Cold feet by Brenda Novak Page B

handsome renter. Letting another man into her life was like embracing a tornado. But she knew Caleb was trying to help her, so she made a conscious effort to let him. "Ice cream sounds good," she said.
     
    T HREE HOURS LATER , Caleb sat at a table at a McDonald's not far from Holly's house in Alderwood Manor, a suburb between Whidbey Island and Seattle. He tapped his pen on his leg, waiting impatiently for Detective Gibbons to answer his call as Holly inched forward in line. He'd spent most of the afternoon with Madison and Brianna, but he hadn't been able to get anything new out of Madison about her father or the murders. Even while they were having ice cream, she'd been too preoccupied by that phone call she'd received from her ex.
    Caleb couldn't blame her. From what he'd overheard, Danny Lieberman was an ass.
    When Gibbons finally came to the phone, Caleb had to yank the receiver away from his ear before the loud, foulmouthed, twenty-year police veteran blasted out his eardrum.
    "Trovato, what the hell are you doing calling me at home on a Saturday?"
    Chuckling, Caleb leaned forward as Holly momentarily disappeared behind some hanging plants. When he'd ordered, she'd refused to eat, but he'd finally talked her into getting a hamburger and wanted to make sure she was still in line to order it. As soon as they finished a quick dinner, they were planning to canvass Susan's neighborhood again, just in case they'd missed someone or something. They didn't have a lot of other options. The private investigator was supposedly hard at work doing background checks on just about everyone who'd ever been associated with Susan, and the police were digging, too, searching for Susan's car, but no one seemed to be finding anything.
    "What, you only accept calls when it's convenient, Gibbons?" he teased. "If I didn't know you better, I'd say you're in it strictly for the paycheck, man."
    "You don't know what the hell you're talking about, as usual," he grumbled, but the old affection was still there. Caleb could feel it beneath the surface of everything that was said. "What do you want?"
    Caleb wadded up his hamburger wrapper and shoved it inside his empty cup. "I have some evidence that might connect the Sandpoint Strangler case to--"
    "The Sandpoint Strangler case!" he interrupted. "I have a woman who looks like Catherine Zeta Jones on her way over to fix me dinner, less than five minutes to clean up this dump, and you call me, acting like there's some kind of emergency on a case that's totally cold?"
    Caleb had a hard time believing Gibbons could get a woman who even remotely resembled Catherine Zeta Jones to cook him dinner. Short, balding and a little on the heavy side, he had a blockish head with bulldog jowls. To make things worse, he had a disconcerting way of shouting almost everything he said. "Just listen to me for a second, Gibbons. I think there might be a connection between the Strangler case and the Susan Michaelson disappearance."
    "Don't give me that, Trovato."
    "Susan Michaelson fits the profile. She's small, she's in the right age range and she was abducted from the same area."
    "That could just as easily be coincidence as anything else. Quit looking for something exciting to put in one of those damn books you're writing these days."
    Holly moved forward in line. Dressed in a denim jacket with fake fur at the collar, she studied the lighted menu overhead as though she hadn't seen it a million times. "I'm not working on a book right now. I'm trying to find Susan."
    "Then why are you calling me? I'm not assigned to the Michaelson case."
    "I think you should get yourself assigned to it, because I'm telling you there's a connection."
    "Listen," Gibbons responded. "I'd give my right nut to know how that bastard Purcell did what he did. But you know as well as I do that the Sandpoint Strangler is dead. So, if that's all you've got, call me on Monday."
    The phone clicked and Gibbons was gone.
    "Damn," Caleb muttered, and dialed