“Thank you,” I said, untangling myself when we were out of sight.
“An ex-boyfriend, I assume.”
“You read people well.”
Ben chuckled. “Mercy didn’t seem overly enthused to meet you and I got the distinct impression the feeling was mutual. And the way Royce looked at you, and then at me…it was pretty easy to put two and two together. I gather it’s a recent breakup?”
“Fairly recent, but it was more of a petering out than an actual breakup. We just never seemed to find time for one another.”
“She looked familiar.”
“She’s an actress. Mostly theater.”
“I’ve seen her in something, not that I go to a lot of plays.”
“She’s in the new Icelandic yogurt commercials.”
“That’s it. Well, if it’s any comfort, her real name probably isn’t Mercy Dellacorte. My money’s on something like Mary Dell.”
Mary Dell. The same name that I’d thought of. I might be a skeptic when it comes to psychics, but I do believe in signs. This seemed like a sign, like I should consider dating again after all. “Tell me something. Do you like vinegar on your fries?”
Ben laughed, a warm, earthy sound. “That’s an odd question, but no. I think it’s a custom that should have stayed in England. I’m strictly a salt and pepper guy, no gravy, no vinegar, and definitely no poutine.”
A man after my own heart. “In that case, I’d like to go out for a drink sometime.”
“How about now?”
We ended up at UnWired, a recently opened pub on Edward Street that strongly discouraged the use of mobile phones, tablets, and other electronic devices in favor of conversing with the ones you were with. It was not an establishment where you took a quick pic of your BFF drinking a beer to post on Instagram. Based on the effusive greetings as we walked in, everyone knowing Ben, he was a regular. Was my loser radar back after all? The last thing I needed, or wanted, was to date a guy who spent the bulk of his spare time at a bar.
I handed my jacket and phone to an apple-cheeked brunette at the coat check by the front door, received a numbered ticket for each in return, then scoped out the interior. It was Mid-century modern with a distinctly Scandinavian flair, round glass-topped coffee tables and slung-back swivel lounge chairs in vibrant shades of teal, emerald green, and violet. A brass starburst clock was the focal point behind a well-stocked teak bar, tended by a clean-shaven thirty-something man wearing a uniform of black pants, white dress shirt with silver cufflinks, and red bowtie.
“Interesting décor,” I said. “It definitely fits the tech-free directive.”
“Do you think a place like this can succeed?” Ben asked.
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. It’s an interesting concept, but we’re all connected to our phones these days. I have to admit it was difficult for me to hand mine over. It just seemed weird, you know? But I hope so. I hate to see any business fail, and Edward Street has seen its share of restaurants and bars come and go.”
Ben smiled. “I hope so, too, albeit for entirely different reasons. I own this place.”
“An IT guy who doesn’t want technology in his bar? Seems like an oxymoron.”
“I said I used to be an IT guy. Now, I’m not, a long story for another day. Let’s just say that sometimes I go for hours, even a day or two, without turning on my cell, and I avoid social media like the plague.” Ben smiled. “Now that you know I’m a slightly neurotic, fledgling pub owner, are you still interested in that drink?”
I smiled back. “Can you recommend the house white?”
“We have a nice Italian Pinot Grigio.”
“Sounds perfect.”
We switched from wine to club soda after the first glass, and talked about everything from starting a business to being raised by a single parent, in Ben’s case, by his mother. Neither of us volunteered any details on the parent who hadn’t been around. There are some things you don’t discuss on a first date, or even a second. Despite that, the evening ended far too soon, at least from my perspective.
I was back home, polar fleece PJ’s on, sipping on hot cocoa in a mug, when my cellphone buzzed. I checked the caller ID. Ben.
“Hello.”
“So you do leave your phone on,” Ben said, a chuckle in his voice.
“Guilty as charged, though true confession. I checked the caller ID.”
“I’m flattered to have gotten through your rigid security.”
“As you should be,” I said. “It’s not everyone who gets a free pass at…” I checked my watch. “Midnight. Seriously, what’s up? Beyond the fact that you can’t wait to see me again.” OMG, did I actually say that out loud?
“I’ve been thinking about Brandon Colbeck, though I’ll admit in large part it was because any information I might have would provide an excuse to see you again.”
“And the smaller part?”
“As I said earlier, I’m sure I know the name Brandon Colbeck from somewhere. I thought if you had any photos of him, it might refresh my memory. Do you have any?”
“As matter of fact, I do. I can email them to you now if you’d like. My computer is shut down, but it will only take a couple of minutes to boot up. Of course, you probably want to wait until the morning.”
“Now’s good. I won’t sleep until I know, or at least try to know,” Ben said, giving me his email address.
I turned on my computer, chatting as I did so. “There will be one jpeg and two PDFs. The photograph of him smiling was taken the summer before he left home, in 1999. He would have been nineteen at the time. The other two are age-progressed sketches drawn by a police artist.” I navigated through the various windows that popped open, found the Brandon Colbeck folder, selected the files, and hit send. “They’re on their way.”
“Got them. Give me a minute, don’t hang up okay?”
“Okay.”
“I recognize him,” Ben said, after a lengthy pause. “Not the older version of him, but the one taken in the summer of 1999. I taught a Dreamweaver course at Cedar County College, and Brandon was one of my students. It would have been the last semester of 1998, September to December. I don’t recall him being a problem. The opposite, really, most of the other students were interested in e-commerce, launching a website, or getting rich quick. Brandon was quiet, studious.”
“He’d been a straight A student until the fall of 1999, when his personality changed and his grades began to fail. You didn’t have him in any other semesters?”
“I only taught that one semester, and only that one class. I was trying to get my foot in the door, you know? Then in December 1998, I was offered a full-time job as an ethical hacker for a company that shall remain nameless, thanks to a non-disclosure agreement. Remember the Y2K bug, we thought a virus would wreak havoc on computers everywhere? It was a very lucrative time if you were in IT, everyone wanted to make sure their networks were safe. Being a white hat paid a lot more than part-time college professor.”
The new millennium. A memory of sitting around a makeshift campfire in my father’s Scarborough backyard flooded over me. The air had been cold and crisp, with the sort of clean scent that only seemed possible on a cloudless winter night. We were sipping on cocoa fortified with generous dollops of Bailey’s Irish Cream, wondering if the world as we knew it would be forever altered, the flames flickering in the darkness, warming our hearts and bodies. It had been just him and me, and I could no more imagine walking out of his life than I could imagine walking on the moon. I wondered how the Westlakes had spent New Year’s Eve that year, together or apart, and whether Brandon had been part of their celebration.
“Do you remember anything else, even things that would seem insignificant?”
“It was a long time ago, and there were fifty-plus students in that class. I don’t have any of the paperwork, not after all this time.” There was a long pause and then, “As I recall, he used to hang out with a girl, attractive, long dark hair, though I don’t t
hink they were an item. There was never any sense of intimacy between them.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“I don’t think I ever knew it. She wasn’t in my class. The only reason I remember her is because she had a large tattoo on her left calf. Unusual for 1999.”
“Do you remember what the tattoo looked like?”
“A pistol with four aces, and some words.”
“Did it say, Smith and Wesson Beats 4 Aces?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s possible.”
“I'm going to send you another photo, okay?”
“Sure.”
I found the Marketville Post promotional piece for the opening of Trust Few in 2003, the one with the photograph of a young Sam Sanchez. I was once again struck by the difference of her then, and now, her dark hair bleached blonde.
There was another long pause and then, “It might be her but like I said, the girl with Brandon had long dark hair, almost to her waist, and she was more of an adolescent than the young woman in this picture. I’m sorry, I wish I could be more help.”
“You’ve been far more help than you know.”
“Anything you want to share?”
“The girl in the photo, her name is Samantha Sanchez, Sam for short. She has a tattoo like you described, owns Trust Few Tattoo on Poplar Street. I’ve interviewed her a couple of times.”
“Let me guess,” Ben said. “She didn’t mention that she knew Brandon.”
“She admitted knowing Brandon as a client in March 2000, but I was left with the impression that he’d been a stranger before then. It would appear she deliberately led me to a false conclusion. The question is, why?”
“A valid question. I suppose you could come out and ask her.”
“I’m not sure that’s my best approach, but it’s late, and I’m tired. Too tired to think about it and sort through the possibilities.”
“In that case, I bid you good night and sweet dreams. I’m heading out of town for a few days, but I’d like to call you on Sunday, set up a time to go out. If that’s okay with you.”
“More than okay,” I said, and found myself looking forward to Sunday.
32
I expected a sleepless night but exhaustion quickly took over. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready for my meeting with Gloria Grace Pietrangelo. The drive to Barrie was uneventful, traffic on Highway 400 unusually light, and I arrived at her studio promptly at eleven o’clock. It was tucked inside the middle unit of a small strip plaza that included a pizza place, sub shop, chiropractic clinic, combination laundromat/dry cleaner, and convenience store, an unlikely location for a nature photographer.
Inside, the studio was plastered with stunning photographs. I paused to admire Birds of Prey, remembering it from my last visit. Gloria Grace had captured a blue jay fighting off a hawk, claws against talons, the abject fear in the jay’s eyes as palpable as the merciless will to kill in the eyes of the hawk. How long had she waited to get this particular shot? Definitely a woman of infinite patience, far more than I had.
I was about to ring the silver bell on the counter when Gloria Grace sauntered into the reception area. She was a woman of generous proportions in her early sixties, gray hair pulled into a ponytail, with a ruddy complexion that spoke of decades in the great outdoors. There were new lines around pale brown eyes that might have been amber in another light, and the creases around her nose and mouth were more deeply entrenched.
“Callie, it’s so good to see you again,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “It’s too early for lunch, but come on back and I’ll get us some tea and a snack. I have scones. I remember you enjoyed them the last time you were here.”
I followed her down the hall, passing a closed door labeled Office, one marked Washroom, and a stark white room with baskets of dog and cat toys, which I knew she used in her pet photography.
Unlike the front of the studio, the kitchenette’s soft green walls were devoid of any photographs or other ornamentation. A small, rectangular wooden table, painted white, was tucked against one wall. Gloria Grace gestured for me to sit in one of the two chairs, plugged in the kettle, and uncovered a plate with lemon cranberry and blueberry scones.
“I recall that your preference was blueberry,” she said, “and that you liked Earl Grey tea, just the tea, no milk or sugar.”
“You have a good memory.”
“You need a good memory to be a journalist.” She slid a manila folder off the counter and placed it in front of me. “I made photocopies of my notes, along with the articles I wrote for the Marketville Post about Brandon’s disappearance. No need to return them, I have the originals. I’ll warn you, there isn’t much there that isn’t in the paper, but call or email with any questions once you’ve gone through them.”
“Thank you.” I skimmed through the file as she bustled about getting the scones heated and the tea poured into oversized ceramic mugs, coming up with my first surprise. “You’re Jenny Lynn Simcoe.”
“Guilty as charged. The Post approached me when Jeanine Westlake requested a follow-up piece. I agreed as long as the byline wasn’t under my name, though the editor added the ‘with files from G.G. Pietrangelo’ on the first one. Being a journalist is in my past. I don’t want it to be identified with my present.”
“And yet, not only did you agree to meet with the family four years ago, you exposed the grandparent scam.”
Gloria placed plates, scones, butter, and mugs of tea on the table before slipping into her seat. “Jeanine can be very persuasive. Besides, the case has haunted me for years, and the thought of someone trying to scam Eleanor Colbeck based on information gleaned from my article infuriated me. I felt I had an obligation to try to make it right.”
Jeanine can be very persuasive. Not Lorna. Not Michael. Jeanine. Of course, it was possible that she’d merely agreed to be the family spokesperson, but what if both her parents had been less than willing participants? Not just Michael, but Lorna as well? I set the thought aside for later consideration and buttered my scone.
“I tried to find Jenny Lynn Simcoe,” I said, taking a bite and savoring the delicate blend of blueberry and sugar. “No luck, which is unusual for a journalist. In retrospect, I should have recognized your writing style. It makes me wonder what else I’ve missed.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You had no reason to think I was Jenny Lynn Simcoe, though I’m grateful to learn that my cover hasn’t been blown by one of the family. Then again, they’re a secretive lot. I reread my notes after you called, and the thing that struck me, again, was that everyone in that family seemed to be holding something back, even Jeanine. Have you learned their secrets yet?”
“Some of them.” I gave Gloria Grace a quick recap of everything I’d found out about the Colbeck-Westlake family so far—Jeanine’s misunderstanding of flash art, Michael’s use of keylogger software, Eleanor’s reminisces of a young Brandon, pre-Michael, Lorna’s admission that she’d told Brandon about his father shortly before he left home. “Lorna claims not to know the father’s true identity, but I think she’s lying, and I also think she told Brandon his name.”
“I always had the same feeling,” Gloria Grace said, “but what brings you to that conclusion?”
“Nothing scientific, I'm afraid. I just sense that she hasn’t told me everything. It could be she was aware of the keylogger business. I’ve yet to ask her. It’s better to have as much information as I can gather before going down that road. Besides, it may not even be necessary if…” I let the words dangle.
“If?” A gentle prompt, ever the journalist for all her talk about leaving the life behind.
Not “if,” I thought, but “what if?”
“Did you consider the telephone call might not have been a scam? That the man calling Eleanor might have been Brandon Colbeck?”
Gloria Grace studied me through narrowed eyes. “Do you believe it was Brandon?”
“I haven’t uncovered any evidence to lead to that conclusion,” I sa
id, knowing that I sounded evasive. But I was unwilling, and perhaps more than a little embarrassed, to admit that I’d been considering the possibility since seeing Nestor Sanchez’s flash on the Light Box website. “Unless Brandon’s remains are found or he resurfaces there’s no way to know for sure. And I’m being paid to find the ‘for sure.’ Or at least try to.”
“Have you thought about asking the family to offer a reward? They could place an ad in all the major city and national newspapers. It would be an expense but it might lead to something.”
“I thought of that but I think a reward would only encourage more scammers to come forward.” I didn’t tell Gloria Grace I’d just come up with another idea. One that almost certainly wouldn’t meet with police approval, let alone trying to persuade the family. I decided to keep my latest brainstorm to myself for the time being. It might not even be necessary to go down that path. I had more leads to follow up, more interviews to hold. But at least now I had a Plan B.
33
I left Gloria Grace’s studio with a promise to keep her posted, mulling over my plans for the rest of the afternoon and Thursday. Reading over the files she’d provided would take the rest of my day. Rather than anticipation, the thought of reading them—much of it bound to be repetitive—exhausted me. I was more interested in a long, leisurely soak in a lavender-scented bathtub with a good book and a glass of white wine.
I bribed myself for the task with a treat and stopped at my favorite Thai takeout on the way home, ordering Som Tum, a spicy green papaya salad that was to die-for, and Kai Med Ma Muang, a delicious concoction of chicken with cashews, carrots, chilies, pepper, and mushrooms.
My belly full of Thai and a glass of wine by my side, I settled in to read the files. I started with an article dated September 21, 2000. This, then, was the first media report of Brandon’s disappearance. The family hadn’t filed a missing person report until early August that year. Was waiting another six or seven weeks to get it in the local paper meaningful? I hoped that Gloria’s notes would offer some insight. I turned my attention to the article.
A Fool's Journey Page 17