by Renee Fowler
“I had no idea he was going to do that with those pictures,” she says quietly, shamefully.
“So he did hire him?”
She nods down towards her tea.
“Do you think he left that letter and flowers here?”
She shrugs. “Probably. I know he’s the one who did it in Houston.”
I try to hide the disgust from my face. Despite what I just said earlier, Mia is gone as soon as we find Trin. I’ll make damn sure of it. No wonder Trin never knew who to trust. She was surrounded by people who did nothing but manipulate and screw with her head constantly. “Can you prove it?” I ask.
“He had me order the flowers in Houston. I don’t know who he called the second time.”
“And he paid someone to lose that evidence for the break in right?”
She throws her hands up. “He probably did, but I had nothing to do with that. There was a lot of things he didn’t let me handle. He has someone else that does that sort of thing for him.”
“You have a name?”
Mia nods weakly.
∞∞∞
A day and a half later, Brent is in custody, and Trin is still nowhere to be found. The things we’ve uncovered in that time are mind boggling, to say the least. The most bizarre is his fake wife “Sue.”
She’s an actress that he had brought in on occasion, when Trin needed a little pep talk, he explained. All of this I learn second hand through Shane, who learned it from another friend at the capital where the charges were filed. We’re damn lucky he has a residence in the state, otherwise bringing him in may have been much harder.
The hardest thing of all is knowing he’ll be walking back out on bond at any moment. Conspiracy charges are notoriously hard to make stick. The embezzlement, maybe? Everything else is circumstantial.
He has a life insurance policy out on Trin that far exceeds what she would be required to pay in the event that his services are no longer required before the end of his contract. That alone makes me wonder if I’m ever going to see her again.
Why in the hell did I ever let her go down there by herself?
On the off chance it isn’t Brent, I’ve been calling hospitals, scanning for reports. Rose is staying with either Leah or Becca for the time being. I don’t want her anywhere near Mia, who I can barely stand to look at right now, but I need her. Mia has been going back through fan correspondence, looking for anything that jumps out. On the off chance Trin has relapsed, Mia also knows who to call, and where to look.
I know in my heart she hasn’t. Something’s happened to her.
But even her own family is questioning that assertion. “She’s done this before, Gabe.” Her sister Faith can’t meet my eyes as she says it that afternoon. “This is what she does, because she doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“Not this time,” I say firmly.
“I know you love her, and I know she loves you, but there were a lot of years you didn’t know her. There were times the only way I could get in contact with her was through her manager, and sometimes he couldn’t find her. Gabe, he always seemed like a good man to me. I don’t think he had anything to do with this.”
“A good man?” I ask incredulously, feeling like I’m losing my mind. How can no one else see what a slimeball this guy is?
But would he really harm her? Would he really stoop that low? I don’t know. Sitting and waiting is killing me. I’m on leave at the moment, possibly permanent leave thanks to my admission that I used police resources for a personal matter. Right now I could care less about my job, which used to be the only thing I cared about besides my daughter.
I can’t just sit and wait though. I really will lose my mind staring at that door, praying for her to walk back through it.
What if she never walks back through the door? At this point I’m almost hoping she did fall off the wagon. At least then there’s the possibility that she’ll be okay. We can get her some help, because after that seventy two hour mark, the chances… I won’t let my mind go there. I can’t.
“Is there anyone from her past that might have taken her, done something. Anyone you can think of, Faith?”
“We all grew up together, Gabe. You know all the same people I do, but she had overzealous fans I guess.” Faith shook her head. “You said yourself she was upset after that article came out. I really think she’s off somewhere.” Her eyes land on that scrapbook she made Trin. She wanders over, snatches it off the top of the microwave, and hands it to me. “This is the Trin you didn’t know. I used to wonder all the time if I was going to see on the news that she was dead. There was a whole year I didn’t hear a word from her. I would call Brent just to confirm she was still alive. When she’s using, she shuts everyone out. She’s not herself.”
“It’s been almost fourteen months, Faith. She wouldn’t do that.”
“I would like to believe that myself, but I’m just saying you may not be looking at the whole picture. I know Trin is crazy about you, and I think you’re good for her. When she does finally come home, just remember that she loves you, and people make mistakes.” Faith gives me a brief hug. “I have to go pick up Hope, but call me if you hear anything, okay?”
I manage a feeble nod.
My fingers are still clutching that scrapbook as Faith lets herself out. Trin wouldn’t want me to read it. She has confessed to me tearfully how ashamed she was of some of the things she’d done, how she treated people and hurt her family. She’s made amends over the past year, and she trusted me enough to leave that scrapbook laying right out in the open. Maybe she secretly wanted me to read it?
Chapter 37
Gabe
After reading those letters from Trin’s intervention, I’m struck by two facts. There really is a side of Trin I’ve never glimpsed, and Conner really did hate her. She told me that once, back when we were trying to determine who left those dead flowers and that threatening letter.
Perhaps hate is a strong word, but he was clearly annoyed by her. At the very least he strongly disliked her. All the rest of those letters are filled with compassion and concern. His read like a laundry list of grievances.
I still say Brent is responsible. The timing is too coincidental, but he is in police custody. I can’t get to him to ask him any questions, but I can speak with Conner, and I have to do something. I can’t just sit here and wait.
Conner is a slightly thinner version of his brother Nolan, minus the glasses, but that’s where the similarities stop. His brother is friendly, gregarious. Conner has me wait for five excruciatingly long minutes while he finishes up some video game match he was in the middle of when I knocked at the door. I clear my throat loudly. “This is in regards to a missing person,” I remind him less than politely.
With an annoyed sigh, he turns the TV off and tosses the game controller aside. “Did you want something to drink?”
“No, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“About Trin? I never speak with her anymore.”
“Why not?”
Conner shrugs and wanders along a spacious hallway towards the kitchen. He pulls open the fridge, grabs a beer, and holds it out to me. I shake my head.
“I hear through the grapevine, you two are supposed to be getting married.” He twists the top off the beer off, takes a swig, and gives me a big grin. “Well, good luck with that,” he says with a laugh.
“I take it you two didn’t get along?”
“You could say that. But if you’re asking because you think I know where she’s at, you’re talking to the wrong person.”
“We’re just trying to cover all the bases. Why didn’t you get along with Trin?”
He laughs again. “Where do I start? She would show up for shows late, high off her ass on something, and I’d be expected to perform alongside her like everything was fine. I had my brother, and her family on my back to keep an eye on her, and I tried, but I’m a musician, not a babysitter. And she didn’t want a babysitter. She was always very clear about that.”
I open my mouth to speak, and he cuts me off, clearly not finished venting his frustrations.
“She would take up with people in the band, and when they’d get in little tiffs, the rest of us would get dragged into their drama. Then she would run and cry to Brent when she got her feelings hurt, and suddenly we’d have to find a new drummer, or bass player. Oh, and once, after our first album, she made some new friends and decided to take a road trip. She blew off two shows that we ended up having to make up for at the end. I almost missed the birth of my first child thanks to her nonsense.”
“What about Brent?”
“What about him?”
“How did you feel about him? Did you get along?”
Conner shrugs. “He preferred to work with Trin. I mean, she was the star, right? She would always try to have me deal with him, but she was so back and forth about it. One day she loved him. The next he was the devil.”
“Did you trust him?”
“I trusted him to do his job, which he did pretty well considering who he had to work with. I mean, I wouldn’t let him watch my kids or anything. The guy is a creep. Personally, I would’ve preferred getting rid of him, but I never could convince Trin. He would sort of sweet talk her, you know?” Conner shook his head, and peeled back the corner of the label of his beer. “She was too damn young. We should’ve never brought her on in the first place, but she really is talented, and I was looking for someone to replace that little asshole we used to have on drums.”
“Who?”
“Dylan… something. Hell, I can barely remember him now. That was before we got that call from Nashville, back when we used to play in little places around here.” He laughs and shakes his head again. “I used to complain because he’d show up a few minutes late. At least he bothered to show up at all, and he wouldn’t be so messed up he was slurring his words when he did.”
“Can you find out his last name?”
“You can ask my brother. He probably remembers, but I’m telling you, Trin isn’t missing. She did this crap all the time. If she really is in some kind of trouble, it’s because she got herself into it.”
I left Conner’s place feeling more unsure than ever. Had Trin really just taken off? Gina had hinted at something similar when I asked her to tell me exactly what she’d overheard Trin say to Brent over the phone that day at the bakery. “Sometimes people slip up. They make mistakes. All it takes is one moment of weakness, and it snowballs. Before you know it, you get sucked right back in. I’m surprised Shane is still married to me after some of the crap I pulled a few years ago.”
I’ve never once heard Shane speak ill of his wife. They joke around with one another a lot. They bust each other’s balls a bit, but he clearly loves her. According to Gina, he has almost six years of sobriety under his belt, and she has three. She didn’t elaborate on what happened, and I didn’t probe.
Is that going to be me one day, having to forgive, forget, and see past? I love Trin, but I have a child to think about. Rose is too young to understand right now. For all she knows, Trin is just away at work. What happens as Rose gets older? Am I going to be making excuses to my daughter for her stepmother’s erratic behavior and random disappearances? I already know the answer to that question, as much as it would break my heart. I love Trin, but not enough to subject my daughter to any of this.
I push those thoughts aside. Right now I need to focus on finding Trin. I need to know she’s safe. The rest I can worry about later. I call Mia to get Nolan’s number. Just as I’ve hung up, and am about to make the call to inquire about this old band mate, Shane’s familiar number pops up on the caller ID.
He informs me that they found Trin’s car, and the remains of what may have been her cell phone at a gas station in a small town not quite an hour away from here. It’s a little place right off the expressway, he explains. They have cameras inside, but none on the parking lot.
Now I’m in a real panic and overcome with guilt for doubting Trin to begin with. Someone must have taken her from that place, and it’s doubtful Brent had anything to do with it either. Maybe he knows people, but it seems unlikely he could arrange something quite that fast. From what I’ve gathered, Trin chewed Brent out over the phone, and left almost immediately to go fire his ass.
My mind pops back to that letter, which I now know was all Brent’s doing, but Trin has gotten other messages like that before, Mia confirmed for me. None hand delivered to her home, but still. There are people out there who might want to do her harm, and she has a face everyone recognizes. Up until now I’ve been laboring under the assumption she was taken by someone she knows, but maybe it’s no one she knows at all.
It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. She could be anywhere. With anyone.
Part of me wants to head down, check this place out for myself, but I know there are already investigators doing just that. It’s already been made very clear that I am not to get involved in this case.
I call Nolan and leave a message. He’s probably still at school. I doubt looking into this old band mate is going to lead to anything, but it might. I have to do something. I can’t just sit back and hope for the best.
Driving back through the center of town, I pass that old church. The parking lot is empty, not unusual for the middle of the day on a Tuesday. We were going to get married in that church.
My very first memory of Trin is of us sitting downstairs in the basement of that place, in children’s church, and she’d reached up from behind me to flick my ear lightly. “What’s wrong with your ear? Why is this one different?” At seven or eight, I didn’t have a good explanation. Her older sister had grabbed her wrist, gave her a look. Even back then Faith was trying to keep her out of trouble. I used to call her Trinity because I knew she hated it. We tormented one another in small ways, and I’m not sure at what age the playful teasing turned into flirtation.
When my parents told me to stay away from her the first time, I actually listened. They were right. She was trouble. Trin wasn’t the kind of girl I should be spending time with, but then I noticed her suspiciously absent one Wednesday night, and asked Leah about it. “She’s probably with Elliott,” she said with an annoyed inflection. “She knew I liked him. That’s the only reason why.”
I wasn’t interested in hearing Leah’s complaining, but I was overcome by jealousy that I didn’t quite comprehend. Trin wasn’t mine to be jealous over.
A week earlier she’d teased me, “I bet you haven’t even kissed a girl yet, have you?” I hadn’t, but she’d posed the question right in front of Leah and a few of the other girls in that clique she used to hang with. There was no way in hell I was going to admit that outloud to all of them. “I volunteer. You can kiss me,” Trin offered. “I’ll teach you how.”
Leah made the offer to a few days after that, less blatantly, just the two of us, and I declined. I didn’t want her. I wanted Trin, even though she was all wrong for me, even though my parents had expressly forbade it. I wanted Trin even though she scared the hell out of me, and had embarrassed me. I wanted her, but I was too shy back then to do a thing about it.
That night I caught up with Trin outside of church. I grabbed her hand, pulled her around the side of the building. “Is Elliott your boyfriend?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I do.”
She’d smirked up at me, her features barely visible in the low light. “What are you gonna do about it if he is?”
There was a challenge in her tone, one that I wasn’t going to back down from a second time. I kissed her, and kept kissing her until her mother’s voice rang out near the front. “Trinity Adah, are you out here somewhere?”
Trin leaned back, and blinked up at me, speechless for once. Her mother called for her a second time, and her head whipped around, then back towards me. She grabbed my face, pressed her lips to mine again, then whispered in my ear. “Elliott’s not my boyfriend anymore. You are.”
∞∞∞
&nb
sp; I go to visit Rose, who hasn’t paused once to ask where Trin is. She is oblivious to all this chaos. Her world is filled with kindergarten, and her new home, and the nice nurse that comes to help her mommy out since she has to walk with crutches right now.
Leah asks quietly if I’ve heard any news, and I shake my head. Why worry her right now? The two of them have resumed their friendship after Trin stepped in and helped her out. In the beginning I found it all a bit awkward, but I guess it’s nice everyone is getting along. Or it would be nice if Trin was here.
Unlike everyone else, Leah is one of the few people who doesn’t believe Trin ran off to drown her anxieties in a bottle of liquor or pills. Maybe it’s because she’s like me, she didn’t know Trin during that time of her life.
I’m still sitting with Rose and Leah when Nolan calls me back. I step out of the room to ask if he remembers the name of their old band member. “It’s Dylan Ross, I think. It’s been years since I’ve seen him. I wonder what he’s up to these days?”
I wonder too.
Chapter 38
Trin
It’s cold and damp. And dark. It’s so fucking dark. I blink and blink into the darkness, trying to force my eyes to adjust, but they refuse. My whole body is floppy, like a rag doll, my limbs weighed down like lead. Despite my alarm at finding myself in such a strange and unwelcoming place, a place I’m not supposed to be, I can’t hang onto consciousness. I slide in and out. I fight to stay above the surface, but the current of sleep pulls me back down.
Each time I claw my way to the surface, the room is a bit less dark.
It’s grey, and shadowy. I can see my breath, but I can’t make any sounds. My voice is gone.
It’s still grey, but less shadowy. The walls are made of bare cinder blocks. The floor is concrete. I’m on a lumpy, stained twin mattress.