Page 108 of What She Saw

He shook his head. “She wanted a different life. It’s for the best.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Good.” I sipped my soda. “There was a lot of pressure on Taggart to solve this case. Word of missing women spread fast. This was a town where people didn’t lock their doors until the festival.”

“Within two weeks of the festival, Taggart arrested Colton.” That arrest had earned Taggart twenty-plus years’ worth of re-elections.

Callie returned with a plate of pancakes and one with toast. She set a fresh soda in front of me. I jabbed the straw into the floating crushed ice.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Soda and toast,” Grant said.

I always grabbed whatever sounded good. I chalked it up to the story. “My stomach often gets upset when I’m working.”

“It’s like this on every case?”

“Basically.”

The front door opened, and several guys walked in. The waitress grabbed menus and walked toward them. I shifted my attention to the toast. I covered a slice with strawberry jam. The first bite was amazing, but by the third, I was full.

I reached for my phone and opened a social media app. I searched Lannie Fletcher’s name. “The sister lives in Washington, DC, and works as an attorney. She’s now forty-seven, is unmarried, and has no children.”

As Grant sipped coffee, I opened Lannie’s profile. “She hasn’t posted a lot. Vacation pictures. Cabo. Sonoma. Hiking in southern France.”

“Who’s she hanging out with?”

“There was a dark-haired guy who was photographed with her a few years ago. But he’s vanished from her page in the last year.” I flipped through several years. In 2018 I found a picture of Lannie with Susan. The two were at a charity drive for missing kids held at the Dance Studio. The photographer had been about ten feet from the women. A death like Tristan’s rippled through an entire family.

Grant took the phone and, with a swipe of his fingers, expanded the pictures. “Lannie didn’t tag her, but she did tag the organization: Missing Children Found.” On his phone, he searched the group. “Five pages into the Missing Children Found site, there’s a photo of them. The tagline says Susan Westbrook.”

I searched Susan Westbrook on several social media sites but discovered no profiles. I searched the Dance Studio. It was in Arlington, Virginia. It had multiple five-star reviews.

“Susan doesn’t have any presence online. But the Dance Studio does.” I studied the image of Lannie and Susan, still wondering if theunknown woman was Tristan decades into the future. “Tristan Fletcher’s body was never found. Her high school ring was found in Colton’s barn with the other victims’ trinkets. Everyone assumed she’d died.”

“You think she’s alive?” He shook his head. “You’re stretching this one.”

“Why? Her body was never recovered.”

“This means she’s been in hiding for thirty-one years.”

“It was easier to vanish in 1994.”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you analyze the photo of Tristan Fletcher and Susan Westbrook and tell me if they’re the same person?”

“I can do that.”

“How long will it take?”

“A day. I still have friends who can push it through.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

Amusement brightened his dark gaze. “‘Thank you’? Where’s the real Sloane?”