Vulnerable (Morgans of Nashville) by Mary Burton Page A

beyond a first date. She was really picky about guys and always found something wrong with them.”
    “She reject anyone lately?”
    “No. Honestly, she was cute in her own way but most guys didn’t think she was all that hot.”
    “Was there anyone bothering or following Elisa? She might have cut someone off in traffic or gotten into a spat in the grocery store line. It doesn’t always take a lot to catch the attention of a killer,” Jake said.
    With a trembling hand she tucked a curl behind her ear. “No. No one. Like I said, everyone liked her. Guys might not have wanted to date her but she was everyone’s friend.”
    Maybe the killer didn’t have a beef with her. Maybe it wasn’t personal for the killer. Maybe it had been sport. “Can we see her room?”
    “Sure.” She rose, moving slowly toward a small hallway that led to two rooms separated by a bathroom.
    Cheryl opened the bedroom door and clicked on the light. “The other detectives asked me if she kept any kind of diary or journal but I said no. She wasn’t really the introspective type.”
    “These were the detectives from missing persons?”
    “Yes. Thompson and Levy, I think.”
    “I know them,” Jake said.
    His focus moved past Cheryl to Elisa’s room. A bedroom could tell him a lot about a person. It was the inner sanctum for most, their secrets held closely were generally found here.
    Elisa slept in a twin bed placed against the wall. Covered in a pink-and-blue quilt with a collection of fluffy pillows, it was neatly made, the seam lines crisp and clean. In front of the bed was a square white shag rug and to the right a small desk with a lamp, a blotter centered directly in the middle, a Titans coffee mug filled with sharpened pencils, and a stack of thick textbooks. “I don’t see a computer.”
    “She always had that with her,” Cheryl said. “She carried a black backpack that had her initials ES embossed on the back.”
    Neither the backpack nor the laptop had been found at the crime scene. “She looks as if she were very neat.”
    “She had a thing about order. Said an unmade bed drove her crazy. As soon as she got up in the morning, she made her bed. Even before she went to the bathroom she made her bed. I’m not so neat as her.”
    “The living room also looked neat as a pin.”
    She folded her arms over her chest and tipped her head back to keep more tears from spilling. “I’ve been keeping it extra neat. Making an effort to straighten and vacuum so when she came home it would be clean like she likes it.”
    “As I understand it, you didn’t report her missing until Sunday.”
    “She texted me on Friday. Said she was going to see her parents.”
    “You think that was odd?” Rick asked.
    “No. She’s close to home and her mom has been after her to visit.
    “We were supposed to see a movie on Sunday. When I called her that morning, she didn’t pick up. I started asking friends if they’d seen her. No one had, so I called her mom. They hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks. That’s when I got scared. When all of us got scared.”
    “What’s Elisa’s cell phone number?”
    Cheryl rattled off the number, which Jake wrote down. He’d have the number searched immediately and see if it could be pinged off a cell tower.
    Jake moved to a tall chest of drawers painted an off white. On top were a mirror and a collection of lipsticks. Several were a pale pink and one or two were clear glosses but there was one tube that was a bright red. The label on the end dubbed it “Siren Red.” There was also a bottle of purple nail polish. It matched the color worn by the victim.
    He set the lipstick back down and opened the top drawer. To his surprise he found a collection of very lacy and sexy undergarments. “How did she dress?”
    “She liked khakis and sweaters. Very preppy.”
    He noted the black thongs and sheer bras. “And these belong to her?”
    Cheryl peeked in the drawer. Her face blossomed into a bright red.