by Rebecca Rane
“I’ll be careful, don’t worry.”
“You sound like one of my kids. I always worry. It’s my official job.”
“You’re retired, and besides, your job is now to grow kick-ass tomatoes.”
“Yes, those are my two specialties. Still, keep your head on a swivel, kiddo. And you have another call to make, don’t ya?”
“I do.”
Josh.
Kendra called Josh’s number, and there was no answer.
She wanted him to know. If the account was Margie’s account, she likely received a notice that there was a match too. Kendra wondered about calling Margie.
But it really didn’t have a thing to do with Margie. Her part in this was the same as it was when Kendra entered the picture. Josh’s actual family tree had nothing to do with Margie’s. But because Margie had entered Josh as her son, they’d gotten the alert of a match somewhere else.
Kendra tried Josh three times on the way to the address that Meriwether had given her. Finally, she left a message.
“I think I have a match for you, Josh. I’m going to talk to her. I’m going to see what she has to say. I know this has been emotionally draining and disappointing, but maybe you will get some closure after all. This time, maybe it’s better that you wait. Talk to you soon.”
Kendra figured if Sherilyn Marie Inkster was open, that would be great. Kendra would help Josh arrange a meeting. If she wasn’t, well, better for Kendra to get the rejection instead of Josh. He’d already been through the wringer with the disappointment about Margie.
He’d come to her to find his mother, to reunite with her. If nothing else, maybe this was something she could do for him.
She arrived at Moonset Apartments by mid-morning.
They were set up like a motor court. Each unit had a door to the outside with parking along with the interior courtyards.
Kendra found unit G-8 and parked in front.
What was she going to say? I know your son?
It was nearly as bad as the phone call with Margie.
She double-checked her bag. Her tape recorder, her phone, her mace; it was all in place. Kendra had no idea what she was about to find inside unit G-8.
She knocked on the door, gently at first, and she waited.
A frail-looking woman opened the door a crack and sized Kendra up from behind the chain lock.
“If you’re an Avon Lady, I’m all set.”
Kendra wasn’t even sure what that meant. She plowed ahead.
“My name is Kendra Dillon. I’m here because I know your son.”
“I don’t have a son.”
Kendra didn’t know the best order to unfurl the information she had. The words came out in a tumble.
“Ma’am. I’m actually a reporter. And a man named Josh Wagy is a DNA match with you. The probability that he’s your son is over 99 percent, according to the DNA test. I’m here to ask you about it to find out. He believed someone else was his mother. Actually, he believed a lot of things.”
Kendra waited for all she’d just dumped out to settle.
“Wagy?”
“Yes.”
“Is the boy okay, Josh?”
“He’s confused, he’s trying to figure out who he is, and well, maybe someday meet you.”
Sherilyn Marie stepped back, closed the door, and she heard rustling as the door opened again.
“But he’s like not a criminal, or a drug addict, or in prison?” Sherilyn Marie asked Kendra.
“No, he’s a very sweet young man, just trying to figure out who he really is, Ms. Inkster,” Kendra said.
“Sherry, call me Sherry. Come in. Ignore the…”
Kendra guessed she was about to say mess, but the woman gave up on the apology. The place was sparse, with no pictures on the wall, a TV tray in front of a small set on a dresser. Sherry shuffled slowly to a couch that looked older than she was, she sat down, and her slight frame was nearly swallowed up by the loose cushions. She dragged an oxygen tank with her and positioned it at her knee.
“Can I record this for the podcast?”
“I guess?” The woman looked past Kendra, toward the window, and then back. Kendra wasn’t sure if she understood what a podcast was.
“You had a baby in 2000 or so?”
“Actually, it was, uh, 1998? He was small, I remember that. Is he still?”
“Yes.”
“You have to understand, I was, uh, well I had problems then, a lot.”
Kendra knew from the sheriff that this was true. Sherry’s life was all problems.
“How did you know Tim Wagy?”
“His name was Tim Garfield then, but yeah, we both were doing janitorial, for a service. I got fired. But yeah, we were both working this office building in Sandusky when we met.” That tracked with what Kendra knew about Tim Wagy, that he was a retired custodial worker. But he’d changed his name? Kendra had no idea about that, and it gave her a chill up her spine. Why would he change his name?
“So, I did what I could then, you know, to pay for my habits. I got pregnant, no way in hell to take care of it, and Tim had money.”
“He was rich?”
“Uh, he had five thousand dollars, so yeah, very.”
Kendra realized that Sherry lived in a world of pain and poverty. A world where five-thousand dollars was life-changing.
“When did you, uh, when did you turn the child over?”
“Well, he was supposed to be out of diapers. But kept messing up. What is that? Four?”
Kendra didn’t know when diapers were over, in the life of a toddler, though by four, she knew most kids were at least old enough for pre-school.
“Did you stay in touch?”
“You know, we ran into each other one more time when I was working the Dunes Resort. You know the one by Sand Point? Anyway, I wanted to see the kid, make sure he was okay. But Tim was a real prick about it. Said no.”
“The Dunes Resort,” Kendra tried not to show a reaction to that information and continued the interview. “What did you do for the hotel, still cleaning?”
“Ha, no, I was there for a visit, shall we say? The cleaning service let me go a few years earlier. Said I stole from a job, please.” Sherry rolled her eyes like it was beyond the pale to suggest she’d stolen anything. Though Kendra knew her police record said otherwise. “I was at the hotel on other business. Tim was still cleaning though.”
Sherry gave Kendra a pointed look that left no doubt what she was doing at the hotel if she wasn’t cleaning it.
“When was that, what year?”
“Ha, they all run together, but you know, it was 2005, maybe.”
Sherry dropped the dates like it was no big deal. But it was everything. There was all of a sudden, a person connected to Josh in the region of Sand Point the year that Ethan disappeared.
“Did you see your son?”
Sherry swallowed hard and then seemed to increase her reliance on the oxygen flowing into her nose from the tank. She coughed for a long spell. Kendra waited, wondering if she should get Sherry water. But then the woman’s breathing seemed to stabilize.
“I saw him in the car, waiting. I went up to it, knocked on the window, and he was afraid. He jumped and scootched back. That was the last time,” Sherry said.
Kendra imagined how scared Josh would have been for a strange adult to startle him like that.
Kendra’s mind raced. She had a key. This had to be the key.
She’d also been here before though, thinking she had something big, only to be completely wrong.
What would law enforcement need from Sherry to connect her to the Ethan story?
The DNA was clear. Josh was her son, and Josh was adopted by Tim Wagy.
Certainly, Sherry didn’t keep records of where she was fifteen years ago. From the look of the place, she barely kept food in the refrigerator, much less an accounting of her whereabouts over the decades.
“Did you know that a boy was abducted from Sand Point, around that time
, similar age as Josh?”
Kendra was on the edge of a breakthrough. There was a connection between Josh and Ethan for the first time.
“I guess. I mean, I don’t really watch much news and never got the newspaper,” Sherry said.
“It was a big deal, like Madalyn McCann.”
“Is that John McCain’s wife or something?” Sherry asked.
“No, another missing child, a little British girl.”
“Oh, wait, I seen that on Extra. Would that be right?”
“Yes, but you don’t know anything about Ethan Peltz?”
“No, never heard of him.”
“Your son, Josh, he thought he was Ethan.”
“Any money in it?” Sherry said.
“Uh, no, no money. Just closure,” Kendra said, though the word closure seemed weak and useless. She needed more concrete facts to put Tim Wagy in the same place as Ethan Peltz. “Can you give me exact dates?”
It was one thing to know Wagy was in Sand Point, but she needed to pinpoint it, nail it down for the police to have any hope of doing more.
But it was a question too far, a truth too dangerous, and Sherry had been burned by life, maybe the law, men—probably all of it. She pulled back, and it was clear her guard was coming up.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with any kidnapping, and I don’t know this Ethan or really Josh. Someone from out there called the cops. They actually busted me for solicitation at Sand Point. Ha. I was the one being victimized.”
Kendra made a note that could be the date corroboration she needed. If Sherry’s arrest was near the beginning of July 2005, that would be something concrete or at least something she could check.
“I don’t think you did anything wrong. It’s just that finding out Josh’s adopted dad, Tim, was around Sand Point in summer of 2005, well, it could be big.”
“Maybe I got that wrong. My memory is bad.” She leveled Kendra a gaze that was the same as shutting the door in her face.
“I wonder if you’d want to meet Josh? He really wants to find out about you, about his biological family.”
“He doesn’t have one. You need to leave. I gave him up because I’m a junkie, got it? Best thing for him.”
Sherry’s life was a wreck and likely always had been. Kendra couldn’t imagine the woman in front of her packing a lunch or signing a permission slip. All the things that, by all accounts, Tim Wagy did just fine for Josh.
“He’s going to want to visit.”
“I’d warn him against it. I won’t be answering the do—” A fit of coughing clipped the end of her sentence. She was protecting herself. That was the only instinct she had.
Kendra could see that Sherry’s window of giving out information was closed. Kendra had played it wrong. She’d shown her cards in her reaction to the connection to Sand Point.
The coughing got louder.
“Thank you for your time, and well, if you change your mind, I know Josh wants to meet you. Let me at least give him your number.”
“Like I said, I won’t answer.”
Kendra left the apartment, and though she had a new lead, she wasn’t at all sure how to follow it.
Chapter 36
Kendra rehashed the interview with Sherry.
What did it mean? Lies, that was the first thing. Tim Wagy had lied about how he adopted Josh. He’d essentially bought Josh from that awful woman.
And it had all happened in the shadow of Sand Point.
This was the other piece she’d been looking for. It was looking terrible for Tim Wagy from Kendra’s point of view.
She played the interview for Shoop after she got back to the office.
“Get out! That’s great… or terrible. I’m not sure which.”
“I know. What do we do next?”
“Do we have an episode?” Shoop asked her.
“We’ve connected a body to the old address of the charter school and we’ve connected Wagy to Sand Point. That’s not a witness to a crime, but it’s a heck of a lot of a coincidence to be a coincidence.”
“Let’s put it in the form of a question instead of a revelation.”
“Okay, and we need answers from the Wagys. Honestly, Tim lied. Huge lies.”
They both stared at their fancy whiteboard with the clues and questions they’d uncovered.
Kendra’s phone buzzed, and it interrupted the focus of their concentration. Kendra jumped in her chair.
“It’s Tim,” she said to Shoop. Shoop’s eyes widened.
Kendra wasn’t sure how to play it, and so she answered and hoped it would come to her.
“Tim, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. There’s a major development.”
“I’ve been dealing with some things, with Josh.”
“What things?”
“I’m worried about him. He’s not home. He’s not answering his phone.”
Kendra didn’t know how to process that information when she had information of her own that Tim had to answer for.
“I talked to Sherilyn Marie Inkster today. Does that name ring any bells?”
She waited for Tim to respond. Kendra wished they were together, that she could see his reaction. The silence was hard to read.
“I saved Josh from her, from that. She was a nightmare. She barely bathed, much less remembered to feed a child.”
“But the fact is you lied to me and to Josh about how he came to you.”
“I did that to spare him. You met her? Then you know: She’s heartbreak and pain on two legs. No one needs that for a mother.”
“I won’t argue that fact. She does seem like she has a lot of problems.”
“Prison. Do you know that she’s been in and out of prison?” Tim added.
“I do, yes, but still, you lied. You worked at Sand Point,” Kendra asserted, leveling the accusations at Tim directly.
“I worked for a janitorial service. I did jobs in the museum, the schools, office buildings—everywhere in the tri-state area. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Well, I’m just worried that you’re hiding a lot more.”
Kendra’s heart was beating hard in her chest.
“Are you saying I had something to do with Ethan Peltz?”
There it was. Did Josh know about Ethan because his dad was the culprit?
Kendra stopped, retreated a beat. What she needed was this on tape.
What she needed was enough to get the police to take a look at Tim Wagy. She needed him to stay put and stay open to her and the podcast.
“I, no. No, I’m sorry, it’s just Sherry had me rattled. It is obvious you did all you could for Josh. He shouldn’t have been with that woman. He was lucky.”
Shoop cocked her head to the side as she listened to Kendra’s shift in tactics.
“Look, I’m sorry too,” Tim said finally. “It’s just I’m worried about Josh. Like I said, he’s AWOL, and I think he’s very vulnerable with all that’s happened.”
“Sure, I totally understand. I’ll keep calling him too, and we need to do a follow-up interview, so this is all easily explained and doesn’t get in the way of the story.”
“Who’s story? Ethan Peltz, or Joshua?”
“Both. When are you available tomorrow?” Kendra pushed. She needed Tim on tape for the next episode. She wanted him to give her answers, but also, she needed it on tape, or it was useless.
“I have to think about it,” Tim said.
“It’s all to help Josh, all of this,” Kendra stated, and it was true.
“Fine, come by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Great, and I’ll let you know if I hear from Josh. Do me a favor and let me know if you do?”
“Fine.”
They ended the call.
Shoop shrugged her shoulders and put her hands out.
“What in the heck is going on? That was nuts. You sounded like you were buying his crap.”
“Good, that’s what I want him to think. We need hard facts before we lay down Episode Six
, but the true parentage of Josh, the proximity, all of it points in Wagy’s direction.”
“Poor Josh.”
“That’s another thing, he’s not answering anyone’s calls or text,” said Kendra.
“We’re hot onto something now, I feel it.”
“Right. Hey, where’s the background on Josh? His school and stuff.”
Shoop grabbed the background they’d collected on Josh, from the junior high yearbook to the directory for Rising Wings back in the day, to Josh’s school pictures.
Kendra rifled through it all.
There was a picture of Tim and Josh, from some long-ago Doughnuts with Dad Day at the junior high. Tim looked younger, and it was the only photo she had of him from the past. There were all kinds of school things that Tim had shared, but they were all Josh’s things. No family photos or birthday family photos.
“Is this the earliest photo we have of Tim?” Kendra asked Shoop.
Shoop knew the files inside and out by now.
“Uh, I think so.”
Kendra slid the photo back into the file of things they’d collected on Josh’s life and put the entire pack, slim as it was, in her bag. She realized now it was her Louis Vuitton, secondhand, but she winced. Carrying a status symbol bag into the life of Sherilyn Marie Inkster had been stupid. Kendra had done a crap job of earning Sherry’s trust.
“What are you thinking?”
“Shoop, we need hard proof, or close to it. I thought of someone who might be able to help with that.”
“Okay, what do you need me to do?”
Kendra thought about how to firm up the dates and places they were uncovering.
“Tim said Josh had a caseworker. Barb or something? See if you can find out who it could have been, how that even works. If he bought Josh instead of adopted him, then he’s lying about the caseworker,” Kendra said. “Also, let’s dig up whatever we can about the janitorial services company. Confirm as much as possible about their clientele. Tim said he worked at schools, maybe Rising Wings was one of them. It could be something.”
“On it.”
“I’ll call you if I get anything new.”
“Okay, be careful. Oh, and if Art comes in, looking for our progress on Episode Six?”