by L. T. Vargus
“Oh, its, uh, Brad.”
“Here’s the thing, Brad,” Charlie said. “I haven’t seen my aunt in ages, and I’d really love to knock her socks off by showing up on her doorstep completely unannounced.”
“Knock her socks off?” Allie repeated with a snort. “Who are you?”
Ignoring her, Charlie continued.
“I know that’s probably against the rules, but I was hoping you might make an exception just this once,” she said, trying to find a tone that registered as “cute begging.” “And as a thank you, maybe I could buy you a drink later?”
She tipped her head to the side and fluttered her eyelashes.
Brad blinked hard, his big eyes looking somewhat wet. His hand rose up to swipe at the back of his neck.
“Uh… sorry. It’s protocol, you know?”
Charlie noticed that he hadn’t denied her request outright. Maybe there was still some wiggle room here.
“And you never bend protocol? Not even for a girl trying to surprise her favorite auntie?”
This time when he tried to smile, it was more like a grimace.
“The only time we’re allowed to let people in without prior permission or calling up to the house is for deliveries. I wish I could, really. But I could get fired, and well…”
He leaned out of the booth and glanced both ways.
“Anyway, I get off work at four, so why don’t you give me your number, and we can meet up somewhere?”
“No, I’ll call you,” Charlie said, leaving him looking confused as she turned out of the drive and headed back the way she came.
THIRTY
Charlie headed back to the office, watching the buildings on the side of the road shrink back from mansions to tract homes to the clusters of trailer parks that dotted this side of Salem Island, trying to come up with a plan to get to Vivien Marley.
A chill ran down Charlie’s spine when she drove past the spot where Gloria had bled out on the sidewalk. There was still a length of police tape wrapped around one of the columns in front of the movie theater, and the ends fluttered in the breeze.
Charlie averted her gaze. She needed to stay focused. Rehashing that grisly scene for the hundredth time wasn’t going to get her closer to finding Gloria’s murderer, but talking to Vivien Marley might.
A large man walked out the front door of her office as she rolled past. He was tall and bulky, with ramrod-straight posture and shoulders like an offensive lineman. They must have gotten another walk-in client.
Charlie turned into the alley that led to the back lot. It was a good thing Frank would be able to return to work soon, because even with Paige holding things down at the office, Charlie wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep up with all the field work on her own for much longer.
She parked and let herself in through the back door.
“Was that another walk-in I just saw?” Charlie asked, but when she reached the front room, Paige wasn’t behind the desk.
“Paige?”
There was no response.
She backtracked to the back room and poked her head inside. Eyed the dining table next to the coffee machine. Empty.
“What the hell?” Charlie murmured.
Then she heard it. A muffled sound coming through the bathroom door.
“Paige?” Charlie stepped to the door and knocked. “Are you in there?”
“Is he gone?”
“Who?” Charlie asked.
The girl sniffled.
“My dad.”
And suddenly Charlie realized who she’d seen coming out of the office when she’d driven past. The dude with the upright posture. Paige’s father.
“He’s gone,” Charlie said. “It’s safe to come out now.”
A few seconds passed, and then the lock on the door clicked. Paige hiccuped as she came through the door, eyes puffy from crying.
“Tell me what happened.”
“He just came in. I was sitting here, sorting through some of the old files, like you asked, and he walked right through the front door. Said we had to talk.”
Paige’s face was bright pink and smeared with tears. Charlie handed her a box of tissues.
“I told him I had nothing to say and that he needed to leave because my boss would be back any minute.” Paige dabbed at her cheeks with the wadded-up tissue. “And you know what he did? He laughed. Said he wondered who taught me to be such an ungrateful bitch, because it sure wasn’t him.”
Paige paused to swallow, and Charlie went to get her a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Thank you,” Paige said, taking a sip. “Anyway, I realized then he couldn’t be reasoned with, so I picked up the phone and told him I was going to call the police if he didn’t leave right then. He got the meanest look on his face, the look he always gets when he’s real mad. And he ripped the phone from my hands and told me he wasn’t going anywhere. That’s when I panicked, because how can you make someone leave when they don’t want to? So I ran in here and locked myself in the bathroom.”
“Did he hurt you?” Charlie asked.
“Not this time. But I got hit with just about everything imaginable when I was a kid. Switches, belts, spoons, extension cords. And he was a believer in ‘company punishment.’”
“What’s that?” Charlie asked.
“I have three siblings. A sister and two brothers. And anytime one of us messed up, we all took the beating.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Between all the mischief the four of us could get up to, there weren’t many nights we went to bed without a sore behind. But it got worse the older we got. He started adding humiliation to the mix. When I was twelve, I was babysitting my little sister, and she got some gum stuck in her hair. I was so scared of how much trouble I’d be in if he came home to that mess that I did the only thing I could think of and cut it out with some scissors. Of course that wasn’t any less noticeable than the gum, so I ended up in trouble for that instead. After he whipped me that time, he shaved my head.”
Charlie’s mouth dropped open.
“What?”
Paige nodded.
“Spent the whole rest of the school year getting teased for being bald. Making friends was hard enough as it was, since we moved around all the time,” she said, pausing to blow her nose. “Dad was in the army.”
Charlie put a hand on Paige’s shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Paige,” she said. “That’s really awful. I can understand why you want nothing to do with him.”
“And that’s all I want.” Fresh tears sprang to Paige’s eyes. “For him to leave me alone! Why won’t he do that?”
Charlie knew the reason. She’d known many men like Paige’s father. Bullies and brutes, the whole lot of them. And the one thing they had in common was that they were only ever interested in power and control. Leaving Paige alone would be losing power over her. Giving up control. And he wouldn’t do that readily.
“Listen, if he comes back, there’s a stun gun in my bottom desk drawer. I always keep one in my bag and one in the desk,” Charlie said. “And in the meantime, I want you to give me his name and address. I’m going to make sure this stops. Right now.”
Paige flung her head from side to side.
“Oh no, Miss Winters. I don’t want to drag you into this.”
“You didn’t drag me into this. He did. No one comes into my office and threatens one of my people.”
Paige scrunched the tissue in her hand.
“But what are you going to do? He’s got a terrible temper. And he’s got friends in high places. Everyone outside the family thinks he’s some great family man.”
“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll figure something out.”
THIRTY-ONE
When Paige finally handed over her father’s information, the first thing Charlie did was call Frank to fill him in on the latest development.
“He actually came into the office?”
“Yep,” Charlie said. “Apparently we’re dealing
with someone with very little respect for the boundaries of others.”
“I’ll say,” Frank agreed. “Let me do some digging on this Henry Naughton. See what shakes loose.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Charlie said, feeling a sudden sense of relief.
Between the Carmichael case, witnessing Gloria’s gruesome death, and losing her mother’s nurse, Charlie was starting to feel the pressure. It was good to have Frank in her corner.
“How’s the case going?”
“Still having trouble tracking down the mistress. She lives in a gated section of Bridgefork Heights.”
“Ahh, yes. The high-security hideaway of the uber cake-eaters,” Frank said. “Well, you’ll need to get creative. I’ve got a whole collection of magnet decals in the office closet with fake business logos on them. Slap one of those on the side of your car, and you might just get past the gates.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Charlie said. The gate attendant had even mentioned deliveries. “Thanks, Uncle Frank.”
“No need to thank me,” he said, sighing dramatically. “Just sharing my vast wealth of knowledge.”
Charlie snorted and hung up, already hurrying across the office to the back room. She clicked on a light in the shadowy supply closet. The bare light bulb flickered and buzzed overhead as Charlie crouched down and began digging through the stacks of junk.
The ragged edge of the cardboard box dragged along her searching hand. She plucked it from the pile of supplies, plopped it on the countertop of the little kitchenette, and started flipping her way through.
The jumbo-sized magnets stared back at her. Sheening and vivid. Colorful logos of all shapes and sizes.
A magnet for a maid service caught Charlie’s eye. She pulled it out. Turned it over in her hands. It felt a little risky. If Vivien had a maid service come through on a regular basis, which seemed fairly likely, it could be a red flag for the guard in the booth.
Charlie chucked the magnet back in the pile and kept digging. A few seconds later, she stopped on a green magnet with a large pink rose and the name “Amanda’s Flowers & Gifts” in curly black lettering. A florist. That could work.
Back in the closet, she dug out the hat that matched the logo on the magnet and blew a fine layer of dust off the brim.
With the ball cap pulled down low over her brow, she didn’t look like herself. She looked younger. Blander. Totally believable as a college-aged girl with a part-time delivery job—the standard retail slave.
Staring into her own face in the mirror next to the closet, she couldn’t help but remember a book she’d read about Ted Bundy, how he’d learned to drastically alter his appearance with facial hair, styling, hats, doing things to seemingly change the proportions of his features. The subtlest change rendered him nearly unrecognizable, allowed him to elude the police for years. The media had called him a chameleon.
She turned her head back and forth in the mirror one more time. Yeah, this would work.
Upstairs in her apartment, Charlie changed into khaki pants and a white button down shirt. The rest of the outfit, combined with the hat, took her from bland to blandest. It was perfect.
She went back down to her car and affixed the magnet to the driver’s side door. It took a couple tries to get it straight, the oblong shape of the thing throwing her off at first. Just as she finally got the positioning right, her phone rang.
Before Charlie could say a word, her mother was jabbering away almost too fast to be understood.
“There’s someone here, and I don’t know what to do!”
Charlie felt her spine go rigid at the panic in Nancy’s voice.
“Someone there? What are you talking about?”
“I went down to get the mail, and this woman popped out of the bushes! Like she was waiting there for me! And she started asking me all these questions!” Nancy paused to take a breath after practically vomiting the words out. “I ran back inside, but she’s still out there. I think she’s one of those reporters. You remember how they were.”
Charlie did remember. When Allie had first gone missing, it’d been a big news story. Allie was photogenic, after all. The pretty type they loved to show photographs of and give dire reports about.
Police are asking for anyone who may have seen Allison Winters the day she disappeared to contact them. Foul play is suspected.
It had been bad enough then, but things ramped up after the foot was found on the beach. Charlie could still hear snippets of the reports in her head. That practiced tone journalists used when dispatching grisly details.
Police are not releasing any information at this time, but many are wondering if the dismembered foot belongs to Allison Winters, a Salem Island teen who has now been missing for several weeks.
News vans had camped out across the street from their house, and more than once a reporter or cameraman had dashed over to try to get a statement from one of her parents.
“Mrs. Winters! Have you heard they found a girl’s foot on the beach? Do you think it could belong to your daughter? Are you still holding out hope that she’s alive?”
Vultures. Charlie wondered why they might be hanging around again, all this time later. But they did little pieces like that all the time, didn’t they? Unsolved cases were perennial material. Evergreen. They probably loved that Allie had never been found. They could go on milking it for years. She could see the headline now: The Tragic Story of Allison Winters.
Charlie felt her panic turn to anger. She’d love to tell off one of those reporters right about now. Love to get all self-righteous on their asses.
“I’ll be right over, Mom,” Charlie said. “If anyone comes to the door before I get there, don’t answer it.”
In the car, Charlie imagined what she’d say if she did find a journalist lurking outside of her mother’s house: Planning on using our personal family tragedy to boost ratings during sweeps? You can fuck right off.
“I’ve got it,” Allie said. “You should say, ‘I eat morons like you for breakfast.’”
“What? No. That’s dumb.”
“I heard Judge Judy say it on her show once. And it totally worked, too. The guy was devastated.”
When Charlie reached her mother’s street, she noticed activity near the front of the house. There was a woman sitting in one of the deck chairs on the porch. The idea that this scavenger had ensconced herself right outside the front door renewed Charlie’s fury. She marched across the lawn, fully intending to read this bitch the riot act.
“Excuse me,” Charlie said. Her voice was loud and sharp.
The woman stood, blinking in a manner Charlie read as friendly. She really was going to eat this moron for breakfast.
“Can I ask what you think you’re doing?” she asked, climbing the porch steps.
The front door opened then, and Nancy came out.
“Charlie,” she said, almost seeming surprised to see her.
“Mom, go back inside. I’m handling this.”
“Handling what?” Nancy came out and passed the woman a rectangle of paper that looked suspiciously like a check.
Why would her mother be giving money to a reporter?
“Here you go,” Nancy said to the woman. “I’m sorry I can’t give more, but I’m on a fixed income.”
The woman beamed and waved the apology away.
“Oh no! Every little bit helps, and we appreciate it so very much. Here’s a receipt for you, since this qualifies as a tax-deductible donation.”
Charlie stood there, frozen, her anger evaporating on the spot. The woman thanked Nancy again, smiled at Charlie, and proceeded back down the walk to the street. Charlie watched her go, waiting until she was out of earshot before rounding on her mother.
“So I guess that’s who was lurking in the bushes, then? A woman collecting donations for God-knows-what?”
Turning to go back inside, Nancy said, “It was for the local Humane Society, if you must know.”
Charlie followed her mother i
nto the house, averting her gaze as she passed the bedroom she and Allie had shared. She didn’t need to look to know that everything was pretty much exactly the same as it had been the day Allie went missing. Posters still tacked in place with pushpins. Glow-in-the-dark star stickers scattered over the ceiling. Bottles of perfume and trays of makeup still spread across the top of the dresser.
“Mom, I came rushing over here because I thought you were being harassed by a reporter.”
“Oh, is that why you look so sour?” Nancy made a clucking sound with her mouth. “It was just a silly misunderstanding. My imagination ran away from me for a minute.”
“And you couldn’t call to let me know that everything was fine? I was in the middle of something.”
“Oh yeah. I guess the P.I. business must not be going so well,” Nancy said, pouring herself a glass of iced tea from the fridge.
Charlie had no idea what she was talking about. Of course, her mother had never approved of Charlie’s career choice. Charlie was supposed to “put those book smarts to good use” and “do something the family could be proud of.” But why her mother would jump to this specific conclusion, especially when business was actually quite good, was baffling.
“What are you talking about?”
With a flick of the wrist, Nancy pointed at the hat. Charlie had forgotten she was wearing the fake florist get-up.
“Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why you’d need a second job.”
“No, this is…” Charlie shook her head, realizing it would take too long to explain, and they’d gotten way off-topic. “Never mind. My point is that your phone call worried me. I ran over here thinking you needed help.”
Nancy sipped at her tea, shrugging.
“How was I supposed to know you’d overreact like this? No one asked you to drop everything and run over here, did they? I know I didn’t.”
She couldn’t believe her mother had the balls to act like Charlie was the one who’d overreacted. She threw up her hands and stomped out of the kitchen.
“I don’t have time for this,” Charlie said. “I have to go. Next time your imagination runs away, call someone else.”