were best able to give an opinion on the matter. After all, an investigator or detective was coming in at the end
of a person’s life; the friends and family had been there the whole time and could see the entire picture. As such, the fact that Elissa’s mother and her friends all thought it was the boyfriend was important to Madison. However, there was now a dissenting opinion, with Ana thinking it was a stranger—even if she might be prejudiced.

  “It is too important to worry about what people think about you,” Madison said. “If you like or liked Frank, you can just say that, Ana. No judgment.”

  “We used to go out before he went out with Elissa.” Ana seemed defiant as she glanced around the group. “But that’s not why I think it was a stranger.”

  “Yes, it is!”

  “You know it is!”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Well, Andrea, you didn’t have her back when she needed it! She asked you to give her a ride home that night, and you said no!” Ana said.

  This caused a combined gasp around the table. Madison thought they might have just sucked all the air out of the room.

  “Okay, okay,” Madison said. “Please don’t fight over this. You guys need each other now. So first, Andrea: Did Elissa ask you for a ride home? Why would she do that if her car was there?”

  Andrea had started to cry, the kind of crying only a young drunk girl could do: big fat tears washing black streaks of mascara and eyeliner down her face, overly pink lips swollen and smearing lipstick onto her chin as she blubbered.

  “She … she …”

  “Okay, deep breath. Don’t relive it. Just sit here right now and tell me about it,” Madison said.

  “She’d had a fight with Frank on the phone,” Andrea said. “She wanted to go home.”

  Madison was silent. She wasn’t about to interrupt her. She could always come back and ask questions later.

  “So! Mas margaritas it is!” the waiter said as he dropped off a new pitcher.

  There was silence at the table. The waiter, sensing that the mood had changed, gracefully switched gears. “Aaaaaand I’ll leave you to it,” he said as he backed away.

  Madison returned to Andrea. “Go on,” she said.

  “Elissa wanted to go home. I was having fun, and I didn’t want to leave yet. We’d come together in her car. I didn’t have a way to get home if she left, so I asked her to stay longer. She asked me to go with her. She didn’t ask me for a ride, Ana, she asked me to leave for home with her.”

  “Same thing.” Ana tossed her head back to get the last of the drink out of her glass.

  “Anyway,” Andrea said. “I told her to just go home and I would get a ride with one of the girls later. She was already upset with Frank, and now she was upset with me. She left looking like she was going to cry. It was the last thing she asked of me as a friend, and I let her down.”

  Andrea was done talking. She took a sip of her drink and dabbed at the black streaks on her face with a napkin. That is some industrial-grade makeup, Madison thought. It would take more than a few swipes with a napkin to get it to come off. Madison glanced at the other girls and then back at Andrea. “Did she say what the fight with Frank was about?”

  Andrea was dipping a napkin in her margarita and wiping her face with it. “He didn’t like her going out in short skirts when he wasn’t with her. I mean, it was ridiculous; what girl doesn’t wear short skirts when she goes out these days?”

  Well, I don’t, Madison thought. But that was a subject for another day.

  “And the argument excalated,” Andrea said. Madison resisted the urge to correct her. “He started saying she was a slut and a whore and wanted to screw other guys, you know, just controlling-guy stuff. But it ruined her night. I just didn’t want it to ruin mine.”

  “You see?” Ana said. “She could’ve prevented this whole thing.”

  Madison snapped at Ana. “Or she could’ve ended up missing too. You don’t know what would’ve happened if Andrea had walked out of the club and into whatever danger Elissa met.”

  The girls went quiet. Ana’s mouth hung open. Amanda finally broke the silence. “Wow. I never thought of that before. I always just thought, if only Andrea had walked out with her, this wouldn’t have happened. But you’re right: we could’ve lost Andrea too.”

  This started a round of weeping. “I’m sorry I ever said it was your fault!” Ana said, and hugged Andrea.

  “Me too!” Amanda said. She piled into the hug. Their enthusiasm caused Andrea’s stool to start to tip backward.

  “Oh! Oh!” they all exclaimed as the stool continued to go over. There was nothing Madison could do to stop it as gravity took over. Ana and Amanda held on to Andrea on the stool and all three went down, with Ana and Amanda breaking Andrea’s fall. They ended up a pile of drunken friends, hiccupping and in hysterics on the floor.

  “You guys are too much,” Madison said. She stood up and helped each one up from the ground. It took several tries with Ana, who was laughing really hard and couldn’t get her footing. The other patrons were looking over, but no one seemed to mind. A bunch of girls at the beach on a summer Friday afternoon. Nothing to look at here, people.

  Once everyone was on their stools again, Amanda poured refills from the new pitcher. Madison still waved away a drink; that showing had reminded her why she had to stay sober for surveillance and tailing later.

  Madison’s phone started buzzing on the table. She glanced at it and saw it was Tom’s friend Ken calling. What does he want? She put it to voicemail.

  “So, did you guys see anyone at the bar that night that seemed especially interested in Elissa?” Madison asked.

  “I mean, there was this one guy.” Andrea took a swig of her new drink. “I think he was a waiter or a busboy. He kept coming up with excuses to walk over by Elissa, and we were teasing her about it.”

  “Yeah,” Ana said. “We were like, ‘Oh, someone has a crush on you!’”

  “But she was still mad at Frank. And she honestly only had eyes for him,” Amanda said.

  “Did the waiter/busboy seem fixated on her, or just like he had a crush on her? Like, was it creepy?” Madison asked.

  “I think it was just like a crush. I didn’t get the creeps from it,” Amanda said.

  Madison thought. What could she ask that the police hadn’t asked? Or that they had asked but she might get a different answer to?

  “Did she know Samantha Erickson, by any chance?” Madison asked.

  “Other than school, no,” Amanda said.

  What?

  “Other than school?” Madison said. “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you know?” Amanda said. “They both went to City College.”

  San Diego City College was in downtown San Diego, right next to the Gaslamp and right next to Golden Hill, where Frank lived. It was one of the main community colleges in San Diego County, and both girls were of college age. It wasn’t a smoking gun, but it was quite a coincidence. Madison realized that although she knew Samantha’s parents were dead and even though she’d spoken to her sister Felicity, she didn’t know where Samantha had lived. She would need to look that up tonight while on surveillance.

  “Were they in any classes together?” Madison asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Ana said. “When Samantha went missing, we were talking about her disappearance. I think Elissa would’ve said something if she’d actually known her. Then when Elissa went missing, the police asked us about the connection of them going to the same school.”

  Well, that was something the police knew that Madison didn’t have to reveal to them at least. She would definitely need to put that coincidence, if that’s what it was, on her whiteboard.

  A family walked into the restaurant. Comfortable sandals, long walking shorts, hats that had good coverage, bags with souvenirs: tourists. They got a table near the big windows.

  “When she left the bar, did anyone see her walk out? Can you say if she walked towards her car or away from it?”

  The girls all shook their heads no. “We didn’t even see her walk out,” Ana said. “I
think she was mad, so didn’t want to say goodbye.”

  Madison looked at Andrea and was afraid the waterworks were going to start again. She quickly moved on.

  “When did anyone first try to call her?”

  Ana jumped in. “Andrea tried the next day. They were supposed to have brunch.”

  “I thought she wasn’t answering because she was mad at me,” Andrea said.

  “Did it go straight to voicemail or ring?”

  “It rang five times and then went to voicemail,” Andrea said.

  So the phone still had charge at that point. Probably sitting comfortably in its cement hiding place along the sidewalk where Madison eventually found it.

  “And then we all got on a group text around one PM after Elissa’s mom called Amanda,” Ana said. “That’s when we knew something was really wrong. By then her phone was going straight to voicemail.”

  “So it was decided that I should call Frank,” Ana said.

  “Of course,” Andrea said.

  “Seriously, Andrea?” Ana said.

  “Oh my God you guys don’t start again,” Madison interjected. “Ana, what did Frank say?”

  “He just said he hadn’t seen her. He was pretty casual about it.”

  “Did you find that strange? That he would be so calm about it?”

  “I mean … not if they’d had a fight.”

  “Plus, he always acted cool about Elissa when he was talking to Ana,” Andrea said. “Wanted to keep his options open.”

  Ana glared at Andrea but didn’t say anything.

  “Why are you guys so sure it was Frank?” Madison asked.

  “It wasn’t,” Ana said.

  “Oh my God, don’t with that! Just don’t,” Amanda said. “We think it was him because he was the last person she spoke to, at least that we know of. He was really controlling, and he’d hit her before when he felt like she was out of line. It just makes sense.”

  Madison loved a phrase that doctors used when diagnosing illness: “If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” The point was that horses were more common and the obvious choice; don’t go looking for strange explanations for things. Because of that, Madison tended to agree with these girls. But it didn’t explain Samantha going missing two years before from the same area in similar circumstances. Anyway, she would know more after surveillance tonight. Hopefully.