Sunset Beach

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “Both that and whatever was going on at the Gulf Vista,” Drue said. “Look, we know that the female housekeepers at that hotel were the victims of sexual harassment. We’re pretty sure that whoever killed Jazmin was someone who knew her. If we could just figure out who killed her, then maybe we’d be able to get to the bottom of this whole thing. I can’t help but wonder if my dad or somebody at the law firm took a payoff or something.”

  “And what happens if you discover your dad, and the law firm, is completely innocent? No cover-up, no bribe, but also no money for Jazmin’s mom?”

  “Then I’ll let it go,” Drue vowed.

  Corey cocked a dubious eyebrow.

  “I will. I swear it.”

  When she was alone again, Drue considered the flip side of the question Corey had asked.

  What if she actually uncovered evidence that her father or somebody at the law firm had betrayed their client? Or worse—that Brice was involved in Colleen Hicks’ disappearance. What would she do then? How far was she prepared to take this quest for justice? She had no answer.

  42

  After Corey left, Drue took a glass of wine and walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. The damp sand felt cool beneath her feet, and the breeze off the water ruffled the sea oats on the dune that separated her backyard from the abbreviated seawall. At the last minute, deep-purple-tinged clouds drifted across the horizon, obscuring her view. She glanced up and down the beach, looking for “her” blue heron, but the only birds in sight were a group of sanderlings, skimming in and out of the shallow wavelets lapping at the shore.

  She turned around and headed home, for a shower and then bed. All evening she’d kept her cell phone close at hand, hoping for a callback from Rae Hernandez at the sheriff’s department, but the only call she got came as a complete surprise.

  When UNKNOWN CALLER flashed across the phone’s display screen, she didn’t pick up, but let it go to voice mail.

  “Uh, hey, Drue. It’s Jonah. From work?”

  She grabbed the phone and tapped Connect.

  “Hi Jonah. It’s Drue. What’s up?”

  “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t pick up,” he blurted.

  “Then why did you call?”

  He sighed. “Remember that do-over I asked for? I was thinking maybe we could try it on Saturday night?”

  She felt the color rise in her cheeks. He was asking her out. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had asked her out on a date. It had to be pre-Trey.

  Yes, definitely pre-him. Her six-year off-and-on relationship with Trey had been a long segue from hanging out to living together; now that she thought about it, she realized Trey never had formally asked her out. One night, after a long day of kiteboarding, he’d sat next to her at a bar and bought her drinks. The next night, when their group of friends had drifted off the beach and out to a restaurant, Trey had picked up the dinner check. And the next night, they’d met up at a concert and he’d gone home with her and stayed over for the next week.

  “Drue? You there?”

  “I’m here. Okay, I’d be up for that,” she said cautiously.

  “So just to be clear, that’s a yes?”

  “Yes, Jonah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That is a yes. What did you have in mind?”

  “Drinks and dinner? There’s a new place downtown, near the Vinoy, that I’ve heard good stuff about.”

  “That sounds nice,” Drue said. “Tell me the address and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Huh? I mean, I thought I’d pick you up at your place. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I just wasn’t sure if you’d want to drive all the way out to Sunset Beach and back.”

  He laughed. “God, this is the most incredibly awkward phone call I have ever had with a woman. Does it feel awkward to you too?”

  “Incredibly so,” she agreed. “Painfully awkward.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “But the worst part is over, right? I asked, you said yes. We have a plan. I’ll pick you up, we’ll have a nice dinner. No stress.”

  “There’s no stress for you, because you’re a guy. You don’t have to think about what to wear, or what to do with your hair.”

  His voice softened. “Wear it down, okay, Drue? You have really pretty hair. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you look great in jeans.”

  “I don’t mind your saying that at all,” Drue said, surprised. “It’s actually lovely, hearing a compliment from a man.”

  “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then. Right?”

  “Right.”

  * * *

  Once in bed, she fell asleep immediately but awoke after only two hours.

  Her dreams were stranger than usual. She dreamed of Jazmin Mayes, staring up from a basket of soiled sheets; of her own mother, Sherri, plucking at the edge of the blanket the hospice worker had tucked around her pale, emaciated body, her eyes clouded by the effects of the drugs in her IV drip. And she dreamed of Colleen Boardman Hicks, and a pile of blood-spattered but neatly folded clothing placed on the bucket seat of an orange Camaro.

  Her mind kept drifting back to that binder on the kitchen table, and the mystery of Colleen. Corey was right. She really did need to find herself a hobby.

  But in the meantime, she had questions. So many questions.

  Exasperated, she sat up in bed and reached for her cell phone, returning to the Google search she’d done earlier in the evening.

  She yawned as she skimmed through the first half-dozen articles the search generated, impatient that none of them yielded anything new. But she paused when she came to a 2016 Tampa Bay Times article headlined COLLEEN HICKS WITNESS DELVES INTO 40-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY.

  Vera Rennick still remembers the last words Colleen Boardman Hicks, her friend and coworker, said to her on that otherwise unremarkable afternoon on August 20, 1976.

  “We’d left work early to do a little shopping. Maas Brothers was having a big summer clearance sale, and afterwards we had dinner at the Suncoast Room. I needed to get home and see about my mother, so Colleen insisted on picking up the check. She stood up and gave me a hug. She told me to make sure to tell my mother hello from her,” Mrs. Rennick said. “And then she said, ‘See you tomorrow.’”

  But tomorrow never came. The disappearance of the attractive 26-year-old dental hygienist triggered one of the most intense police investigations in St. Petersburg history. Investigators widened their search to a five-state area, consulted psychics, dragged local ponds and questioned dozens of known sex offenders, but to no avail. The mystery remains unsolved.

  Forty years later, Vera Rennick’s pale blue eyes still fill with tears at that memory. “And that was the last time anybody ever saw Colleen. Ever. It still haunts me. I wake up so many nights, wondering, Where are you, Colleen? What happened to you? That’s why I decided to start my own blog. It’s my way of trying to find answers to my questions.”

  Mrs. Rennick titled her blog Have You Seen Colleen? In it, she shares tidbits of information she has personally gleaned over her years of following the case, and invites readers to contribute their own knowledge and theories.

  “The police don’t care anymore,” Mrs. Rennick said. “The fact that it’s unsolved is a black eye. They won’t even answer my phone calls.”

  Cassandra Banks, a spokesman for the St. Petersburg Police Department, denied that authorities have given up their investigation. “We welcome any and all information from the public concerning this case, as we would for any still-open investigation.”

  “People are still fascinated with the case,” Vera Rennick said. “And I’ve received valuable tips. It all happened so long ago that people who might have stayed quiet at the time of Colleen’s disappearance have been willing to come forward and share information with me.”

  She pointed out that Colleen Hicks’s husband Allen passed away in 2009, and that the missing woman’s parents, Burton and Edith Boardman, died, separately, within four years of their daught
er’s disappearance.

  “I’m the keeper of the flame,” Mrs. Rennick said. “And I intend to keep asking questions until I find out the truth, or die trying.”

  * * *

  “Screw it,” Drue whispered aloud, after tossing and turning for another half hour. She found Vera Rennick’s blog online, and spent the next hour or so trying to slog through three years’ worth of Have You Seen Colleen?

  The blog was comically amateur, replete with typos, misspellings, blurry photos and stream-of-consciousness posts in which the author posed, then debunked, wildly improbable theories.

  One post would examine the possibility that Colleen Hicks was living in a hippie commune in upstate New York, while another would have the missing woman joining a cloistered religious order.

  Various “experts” opined that Colleen Hicks had been murdered by a Manson family–inspired cult, by a jilted former boyfriend, even by a disgruntled patient from the dental clinic where Colleen was working at the time of her disappearance.

  It was all mildly entertaining, Drue decided, but what she really needed to do was talk to Vera Rennick in person. Just before dropping off to sleep, Drue sent a deliberately vague private message to the blogger.

  Hi, Vera. I recently moved home to St. Pete from the east coast, and found a trove of newspaper clippings about the Colleen Hicks case in my late mother’s belongings. I’m intrigued and wonder if you’d be willing to talk to me about the case in person? Thanks, Drue Campbell.

  43

  The woman, Drue concluded, must be a night owl. At 2:15 A.M. she’d responded to Drue’s message: I’d be happy to talk to you about Colleen. I’m free anytime before noon. It’s a retirement community on the south side. She attached the street address.

  Still sleepless, Drue checked her phone at seven-fifteen Friday morning and found Vera’s response. She typed in her own response immediately. If Vera Rennick agreed, she would visit her today. It would make her late to work, but, she reflected, with Wendy out of the office, there would be no hateful yellow SEE ME notes stuck to her desk when she finally did make it in to work.

  I can be there by 9, if that’s all right.

  Vera’s answer came almost immediately. See you then.

  Drue called Rae Hernandez on the way to meet Vera Rennick. “Call me please, Rae. I have new information about Jazmin Hicks, and it’s important that we talk.”

  * * *

  Vera Rennick lived in a tidy buff-colored stucco bungalow in the sprawling Sunny Shores retirement community in the Bahama Shores neighborhood on the city’s south side.

  Before Drue could ring the bell, the door opened. The woman who answered the door wore a floor-length black and white floral caftan. She was stoop-shouldered, peering up at her visitor past a fringe of silver bangs, through thick-lensed glasses.

  “Drue? How nice to meet you.”

  She showed Drue into the living room, which, though modestly furnished, boasted a stunning waterfront view.

  “Sit here,” Vera urged, pointing at an avocado velvet club chair. “It’s the best view of Little Bayou.” She pointed toward the galley kitchen, visible through the half-wall that separated it from the living room. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, maybe?”

  “No, thank you,” Drue said politely.

  Her hostess sat in a worn brown vinyl recliner set between two banks of four-drawer metal filing cabinets. “My research,” she said, patting the top of one of the cabinets as though it were a beloved dog.

  “All of that?” Drue asked. “All about Colleen Hicks?”

  “Most of it. Of course, all my data is also stored in my iCloud, but I guess I’m old-fashioned, because I like to keep hard copies of everything as backup.”

  “That’s very impressive,” Drue said. “I had no idea there was that much information available about the Colleen Hicks case.”

  “Some of my materials are actually about other, possibly related cold cases,” Vera said. “You know how it is these days. You do one computer search and pretty soon you fall down that internet rabbit hole and the next thing you know, six or eight hours have flown by. Other bloggers, people in the true-crime community, they share information with me. You’d be surprised how many unsolved cases there are involving missing or murdered women, just in the Southeast.”

  “It looks like you’ve become somewhat of an authority on the topic,” Drue said. “And your blog is fascinating. I just discovered it last night. I only stopped reading it because I had to get up and go to work this morning.”

  Vera leaned forward. “Your email said you discovered some old newspaper clippings in your mother’s things. But you didn’t mention your mother’s name. Did she have a connection to Colleen? What did you say her name was?”

  Drue hesitated. She really didn’t want to divulge anything personal to this stranger. But on the other hand, she couldn’t expect to get if she didn’t give. Just a little.

  “I don’t think my mother had a connection to Colleen,” she said. “Her maiden name was Sherri Sanchez. She grew up in Tampa, and moved to St. Pete after she married my father. Her parents owned a little house on Sunset Beach, and my parents lived there in the mid-seventies. I recently inherited the cottage, and that’s how I came across the folder full of newspaper clippings about the case. It was up in the attic.”

  “Interesting,” Colleen said, tilting her head. Her skin was surprisingly smooth and unlined, and her eyes, behind pale blond lashes, were like a pair of large, blue marbles. “Any idea why your mom would have saved those articles?”

  “No. But I do know my father went to high school with Colleen Hicks.”

  “He went to Boca Ciega? What year? Was he in Colleen’s class?”

  “Um, well, I think maybe he was a year older,” Drue said.

  Vera propelled herself out of the recliner with a soft grunt. She went to a bookshelf beside the window, pulled out a large leatherette-covered volume and sat back down. “This is the Treasure Chest from 1968.”

  “Excuse me?” Drue asked.

  “Her yearbook. This is Colleen’s. From her junior year.”

  “Really? How do you happen to have that?” Drue asked.

  “A fan sold it to me,” Vera said, her eyes glittering with excitement. “He bought it from a local antique dealer, who bought it along with a box of books at a yard sale after Colleen’s parents died, back in early 1980.”

  She opened the yearbook and began flipping through pages of black-and-white photographs. “What’s your father’s name, Drue? Is he still living?”

  “He’s very much alive. His name is Brice Campbell.”

  Vera looked up sharply. “The lawyer? The man on all the billboards and bus benches?”

  Drue winced. “Yes.”

  Vera began leafing through the yearbook pages, stopping when she reached the page she was searching for. “Campbell,” she said, dragging a finger down the rows of photographs. “Campbell.”

  She stabbed a photo with her finger. “Here he is,” she said triumphantly, holding up the yearbook. “Brice Campbell.”

  Drue knelt on the floor beside the recliner and stared down at her father’s senior class picture. William “Brice” Campbell. JV baseball, V baseball, wrestling, Key Club, said the caption under the photo.

  The boys of the class of 1968 were mostly a clean-cut group, and Brice was no different. His short blond hair was neatly combed and side-parted, and he was clean-shaven. Like the other boys, he wore a dress shirt, narrow striped tie and a familiar smirk that suggested he knew more than he should.

  The surprise was that her father had signed his class photo, scrawling his name and PIRATES 4EVER across his own face.

  “Looks like your father knew Colleen,” Vera said. She flipped back toward the front of the yearbook, to signature pages filled with inscriptions of dozens and dozens of Colleen Hicks’s classmates.

  “He didn’t sign anyplace else in the yearbook,” Vera commented. “I’ve cross-referenced all the names of all her f
riends who wrote inscriptions, and I certainly would have remembered if I’d seen Brice Campbell’s name on my list.”

  “You made a list of everybody who signed her yearbook?” Drue asked, at once fascinated and repelled by the older woman’s obsessive knowledge.

  “Now you think I’m crazy,” Vera said, closing the book and setting it aside.

  “Oh no, I don’t think that at all.”

  “Well, everybody else does, including my sister and my nieces,” Vera said. “Not that I give a tinker’s damn. The fact is, I’m the last known person who saw Colleen Hicks alive. I don’t take that responsibility lightly.”

  “I think that’s a good thing,” Drue said, choosing her words carefully. “If somebody I cared about disappeared, I’d want somebody to find out the truth. If it were my mother, say, instead of Colleen, I’d make it my business to find out what had happened.”

  “There you go,” Vera said approvingly. “So you do understand.”

  “I think so,” Drue said. “Would you mind talking to me, about Colleen? And about that day she disappeared?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Vera said. She heaved herself up from the chair again. “But first, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have some coffee. Won’t you join me?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Drue said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “How do you take yours?”

  “Black, one sugar,” Drue said.

  * * *

  Vera returned with a small tray holding a pair of bone-china coffee mugs. She handed one to her guest and settled back into her lounge chair. “Now, where were we?”

  “You were about to tell me your theory. About what happened to Colleen,” Drue said.

  “Right. At first, I was convinced she’d run away. I never liked her husband. None of her friends did. He was cold and bossy, you’d call him controlling today. They were total opposites in every way. Colleen was so lively and vivacious. Very popular with the patients. Especially the male patients.” She winked at this last statement.