Abandoned

by Allison Brennan

  “Did you know my mother had me?”

  “Yes, but not because she told me.”

  Max frowned. She had no idea what Eleanor meant.

  Eleanor continued. “I heard about you when you were three from a friend who saw your mother at a resort in Florida. I have tried to reach out to Martha over the years, but she doesn’t make it easy to find her. And—I can be proud. Too proud, my James tells me. I didn’t try as hard as I should have.”

  “We moved a lot,” Max whispered.

  Take the money and run, Max thought. Withdraw her trust fund allowance on the first of every month and go someplace new.

  Where should we go now, Maxie? Maine! I’ve never been to Maine. Well, once when I was sixteen with my friend Ginger, but that was forever ago. We’ll rent a house on the beach and eat lobster every night.

  “If Martha returns, you don’t have to leave with her.”

  “She’s my mother,” Max repeated because she didn’t know what to say.

  There was something in Eleanor’s expression that Max couldn’t read. She said, “You’re my granddaughter. This will always be your home.”

  Max didn’t know what she should say. She stared at the postcard.

  “You are a Revere. You come from a strong, independent family on both sides, Maxine. It’s time for you to take your place. If Martha returns, you’ll make the right choice.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ll know.” Eleanor rose, a bit stiffly. Max got up as well and they walked inside. She was as tall as Eleanor, and felt awkward. She’d grown several inches over the last year and was gangly. All arms and legs and red hair—hair that no one else in the family had. If she didn’t have Eleanor’s eyes, she might doubt that she was her mother’s daughter.

  “My mother isn’t coming back,” Max said. She knew it when Martha left with Jimmy. Saying it out loud was both upsetting and maybe a bit cathartic. As if she’d been holding on to a secret that was now free. How could she be both happy and sad? How could she miss her mother and be happy she had a home?

  Happy? She’d never really been happy. And that was why she and Martha didn’t get along. Martha was carefree, wild, laughing, always happy. Max lived in fear of the unknown. Where they would be living, what would happen when the money ran out for the month, whether what Martha told her was the truth or another lie. A lie not designed to reassure Max, but to make her stop asking questions.

  “All right,” Eleanor said.

  “I miss her.”

  “She’s your mother. You should miss her.”

  Max bit her lip. “If she comes back and I decide I want to stay, would you make me leave with her if she wanted to take me?”

  “Make you leave?”

  Max nodded. Then remembered that Eleanor liked verbal answers. “Yes.” Her voice cracked.

  Eleanor took both of her hands into hers. Her skin was cold and thin and her hands smaller than Max’s. “You are a Revere. You are my granddaughter. You have a home here for as long as you want.”

  “What if my mother makes a scene?” Martha was very good at that.

  “If you tell me you want to stay here, I will fight for you. My daughter knows I will win. I always do.”

  She said it with such assurance and confidence that Max believed her. She believed that Eleanor would protect her. That she would give her a real home.

  “You’re cold,” Max said.

  “I feel the chill more than I did in my youth,” she said with a small, regal smile. “I’d like to take you to the school tomorrow for an interview with the principal, and then you’ll start on Monday.”

  “I didn’t say yes.”

  “You don’t want to go to school?”

  “I do, but—” How could she explain what she was thinking? What she was feeling? Everything was new, and not like the changes she had growing up with Martha.

  Eleanor looked at her. “Why are you scared?”

  “I’m not,” she said quickly.

  But she was. How had her grandmother known she was terrified? She’d never been to school, she’d never interacted with kids her own age, over and above playing in hotel pools and arcades. She’d never had a friend her own age. She’d never really had a friend ever.

  She didn’t know what to expect.

  “You are a strong girl, Maxine. I am a very good judge of character, and when you walked into my life Thanksgiving morning, I said to James, ‘She is our granddaughter.’ I hope as you adjust to living in our house that when your mother returns, you will choose to stay.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “As I said, you are strong and intelligent. You will make the right choice.”

  As it was, Martha never returned and Max never had to make the choice. She and Eleanor didn’t always agree—and they argued quite extensively as Max grew up—but Max still thought of Atherton as her home, Eleanor as her grandmother, and herself as a Revere.

  Chapter Five

  PRESENT DAY

  Late Tuesday afternoon Max reached the area on the far Eastern Shore, near Oyster Bay, where her mother’s car had been abandoned. Though the police file was thin, the map and photos helped.

  It was close to six and the light was rapidly fading. Not to mention she was on a dirt road deep in what she would call a swamp, but she supposed others might call it something else.

  There were three houses along this road, all large spreads far from one another. One was clearly farmland with extensive fields growing a crop Max couldn’t identify. The second house, which was on a point surrounded on three sides by water, had a long paved driveway. The third house was the farthest back and she could barely make out the roof. It, too, might be ag land, but again, research was her friend. Max made a note of each address. She would have to check to see who owned the property sixteen years ago. Had Martha been out here to meet someone? Or was this simply a convenient place for a killer to dump her car?

  Now that the sun was setting, it was getting chilly and Max pulled a jacket over her thin twin-set blue sweater. She slipped out of her sandals and into boots. They didn’t match her slacks, but no way would she be able to get through this rocky, damp terrain liberally dotted with prickly shrubs, not in Jimmy Choo flats.

  She figured she’d have thirty minutes tops to inspect the area before the light disappeared, and even then she was pushing it. She should return in the morning. But now that she was here, she didn’t want to leave.

  The car had been discovered north of the three properties, where the road was barely a road and clearly leading to a dead end. Had Martha gotten lost? Attempted to turn around and became stuck? Why hadn’t her body been found? Had someone killed her elsewhere and disposed of the car here, hoping no one would uncover it? Had Martha herself dumped her own car and used another car and another identity because she was in trouble? Running from Jimmy Truman? Or had she gotten involved with someone else?

  Sixteen years was a long time, especially on the Eastern Shore where the water, wind, and hurricanes could change the landscape quite substantially over the years. Max wasn’t a hundred percent positive she was in the right location, but she had to be close.

  She looked at the photos in the police file, then inspected the terrain. There were sand dunes that had changed over time, but for as far as she could see there were dunes mixed with shrubs and tall grasses. She couldn’t see the water, but she could smell the salt air and a slightly rotting fishy smell. The estuary that made up the entire eastern side of the peninsula had that same pervasive undercurrent. It was less prevalent, on the Chesapeake Bay side.

  To the east were numerous bays, inlets, and nature preserves, but if Max had read her maps correctly, no one lived out there. Some of the islands would come and go with the tides or seasons. Some could be visited during the day, some were restricted use.

  She heard no traffic, no voices, no machinery. During harvest season there would be tractors and other heavy-duty machines, but today, at dusk, only nature spoke. The birds were
few and far between, likely nesting for the night. One of the things she’d enjoyed yesterday when she walked through the small town of Cape Haven was the variety of birds everywhere. They would be even more plentiful here, another reason to visit earlier in the day.

  When she closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, she could hear the water beyond the dunes, The gentle waves of the bay. Some animals scurrying in the bushes, most likely rabbits and smaller rodents.

  Max opened her eyes and took several photos of the area. She could compare them in greater detail on her computer with the crime scene photos.

  But one thing was abundantly clear to Max. There was no logical reason for her mother to have been parked here, at the end of a dirt road.

  * * *

  By the time Max arrived back at her beach house, showered and changed, and walked to the restaurant, it was eight thirty and the dinner rush—such as it was so early in the season—was over. There were only a half-dozen occupied tables, and Max suspected they were locals more than tourists. She’d talked to the concierge at the resort—a knowledgeable older gentleman named Reginald Cruthers who’d once run a fishing trawler until an accident took his arm. He was chatty, which was good for Max because she’d learned a lot of tidbits which may or may not be valuable down the road. One fact: the resort was only a third full, though they had reservations starting early May that would bring them to near capacity by Memorial Day. Then they were booked through Labor Day, which had been a common occurrence since their renovation and expansion a decade ago.

  Max sat in the bar. They didn’t serve dinner in the bar, but she’d looked at the menu last night and she would be just as happy with their crab cakes appetizer and a glass of wine. Her wine was served almost immediately, and while she waited on the crab cakes she opened her iPad and logged into her email.

  Nothing from Rogan, but she wasn’t expecting anything new. David had told her more about what Rogan and his wife, an FBI agent, had been doing over the last few weeks and Max was surprised Rogan had any time to work on her case. She was pleasantly surprised by his professionalism—when they first met in January, she hadn’t liked him. He was arrogant and acted like a bully. Other than his good looks, she couldn’t imagine what his wife saw in him.

  As she got to know him, she realized that while she was correct in her assessment of his arrogance, he was intelligent and resourceful. He wasn’t so much a bully as protective of his wife—who didn’t need protecting, Max mused, though Agent Rogan didn’t seem to mind her husband’s he-man attitude. And the way he looked at his wife … well, Max realized that even her snap judgments could be wrong on occasion.

  An email from Ben with questions. Very straightforward and he didn’t attempt to guilt her about her prolonged trip. She answered them all, and agreed to a conference call with him and the marketing team for later in the week.

  The email from David was by far the most interesting in her in-box.

  Max—

  When Martha cleared out of her apartment, she put everything in a storage unit and paid for a year. When the unit was in default, they sold off the items. The storage facility has the same owner and I’m going to talk to them—they may remember something unusual that was sold, or there may be a record of the items.

  I talked to Miami PD. A case this old they don’t mind talking, but they couldn’t find much. I’m meeting with the retired detective who worked the case sixteen years ago. The file stated that Northampton County Sheriff’s Department was investigating a car abandoned in their jurisdiction, registered to D. Jane Sterling of Miami, Florida. They determined that she’d moved out of her apartment—though she didn’t give notice—and that there was no sign of foul play. There may be nothing here—and after all this time I’m not confident the detective will remember anything useful, if at all.

  But because I played nice with the police, they gave me a rap sheet on James Truman. He’d been arrested twice in Miami, charges dropped. Both more than ten years ago. Once for possession of narcotics, once for driving a stolen vehicle. Don’t know why they were dropped. He was wanted for questioning in a fraud investigation, however, but the warrant expired when the statute of limitations was up—again, more than ten years ago. They didn’t have his possible alias of J. J. Sterling, but feel that after all this time there isn’t anything they can do, so have no plan to reach out to neighboring jurisdictions. The retired detective may have more information.

  There is nothing on Martha Revere or D. Jane Sterling or Delia Sterling in the Miami criminal database.

  Call me tonight and let me know what you learned.

  —DK

  Max didn’t hold out hope that there would be anything left from a storage unit abandoned sixteen years ago, but if any of the belongings could be found, she put her money on her partner to locate them.

  She responded to his email that she’d call later because her crab cakes had arrived.

  She had just finished her meal and was still hungry. She ordered a second glass of wine and crab cakes to go—she was the last person in the restaurant, other than the staff. A tall, blond man with thinning hair walked in and approached her. He smiled.

  “Ms. Revere?”

  She nodded, sipped her wine, and assessed him. He dressed like many in the area—jeans, a cable-knit sweater, and loafers. He looked like he would be comfortable relaxing on a yacht or working on one.

  “I’m Brian Cooper, co-owner of Havenly. May I sit down?”

  “Of course.”

  He pulled out a chair. “I should have tracked you down when you first checked in. We get our fair share of celebrities, but they’re regulars. I don’t believe you’ve been here before.”

  “I’m hardly a celebrity.”

  He laughed. The bartender walked over with a glass of scotch for Cooper. “For us, you are. I wanted to introduce myself, thank you for choosing our resort. Extended vacation?”

  He must have looked at her record and noticed she’d reserved the cottage for the entire month of April. She didn’t know if she would be staying that long, but she wanted the option.

  “Business and pleasure.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to make the pleasure part of your stay more enjoyable, please let me know. We’re very happy to have you here with us.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  He smiled, picked up his drink, and walked over to the bartender where he gestured to the bottles and asked a question Max couldn’t hear.

  Max didn’t consider herself a celebrity, but now that her cable show had been running for more than two years, she didn’t have the anonymity she’d once had. Now people often went out of their way to either get close to her or to avoid her.

  David had run a standard background on Cooper and nothing popped up as being suspicious: no criminal record; divorced years ago, remarried; one adult son who was career military and stationed overseas; a stepdaughter in college. His second wife worked at the resort as an accountant—a local girl who was one of Cooper’s peers, so he hadn’t dumped the first wife for a younger model.

  She’d dig around a little more, but didn’t expect to find anything odd. Still, she’d do the work because there were times when she’d been wrong about human nature, or she’d misjudged someone.

  It was rare, but it did happen.

  Chapter Six

  Max had always had a version of insomnia, even when she was young. Over the years it had gone from no big deal to miserable to managable, often related to stress but not always. There were times when she could sleep six hours straight and wake up as if she’d slept twice that long; other times she lasted two hours and then was up for the rest of the night. It didn’t matter if she was in her own bed or a hotel or with a lover. The only real benefit of having a lover was that often a bout of early morning sex helped her doze off for another hour or two. She’d learned that tossing and turning was not her friend, so when she woke up whether it was 2:00 A.M. or 4:00 or 6:00, if she couldn’t fall back to sleep in a few minute
s, she would start her day.

  The clock read 5:13 A.M. Not bad, she thought. She’d slept a solid five hours and felt pretty good. Max didn’t like or dislike running, but when home in New York she often ran along the Hudson River, from her place in Greenwich Village down to Battery Park and back. It was more than four miles. The idea of a morning jog on the beach enticed her. She pulled on sweats, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker and ran down the coastline to the end of the resort property, then back and up the coastline to the inlet. All told, she jogged just under three miles. By the time she returned, her skin was cold but her blood was hot. She made coffee, showered, and felt invigorated.

  Max stood in the den and looked at her timeline while drinking her second cup of coffee. She needed a conversation with Lipsky first and foremost, and depending on how that went she might question him about Jimmy Truman and the inactive FBI investigation. She’d considered working through her contacts to get the FBI file, but decided she wanted to talk to the investigator herself once she learned his identity. If he found out that she was going around him for the information that wouldn’t bode well if she did need to talk to him.

  She read over the police report on the abandoned car in greater detail. Yesterday she’d been focused on the photos and the location; now she wanted to know what exactly had been left in the car. No purse or wallet or luggage had been found, which gave credence to the theory that the car was intentionally abandoned by the owner. There was no registration in the glove box—ownership had been determined based on Florida DMV records, according to Lipsky’s notes.

  The other personal effects were itemized:

  Receipt from gas station, Norfolk

  Women’s shoes, size 7