Thinking a jolt of caffeine might help her stay awake, Cassie had ordered a Coke. Trent settled in with his beer and ignoring the frosted glass that was left for him, took a long pull from the bottle.
“I’ll drive for a while,” he offered, and she nodded. The silence that had been fairly companionable in the car was now awkward and she was grateful when his cheeseburger and her club sandwich arrived. They concentrated on their meals for a few minutes before she decided to be proactive. “Did Allie’s mood change?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, just before she disappeared?”
His eyes found hers and his gaze wasn’t friendly. “How would I know? Did you even hear what I told you before? We were not involved. I have no idea what was going on in her mind.” He took another long drink, then said, “You just don’t give up.”
“Not when it’s about my sister.”
“Or a story,” he added, reaching for his beer.
That momentarily stopped her. “You looked through my work? My computer?”
“No computer. I didn’t see one.” That was right, she remembered, she’d had her laptop with her earlier today. “But you did leave some notes lying around. I read them.”
Okay, so he knew about her plans to write a screenplay about Allie. So what? Everyone would know soon enough, including, she hoped, Allie herself, once she was found. A tiny doubt skidded through her mind, a worry about her sister’s whereabouts and the possibility Allie might never be found, but she pushed it aside. She picked at her sandwich and persevered. “So, did you know any reason Allie might have gone to Santa Fe? Does she know someone there, maybe a plastic surgeon? Probably around 2007?” The problem was the numbers didn’t add up. In 2007, Allie had still been in Falls Crossing....
Trent just stared at her, then with a shake of his head took another bite from his cheeseburger. “I don’t know.”
“It’s just that I got this weird message from Portland. Actually the phone number is my psychiatrist’s cell, but I don’t think she sent it.” She scrounged in her purse, withdrew her phone, and scrolled down to the cryptic text she’d received before sliding her iPhone across the table. He glanced at the display.
“Look, Cass, I don’t know how to make you get it. I really don’t know Allie, only through you as my sister-in-law. As for this”—he thumped the tiny screen with a finger—“I have no idea what it means. None.”
He was so emphatic, she almost believed him. Which sent her back to square one. “Are you sure?”
“Jesus, Cass. I don’t know your damned sister! I didn’t sleep with her!”
A man in a baseball cap who had been forking a bite of meat loaf into his mouth turned his head. Trent noticed the guy and lowered his voice. “That’s it, Cassie!” he warned. “You’ve got to find a way to trust me.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” Scowling, he studied the message on her phone and appeared to somehow rein in his anger. “So this is what you’ve got? Santa Fe 07?”
“Yeah.”
“A message from your doctor?” He slid the phone across the table that was topped in Formica straight out of the 1960s, and dug into the rest of his meal.
Cassie nodded.
“Could the text have been sent to you by mistake?”
“I suppose.” She’d considered that possibility herself. “Or maybe it’s just gobbledygook. You know, maybe the doctor let one of her grandchildren play with it and . . . no, I don’t think so.” Virginia Sherling didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would let kids touch anything associated with her professional life, and Cassie wasn’t sure the woman had ever been married or had a child.
“Did you cal
l her? Ask her about it?”
“Called. Didn’t leave a message.” She frowned. “I’m her patient, her mental patient. I didn’t want to leave some kind of voice mail she might misinterpret.”
“By thinking you were . . . what? Hallucinating about a text? It would show on her phone, too.”
“It’s touchy with the doctor. Dr. Sherling didn’t release me. In fact, she thought my leaving Mercy wasn’t the best idea, and she said so.” She pushed aside the remains of her sandwich. “I decided to leave it alone for a while. Besides, everything at the hospital was so out of sync,” she admitted.
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated.