So Sweet a Changeling: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 6)

Chapter Twenty-Six: Rachel, Thursday

When Al climbed into the Versa, he looked pale.

"Are you okay?" Rachel asked, seeing him in the rear view mirror.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," he said dully, as if he were thinking of something else.

Lauren turned around in the driver's seat and looked at him. She hadn't pulled away yet from Hamilton Street, where they always picked him up and dropped him off, at the entrance to the loading bay. "You look ill," she said. "Are we going to catch something from you?"

"No, I'm not ill," he said. "I just... okay, something happened today."

"Oh, shit, you didn't get in trouble with HR, did you?" Rachel asked, looking pointedly at Lauren, who squirmed.

"No, but, funny enough, that woman with whom I had that encounter on Monday?"

"Yeah, the one named Sadie?" Lauren said.

He nodded. "I saw her again. She didn't mention anything about Monday, though."

"Who the hell is this woman, and why is she talking to you?" Rachel asked in annoyance. "You have enough women talking to you."

"You don't think it's weird that her name is Sadie?" Lauren asked.

"Lots of women are named Sadie. The name hasn't gone out of style."

Al drew something from his pocket and unfolded it. He handed it to Rachel and said, "I found out a bit more about Sadie T. Diamond's disappearance. That article there, written in 1991, talks about what she would look like twenty years after she disappeared."

Rachel looked at the drawing of the girl at thirty-three as Lauren said, "That was some great detective work from Marjorie, finding the original article." 

"I know," Rachel said. When Rachel told her the news earlier in the afternoon, Lauren had nearly done a spit take with her coffee. "She had to go back into Mrs. Anderson's memoir to even confirm the name. Did the authorities who released this drawing really think she'd be wearing glasses?" she asked, tapping the paper.

"It's a safe bet," Lauren said, "if she was wearing them at thirteen."

"What about contacts?"

Al stared at them silently for a moment, not contributing to the conversation, and Rachel was chilled by it. "What?" she asked.

He said, "The woman I talked to looks a lot like the woman in that drawing."

Rachel looked at Lauren, who stared at Al with her mouth open. She turned to Al and said, "What? Come on. You're not implying what I think you are, are you?"

"You said her name was Sadie," Lauren breathed.

"Well, about that," Al said. "She was wearing someone else's badge. The only Sadie in our system is Sadie McGee, and this woman had her badge. She looks nothing like Sadie McGee, but the picture's small enough that you wouldn't notice the difference unless you looked really closely."

"And how were you close enough to see the difference?" Rachel asked, feeling irrationally jealous of this stranger, and jealous of Al for being the only one to see her.

"She showed it to me," he said, miming holding it out on a lanyard. "It was like she wanted me to see it was someone else's badge."

"This woman is wandering around VPL with someone else's badge?!" Lauren exclaimed. "She's trespassing! I have to warn my guards! They have to keep an eye out for her!"

"I should have said something earlier, maybe called Security," Al said regretfully, "but I was just too spooked."

"Guys, could you sit tight while I go into the library security office?" she asked as she opened her door. "This should only take a few minutes. You said the staff badge belonged to Sadie McGee?"