“Have you got any idea where your mother would disappear to?”
“I never asked her.”
“You never wondered?”
“I always assumed she needed to get away from Dad’s episodes of depression.”
I nodded.
Then I glanced at Julie’s laptop screen. It still showed the Facebook profile page of Kirsten Love. She was now one of Julie’s Facebook friends.
But who was she really?
Julie followed my gaze.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go talk to my mother.”
CHAPTER 4
JULIE LIVES WITH her mother in a Tiffin Phaeton motor home. It is wheelchair accessible.
Julie has taken care of her disabled mother ever since the auto accident. It was a hit-and-run. Julie was driving her mother to the grocery store when a Hummer rammed into the side of their Mini Cooper. Mother and daughter were both knocked unconscious.
Julie remained in a coma for two weeks.
It took her mother almost a full month to come out of her own coma. Her injuries were more severe. Doctors said she would never walk again.
So far they have been right. But medical breakthroughs are being made every day. There is always hope.
Soon after Julie’s hospital discharge she bought the Tiffin Phaeton. She wanted to spend time traveling with her disabled mother. Both women sold their houses and moved into the RV.
Now they travel whenever Julie gets time off from work. She is an education professor at the University of South Florida.
“Mom?” Julie said from her RV kitchen. “Are you here?”
“In my bedroom, honey,” a voice said from the back.
“What are you doing?”
“Folding laundry.”
“Rip’s here. Do you want to come say hello?”
“Is he naked?”
“No, Mother. He’s not naked.”
“Then why bother.”
“I could get naked,” I whispered to Julie.
“Don’t encourage her,” she said.
“I don’t mind. Really. It’s hot today anyway.”
“Control yourself.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Try harder.”
A door opened and Ruth appeared. She chewed and cracked her gum. She rolled her wheelchair over to the kitchen counter and scooped up a plate of cookies and held it out to me.
“Homemade,” she said. “Chocolate chip.”
I like cookies. Especially chocolate chip. But I also like to stay in shape. It is difficult to do both. Occasionally I try. This was one of those occasions.
As soon as I reached for a cookie Ruth jerked away the plate.
“Not until you show me some skin,” she said.
“How much skin?” I said.
“I’ll take what I can get.”
I smiled and undid a button on my shirt.
“Good enough,” she said, and held out the plate again.
I took a cookie and thanked her.
Julie spoke up.
“Mom, we need to talk.”
“So talk.”
“Okay. It’s about Max.”
Ruth stopped chewing her gum.
“What about Max?”
“Did you ever tell anybody that Max knew sign language?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Can you just answer the question. Please.”
“Who would I tell?”
“I don’t know.”
“No. I never told anybody.”
“Not even Dad?”
“No. What’s this all about?”
Julie opened her laptop and set it on the kitchen counter.
“I have something to show you, Mom.”
Ruth squeezed her kneecaps as she watched the video of the little hands communicating in sign language.
Julie shut her laptop again when the video had finished.
“What do you think, Mom?”
“About what?”
“The video.”
“It’s some kid using sign language. What’s he saying?”
“Did those hands look familiar to you?”
“Familiar?”
“I think they’re Max’s hands.”
Ruth squeezed her kneecaps some more.
“What do you think, Mom? Could they be Max’s hands?”
“I can’t talk right now,” Ruth said, and wheeled herself away.
CHAPTER 5
“JULIE,” I SAID, “you may want to send a Facebook message to your new Facebook friend.”
“And say what?”
“Doesn’t really matter. Point is to see if she writes back.”
“I guess I could ask her about the video. Maybe she’ll tell me something about it.”
“Worth a shot.”
When Julie had sent the Facebook message we went for a walk on the beach. We held hands. The sun was still blazing and the beach was still crowded.
“I bet my ex-husband is behind all this,” Julie said. “It would be like Heath to pose as somebody else on Facebook. He would enjoy torturing me like this. We had a torturous marriage.”
“ ‘Torturous marriage’ is redundant.”
“You had one too?”
“I did.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
Julie nodded.
We were quiet. A few seagulls bobbed on the gentle waves. Down the beach a group of surfers napped under a huge thatched umbrella.
“Heath was a real bastard,” Julie said finally. “By the end of our marriage he had turned me into somebody I didn’t even like. I had completely forgotten who I used to be before the marriage. I had no memory of my former self. Not even a vague recollection.
“I began as a good wife. No. A great wife. I was loving and giving. I was always there for Heath. I always put our marriage first.
“Heath took advantage of that. He became very critical of me. He began to erode my confidence. I began to doubt everything about myself. My looks. My brains. My skills. It was hard to look at myself in the mirror. After a while I actually came to believe I deserved the criticism.
“Heath tried to dominate me. That’s what it was. But I didn’t realize it at the time. He was a domineering son of a bitch.
“I became passive and submissive during our marriage. Too passive and too submissive. I think it was because I felt as if I had failed Heath. I had failed to make our marriage work. The guilt was enormous.
“Of course Heath never took any responsibility for anything. Especially for our failed marriage. Especially for that.
“One day I woke up and finally realized I was a victim. I felt humiliated. I should have known better than to let myself become a victim. It isn’t something I’m proud of now.
“After my epiphany I fell out of love with Heath. I lost interest in our marriage. I just didn’t give a shit anymore. That’s when I filed for divorce.”
“So you think Heath made the video,” I said.
“That’s what my intuition tells me.”
“And you also think he created a fake Facebook profile of a woman named Kirsten Love.”
“Yes. I think he posted the video and then friended me on Facebook so that I would discover it.”
I thought about it.
“You know,” I said, “the name Kirsten Love does seems fake.”
“How so?”
“It sounds like the phrase cursed in love.”
Julie stopped walking. She stared at nothing.
“Kirsten Love,” she said. “Cursed . . . in . . . love.”
She nodded to herself.
“That’s me,” she said. “I’m cursed in love.”
“You and a few billion other people.”
“Including you?”
“Until I met you.”
“Aren’t you sweet.”
“Just call me Honey.”
Julie’s phone rang.
“Hello?” she said, and pressed the
SPEAKER button on the phone.
“Julie Collins?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Detective Woods . . .”
“From the Tampa Police Department.”
“You remember me.”
“Of course.”
Julie put her hand over the phone and whispered to me.
“He was the lead investigator on Max’s case.”
I nodded.
She took her hand away from the phone.
“What can I do for you, Detective Woods?”
“Miss Collins, there’s been a new development in Max’s case.”
“What kind of new development?”
“I need you to come down to the station, Miss Collins.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Noon tomorrow work for you?”
“Sure. What’s this all about?”
He hung up.
CHAPTER 6
THE FOLLOWING MORNING I went down to the beach and sat alone on the cool sand while Julie took a yoga class in a nice gym on Main Street in Sarasota. The sky was overcast and the beach was nearly empty.
It was quiet. Perfect for reading.
I was halfway through a suspense novel. I turned another page.
The beach and a good book. My kind of vacation.
I wiggled my toes in the loose sand and sipped some coffee from my dolphin-shaped mug.
I turned another page.
Then I saw her. A little girl. Maybe nine or ten years old. She was overweight. Not by a lot. But beyond a healthy level. She seemed to be all by herself.
My eyes swept the beach. No parent in sight.
The girl stood at the shoreline and plunked shells out into the sea. One after another. I watched her for a little while.
Plunk.
Plunk.
Plunk.
Then I read some more. I took another sip of coffee. I wiggled my toes in the sand. I turned another page.
When I glanced up again the girl had stopped plunking shells. She sat hunched and defeated, arms around her legs, chin on one knee. She sat staring at the blue curve of the watery horizon. Her shoulders slumped and her body rocked slowly back and forth.
My eyes were about to return to the book when she turned her head and caught me looking at her. I felt a little stupid.
She waved to me.
I waved back, began to read again.
Mind your own business, Rip. There are millions of lonely kids in the world and none of them are yours. You are responsible for nobody.
“Hey,” a voice said.
I looked up from the book.
It was the girl. She had walked over to me.
“Whutchoo readin?”
I showed her the front cover of the book.
“You goan read all of it today?”
“Probably not,” I said. “I have other things to do later.”
“Whut kine of book is it?”
“Suspense novel.”
“I never read no suspense novel.”
“You should. It’s good stuff.”
“Whut’s suspense mean?”
I resisted the urge to delay my answer.
“It’s a feeling of anxious excitement while waiting for something uncertain to happen.”
“Cool,” she said, and smiled for the first time.
“You like to read?”
“I do now. But I dinn use to.”
“That’s good. Reading’s good for your brain.”
“I lak to read cause it heps me escape my reality.”
“What’s to escape from?”
“My folks. They’s gettin a divorce.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged.
Her fingernails were chewed short.
“Nuthin I can do bout it,” she said. “So I read to escape.”
“I can understand that.”
“My folks is fightin over me lak I’m a trophy or sumpin. They use me to get even wit each other. They doan care bout me at all. They juss doan want the other one to get me. I hate em both.”
She looked away and gnawed at her fingernails.
“Can you do me a favor?” I said. “Can you watch my stuff for a minute? I’ll be right back.”
She nodded without looking at me.
I trotted back to my RV and went to my bookcase and sat on my heels. I carefully selected a dozen hardcover books. All of them were suspense novels. They were the best suspense novels I had ever read.
I stuffed them into a bag and then burst out of my RV.
“Take a look at these,” I told the girl when I got back to the beach. “These are some great suspense novels.”
She asked questions about each one. I answered her questions to the best of my ability. She showed the most interest in a book by Mary Higgins Clark.
“Take it,” I said. “I want you to have it.”
Her big brown eyes looked up at me.
“To keep?”
“To keep.”
Her eyes lit up. She took the book. Her voice was a whisper.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She beamed.
“You know what?” I said. “Why don’t you take all of them.”
“All twelve books?”
“All twelve. I’ve already read them.”
She hugged me.
CHAPTER 7
AT NOON JULIE and I met with Detective Woods at the Tampa Police Department. His office was small and neat. He was small and neat.
He shut the door and sat down at his desk. He nodded toward seats across from him. We sat down. He squinted at me.
“What’s your relationship to Miss Collins?”
“We’re dating.”
He clicked his pen and wrote on a slip of paper.
I thought maybe I had given him the wrong answer.
Julie spoke up.
“Rip used to be a U.S. marshal.”
“Deputy marshal actually,” I said.
I waited for him to write that down. He didn’t. It must not have been important.
“No kidding,” he said. “We’ve worked with you guys a lot. Marshals always get the job done.”
He gave me a thumbs-up.
It made me like him. Of course that was always subject to change.
“Detective Woods,” Julie said. “You mentioned a new development in Max’s case?”
“Yes ma’am. Would you like some coffee or tea before we begin? A scone perhaps?”
“No thank you. What’s the new development?”
“When’d you last see your brother?”
“Moe? Why are you asking me about him?”
“When’d you last see him?”
Julie shifted a little in her seat.
“I haven’t seen Moe in years.”
“Any idea where he is?”
“I think he went to hell. That’s where he belongs. In hell.”
“Seriously, Miss Collins. Any idea where he is?”
“I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. What did Moe do this time? Steal more money? Buy more drugs? Why are we even talking about him? Does he have something to do with the new development in Max’s case?”
Detective Woods clicked his pen again. He jotted down some more notes. Then his squinty eyes slid in my direction.
“Mr. Lane, you ever meet Julie’s brother?”
I didn’t even know she had a brother. She had never mentioned him to me. Neither had her mother. Now I could see why: Moe was obviously a career criminal and an embarrassment to the family.
Every family has its secrets. Some secrets are harmless. Others are destructive. Moe seemed to be the latter.
“No,” I said. “I never met her brother. Julie and I met only two weeks ago.”
Julie shifted in her seat again and moistened her lips.
“Detective Woods, my brother has been estranged from our family for a long time. He got involved with drugs at an early age and it changed him. Especial
ly when he got hooked on meth.
“He began to steal things. Money. Jewelry. All kinds of valuables. He wasn’t a very good thief. He was always getting caught. The drugs made him stupid and careless.
“Anyway he moved in with my parents and tried to turn his life around. He did pretty good for a while. He got straight. He even got a decent job. But then he fell in with the wrong crowd and turned to drugs again.
“One night I caught him stealing from our parents. He had rummaged through all of the drawers in their bedroom. His backpack was filled with cash and watches and rings. When I caught him in the act he looked like a fox in a chicken coop.
“I reported him to the police and they arrested him that night. He was prosecuted and he spent time in jail. He got raped in jail. I never wanted that to happen. But it did. And he has hated me ever since.
“When he got out of jail I began to get anonymous hate mail. My tires were slashed. My house was graffitied. I knew Moe was doing it but I didn’t have any proof. So there was nothing I could do about it. Fortunately he stopped doing it after a while. I guess he just ran out of venom.”
“Julie,” I said, “when’d this happen?”
“Moe went to jail six years ago.”
“When’d he get out?”
“Five and a half years ago.”
“So it was right before Max’s abduction.”
She nodded.
“Three months before,” she said, and stared at me. “You think Moe took Max?”
I shrugged.
Detective Woods cleared his throat.
“Now’s a good time to tell you about the new development in Max’s case,” he said. “You know that new mall in the Channel District of Tampa? The gigantic one on the corner? Well one of the stores there got robbed the other night. A Spencer’s store. The alarm went off around midnight. By the time law enforcement arrived the perps were already gone. Some money was stolen from a safe. We found Moe’s fingerprints on the safe.”
He paused for a moment.
“We also found somebody else’s fingerprints on the safe,” he said. “They belong to Max.”
CHAPTER 8
“LET ME GET this straight,” Julie said. “You found two sets of fingerprints on the safe.”
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