Chapter 20: The Planner

The detective stood in the atrium with her phone to her ear, and every officer she called came back with the same answer.

Joanna had left her car and her purse, and nobody had seen her go.

"She'll turn up," the detective said. "People like her always do."

"She's at work," I said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Tonight is the Children's Hospital winter benefit. It's the biggest contract she has. She has run it for six years."

"She's wanted for forgery and fraud."

"She once ran a wedding with a fever of 102," I said. "She won't miss it."

The detective looked at Wyatt.

He shrugged.

"I've known her a week," he said. "I'd bet on Deanna."

The benefit was at the old grain exchange, the same hall where Joanna had pinned the wristband on my arm.

Four hundred people in black tie stood under the gold chandeliers with champagne.

At the back of the room, behind a pillar, the detective and two officers waited for my nod.

Wyatt stood beside me at the door.

In the car I had opened the camera app for the doorbell Wyatt put on my mother's porch on Wednesday.

She had called it nosy and kept it.

The porch was empty, and the light was on.

Joanna stood at the foot of the stage in a black dress, with a headset and a clipboard and her hair in perfect order.

She was smiling at a man with a gavel.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the man with the gavel said, "our auction begins in five minutes."

I walked up the center aisle.

Four hundred people turned, because by now my face was on every phone in the state.

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