KILLER DATE (SCANDALS) Read Online Free Page B

“Okay…pull the drawer open slowly until I say stop.”
    Dallas started pulling the lower desk drawer out, moving it from side to side.  “It needs some oil on the tracks or something.”
    “Stop!  Got it.”  I felt the paper release and I was able to pull out what appeared to be an old mailing envelope.  I opened it and looked inside.  “Hmm, that laser machine isn’t the only thing you don’t know about.”  I pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills and handed them to Jenny.
    “What the fudge?”  Jenny’s shocked expression confirmed that she had been completely unaware of the hidden cash.  “How much is there Where would she get this much money ?”
    Dallas fanned through it.  “At least five grand.”
    “It doesn’t make sense,” I mused.  “If she was hiding the money from you and buying lights and equipment you didn’t know about, then it seems more likely that she was making some bold choices and probably left of her own free will.  But then, why didn’t she take the money with her?”
    “Maybe she didn’t have time,” Jenny commented thoughtfully.  “That indicates to me that it wasn’t a planned trip.  I think someone took her or at least caught her by surprise.”
    “Let’s take this laptop back with us,” Dallas suggested.
    “Agreed,” I said.  “Anything else seem odd to you, Jenny?”
    She went to a large bulletin board that was loaded with pictures of people displaying their tattoos and sketches of all kinds.  She pointed to one of a pretty girl and an attractive young man with his arm around her.  He wasn’t wearing a shirt which showed off his tanned, muscular torso and a large tattoo of a wolf on his right shoulder.  It was a casual photo, but there was something intimate about the way they leaned into each other.  Jenny ripped it off the board, ignoring the stick pin that popped out and fell on the floor.  She handed it to me.
    “Is that Angela?” I asked.  The girl in the photo had shoulder-length black hair and big green eyes like her sister and was very pretty, but other than that the resemblance to Jenny was slight.  While Jenny was shapely and petite, Angie was medium height and…well, to put it bluntly a little overweight. 
    “Ye s…but I’ve never seen the guy before.”
    “Any idea where it was taken or when?”   I turned the photo over, hoping to find a name or a date, but there was nothing written on the back.
    “Looks like the base of the clock tower on the UT campus,” Dallas comment ed.  “Maybe he’s a student.”
    “We’ll check it out in our system and shop the picture around campus.  If there’s a name that goes with t hat face or body, we’ll find it,” I offered.
    None of the other photos on the board included either Angie or the guy, so we gathered up the laptop, the envelope full of cash and the laser machine receipt and left.  Jenny turned out the lights and carefully locked the door behind us.  We had plenty of clues, but absolutely no additional information to lead us to the missing sister. 
    “ We should give her bedroom a check, but we don’t have enough time today,” Dallas stated.
    “Maybe we could make it after I get home from work tomorrow.  I can’t afford to miss another day,” Jenny answered.
    “That’ll work for us.  Let’s stop in at the mini-mart next door before we head back to the office.  Maybe someone has seen her or him…or them,” I suggested, trying to think what Christopher would do since he had almost ten years of experience compared to my piddling two weeks.
    We walked to the corner and entered the door that was on a diagonal to the intersection.  Several large cow bells jangled loudly as we entered the small store.  The clerk barely glanced up as we approached the counter.  His focus remained on marking passages with a yellow highlighter in a thick college textbook.
    “He y, my name is Reno.”
    “What can I do for you?”  He held his index finger on the page,