I Thought It Was You – 15?
"My Cookie is missing and you had better find her!" Lisa Williamson bellowed in the suddenly too small office.
"Cookie?" Natalie echoed in the background. Evangeline's mother called her grown daughter Cookie?
"What do you mean missing?" John asked calmly.
"Cookie was supposed to call me last night, she never misses our calls. She didn't call and I called and called all night and couldn't reach her. I called her office this morning and she didn't even show up for a court date!"
Natalie backed away from John's desk slowly.
"That's not like her," John said thoughtfully.
"Of course not!" Lisa snapped. "She's missing. And given how you mistreated my baby you'd better find her and now!"
"Why don't you have a seat, Mrs. Williamson. Mrs. Vega will get you a cup of coffee?" John looked at Natalie beseechingly.
"Of course, Ma'am."
"Vega. I know that name. You're the one aren't you. That Natalie person my Cookie was always going on about. That's why you broke my baby's heart. For this one!" Lisa refused to sit down.
"I'll go get that coffee." Natalie sped out of the office. Someone else, she decided, could bring it in. She went to get her Uncle Bo and tell him what was going on.
"I am not sitting down! You need to find my baby and right now. If anything happens to her I'm holding you responsible!"
"Mrs. Williamson, you need to calm down and tell me about the last time you spoke to Evangeline. What did she tell you?"
"You better get on the telephone and put an APB out!"
Jesus. John bit back a terse response.
"I understand you are Evangeline's mother and you haven't been able to reach her? I'm Commissioner Buchanan. Bo. Why don't you come into my office and talk to me and we'll send a cop out now to check out some of her usual haunts. John, why don't you call her secretary and send someone over to talk to him."
"Of course." John looked at Natalie, who had come in the other door of his office, with a grateful look. He picked up the telephone and made some calls.
"Do you think she's in trouble?" Natalie asked when he was done.
John shrugged.
"But it's not like her to disappear is it?"
"We don't know if she disappeared, yet."
"Oh, okay. I'll, uh, be at my desk." Despite her words, Natalie lingered in front of John's desk.
"What?" he looked up at her.
"I was thinking, you know." Natalie ran a finger over John's name plate.
"Spit it out, Vega." John smiled and closed the file he had been reading.
"You don't think she engineered this to get your attention do you? I noticed, you know, in passing, that she tended to be kinda passive aggressive."
"Really. In passing?" John asked with raised brows.
"Fine. She's a sneaky, manipulative snob. Is that what you wanted me to say. Hey. Wait a minute. You know, you never told me how and when you broke up with Evangeline."
"It was at the hospital. Before I saw you. What does that have to do with anything?"
"I don't know, Lieutenant. Why don't you tell me about your last conversation with the subject."
"Come on, Natalie."
"Fine, don't tell me. But you should tell someone. It might be relevant." Natalie shot him a look before walking out of the office.
John scowled. Natalie was right. If Evangeline was missing, the possibility that she had orchestrated it, and certainly the last time she was seen would be relevant.
"Wait a minute." John stood up and walked out of his office.
"Bo, can I see you for a minute." John stuck his head into the Commissioner's office.
"There might be some news." Bo smiled politely at Evangeline's sniffling mother.
Bo walked closed the door behind him and pushed John further down the hallway.
"What's going on."
"Something Mrs. Williamson said just struck me. She said that I broke her daughter's heart. That just happened yesterday. When did she say the last time she spoke to her daughter was?"
"She said it was a few days ago and that her daughter missed their regularly scheduled Friday night call." Bo pressed his lips together. He didn't like this.
"I might have missed it, but Evangeline never mentioned a regular Friday call. Nor did she ever do it in front of me."
"Right. I'll take care of this. Keep the uniforms on this and let me know if you find her."
"Another thing, Bo. She might be having some professional problems."
"Like what?"
"Antonio said she came on to him yesterday after she and I ended things. He's a client, he was going to talk to someone about reporting her to the ethics board."
Bo clapped him on the shoulder and went back into his office.
John turned and went back to his office. He hoped Evangeline was all right, even if it meant he would owe Natalie an apology.