Free Deep in Death: A Shelby Nichols Adventure by Colleen Helme Page A

if I give it back. He’d kept it too long as it was.
    “Thank you, I really appreciate it.”
    “I hope it helps.” He caught my gaze, wanting to emphasize his point. “I didn’t realize Tiffany was going to hire someone or I would have shared this with her a long time ago.”
    I smiled and nodded. “I understand, but just so you know, she told me this was something she needed to do. I think she needs some kind of closure so she can move on with her life.”
    “And you think you can give it to her?” He’d heard of psychics feeding on the vulnerabilities of others with false promises, and wasn’t about to let me try anything like that on his daughter.
    “I don’t know, but I’d like to try.”
    He liked that I hadn’t agreed to something I couldn’t know, and his mouth creased into a curt smile.
    “Can we get started?” I asked. “I’d like to hear in your own words what happened that night.”
    “Sure,” he agreed, and we both sat down. I sensed immediately how emotionally draining this was for him to relive the worst day of his life. His story matched up with everything I already knew. He told the events clearly and concisely, only leaving out the pain and fear he’d felt, and I knew it was the truth.
    “How long did you wait after the police investigation to hire the P.I.?” I asked.
    “About two weeks,” he said. “At first, I knew they were taking it seriously and doing everything they could. There were even some leads they followed up on, but nothing came of them. That’s when I got frustrated with the way they handled it. It was like they kept putting me off, but now I know it was because they had nothing to tell me. That’s when I hired the P.I.”
    “Did you ever receive any strange phone calls?”
    “No. I kept waiting for something. Hoping actually, but there was never anything like that. I’ve never told anyone this, but somewhere along the way it just hit me that she was gone.” He couldn’t say dead even now. “It was the weirdest thing, but as I stepped back from the situation, I realized the feeling had been there for a while, and I just knew it here.” He placed his hand over his heart.
    I nodded and sent a sympathetic smile his way. “One more thing. Do you know anyone who works for Marketing Solutions on the first floor of her building?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Do you think Darcy might have had contact with anyone who worked there?”
    “No,” he said, his brows drawn together. “Why?”
    I shrugged. “Let’s just say I have a feeling that someone in the company is connected to her in some way. I don’t know how, or why, but I’d like to find out.”
    He raised his brows. To his knowledge, no one had done more than the cursory Q and A with the tenants in Darcy’s building. If I had a ‘feeling’ about it, he was more than interested in what I could find out. “You can check the files from the police and my P.I. to see if they interviewed anyone from there. But I never heard of a connection.”
    “All right, I will. Hey…did Darcy like gardenias?” I asked on a whim.
    His face paled. “Yes. She did. In fact, she loved the way they smelled. How did you know?”
    I didn’t know quite what to say, so I went with the truth. “As I’ve worked on this case, I’ve smelled them a few times…weird huh?”
    “Yeah,” he agreed, thinking it would probably freak him out if he were in my place. But hearing that also had a soothing effect on him. He hoped I’d finally find out what had happened to her. He hated to think that she had died painfully, but it was worse thinking her killer was still out there. It also made him a believer that I really was psychic. How else could I have known that?
    “Well…thanks for your time, and for this.” I picked up the box. “I’d better get going.”
    “Wait,” he said. “How much is Tiffany paying you?”
    “Um…one-fifty an hour, but she gave me five hundred and I’m going to see how far I can stretch