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"Mr. McDermott." I extended a hand. "Liz Bowles, White Rock Times. Do you have a minute?"
He resumed filing. "I do, but we aren't hiring."
"Hiring? Oh, no, I'm not a photographer. I'm a journalist."
McDermott closed the filing cabinet and moved to his desk. "From where?"
"White Rock."
He waited.
"Cottage country," I added.
"Oh." A slight twist of the lips. "The Muskokas."
"The Kawarthas, actually."
"What can I do for you, Miss…"
"Bowles. Call me Liz."
Not likely, his eyes said with another glance at my midriff.
I beamed a small-town smile. "Not a big fan of black-fly country, I take it?"
He rewarded my smile by picking up a sheaf of papers from his desk, turning to the filing cabinet, and presenting me with a lovely view of his back. He then proceeded to file as if I'd already left.
"You should get up our way sometime," I continued. "This time of year, it's absolutely gorgeous. We have some great vacation getaway deals, too."
I watched his body language for any reaction, any tensing of the muscles. Instead, he gave a soft snort. "I'm sure it's beautiful, but I've already taken my spring vacation. To Venice." He glanced at me. " Italy."
"Wow. I bet it was gorgeous."
McDermott turned to nod, and I detected the faintest thaw in his cold front.
"It was quite nice, yes," he said. "Of course, one really should see Venice in June, but my fiancée had a photo shoot, so we had to settle for April."
"She's a model? Wow. You must have just got back home."
"This week."
"That must be tough. Coming back here after a week in Venice."
"Three weeks."
I widened my eyes. "Wow. Our readers are going to flip. A Bancroft boy, dating a supermodel, and jetting off to Venice."
McDermott's brows arched. "Bancroft?"
"You're from Bancroft, aren't you?"
He snorted. "Hardly. Born and raised right here in Toronto, thankfully."
"Oh, my God. I am so sorry, Mr. McDermott. I'm looking for a Jordan McDermott, son of John and Hazel from Bancroft. He's supposed to be a photographer in Toronto and someone gave me this address."
"I see," McDermott said, cooling fast. "Well, then I would suggest you double-check your sources. I have work to do."
Every once in a while, you get lucky and everything goes smoothly. Of course, I guess if things had gone really well, McDermott would have been moonlighting as a hitman and confessed to killing Sammi, but nothing's ever that simple.
If Sammi had tried to double-check the information, she'd have discovered that a man named Jordan really did work for Pfeiffer Photography in Toronto. Had she attempted to contact him, she would have learned he was on vacation.
Whoever had taken those pictures had put a lot of effort into his story. Exactly the kind of attention to detail you'd expect from a professional killer.
As we drove, I told Jack what we'd found. Then I tried Denise Noyes again. She answered on the third ring.
"I'm calling about Dea
"Yes?"
Noyes invested the single word with such joy that I winced.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't have any news for you."
"Oh." Her voice drooped.
"I'm calling because my niece has disappeared, in circumstances similar to Dea
"But you know better, don't you? You can tell. The police – I guess they've heard that story a million times, they stop listening after a while." Her voice shifted, as if she was settling into a chair. "I'm glad I decided to come home for lunch today. I forgot some tests I'd marked over the weekend."
"Are you… a friend of Dea
"Her sister. Well, half sister. Our dad got around. I was from his first marriage. Dea
"I bet."
"She's half my age, so we didn't exactly do the sister thing, but I could see she was in a bad place, her mom dead, our dad long gone, Dea
"Which is why you don't think she ran away."
"I know she didn't run off because if she had she wouldn't…" Another pause. A sharp intake of breath. "I'll be blunt. I don't mean to speak poorly of Dea
"Like any sixteen-year-old."
"Exactly. When she became pregnant, I strongly suggested adoption. Maybe too strongly. I might have made her feel like I didn't think she could care for a baby and she wanted to prove me wrong."
In the silence, I could hear Noyes's self-recriminations and hurried to change the subject. "I saw Dea
"Isn't she? And Co
"Did anyone ever take his picture? Offer to make him a model?"
Noyes paused. "No. Why?"
"A few weeks before my niece disappeared, a man took photos of her baby. He claimed to be from a modeling agency, but I was suspicious. You hear so much about perverts – "
"Yes!" Noyes fairly shouted the word. "Oh, God, yes! I knew it. I knew it. I told the police, but they brushed me off – " She inhaled, controlling her excitement. "A few weeks before Dea
"But he didn't."
"Not the front page, not the back page. I know photographers don't use every shot they take, but when Dea
"Did Dea
"She didn't ask. Too excited, I'm sure."
"Did she tell you anything about him?"
"She said he looked like a photographer. Clean-cut. Nicely dressed. Homely." A laugh. "That's not the word she used, but you know what I mean."
"Unattractive."
"Yes. She said he was around my husband's age. Thirty-five or so. Oh, and he had very nice teeth. Very straight, very white. She made a point of saying that. As if no one could be a pervert and practice good oral hygiene. Does this sound like the man your niece met?"
"She didn't say anything about his appearance." I hated to lie, but I couldn't have Noyes phoning the police with added information. "I don't know if there's a co
"Even if there's no co
God, how I wished that were true. But there was no hope for Sammi, and I was pretty sure there wasn't for Dea