Page 47 of Last Seen Alive

“It’s surprising you and Trent didn’t meet at their wedding.”

“Well I wasn’t able to make it.” A simple statement, but it felt weighed down with regret. She didn’t feel right about pushing him for a reason. It might have just been that it was hard being around Michelle with Claire in the wind.

“Take care, okay? Call if you need anything.” She ended the call. Trent was looking at her over the divider between their cubicles. She filled him in on her conversation with Logan and where he was staying.

“It certainly is a small world. I never even heard them mention Logan’s name before, but I guess they wouldn’t have had much reason to bring him up. Not with how quiet Shell was about Claire. I mean I never even knew she had a sister.”

“Family can be rough.” She was blessed by a big, rather functional one. “So I just got back from speaking with Graves. She wanted an update.”

“That explains that sour look you had on your face.”

“She still thinks Logan killed her.” She couldn’t dwell on that for long or she’d get angry. “What have you been working on?”

“I called the law office, but they’re not open until nine. Just got on Claire Ramsey’s Facebook and was looking at her feed.”

“Oh.” Amanda walked to his cubicle. “Any friends named Roo by chance?”

“Nope, but there’s definitely one person who Claire was in a fair amount of contact with.”

“And you could find all this without logging into Claire’s actual account?”

“She has her settings public.”

“Doesn’t really go with the rest of her life, how she typically took precautions.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect.”

Amanda couldn’t help but think maybe the social media site afforded the younger Claire some semblance of normality.

Trent continued. “Now, there were a lot of comments to Claire’s posts by a woman named Rita Flynn.”

“Click her profile, let’s see who she is.”

Trent did just that, and a quick look at the posts to her timeline had them staring back at each other.

“Condolences,” she muttered. “Rita Flynn is dead too? When was this?” Tingles ran through her as the answer was in front of her. The sympathies were recent.

He scrolled down. “From what I’m gathering, I’d say she died in an accident in the last few days… Looks like the posts start last Friday.”

“The day Claire was murdered. Quick. Type Rita’s name into the system. See if you can get more information about when and how she died.”An accident…It could be a coincidence that Claire and her friend were dead within a day or two of each other, but Amanda had a burning hunch it wasn’t.

Trent pulled her background, and it showed her deceased as of last Thursday. “She died the daybeforeClaire was murdered. Is this just a coincidence or…?”

His tone of voice relayed he didn’t think there was anything coincidental about it either. “I don’t think so.”

“Were Claire and Rita involved in something illegal together, that finally caught up to them?”

“Could be, but how far back do we look? Years?”

“And it looks like there’s an age gap between the two women of six years. How did they become connected? What bonded them?”

“Hard to say at this point. Cause of death?”

He pointed to his screen. “A car accident last Thursday afternoon. Looks like her vehicle careened off Interstate 95.”

“Can you see anything about what caused the accident?”

“Not here.”