The First Cut by Dianne Emley Page A

looked at the picture and said, yeah, I think that’s the one.”
    “Did he tell you who the man in the photograph was?”
    “No. Wouldn’t tell me anything. When Frankie’s gentleman friend came by, I didn’t get the idea it was a date, if you get my drift. He’d stay for a couple of hours during the day and then leave. If I was a betting woman, I’d bet he was married.”
    Mrs. Bodek squared her jaw. “I hate to talk about Frankie like this, but seeing as we don’t know what happened to her, there’s no point in keeping it to myself. If you ask me, she could have done a whole lot better.”
    I know the feeling, Vining thought.
    “Lately, Frankie was gone overnight a lot. A couple days at a time, sometimes. Could have been working. Hard to tell because her schedule changed a lot. She wasn’t one to talk much about her personal life. I like that in a person, especially a woman. Not a quality you see much anymore.”
    The condo was pleasantly but not lovingly decorated, with framed art prints on the walls and comfortable, midlevel furniture. Vining surmised her house would look the same if she didn’t have Emily.
    Vining guessed it was all about the job for Lynde. Male cops had wives and girlfriends to feather their nests and make a home. If they didn’t, it was all about partying, and no one expected more than a grimy bachelor pad. If a female cop’s job consumed her, the absence of an outside life was more obvious than it was for a man.
    Thank goodness for Emily, her anchor.
    Vining walked slowly through the small place. Whatever had happened to Lynde had not happened there. She hadn’t brought it home with her. She hadn’t opened her front door to it. The space felt empty but expectant. A life hovering on a knife edge. Running her hand over the officer’s bed pillows, Vining sensed the unsettledness in Lynde’s heart. There was trouble here. The opportunity for trouble. A crack in the armor.
    Vining knew her perceptions were useless. There was nothing in them that could help anyone find Lynde.
    She walked to a dresser and examined the bottles of fragrance on a glass round. Expensive brands. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d spritzed on cologne. She still had the bottle of Chanel No. 5 that her ex-husband Wes had given her one Valentine’s Day years ago.
    She asked Mrs. Bodek, “Can you think of any reason she’d run away? Was she happy?”
    “Happy? Who’s happy? But we don’t run away.”
    Vining looked at framed photographs on the dresser. She recognized Frank Lynde in his wedding photo and was surprised by how much hair he had. Frankie looked like her mother. All the others were current photos of Frankie with friends. Judging by the tabletop real estate devoted to family, Frankie didn’t seem close to them.
    A grammar school photo of Frankie was stuck into the mirror frame. It was a goofy bucktoothed, preadolescent photo. A whimsical outline of the beauty that Frankie would become. Vining wondered why that photograph was significant to Frankie. Maybe she came upon it while looking through old papers and spontaneously planted it on the mirror. That explanation didn’t satisfy Vining. People may not consciously be aware of the multitude of decisions they make each day, but they’re often not the result of happenstance.
    She made notes in a memo pad and took shots with her digital camera—a birthday gift from her mother and grandmother, purchased with Emily’s help.
    She thanked Mrs. Bodek and was about to leave when the old woman touched her arm.
    “Almost forgot. Week before last, I’d been out grocery shopping and came up the steps when I see this gal leaving Frankie’s place. I think, what’s this? I came right up to her and said, ‘Hi. Can I help you?’ She became very flustered. She was carrying this big handbag that was almost a suitcase. She drops it and I don’t know what all. I can tell it’s heavy. She says she’s a friend of Frankie’s from out of town and