Hayley Snow receives an email about a forty-five-year-old missing person’s case. She is intrigued. After discussing it with her friends, Hayley decides to meet up with the woman and find out what her story is.

The woman, Catherine, spins an interesting yarn and without much of a struggle, Hayley is roped into driving her to a few places where Catherine and her friend hung out. At one of these places, Catherine, and Hayley, stumble across the body of one of the people she used to know back in the day.

Coincidence?

Hayley - and the police - entertain the possibility it is not. Hayley contemplates whether it is possible Catherine went to the motel in the morning, killed, then returned to her hotel to be picked up by Hayley at ten, in order to have Hayley with her when she ‘found’ the body. But if Catherine had plotted this, then why did she go into the office alone and discover the body on her own. If Hayley was supposed to be her alibi, why not make sure Hayley was her alibi all the way?

Hayley decides to speak to a few people from Catherine’s past without her. To see if they tell a different story, or talk more freely. Surprisingly, they do. Very few are deterred by the bombardment of questions Hayley unleashes on them.

It irked me that Hayley was not very good at asking questions. She asks too many questions without waiting for answers and she doesn’t ask good follow up questions. When Arthur says: “But when I think back on that last night before she disappeared, I think that can’t be true.” Hayley does not jump on the opportunity to ask: So what happened that night. Rather she asks a completely unrelated question. (Later Miss Gloria mentions that “Nobody’s exactly told us what occurred that last night.” Of course not! If you don’t ask. They don’t even have to be evasive about it.)

Then Catherine herself disappears, but this does not seem to get more than an eyebrow raise.

Hayley continues her investigation, she has become intrigues by the old missing person’s case.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.