Free Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) by Blake Pierce Page B

case anyhow. He wasn’t
going have an FBI team fly in here from LA.
    She realized that in
spite of what Riley had reported to him, Morley was still thinking of this as a
single murder that they were investigating as a favor to a fellow agent. She
would just have to work with the team they had. But what might these guys have
missed?
    She asked, “Have you
looked at maps of the canyon before it was flooded?”
    Rosner was silent
for a moment.
    “No, but what good
would that do?” he said.
    Riley stifled a
groan of impatience.
    How much training
does this guy actually have? she
wondered. Do I really have to tell him how to do his job?
    She said, “How can
you be sure that you checked every nook and cranny without knowing more about
the terrain?”
    Another silence
fell.
    “You should be able
to call it up on your laptop,” Riley added.
    “We’ll get on it,”
Rosner finally said, sounding gloomy.
    “You do that,” Riley
told him.
    She ended the call
and stood in the hall wondering what to believe. Was there no second body after
all? If there wasn’t, then this probably wasn’t even a serial case. She felt a
flood of mixed feelings. She hated making mistakes. Even so, the possibility
that Nancy Holbrook’s murder hadn’t been the work of a serial killer might be
good news.
    But Riley’s gut
still told her that there was another body in the lake. That this was a
familiar type of monster who would strike again.

Chapter Eleven
     
    When she and Bill
walked into the Ishtar Escorts office, Riley thought that it actually looked
very much like a high-class travel agency. A bulletin board was devoted to
posters about things to do in Phoenix, suggesting visits to museums, art
galleries, parks, and botanical gardens. A table carried brochures with details
about a variety of places. The detail that would be missing from an actual
travel agency was the second bulletin board, with images of the escorts. She
recognized the ones that she had spoken with earlier. In these photos, they
were all nicely dressed as if for an elegant event, with just an occasional
flash of cleavage here and there.
    The woman at the
reception desk didn’t seem at all nervous about a visit from FBI agents. The
receptionist explained that many clients were visitors who weren’t well
informed on cultural and recreational activities.
    “We help them out.
We’ll even book tickets for theatrical and sporting events. We want our
visitors to have a good time here.”
    She punched a button
and spoke into her phone, “The agents are here to see you.” The receptionist
guided them into the madam’s office.
    Ishtar Haynes stood
up to greet them and gestured for them to be seated. Riley found the woman’s
appearance even more startling than that of the escorts she had talked to
earlier. Ishtar Haynes was wearing an expensive pantsuit and had perfectly
coiffed hair. A pair of reading glasses was perched on her sharp, long nose.
She looked like any legitimate female CEO.
    “Let me see if I
understand your purpose for making an appointment with me,” she said, taking
her own seat behind an expansive desk. “You want me to give you the name of
Nanette’s client on the night she was killed.”
    She directed her
question to Bill, who nodded. Riley let him carry the interview as she took the
opportunity to look around the plush office.
     “That’s right,”
Bill said. Ishtar Haynes smiled. Riley saw a world of coldness in that
professional smile. This wasn’t the stern face of a competent businesswoman, it
was the frozen face of a person who had experienced no real feelings for many
years.
    “Agent Jeffreys,
what kind of business do you think I run?” she said. “Not that I have any
reason to think that Nanette and a client were doing anything especially
illicit on the night in question. If they got, shall we say, affectionate ,
that was entirely up to them. But my clients trust me to keep things strictly
confidential.”
    “But you keep
records of