Margret stayed in Audra's room hearing about the twin she'd never known until close to dawn.
"You talk about her in the past tense," Margret said cautiously. "How did she die?"
Audra swallowed and took a deep breath.
"About thirteen years ago she was attacked."
"Oh, no," Margret murmured.
"Much the same way that Gwyneth Miller was." Audra paused for a moment and allowed that to sink in.
"I see," Margret replied as her eyebrows knitted together in pensive thought.
"However, she didn't die. I walked in on the scene before the killer could finish and she was rushed to the hospital. She was nearly nine months pregnant and lost too much oxygen. The attack left her in a coma."
"I see; and her baby?" Margret asked, worried.
"Alive and well." Audra smiled.
"Good." Margret stood as if the story of her twin placed the weight of the world on her shoulders. "Thank you for taking the time to tell me about her, Agent Wheeler."
"You're welcome, Margret."
"Should I be worried?"
Margret's keen eyes bored into Audra in a way that said vague, noncommittal answers would not be enough.
"There is a good chance that you could be in danger," she said. "The best advice I can give you is to not sleep alone. If you have friends…" Audra trailed off when Ethan Cole came to mind.
"Right," Margret said. "I should go. Thank goodness it's Saturday, I can sleep in. We'll still be seeing you at dinner?"
"Yes, with bells on," Audra confirmed.
"Good. I usually get my hair and nails done at Sassy's," she offered and nodded towards Audra's late night get up and opened the door. "She does good work."
Audra gave her a nod and tight smile as she left, closing the door behind her. Putting on the deadbolt before falling back in the bed Audra looked out the window. Daylight was beginning to peek through so she set her alarm for late morning and peeled her clothes off, dropping the short black wig on top of the pile, before getting under the covers and falling asleep.
She didn't have to wait for the alarm to wake her up as the hotel phone rang nearly an hour ahead of it. Audra groped for the phone. Thinking it was one of the team she allowed her half sleep grogginess to come through.
"Yeah?"
"Agent Wheeler?" a man with a slight Hindi accent asked.
Audra popped up. "Yes," she said as if she'd been up for hours.
"My name is Raj Kapure."
Audra nodded and then realized he couldn't see her. "Yes, Mr. Kapure. How may I help you?"
"I saw on the news, about Abigail Stevens," he began. "I needed to talk to someone and see if it was true. Has she been dead for twenty-five years?" His voice broke under the strain of saying those words.
"Yes, Mr. Kapure, that is true," Audra confirmed. "What was your relationship to Ms. Stevens?"
"I am certain that you know I am her first husband," he chided, annoyed.
"What happened between the two of you Mr. Kapure?"
"Not on the phone," he said quickly. "I need to tie up a few things overseas and then come pay my very late respects to her next of kin."
"I see," Audra said. "You have to leave the country, Mr. Kapure?"
There was a long pause.
"Will that be a problem for me, Agent Wheeler?"
"It could be," she said. "Maybe you can stop in to pay your respects first, and then handle your business."
"I understand," he said as if he truly did. "I will do what I can from my office. The US businesses are closed on weekends, so that will mean I won't be able to fly down until Monday evening or Tuesday morning."
"I understand, Mr. Kapure, I look forward to speaking with you in person."
As Audra hung up and leapt out of bed to get in the shower she reasoned that killers never contacted law enforcement under any circumstances. She recalled the heaviness in his voice when he asked about the time of her death being nearly twenty-five years.
She scrubbed everywhere, and came out of the shower redder than usual. She re-entered the room to find that it smelled faintly of the booze and cigarettes from The Scoop's atmosphere. She zeroed in on her clothes from the night before, as well as her sheets and pillowcases that were stained with makeup, quickly shoving the clothes and wig into a bag and placing it outside her room. Then she picked up the phone and called the receptionist.
"How may I help you, Agent Wheeler?" the chipper Saturday morning clerk asked.
"Yes, I'll be gone for the day and would like my room cleaned, a fresh supply of towels and washcloths, and the sheets from the bed changed."
"Yes, ma'am. I'll have housekeeping come by late afternoon."
Audra opened her dresser drawer to the new clothes she'd purchased the day before. She pulled out a pair of jeans and a blue sleeveless t-shirt and dressed quickly before picking up the album and letters from Renee Stevens and going down the hall to the command post.
When she walked inside she was floored by the suite's transformation into wall-to-wall computers and a central table plastered with maps, pinned down in locations with names and dates flagged on them and strings tying them together. She wondered how long she had been asleep, and how long it took them to complete all of this. She took note of four new FBI staffers, one being a young man that was obviously fielding calls from the public.
"No ma'am, no reward has been offered yet, however if you have any viable information I'm sure we can make some arrangements," the young agent said politely. "Hello?" The agent rolled his eyes, hung up the line, and answered another waiting caller whom Audra heard was calling from Kansas. The agent rolled his eyes again, but remained calm and professional.
Audra shook her head. This is what it meant when an FBI case went viral on the Internet and the public had a phone number to call. She spotted Cordero seated to the side of another new agent, a middle-aged woman, at a computer that seemed to display a bird's eye view of the entire town of Specter. He motioned Audra over but remained focused on what the woman was saying.
"Okay, so this program links to a special feature in the satellite system we have directly over the town of Specter. You see the yellow blots?"
"Yes," Cordero said.
"That would be the normal energy signature of a living human being, like you or me. If I zero in on the B&B," she did so and then Audra watched as yellow blips over the B&B stayed mostly stationary while a few traveled around. "We only see yellow blips here because we put up four more specter shields, covering the entire property."
She pulled the image up and took it down again over the cemetery where Audra took note of a speckling of pale green dots that seemed to be congregating in a tomb.
"Those green dots are the energy signatures we get from specters that are in some stage of manifestation," the agent supplied.
"Whose tomb is that?" Audra asked and the agent shrugged.
"We'd have to go on site to find out." The agent looked to Audra and Cordero as if that were the last thing she wanted to do.
"I'll check it out before we head to dinner," Audra volunteered.
"Right, you're having dinner at the haunted mansion." The agent pulled the satellite image back again and zeroed in on the Shelley mansion.
Audra was surprised to find that there was nearly five times the number of specters as there were people.
"Wow," she commented and made a mental note not to forget her specter shield.
"Who are you taking to the dinner with you?" Cordero asked.
"Oh, I might just go stag," Audra said and Cordero shook his head.
"Yolanda is taking Kane, you go with Neil."
"Right."
"And I don't want either of you going into that cemetery alone. Just drive in and get the name on the tomb, then drive out."
"Yes, sir," Audra agreed. "I got a call from Kapure this morning."
Cordero turned to give her his undivided attention.
"He sounded as if he had no idea that Abigail was dead."
"After twenty-five years?" Cordero looked doubtful. "What more did he tell you?"
"Not much. He didn't want to talk on the phone, said he needed to go overseas for business and then he would fly down here."
"How did you respond?"
"I insinuated that leaving the country at this point might be a problem for him."
"Good job." Cordero looked proud of her.
"He said he would stop by here first either Monday or Tuesday," she finished.
"Wonderful." He pointed to the photo albums and shoebox in her arms. "What is that?"
"Renee Stevens gave us some old photos and letters to look through for clues. I brought them by to see if we could divide and conquer."
"Leave them on that table there. I'll delegate them to some of the new arrivals. You should probably get your hair and makeup done or something. I'll tell Neil and Kane to be ready by five-thirty."
Audra left the photo albums and letters on the table, nearly giddy that she wouldn't have to go through them alone. She went to Yolanda's room and the young woman opened the door in electric curlers and a mud mask.
"Really?" Audra asked.
"I come prepared," Yolanda said. "You want me to set your hair?"
"Sure." Audra said, stepping into a pantyhose war zone. Audra saw that Yolanda may be able to keep it together on the outside, but her room indicated that the last thing she thought about was being neat and organized.
"Sorry for the mess," Yolanda said without an ounce of sympathy in her voice. "I know it's somewhat jarring but it is actually a form of therapy for me. I have a tendency to be a little OCD about some things; it comes with the borderline personality thing, especially since splitting with Billy. My therapist told me that I should allow myself to be messy, and stay messy, in at least one nonessential area of my life. So, I chose my clothes."
"Does Joshua know about this?" Audra joked.
"He keeps offering to tidy up for me." Yolanda smiled. "What man do you know that actually uses the phrase tidy up?"
Audra shook her head. "So, you were a stylist in a former life?"
"I used to like to do hair," Yolanda admitted. "There wasn't much to do growing up so some friends and I would spend Saturday nights doing each other's hair for church on Sunday. I picked up a few things."
"Nice. So how long will it take you to fix me up?"
"I can set your hair and put a net over it. We can send the boys to pick up our dresses and order in."
"Sounds like a plan," Audra said, kicking a path through the clothes to the bed and plopping down.
When their dresses arrived Audra and Yolanda were still in mud masks waiting for their fresh coat of nail polish to dry.
"Did you ever think about being an actress or a model?" Audra asked.
"I don't have the right look for today," Yolanda said. "I'm way too plain for modeling and I don't have the bone structure that cameras love. If you weren't FBI what would you do?"
"I don't know. Ethan offered to higher me as his deputy."
"Smooth talker," Yolanda said with a cross-eyed smile that tickled Audra.
"That was before I found out he and Margret had a thing."
"Margret?" Yolanda questioned.
"The hospital administrator. Kendra's twin."
"Right." Yolanda thought about that for a moment. "Oh."
"Exactly."
"What are you going to do?"
"Close this case and head back to New York. Cordero hasn't fired me yet."
"Yet," Yolanda repeated with another cross-eyed smile and Audra laughed out loud.
Audra took her dress back to her room to shower and change. She was glad to see that the housekeeping staff had seen to her room. A vase of roses also sat on the table. She went to them and plucked the card out.
I'll never send you flowers to say I'm sorry. But, I'll always send you flowers to remind you that I love you. – Ethan.
"One point for Sheriff Cole," she said to herself.
Audra smiled as she brought her nose to the bouquet and inhaled. She felt a little bad that she had not made Ethan her plus one for dinner with the Shelleys, but she knew it was a bad idea to mix the current tension she and Ethan had with the elements of the ongoing investigation. Plus, Margret would be there.
When she emerged from the shower and primped with makeup and accessories borrowed from Yolanda, she slipped into her gown and took in her reflection.
The dress was white silk trimmed with lace. It fit snug over her bust and flowed loosely over her abdomen, hips, and legs to the floor. Yolanda had set her hair in a tight French twist with spiral curls at the top that fell to the left. She pulled out a pale pair of heels and slipped them on. She smiled sweetly and tried to channel the persona of a modern day Southern lady as she picked up her matching shawl.
She was ready to step into the hallway when a knock came on the door. As she opened it she threw her attempts at pretense aside when she saw the charming figure Yolanda cut in her antique rose gown, draped on Joshua's arm. He and Eric were in suits and ties.
"We are the luckiest men in the FBI," Eric commented as he offered Audra an arm. She took a moment to think about it as his electric blue eyes did have the honest look of admiration in them.
"Best to play the part from start to finish," he suggested.
Audra nodded her agreement and took his arm.