A Fairy Tale by Shanna Swendson Read Free Book Online

was making Tank sweat, just by looking at him. The most hardened psychopaths hadn’t been able to get to Tank like that.
    No, not a girl, Michael corrected himself. She was about four years older than Emily, as he recalled, so she was over thirty. She’d probably get carded in a bar, but no one would dare treat her like a child.
    Tanaka shifted his shoulders uncomfortably and turned to Michael. “What about you, Rev? Does this fit with what you’ve seen?”
    “Yeah.”
    Tanaka nodded. “Okay, that eliminates the usual reasons people go missing.”
    “Which means foul play, right?” Sophie asked.
    Tanaka took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead, then shot a worried glance at Michael before answering Sophie. “Let’s play it safe and investigate like it is foul play. Now, I need a physical description of your sister.”
    “She’s twenty eight, five foot nine, very slender build, has strawberry blond hair a shade redder than mine. I think she’s wearing it past her shoulders now. Her hair is a little curlier than mine. Blue eyes.” She broke her focus on Tanaka, who sighed in relief, to take a photograph out of her purse and hand it to him. “This is the most recent photo I have of her. I printed it before I left.”
    Tanaka tucked it away in his coat pocket. “Thank you, that’s helpful. Any tattoos or other distinguishing marks?”
    “No tattoos, unless she got one recently that I don’t know about. She is a dancer, though.”
    “So?”
    “It gives her some distinguishing marks.” Sophie pulled her right foot out of her shoe and extended her leg in front of her, her toes pointed. Michael would have expected a woman like her to have the kind of dainty foot that would slide easily into a glass slipper, but her foot was gnarly. Her toe joints were large and knotted, and there were calluses around her toes. The nail on her big toe was a purplish black. Two of her smaller toes were taped. “Dancers tend to have hideous feet,” Sophie said, putting her foot back in its shoe.
    Tanaka raised an eyebrow as he made a note. “I never knew you could spot a dancer by her feet.”
    “Oh, honey, ballet is brutal .”
    Tanaka flipped a page in his notebook. “When did you last talk to your sister?”
    “Last night, shortly after ten my time, which would have been eleven here. She’d just come offstage, and she called to tell me how the show went. She was about to go out with some friends from the cast. She said she’d call me later, but she didn’t, and she hasn’t answered when I’ve called her, either at home or on her cell.”
    “Did she mention the names of these friends?”
    “I’m sorry, no, but they’re in the chorus of Emma: The Musical .”
    Tanaka turned to Michael. “And what about you? When did you see her last?”
    “She came up yesterday evening before she left for the theater bring me some soup. She left Beau with me for the night and said she’d come by in the morning to walk him.”
    “She didn’t come by?”
    “No, but I didn’t notice it at the time. I was kind of out of it. I fell asleep on the sofa, and Beau woke me up this morning when he wanted to go out. I took him for a walk, then I fed him, ate something, and I fell asleep again. Next thing I knew, Sophie was knocking on the door.”
    “Did you hear Emily come home last night?”
    Michael shook his head. “Nope, but she could have had a wild party down there and I wouldn’t have noticed.”
    Tanaka consulted his notebook. “Now, Sophie, Michael said you knew Emily was missing when she didn’t show up for the matinee.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You flew to New York from—where, exactly?”
    “Maybelle, Louisiana. It’s about forty miles northeast of Shreveport.”
    “Michael called us soon after three. The matinee started at two. How could you have known to come before anyone knew she was missing?”
    Michael wanted to groan out loud. He hadn’t even registered the time incongruities.
    He