Page 11 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

“How much of this was already here?”

I walked through Kate’s room, looking for anything useful, while her roommate/boss watched me from the doorway.

“All the furniture is mine. That poster, too.” Blake Ashlock, the neon-haired millennial baker, pointed to the only print on the wall—a framed Twisted Sister poster that looked twice as old as her. “Darcy bought the curtains.”

The fabric was sheer and mint green, letting light flood in.

The room looked lived in, relatively neat but not fastidious.

A few pieces of clothing littered the floor near a plastic laundry hamper.

The bed was made but rumpled, with a pair of pajamas loosely folded on top of the blanket.

The only photograph in the entire space was a Polaroid propped next to a bedside lamp, showing Blake and Charlie with an arm around each other, siblings cheesing into the camera.

Charlie looked flushed and happy, a different man than the one I’d first met a few days ago.

“Charlie thinks her real name is Kate.”

“Yeah, he told me his incredible Milk Duds theory.” She played with the end of her pink braid, eyes darting around the room. “He didn’t get the brains of the family.”

“Do you think her name is actually Darcy?” I checked under the mattress and bedspring. Nothing.

Blake bit her lip, eyes unfocusing as they turned watery. After a long pause, she shook her head. “She’s Darcy to me. That’s how she identified, who she wanted to be. And I know her, no matter what her birth certificate or driver’s license says. It doesn’t matter what her legal name is.”

Except it did, if we ever wanted to find her.

Kate/Darcy/Whoever She Was’s room wasn’t giving up much in terms of clues.

She’d left library books stacked on the nightstand, all of her clothes as far as Blake could tell were hung in the closet and folded in the drawers, and several lotions, sprays, and other women’s bathroom stuff were lined up on top of the dresser.

It didn’t appear like she’d gone anywhere, or at least not anywhere she’d planned on.

It looked, on its surface, like a lot of the homes I’d visited while investigating cases on the ICPD.

I’d been in too many bedrooms like this, where a victim’s stuff was comfortably scattered, just another regular day until something happened to take them away from the place they belonged.

I wished Jonah were here. Our mystery woman had left no hard evidence, no clues someone like me could follow to figure out who she’d been or where she’d gone. At the very least, Jonah would’ve been able to sense more about her than just a life interrupted.

Giving up on the bedroom, I followed Blake to the apartment’s kitchen.

She took a bowl out of the dish dryer, opened a cupboard, and stood there, one hand on the handle, the other gripping the bowl as she stared blindly across her living room.

She was maybe thirty, young to own the bakery downstairs, but it must’ve been doing well judging by the quality of the furnishings, the giant TV, and the tech lying around the apartment.

The brands of the appliances on the counter looked French or Italian and several notches above the GE specials Shelley and I picked up at Lowe’s.

I leaned against the other side of the peninsula.

“What did K—Darcy like to do? How did she spend her time?”

Blake startled, shutting the cupboard. “She loved to bake. She loved being in the kitchen. I don’t think she ever asked for a day off.” Blake hugged the bowl to her stomach.

“And when she wasn’t working?”

Blake shrugged. “She took walks all over town. She liked being outside. Even on movie nights she always opened all the windows. And Charlie. She loved Charlie.” Her eyes filled and she cut off, looking down at the empty bowl.

“He’s hopeless, but a sweetheart, you know?

Total mush. And he’s never been with anyone who got him, someone who didn’t want to change him into something else.

I was shook when they first got together, but then it was like—I don’t know, like puzzle pieces.

They just fit. And they made each other fit. ”

I asked about any arguments, any trouble in the relationship, but Blake shut that down.

“Never. Neither of them were fighters. Except . . .” A look came over her face as she trailed off.

“What?”

“One time Darcy thought someone broke into the bakery after hours and went to confront them.” Blake glanced at the kitchen counter. “She took a knife. She looked terrified, ghost white, but she went anyway. Knife first. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her.”

“Was there an intruder?”

“No, it was—no.”

“Did she ever talk about her life before she came here? Places she’d lived? Family or friends?”

Blake shook her head. “She mentioned her mom a few times, mostly about recipes she’d made. No names or places or anything.” Blake paused, thinking. “It seemed like she missed her mom a lot.”

“Did you get the impression her mother was dead?”

“I don’t know.”

I tried a few more avenues, but Blake couldn’t recall any other mentions of Kate’s family or friends. Just a mom. Maybe that was all the family she had, or at least all the family she cared to remember.

I paced the rest of the living space, looking for any signs of Kate in the retro neon, jungle of plants, and wall of DVDs. “Did she own anything that seemed special to her? Like it might have significance to where she came from?”

Blake didn’t hesitate. She discarded the bowl and ran downstairs. I followed, but a text from Jonah made me pause on the stairs.

Strange neighbor on the running route. He knew Kate, wouldn’t admit it.

What did you get from him? I texted back.

Anger. Fear. He felt threatened by us. According to property tax records, his name is Silas Hepworth. There was someone else on the property, too. Watched us while holding a shotgun.

Hepworth have any priors?

TBD.

Blake waited impatiently at the bottom of the stairs, a kitchen tool in her hands. I put the phone away and joined her. “Does the name Silas Hepworth mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Did Darcy ever mention running into someone when she went for jogs at Charlie’s place?”

Another negative. I broadened the question.

“Did she feel uncomfortable around anyone at the bakery or in town?”

Blake glanced through an open doorway to the front of the store, where a line of customers waited for their coffee and pastries. She leaned against the butcher-block work surface in the center of the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“Who?” My attention sharpened.

“Everyone. Everyone except me and Charlie. She never wanted to work the front counter, hated talking to people. She was just shy. An Allison.”

“A what?”

“Allison from The Breakfast Club . She’s shy, but she wants to belong because she’s never belonged anywhere before. I think Darcy was dealing with some past trauma, too, just not parents who ignored her like Allison’s. But she wanted to belong to us. An Allison, you know?”

The only thing I understood was that it was some kind of metaphor and I didn’t have to add another alias to the case file.

“Here.” Blake thrust the thing she was holding at me. It was a flat stainless-steel rectangle with a rubber handle along one of the long edges. The opposite edge ended in a single, sharp line that glinted in the work lights of the kitchen.

“A . . .”

“Dough cutter.” She supplied. “You asked if she owned anything that seemed to have significance.”

I ran a finger along the cutting edge. It was duller than a knife, sharper than a mail opener. “This was special to her?”

“She brought it to the kitchen in probably the first week she started working here and she always used it, even though I’ve got commercial-grade cutters that are way more efficient.

That’s for home use. But Darcy always reached for this one.

Once I saw her put it into an apron pocket when she was scooping cookies.

Totally unnecessary for the job but maybe it was like an emotional support animal, you know? ”

Or like she wanted to hide it. Keeping it close for another reason. Pulling the case notebook out of my pocket, I tested the cutter on a few pages. They sliced away with little force. The dough cutter, whatever it meant to her, could fucking cut.

Blake braced against the butcher block, her face falling into quiet, somber lines. “Do you think you’ll be able to find her?”

With no name, a complete lack of physical or electronic trails, a mystery kitchen tool, and an angry neighbor as our only possible lead?

“It might depend on whether she wants to be found.”