Our phones buzzed before I had a chance to respond. It was from Officer Gomez.
RAN LETTER FOR PRINTS. MATCHES ONE OF THE USERNAMES, BUT HE HAS SOLID ALIBI. DON’T THINK THERE’S ANYTHING THERE. SORRY, GUYS.
Joe groaned. “Okay, now that’s really it. No more leads.”
I stood up, carefully folding the photo and putting it back in my pocket. “We will find her,” I insisted. “In fact . . .
“I think I know where Harper is.”
13
ANSWERS
JOE
JOE, DEAR, DID YOU WANT another doughnut?”
Harper’s aunt Patty held out a near-empty box from her perch on the end of the bench.
“Uh, no thanks,” I said, adjusting my binoculars.
“How about you, Officer McGill?” Patty asked.
“No thanks,” he said. “I’m good with coffee.”
The three of us were packed—along with Frank, Jones, and Officer Gomez—onto a wooden bench on the Atlantic City boardwalk. It was cold, being only a few minutes before ten on a March morning, but at least we had hot coffee and doughnuts that Frank, Jones, and I had picked up on the drive from Bayport.
“Won’t you give me a hint?” Officer Gomez asked us. “I’ve always been the nice one to you boys, remember.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m not so sure about that.”
She frowned. “Well, I am genuinely nicer. Usually.” She gave me an appealing look. “Come on, tell me what we’re doing here.”
Frank cleared his throat from Gomez’s other side. “That will all be clear very soon,” he said.
McGill looked up and down the line of us on the bench. “Obviously we’re all people connected to Harper and her case,” he said impatiently.
“Yup,” said Frank, taking a sip of his coffee.
McGill fiddled with the lid on his own coffee, getting more and more frustrated. “You’re seriously not going to tell us?!”
Frank glanced at me and shook his head. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Officer McGill was pretty annoyed Frank wasn’t telling them what he’d figured out. Now he sipped his coffee and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like games. And I don’t have all morning.”
It was definitely risky not to inform the police of our theory, and the officers certainly could have made us tell them our plans. But it seemed we had earned their respect on this case. Or they were worried about what we’d say about our interrogation—it’s not usually a good idea to question minors without a guardian present. Whatever the reason, they were following our lead. Not that they were happy about it.
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to wait much longer,” I assured them.
We looked around the boardwalk, from the just-opened arcade plus gift shop, to a saltwater taffy shop (a different one from Fiorelli’s, and I made a mental note to check it out later), to a line of cheesy “boardwalk games,” where you could win a huge stuffed animal. Farther down the boardwalk, the casinos were lined up, one after another, and an amusement park, still closed for the season, jutted out into a pier.
There weren’t many boardwalk revelers around at this hour. Just a few joggers and a couple of people with metal detectors, wandering the beach.
Officer Gomez pointed to the white building that rose above the arcade/gift shop. “You guys keep looking up at this place,” he said. “Is that something?”
I followed his eyes up the side of the white-painted building. A few small balconies jutted out from the wall. At the very top, an old-fashioned metal sign proclaimed the building THE SANDPIPER APARTMENTS.
“It most certainly is something,” I replied.
Frank pulled out his phone and checked it, prompting me to look at mine. It was exactly 9:59. He and I nodded at each other.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Frank, “I’d like to direct everyone’s attention to a trash can across the boardwalk.”
Everyone looked. “Which one?” Officer McGill demanded.
I pointed. “The one in front of the saltwater taffy shop just to the left of the Sandpiper apartment complex.”
Everyone turned to face that garbage can. At the moment, absolutely nothing was happening.
McGill groaned. “Are you seriousl—”
“Shhhhh,” I hissed.
Because right at that moment, a hunched, slight figure was pushing open the front door of the Sandpiper. A baseball cap was pulled low over their head, and a baggy hoodie and sweats covered most of their body. The figure walked outside and slowly moved over to the trash can we were all watching, looked around furtively, and glanced pointedly at a corner of the arcade. Then, carefully, with shaking hands, the figure placed a wrapped plastic parcel in the trash can.
Frank cleared his throat and stood up, putting his coffee down on the bench behind him. “Hey,” he yelled, “Harper! ”
The figure looked up, seeking him out.
I gasped.
Even though her hair was shorter and dyed black, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup, I would have recognized her anywhere. “Harper!”
Frank had explained his theory to Jones and me over and over the night before. Jones had even found some really useful information online to back it all up. But it was still a shock to see Harper alive and well, just with a different look.
Jones jumped to her feet and ran toward the hooded figure. “Oh my God, Harper!” she cried, her voice tight with worry.
Frank and I quickly followed behind her.
Just then another figure emerged from the Sandpiper. It was Complainy Guy, just as we’d hoped. Eyebrows furrowed, he reached into the pocket of his denim jacket and brandished a tiny gun in Frank’s direction. . . .
But he quickly paled when he saw Detectives Gomez and McGill followed us from the bench. McGill pulled out his badge as he approached.
“Drop it,” Gomez barked.
Complainy Guy dropped his gun onto the boardwalk and put his hands up.
“And if you point out your accomplice before we find her,” Frank told him, “I bet that’ll look good for you.”
Complainy Guy scowled but pointed with one raised hand to the far wall of the Sandpiper, where a small alley led to a ramp off the boardwalk. . . .
“Come out, Geraldine. Trust me, it’s better to cooperate,” he yelled out. This must not be the first time he’s gotten into trouble with the police.
Geraldine, the UrMotel host, reluctantly emerged with her hands up. “And just what are we being arrested for?” she sneered. Officer Gomez moved behind her and ushered her closer to Officer McGill.
To everyone’s surprise, it was Harper who spoke up. “For helping me stage my own abduction and run away from all my debts.” She sighed and looked over to Patty. “I’m so sorry, Auntie.”
“Oh, honey,” Patty murmured, staring at Harper, who was looking down the line of us, biting her lip. “I’m just so relieved you’re really okay! How—” She turned around and sought out Frank. “How did you figure this out?”
“Well . . . ,” Frank began.
It was the gun that had tipped him off. Specifically, the way Von described the gun Complainy Guy had used to threaten him. Super tiny, he’d said.
That had reminded Frank of another time he and I had been threatened with a gun. It hadn’t been that long ago.
Geraldine, the UrMotel host, had pointed a gun at us when she’d found us with Matt in Harper’s room. Like the one Complainy Guy had threatened Von with, it was small. Notably small.
Which made Frank wonder: Could her gun be the same gun as Complainy Guy’s?
And if it was—if they were working together—what exactly were they trying to do?
That’s when Frank had started thinking about Harper. All the debts she’d racked up, and her tempestuous relationship with Matt, who seemed to want more from her than she could give. To put it plainly, Harper had a lot to gain from disappearing. If “Harper” was gone, then the Girl Formerly Known as Harper would get to keep all the money
she stole, avoid her online victims and collections agents, and get out of her relationship with Matt, which clearly wasn’t normal or healthy. Maybe she could even use that money—some of it, anyway—to start a new life in a city, going to art school, like she’d always wanted.
“But not all the money,” Frank explained now. Some of it, he went on, she used to buy Geraldine’s “help” to disappear. Because that was Geraldine’s real business—not the UrMotels, though those were a profitable side gig. Geraldine worked with Complainy Guy to stage “abductions” for guests who wanted a fresh start. No one would ever know what happened to them. She’d done it before, with the other guests Gomez and McGill had mentioned who had “disappeared” from UrMotels in the area. And she’d tried to do it for Harper.
Complainy Guy ran interference at the UrMotel—kicking out any stray guests and creating believable suspects like the ones Harper cooperatively brought into the apartment. He’d encouraged her to bring back friends she made at Comic-Con. And he got rid of Von because he came too late, and they couldn’t have anything disrupting Harper’s “abduction.” Because Geraldine owned the unit, she knew exactly where to place a plant to block the security camera.
As Frank explained, everyone stared at him, looking stunned. Even Complainy Guy and Geraldine looked shocked that we’d been able to figure it all out.
“But how did you find out for sure?” Gomez asked, gesturing at Harper. “How did you get her out here?”
Frank smiled at me. “That was Joe’s idea.”
Everyone turned to face me, and I felt a little self-conscious. “We slipped a note under the door of apartment 2G, the place where Complainy Guy was staying the night we met him. The police had called him a neighbor, so we figured he was a more permanent resident than he had claimed,” I explained. “We’d already guessed that he worked for Geraldine and was in on the whole fake abduction. He’s too big to be one of the actual abductors, so I’m guessing there two more people involved. Anyway, in the note we pretended to be one of the guys Harper owed money to, and we said we’d figured out the whole disappearance act and would tell everyone the truth—unless Harper herself came out and returned our money. We even asked they meet us here, at the Sandpiper, so they would know how much we’d figured out. That’s what she was dropping in the trash can.” I looked at Geraldine. “We knew Geraldine and her muscle would be nearby, making sure it all went off without a hitch.”
“That’s pretty good detective work,” McGill murmured. He sounded, annoyingly, kind of surprised. Then there was silence for a few seconds.
Finally Patty spoke. “So you were going to disappear forever?” she asked Harper, shaking her head. “You were going to leave and never come back?”
Harper began to cry. “Aunt Patty . . . I really am sorry. It just seemed . . .”
“Easier?” Jones asked. When Harper nodded, Jones said, “According to my research, the other two people who ‘disappeared’ from Geraldine’s units were never found. No charges were ever filed. But as Detectives Gomez and McGill told us, those people had reasons to want to disappear too. But they weren’t just running from their past. They had done some pretty bad stuff and were running from the law. I just can’t believe you’d want to work with these guys.”
Officer Gomez looked at Geraldine. “Do you have anything to say about that?”
Geraldine was still standing with her hands up. This time her shirt had a rhinestoned pineapple on it. Her jaw was set, and she didn’t look sorry. She just shook her head. Her orange-tinted hair didn’t move.
Gomez sighed. “All right,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of time to discuss this back at the station.”
McGill gestured to Complainy Guy to follow him to the unmarked police car they had parked close by. But as Gomez moved toward Geraldine, the old woman suddenly bolted down the boardwalk.
“HEY!” Gomez screamed.
“Hey!” yelled a popcorn seller whose stand Geraldine plowed into, knocking the whole thing over.
I turned to Frank. “Come on!”
McGill stayed behind with Complainy Guy, but Frank and I followed Officer Gomez as she trailed Geraldine into the arcade and paused at the entrance. The inside was dark and musty, and the loud bleeps and bloops from the machines were a little overwhelming. A guy stood at a glass display case of cheap prizes, but he goggled at Gomez, who gestured that he should get out of there. He ran out the front door without a word.
I drew up behind her. “Where did she go?”
Gomez startled and looked at me, surprised. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s so dark in here. I thought I saw her run off to the left when she came in, but I don’t know. . . .”
“We’ll split up,” I said, as Frank skidded to a stop behind me. “You take the back, by the Skee-Ball; I’ll take the right, the gift shop; Frank, you take the left, the arcade games.”
Gomez nodded. “Deal,” she said, heading to the back of the arcade.
As Frank headed toward the bleeping arcade games, I walked into the grimy, seen-better-days gift shop. It was full of shelves of dusty merchandise that had probably been there since the 1980s. I stumbled into a rack of T-shirts, which included one with Garfield saying THE ONLY THING I LOVE MORE THAN LASAGNA IS PLAYING THE SLOTS IN ATLANTIC CITY!
“Aaarrgh!” I heard Frank yell. “She popped up behind the Whac-A-Mole machine! Get her!”
As I moved toward the arcade section, I heard Gomez shout.
“Joe!” she yelled. “Look out! She’s coming your way!”
I ducked behind a shelf full of shell ashtrays and waited. Sure enough, she ran into the store area and looked around, creeping behind the personalized mugs.
I jumped out. “AHA!”
She saw me. “You’ll never get me alive!”
I was impressed: that was an awfully spunky thing for such an old lady to say. My grandma lived in a retirement home and spent her golden days playing bridge and watching game shows I didn’t know they made anymore. Geraldine ran a crime ring.
I advanced on her. Despite her spunkiness, I was bigger and stronger. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
CRASH!!! Something hit me in the side of the head and knocked me down, and I was stunned by the sounds of shells clacking together and breaking glass. I blinked, struggling to keep conscious, and stared as a large periwinkle shell painted with a neon ATLANTIC CITY 2019 swam in my vision.
She’d knocked over the tank full of hermit crabs! This woman was diabolical!
“Frank . . . ,” I moaned.
And then he was looming over me. “Get up, dude! She threw that tank at you and took off out the front door!”
“But the craaaaaabs!” I whined, pointing at Mr. Atlantic City 2019, who clicked his front claws at me.
Frank gasped. “That’s cold! We’ll help them when we’ve caught her. Come on.”
I staggered to my feet and shook my head to try to clear it. Unfortunately, that only made it hurt a lot worse. But I managed to follow Frank out of the arcade and onto the boardwalk, which seemed blindingly bright now.
I scanned the stands. “She’s not at the goldfish throw. Not at the Super Shot.”
Frank pointed. “There!”
She was running past the food stands across from the games.
“HEY!” I yelled, bolting after her. She opened the door of an enclosed lemonade stand.
Finally I was too quick for her. I reached the door and pushed it open before she could block it off with a case of lemons.
“Come on, Geraldine,” I coaxed. “You’re not making things any easier for yourself. Aren’t you in enough trouble, without resisting arrest?”
She scowled. “What do you know about it?”
“I know what it’s like to get in over my head,” I said, thinking of the SATs. “I know what it’s like to get absorbed in something I shouldn’t and forget what’s really important.”
She stared at me, her gaze softening a bit. “You do, huh?”
I nodded. “B
ut it’s never too late, you know,” I said. “You could start cooperating. I can go back and do my SAT practice tests.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I shook my head, moving even closer. She was backed up against the rear wall of the stand, and I was just a couple of feet away. I just had to reach out and grab her, and this would be over. “The point is, we can both turn things around!”
“BANZAI!”
Whack!
Something hit me square in the cheekbone, and I shrieked, grabbing at my face.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
One caught me on the ear. One hit my chest. It was lemons! Geraldine was now throwing lemons at me from a basket full of them!
Squish!
And some of them were rotten!
Where is the stand employee for all this? Are they hiding in here?
But I didn’t have time to give it too much thought. Geraldine had thrown me off my game enough to slip past me and run out of the stand. Frank raised his arms as I emerged, sticky with lemon juice. “Dude, who is this lady? She slipped by me too. I barely even saw her!”
I could only shrug in response.
Frank pointed behind him. “She’s down at the next line of stores.”
Without further ado, we ran after her.
Gomez was already there, standing in front of the first store, a closed ice cream shop.
“Do we know where she is?” Frank asked her, panting.
Gomez shook her head. “She’s slippery,” she said. “Amazingly so, for her age.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered, rubbing my cheek. I looked at the stores. Only two were open: a swimsuit shop, and yet another saltwater taffy place.
“I’ll take the bathing suits,” Frank said, nodding at me.
I took a deep breath. Yes. All was as it should be. “I’ll take the taffy.”
“Whoever finds her, flush her out, and I’ll be waiting here,” said Gomez.
I walked into the saltwater taffy shop.
Inside, there were a few tall displays of boxes of taffy in different designs. One Atlantic City theme, one general beach theme, one “thank you” theme . . . They were all arranged around a large machine in the middle that mixed and pulled the taffy. It was running, and full of thick, gooey, delicious-looking taffy.
The Disappearance Page 10