he got nothing anyway.
“I wasn’t aware that Miss Porter had hired a private investigator.” Cale could almost see him turn up his nose.
“She’s very concerned that the police have turned up nothing. She wants to know what happened to her sister.” He paused. “And she hopes everyone else feels the same way.”
“I want to assure you,” he said in his smooth voice, “that we are all extremely upset over the situation with Cathy. Of course we want to know what happened.”
Cale stared at the man. “I think it’s a little more than a situation. She’s disappeared without any trace at all. From what I understand, she isn’t the kind of person to do that .“
“No, no.” Fisher smoothed a hand across the immaculate blotter on the desk. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I just can’t imagine what could have happened to her.”
“And she never came into the office at all that day?” Cale wanted to grab the man by his throat and shake him out of his practiced silky veneer. He could imagine Fisher clucking over some well-heeled prospect while he finessed them out of every dime he could.
“No. As I told the police and Cathy’s sister, she was out on calls all day.”
“And she never checked in? Isn’t that unusual?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. There was nothing pending we needed to touch base on and I don’t think there was anything going on here that needed her input. She’d gone over her schedule with the staff and me the day before. If anyone had to get in touch with her, she always carried her cell.”
Despite careful probing, Cale got nothing new from the man. He called up his wolf senses to see if he could detect anything beneath the surface of Gray Fisher. He didn’t like him at all, or the scent he gave off, but that didn’t make him a liar or guilty of something. Just an unpleasant person. At least to someone like Cale .
“Sorry I couldn’t be more help.” Fisher stood up, signalling the end of the meeting.
“If you think of anything, please give us a call.” Cale handed him a Sentinels’ card.
He punched in the office number as soon as he got into his truck.
“The guy’s an asshole,” he told Brian when he came on the phone. “Unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s hiding something. I’d feel a lot better, though, if you’d do one of your ‘pull everything out of the closet’ searches to see else what we can find on him.”
“I’m on it. Who’s next on your list?”
“Jim Franklin, the guy Cathy was living with. He works for an ad agency downtown.” He looked at his watch. “Shit, the morning’s already gone. Maybe I can take this guy to lunch. Catch him off guard.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Cale heard the clicking of computer keys.
“Call me when you finish with him and I’ll see what I’ve got on Fisher by then.”
“Good. Thanks. Oh, and find out who their attorney is. He and Fisher were in a hush-hush meeting when I got there. Let’s see where he is in all this.”
“Okay. Later.”
Jim Franklin was fifteen minutes late meeting him and dropped into the chair on the other side of the table with a harried look on his face. “Sorry. It’s crazy at the office right now. We just picked up a new account that’s huge and everyone’s running around like idiots putting a campaign together.”
“I appreciate you taking the time to see me,” Cale told him.
“Are you kidding? Anything for Cathy. I’ve been worried sick about this.” He stared at Cale . “You said her sister hired you?”
Cale nodded. “She’s upset the police haven’t turned up anything at all.”
“Same here. If I’d known about you guys, I’d have come to you myself.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “But I don’t think there’s anything I can tell you.”
“Why don’t you give me what you can and let me decide?”
But Jim Franklin was right. He had nothing. He’d seen Cathy for the last time that morning when she left for