Excerpt of Deadly Puzzles by Terry Odell

Gor­don started run­ning through the pos­si­bil­i­ties. She was
miss­ing, but was it vol­un­tary, or had she been taken by
force? Had some­one come by before the car went over the
edge, and she’d hitched a ride, bring­ing their belong­ings
with her? Had she wan­dered off, dazed and dis­ori­ented
either before or after the sec­ondary accident?

And, because he was a cop, he had to won­der if Wardell had
made every­thing up and was respon­si­ble for Roni’s dis­ap­
pear­ance. His gut said no, that Wardell couldn’t be that
good of an actor, but he wasn’t going to rule out foul
play. He fin­ished doc­u­ment­ing the inside of the vehi­cle
with­out touch­ing any­thing, then backed out and snapped more
pic­tures of the out­side. Wardell bounced up and down,
stomp­ing his feet and rub­bing his hands, but didn’t
interfere.

“You seem to know what you’re doing. You work for an insur­
ance com­pany or something?”

Gor­don put his phone away. “No, but I’ve had expe­ri­ence
with this kind of thing.”

“Oh, so you’ve been in an acci­dent yourself.”

Gor­don let Wardell think what he would. If it turned out
the man had some­thing to con­ceal, he’d be less likely to
hide it if he didn’t know Gor­don was a cop. “You could say
that.”

“So, what do we do next?” Wardell asked.

“Did you see any tracks lead­ing away from the car?” Before
you tram­pled every­thing? And did he have an ulte­rior
motive? To hide evi­dence? Had Wardell hid­den the suit­case
before he’d set off for Tran­quil­ity Val­ley? If so, why?

Too many ques­tions. Right now, they had to find Wardell’s
wife.