Betsey has been bugging Tierney daily. By phone. By text. By email. “You haven’t done enough,” “You’re giving up,” “I’m the only one who gives a good goddamn about Emily.”

  None of those angry statements from Betsey is true. Joel does care, but he’s come up with nothing, nothing from the crime labs in Manhattan and Queens, nothing from interviews with Dr. Craven, the staff at Betsey’s building, the nasty next-door neighbor Mariana Micelli, colleagues at Dazzle… But with Betsey’s furious urging, Joel has agreed to do a deep dive on four specific persons of interest—Ted Burrows, Quinn Church, Mike Miller, Keith Hennessey—in addition to, as Kalisha puts it, “just about any other man in America who might have breathed the same air as Emily Atkinson.”

  Yes, that’s why Kalisha is so pissed off. The assignment has trickled down to her, to Kalisha who believes that this case is at a dead end, who also believes that Betsey Brown should mind her own business.

  But she’s doing what she’s been asked to do. She knows Tierney’s limit for complaints. It’s pretty elastic, but, like even the toughest elastic, it’ll break at some point.

  “How’re we doing over there, Kalisha?” Tierney calls to her from his seat at the other end of the table in the large conference room where they’ve been working.

  “I’m on number three of the twenty-two names we’ve got here.”

  “Great,” he says. “You should be finished by the end of…”

  “Please stop right there, Detective. My energy slows down when I’m unhappy.”

  Tierney smiles and says, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And speaking of the title ma’am, have you noticed anything unusual about this list I’m going through?”

  “Unusual? No,” says Tierney. “It’s about as diverse as a list can be—rich guys, poor guys, old guys, young guys, white guys, Black guys.”

  “That’s just it. Guys. Guys and more guys. Who’s to say that it’s not a woman who’s messed with Emily Atkinson?”

  “Well, dumb as I am about life, it would take a man to get her pregnant,” says Tierney.

  “Well, you must have been a bio major, Detective, because there very well may have been a woman or women who had a hand in whatever’s happened to Emily. Somebody like that Italian witch who lives next door or one of the women who has hung out with some of the victim’s friends, you know, some of her close friends, the druggies. What about that strange lady, Miriam, who was padding around when our beloved associate Betsey Brown went to visit the rich dude, Quinn Church?”

  “Okay, Kalisha,” says Tierney. “Just put ’em on your list. And thank you.”

  Kalisha was afraid that this would be Tierney’s reaction—more work, more analysis, more phone calls to DC and any city Emily might have traveled through. Yet, angry as Kalisha is, she only knows how to do her job one way. The right way. So she shakes her head and goes back to the computer.

  But not for long. Within a few minutes she’s calling to Tierney again.

  “Do you remember this David Zingerman guy?” she says.

  “Yeah. The kid who was Emily’s secretary at her marketing firm.”

  Kalisha sighs loudly. “Her assistant, not her secretary. Could you please try to jump into the language of the twenty-first century?”

  “I’m trying. I’m trying. Anyway, we talked to Zingerman twice. He loved her.”

  “Yeah,” says Kalisha. “He told us about a lot of situations at the office—Emily and her boss, Emily and her coming in late and drunk and groggy. But he left something out.”

  “And that is?”

  “Five years ago… which would be one year before he went to work at Dazzle, he was arrested for drug possession in Hanover, New Hampshire.”

  “Yeah, Hanover. That’s where Dartmouth is, and that’s where the Zingerman kid went to college. Case closed. What was the substance? Grass?”

  “First of all, nobody has called it ‘grass’ since Nixon was president.”

  “Stop with the language lecture, Detective,” Tierney says. “Move on.”

  “It wasn’t weed or pot that he was busted for. He was selling high-grade cocaine cut with fentanyl. He had some fancy-ass lawyer from Boston who helped get him off.”

  “Okay. So Zingerman is not or was not the geeky-looking choirboy we thought he was. Case closed.”

  “Not quite. Here’s the interesting part.”

  She reads from the screen. “‘Suspect Zingerman’s bail was set by Justice Leo Delaney at one hundred thousand dollars. Bail posted in the name of Zingerman, David, by Atkinson, Emily, State of New York.’”

  Tierney agrees that this is interesting. Very interesting. In fact, he says that he thinks it is really very fucking interesting. He also thinks that there may be a simple explanation. Conceivably, Emily Atkinson and David Zingerman knew each other from another time and place. Kalisha checks, and, yes, Zingerman, like Emily, was raised in Manhattan. Yes, the two both went to the same prestigious prep school, Hotchkiss, although a decade apart. It’s possible that their families knew each other.

  When Tierney finishes reciting his list of possibilities, Kalisha speaks.

  “And before you tell me to do it, I will make it my business to pay another visit and have another chat with Mr. Zingerman.”

  “That’s my girl,” says Tierney. And before Kalisha can speak again, Tierney says, “I mean, ‘That’s my excellent detective.’”

  Tierney thinks he hears Kalisha whisper the word asshole, but she looks to be very busy with her computer.

  They both work silently for another hour or so, taking time out only to order a chicken salad sandwich on whole-wheat toast for Kalisha, and a BLT with a side of fries for Joel.

  When the desk officer telephones to tell them their order has arrived, Tierney volunteers to walk to the front to pick it up. His hand has almost touched the doorknob to leave when Kalisha speaks again.

  “Remember how Ted Burrows, the world’s most adorable bartender, told us he was skiing out in Colorado last week when Emily disappeared?”

  Kalisha doesn’t wait for Tierney to answer. She simply says, “BlueSky Breckenridge just faxed over some receipts. With Ted’s name and credit card on them. Looks like he was telling us the truth.”

  Tierney shakes his head, disappointed and discouraged. “So he’s got an alibi.”

  “Yep. Shit. We’re no closer than we were yesterday. We don’t know where Emily Atkinson is. We don’t know who the father is. We don’t know anything.”

  “Well, we do know one thing,” says Tierney.

  “What?”

  “We know that Ted the bartender likes to ski.”

  “Go get the food, Tierney. Go get the food.”

  CHAPTER

  66

  BETSEY AND HER AUNT are close. Very close.

  How close? The older woman is known as Aunt Gloria to her other nieces. But Betsey has a special name for tough-talking, down-to-earth, bighearted Gloria McCarthy. Betsey calls her Auntie Mama. Even when Betsey was in high school and Auntie Mama moved to Las Vegas—“It’s my dream town, honey. A gal like me can have a good time being a croupier”—they spoke every day by phone. They’re talking on the phone again today. But the circumstances are entirely different.

  “Betsey, honey. You’re calling your old aunt earlier than usual. What’s going on, baby girl?”

  “Guess where I’m calling from, Auntie Mama?”

  “I’m no good at guessing this early before I’ve had my first coffee and cigarette,” Gloria says. Betsey supplies the answer.

  “McCarran.”

  “McCarran! As in the airport? What are you doing, lady? You can’t be flying after the seventh month.”

  “My OB said it was all right,” says Betsey as quickly and softly as she can. As always, Betsey is a terrible liar.

  “Things are sure changing,” Auntie Mama says.

  “No. I’m out here on business. Sort of.”

  “What kind of business does a surgical nurse have in Vegas? Is Céline Dion having surgery?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. But I’m going to need a little help from you.”

  “You need money?”

  “No. I need someone to drive me around. And I need her to do it ASAP.”

  “Well, that’d be my pleasure. I don’t have to start spinning the roulette wheel until eight tonight. I’ll just guzzle me some coffee and pick you up. I’ll phone you when I’m almost there.”

  An hour later Auntie Mama and Betsey Brown, fortified with Egg McMuffins and some beverages (Coke for Gloria, chocolate milk for Betsey), are riding Gloria’s Honda Civic across Highway 95.

  Betsey explains the situation to her aunt—Emily’s condition, Emily’s problems, Emily’s disappearance. She explains how Emily had a quickie, spontaneous wedding at a Las Vegas wedding chapel. And although Betsey suspects who the groom is—Ted Burrows—she needs to find out for sure.

  She’s also hoping against all hope that she can stumble on something that’ll give the whole investigation some direction.

  “Honey, stumbling is never a good plan. Stumbling is only for birdbrains. Stumbling is something lucky that happens when you’re doing something logical.”

  Betsey, hoping that Auntie Mama will not think her niece a birdbrain, tells her that she’s mapped out, on Google, a route that will let them visit all the wedding chapels that—

  But before Betsey can finish explaining, Gloria jumps in.

  “Honey, keep your Google phone in your fake Chanel purse. I know this town like I know my own house. I say we start down Las Vegas Boulevard, cross over to Fourth Street and hit the four or five most popular wedding places. Chances are pretty good that I even know some of the folks working in those chapels. And I need to warn you, they take their jobs real serious.”

  Betsey says, “Well, I don’t think Emily and Ted or whoever she was here with was taking this whole wedding very seriously.”

  Gloria seems to be annoyed.

  “Maybe so. But these are real weddings. These are legal weddings. You can’t just run in, get married, and say it didn’t happen. Never mind the orchestra on tape and the pictures of Elvis and Marilyn and Reba and Garth on the walls. These are very real weddings.”

  Maybe it’s the dry heat seeping into the air-conditioned car. Maybe it’s the pregnancy. Maybe it’s the fact that Betsey’s husband thinks this is dangerous for her and the baby. Maybe it’s because Betsey easily figured out that while her aunt was glad to see her niece, she didn’t expect… well, whatever. Betsey has to pee. Betsey hopes her nausea subsides. Betsey is scared.

  Then Gloria speaks.

  “Well, speaking of Elvis, we’re coming up to the place that might as well be our first stop. It’s a popular chapel. Maybe it’s even the most popular.”

  Gloria pulls into the driveway of a building that could be a high-end motel. But the neon sign over the churchlike entrance clarifies everything.

  Graceland Wedding Chapel.

  Prompt and beautiful ceremony.

  Sale price. Today only. $177.

  “Must be our lucky day,” says Gloria. “Too bad we’re not getting married.”

  So begins one of the strangest tours that Betsey Brown has ever taken.

  She and her sassy-sweet aunt visit four chapels along Las Vegas Boulevard. It is an extraordinary education. By noon on a desert-dry day, Betsey learns the following:

  Her aunt is correct. The people who run these chapels take themselves and their jobs quite seriously. They celebrate the fun and joy, and in some cases, because it is Las Vegas, the goofiness of the event. But the person officiating—even if the man is dressed like Elvis or the woman is done up with more makeup and bigger hair than RuPaul—reads the vows slowly and gravely.

  The chapels themselves are so overdecorated and ugly that they have a certain kind of ostentatious beauty to them. Most of the places Gloria and Betsey visit have big photos of famous couples who decided to get married in Vegas: Angelina and Billy Bob, Demi and Bruce, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos.

  The chapels all take credit cards. The chapels that take cash want the money before the ceremony. If the couple hasn’t brought “folks to stand up for them,” a man or woman “in the office” will do the job for fifty dollars each.

  At every chapel, Gloria does the explaining. (“We’re trying to track down some information about this wonderful couple who eloped a little bit of time ago. Show ’em the photographs, honey.”) Then Betsey holds out her phone and taps on a few photos of Emily. The chapel people, a man and a woman, initially seem to think that they remember the bride. But sooner or later they shake their heads no. At all four chapels the chapel officials go to their computers and look up the names Emily Atkinson and Theodore Burrows.

  After finding nothing at the fourth chapel, Betsey tells Auntie Mama that she must make another bathroom stop really soon, that she must get something more nutritious than an Egg McMuffin for her and her unborn baby, and that maybe they both should just give up on this investigation.

  “You’re a crazy lady,” Auntie Mama says. “You used all your air mileage and came out here to help a friend, and now you’re throwing in the towel because you’re hungry and you’ve got to pee?”

  Betsey says nothing. Her stomach aches. Her back is stiff. And she thinks that her heart could begin breaking at any moment.

  “Let’s pull into one more chapel, honey, and, soon as we’re done, I’ll take you for a good steak-and-potato lunch at Golden Steer,” says Auntie Mama.

  Soon they’re pulling into an entrance drive with a sign that says LUCKY LITTLE WEDDING CHAPEL.

  Betsey looks at a huge electronic billboard with alternating photos of real brides and real grooms. Each couple is holding a placard that says WE GOT LUCKY IN LAS VEGAS.

  The fact is, Gloria McCarthy and Betsey Brown did just get lucky in Las Vegas.

  When Betsey flashes Emily’s photo to Pete Rodriguez, the owner and minister of Lucky Little Wedding Chapel, he nods and says, “I do remember that lady, matter of fact. She was nice enough. Sweet. Charming. Maybe a little drunk. But not so drunk as I wouldn’t marry them.”

  “So they actually did get married?” Betsey asks.

  “Yes, ma’am. This is not a joke. This place is a real chapel, with real marriage licenses, and real people who want to get married.”

  “I see,” says Betsey. “And if those real people want to get a real annulment, how quickly could they do it?”

  “As fast as state law allows, I’d imagine. Now as far as this wedding goes, I do remember that the groom wasn’t the nicest guy I’d ever met. I think he told the bride that it’d be best to use her credit card. Let me check.”

  He consults his computer at the reception desk.

  “January. February… here we go. Here’s the receipt. It’s what we call a Cherish Ceremony. Not the most expensive package, but very nice indeed. Five hundred fifty dollars. The name is Emily Mary Atkinson. Five hundred ninety-six dollars and nine cents total, with Nevada state tax.”

  The chapel minister turns the computer screen to face the two women. Betsey sees the marriage license. Emily’s address. The address of Ted’s Bar and Grill.

  “Whose names are these? Margaret Lloyd and Peter Deacon. It says that they were the witnesses.”

  A pause.

  “Well, those are the names of the witnesses. But sometimes we just put the names down and ignore the formality.”

  Betsey asks if there’s anything else on that computer about Emily and Ted.

  No.

  Betsey asks if there are photographs of the event.

  No.

  Can he print out the three or four pages of the file?

  No.

  Can he remember anything else about the event?

  “Well, we do an awful lot of weddings out here. So it’s pretty much a miracle that we even got this far. But thinking about it now, there is one thing I was thinking before, during, and after the ceremony.”

  “What was that?” asks Gloria.

  “The bride was very nice, very pretty. I honestly think she could’ve done a lot better than the jerk she married.”

  So now Betsey knows that Ted told her the truth.

  He and Emily did get married.

  But there is something odd about everything.

  Why did Emily insist that it wasn’t Ted who she married on that funny, crazy day at the Lucky Little Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas?

  CHAPTER

  67

  SOMEWHERE BENEATH THAT MOUNTAIN of Nature Valley wrappers and crushed cans of Diet Coke lies the head of Kalisha Scofield,” says Joel Tierney.

  Big mistake. Almost forty-eight straight hours of Kalisha trying to uncover some clue, some scent, some piece of evidence that might send them toward a hint of how to find Emily Atkinson. The conference room table is a mess. And Kalisha is not happy.

  “I’d pick my words very carefully,” says Kalisha, without looking away from her laptop. “The next time I go to the bathroom I may just not come back.”

  Hmmm. Tierney realizes that he’s on thin ice.

  “Holy Mother!” says Kalisha. She doesn’t quite scream it, but it sure registers with Tierney. “Get over here. I think we may have an actual lead.”

  Tierney thinks of all the files and Google searches and websites and police reports and school transcripts and police blotter chronicles Kalisha has gone through. He knows that she’s delved into the background of Emily’s masseurs, tennis teachers, her prep-school friends, her college professors, her uncles and cousins and dry cleaners and dentists and emergency room nurses and… “

  Get over here, Detective. Move your ass.”

  Tierney knows it must be shocking. Kalisha Scofield would never speak to her partner this way. Tierney moves his ass.

  Kalisha keeps talking.

  “It’s about that guy Mike Miller,” Kalisha says. She’s actually clapping her hands. Tierney can’t stand that degree of enthusiasm.

  “Mike Miller, big catch,” says Tierney. “We know he was her drug dealer. We know he was tagged twice by the local narcs.”