Grabbing his own phone, he scrolled through to the browser and navigated to Monica’s Facebook profile. He looked up to make sure Eric was behaving; he was. When the blushing barista handed him the finished drink, she made sure to let her touch linger. Again. Eric seemed less interested than she did, and as he walked toward Donovan’s table in the corner, he rolled his eyes at the episode.
“She seems to like you,” Donovan said, keeping his voice quiet as Eric settled into the opposite seat.
“Gone are the days where you’d flatter a woman and she’d give you an extra shot of espresso. This one gives me the entire drink.” Another eye roll, except the smile on his face said he actually enjoyed the (much) younger woman’s attention. He leaned across the table, bringing his face closer to Donovan’s. “I haven’t paid for a latté in four weeks.”
Donovan did the math. “She’s saved you fifty bucks.”
Laughing, Eric shook his head. “But I can’t bring my wife her for a coffee!” He laughed some more. “And Mel loves this place.”
Yes, well, that could be problematic. If Mel had seen that lingering touch, like Donovan had, she would’ve pioneered the use of stir sticks as lethal weapons.
Once Eric’s laughter died down, he glanced over his shoulder. It seemed to Donovan that he was taking stock of the other patrons at Barney’s. Once he was happy with what he saw, he turned back to Donovan.
“What were you talking about last night?” Eric asked, his voice a notch lower than conversational. “You said something about a grave? Did I hear you correctly?”
Donovan nodded, took a sip of his cappuccino, and then nodded again. “That girl—”
“Did she ask for money yet? She did, didn’t she?” Eric shook his head, disappointed. But he already knew the answer, didn’t he? Last night, the way he’d asked about the money . . . “Please tell me you didn’t give her a damn dime, Donovan.”
Groaning, he said, “She took me to Elizabeth’s grave. It’s in Wisconsin, just outside of Twilight Creek, overlooking a small lake and—”
Eric rolled his eyes so smoothly that it came across as part of his courthouse repertoire. “Impossible.”
Donovan was starting to believe that as well. “Except I was there.”
Eric leaned closer again. “If she knew you’d lost your pet dog, Fido, she’d have told you that’s what you saw. Jeez, Donovan, why can’t you just listen to me? This girl’s a fraud, and who knows what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“My guy at the FBI is going to run a DNA match on a bone I recovered from the site.” He swallowed, wondering if his last statement sounded authoritative enough for Eric’s liking.
Eric threw his arms into the air. “You’re serious?” After waiting a fraction of a second, he let out a disheartened sigh and changed his question to a statement: “You’re serious. I can’t believe this.” Another pause. “And you gave her the money, didn’t you?”
Donovan opened his mouth to answer, but Eric cut him off.
“Of course you did. That’s why you avoided the question fifty times.” He shook his head. “So now you want to know what’s next, right?”
“Well, I’m a little worried. This girl—”
“What’s her name?” Eric asked, cutting him off and simultaneously withdrawing his phone from his pants pocket. He got his fingers ready on the screen’s keyboard. “She’s got a name, doesn’t she?”
“Well, yes, it’s, um, Monica. Monica Russell.” Donovan produced his own phone while Eric tapped her name into his keyboard. Donovan showed him her Facebook profile. “This is her.”
Eric finished typing and then took the phone. His eyes skipped from the images on Donovan’s screen to Donovan himself. After swiping through a few photos, he handed the phone back and shook his head.
“Jeez, Donovan. You’re lucky to be alive.” More head shaking. “Let’s think this through, okay? She takes your money and drags your ass out to Wisconsin. Twilight Creek of all places.” Still shaking his head. “She shows you a grave site, which may or may not have been a human grave—”
“Definitely human.” Donovan made a spherical motion with his hands, trying not to think of the cranium that he’d been so certain was Elizabeth’s. It was difficult—whenever he thought of that half-buried skull, he saw his daughter’s image. “I saw her skull. Her limbs and—”
“Impossible.” Another dramatic eye roll. “It could’ve been anyone. It might not’ve even been real, Donny. For all you know, she lured you out there to ask for more money, or she’d shoot you.”
He considered telling him about the handgun that Monica had lodged into the front waistband of her pants but felt that detail was best left out of the conversation.
“Did you ever think of that?” Now Eric looked legitimately concerned. He tapped his phone. “I’m going to run a search on this girl. I’ll tell you right now, this isn’t her real name. And if it is, she’s got a criminal record.”
“She—”
“She definitely was not reported missing. Ever.”
Before Donovan asked how Eric would even know something like that, his brother-in-law turned his phone toward him so he could read the screen. What Eric had done was run a simple Google search for “Monica Russell Missing Person” inside quotation marks. The search results said: no results found for “monica russell missing person.” What results showed up were nowhere near the search term. There was a Monica Porter, and a movie called Monica the Medium. But nothing about Monica Russell as a missing person.
As the truth sank in, Eric reeled his phone back, clicked a button that turned the screen black, and then sipped his latté.
Donovan wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the fact that Monica was lying. Lying about knowing Elizabeth, about escaping from “Roger’s” assault at the grave site, lying about everything. He’d trusted her, and she’d lied to him. Taken his money, driven him out to some sort of grave site, and lied to him.
“Listen,” Eric said, sighing as if he felt a little sorry for Donovan, “it’s an easy trap to fall into. First off, you don’t have closure. Second, you’re something of a hermit, Donovan. Jeez, you should swing by the house for dinner sometime. Mel would like to actually see you. Right now, you’re a voice on the other end of an occasional phone call when you need something.”
“Yeah. I . . . I’m sorry about that.” Donovan shook his head, his mind racing over this business with Monica. And, dammit, the bone he’d given Agent Klein. Although it probably wasn’t a real bone, he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to him if it came back as human remains. Had he implicated himself in some other cold case now? “I’ll, uh, swing by for a barbecue or something.”
Eric smiled. “Thank you. We’d like that a lot.”
More sips of expensive Barney’s espresso.
“Hey.” Eric leaned forward again, acting like he hadn’t just burst Donovan’s last bubble of hope. “You should start dating again, too.”
Donovan laughed at Eric’s suggestion. The most interaction he’d had with a female since Amelia had killed herself was his banker and now Monica Russell. The fraud with the purple hair and pierced nose.
“I’m serious, Donny.” Eric smiled and gave him an approving nod as he raised his right hand to his left breast. “As Amelia’s surviving brother, you have my blessing to speak, befriend, and sleep with other women.” He winked. “Lots of other women.”
Shaking his head, Donovan had to look away. He didn’t try to hide the shy smile that had overtaken his lips, but he couldn’t look into Eric’s eyes without feeling a roar of laughter building up in the pit of his stomach. What kind of women did Eric have in mind? Barney’s baristas?
“Donovan, come on. You’re what, fifty?”
He snapped his attention to Eric, frowning. “Not even forty-six yet. Jeez.”
“Okay, you’re forty-five. I’m going to take a wild guess here, but I’ll bet you haven’t been laid since we buried my sister, huh? And maybe even a w
hile before that, if she was depressed and losing touch on reality.”
The smile melted off Donovan’s lips.
“Donovan, that’s not normal, man. It’s downright unhealthy, and you need to find someone.”
Donovan shook his head. No, he needed to find Elizabeth. Closure.
“I’m not suggesting you go and get married to the first broad you find.”
Squinting, Donovan hit the imaginary replay button in his mind. Yes, his brother-in-law had just used the 1820’s word broad to refer to a woman. Unbelievable.
“But you should find someone. Get back into the groove, if you know what I’m saying.” He laughed at that. “Whatever happened to that girl? The one my sister would get all upset over? The banker, wasn’t it? Remember her?”
Raising his cup, Donovan took a long sip while Eric rhymed off names that started with the letter B.
“Beatrice? No, it was Belinda, or something like . . . Brenda? Was that it? Brenda?”
Donovan shrugged, pretending he didn’t know what Eric was talking about.
“Well, whatever her name was, why not look her up, huh? Maybe bring her to this barbecue at my place that you say you’ll be coming to, okay?” Eric reached across the table and gave Donovan’s forearm a soft punch. “It’s all cool, Donovan. Whatever you do. Or, should I say, whomever you do?” He laughed like an idiot.
Trying to be polite, Donovan offered a kind nod. “Okay,” he said, but he had no intention of following through. Not only about talking to Brenda outside of the bank but in attending a barbecue at Eric’s place.
CHAPTER 24
Still buzzing from the morning trip to Barney’s, Donovan began to experience an odd anxiety around nine o’clock when Monica didn’t show up. Again. Second night in a row. Not that he expected a twentysomething young woman with purple hair and a pierced nostril to look forward to spending her Saturday night with a middle-aged man whose grieving had aged him physically and mentally in ways that Mother Nature couldn’t. But ever since he’d given her $10,000, she’d been different.
Pushing himself out of the reading chair, Donovan walked to the front window. He nudged the curtain aside and stared at the empty street. It was still too early for the apartments at the end of North Williamson to light up with activity, but it was late enough that the people in the single-family homes had settled on their backyard patios, cracked open their bottles of beer, and were enjoying the quiet before the weekend parties started down the street.
And no sign of Monica or her Mustang.
Keenly aware that he wouldn’t be falling asleep anytime soon, Donovan spun away from the front window and headed to the kitchen. He grabbed his car keys and decided to take an overdue drive out to Roseland.
* * *
The apartment where Monica lived with her skull-tattooed boyfriend or husband or coconspirator seemed relatively quiet. On the second-floor balcony, the one below Monica and Leo’s unit, two men with big beards were smoking pot. They seemed to not care that anyone driving or walking by could see them and smell their herb of choice, almost as if they were Canadians exercising their own First Amendment rights, which was probably to smoke weed.
“Hey, bro,” one of them said as Donovan approached the building’s front door.
“Good evening.” Donovan raised a hand and tried not to stare, as if he could deny ever getting a whiff of the distinctive odor.
“Want some?” Both men started giggling.
Waving them off and still looking the other way, Donovan said he should pass. “But I appreciate the offer.”
The two men giggled some more and then started rapping the words to an Eminem song. They were silly. As a philosophy professor, he’d seen and dealt with his share of stoners.
Donovan noticed the broken Popsicle sticks on the grass next to the front door. Still, another stick had been jammed into the lock, so accessing the building wasn’t a difficult task. As he climbed the stairs, he wondered what he’d expected when he decided to make the trip out to Roseland in the first place.
Stepping up to apartment 304, Donovan angled his head toward the door to see if he could detect any activity inside. All he heard was the television, its volume turned up. No conversation.
Someone was definitely inside that apartment, though. After a few seconds, he heard some rummaging. Still no conversation.
Deciding to leave before someone caught him hovering, Donovan started down the stairs when another door opened. He heard some laughter from a female, followed by conversation that seemed to get closer to the stairs.
As he reached the second floor, he glanced back and watched a young blonde and her much older boyfriend coming down the stairs behind him. So he picked up the pace and, at the front door, tugged the Popsicle stick out of the lock so that the door would latch shut behind him.
By the time the young couple reached the front door, Donovan was looking both ways before crossing the street. He heard the girl curse.
“Someone’s always messing with my setup,” she said, whining.
“That’s why you should just give me a key, Daisy,” her boyfriend said.
Glancing back, Donovan took a closer look at Daisy. She was definitely young, maybe younger than twenty, the kind of girl who would show up in his 100-level classes but would drop out before they could get into the really interesting and specific stuff in the 200-level classes. Daisy’s boyfriend, though, he looked like he was Monica’s age, maybe even a little older. Either way, he should have known better.
The guys on the second-floor balcony said something to the young couple, and they all engaged in something of a conversation.
Trying not to look too nosy or creepy, Donovan crossed the street to where he’d parked his Impala. He slid inside, settling behind the steering wheel, but he didn’t get the engine started just yet. From the driver’s seat, he watched the third-floor windows for signs of Monica while the duo on the second floor passed around a couple of joints with Daisy and her boyfriend.
All Donovan saw in Monica’s apartment was a shadow, and it looked pretty big so he assumed it was Leo.
And then it struck him: the possibility that she’d made a trip out to North Williamson in Oak Park to pay him a visit, but now that Donovan was here, he would miss her.
CHAPTER 25
Donovan’s Sunday evening felt a lot like déjà vu. At nine o’clock, he stood at the front window and stared out at the quiet, dark street. The biggest difference was the rain. The second biggest was that there was very little traffic headed to the end of the street.
While he stood there, Donovan realized that Monica probably hadn’t come to visit him last night while he was in Roseland, just like she hadn’t shown up tonight. He cursed himself for not peeking into the lot behind her building to see if the Mustang was parked there. That could’ve partially answered his questions about whether Monica had even left the apartment. But he’d been so panicked by the sudden belief that she’d stopped in while he was out that he’d been unable to see any other possibility.
Shaking his head, he moved back to his reading chair and wondered what it meant if Monica was neither at home nor paying him a visit. Did that make her a missing person? Again? And if it was “again,” how would Monica explain Eric’s discovery that her name didn’t show up as a missing person the first time around? Donovan had even duplicated those search results on his new Apple MacBook, had scrolled through several pages of results, all with the same outcome: nobody named Monica Russell had ever been reported missing in the United States.
And that seemed strange, he thought to himself for the millionth time as he pushed himself out of the reading chair and headed to the kitchen. Because a young missing girl who’d attended a private school in Louisiana would definitely make the headlines—at least locally but probably nationally, too, just as his own daughter’s abduction had.
Leaving the house, Donovan hurried to the garage, slipped into his Impala, and started off toward Roseland again.
This tim
e, he planned on knocking on the door to apartment 304 and asking Monica to explain the disparity between her story and the lack thereof online. Dammit, he’d given her ten large; she should at least be honest with him!
* * *
Like Saturday night, the street in front of Monica’s apartment was quiet. He parked in the same spot, crossed the street, and glanced up to the second-floor balcony, where empty bottles of beer and a broken bong had rolled up against the railing. There was nobody sitting outside, no welcoming committee offering charity tokes of marijuana.
A fresh Popsicle stick had been replanted into the front door’s latch, and, despite the security concerns that Daisy’s setup should raise, Donovan decided to let it go. He climbed up to the third floor and approached apartment 304. Angling his head forward, he heard someone inside, but no dialogue and no television. He stayed there, listening for hints that Monica was somewhere inside, but then realized he’d made the same mistake as he had the last time: he hadn’t checked the parking lot to see if the Mustang was there.
Stepping away from the apartment door, Donovan descended to the ground floor. But instead of leaving the building by way of the front door, he walked toward the back where another locked door led to a well-lit parking lot, a trash bin at the far end that was illuminated by its own floodlight, and a mutilated picnic table in the opposite corner where the grass had died. Like the front door, this one was all glass, but it didn’t have the same type of latch, which meant there wasn’t a Popsicle stick jammed into it to stop it from locking.
It really didn’t matter, though. From this view, Donovan could see the entire parking lot, and the Mustang was parked in the second closest spot to the building. Even if he were partially blind and those bright security lights had been smashed out, he couldn’t have overlooked that car.
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