Thread of Innocence (Joe Tyler Mystery #4)

by Jeff Shelby

  We jogged home to cool down and as we came up the street, I saw a familiar frame leaning against a car, parked at the curb.

  In a lot of ways, Chuck Winslow was the reason I'd finally found Elizabeth. I'd come back to San Diego, temporarily ending my nomadic search for Elizabeth in order to help Chuck. He was hospitalized, accused of a crime he didn't commit, and I'd returned because he had been my best friend. Getting him out of the jam kept me in San Diego long enough to get the first clue to Elizabeth's whereabouts; the clue that ultimately led me to finding her. If he hadn't been in trouble, I wouldn't have gone back to San Diego and I might not have gotten the picture of Elizabeth that had set everything in motion.

  His six foot four frame was stretched out against the side of his black pick-up truck. He'd lost some weight after spending time in the hospital so he looked thinner than I was used to seeing him. His hair was buzzed short and he had on a gray T-shirt, corduroy shorts and flip-flops.

  Elizabeth immediately went on guard and moved closer to me.

  “It's okay,” I said. “He's a friend.”

  She nodded but stayed at my side.

  “Lauren said you guys were probably on your way back,” he said, smiling. “I was about to get in the truck and saw you coming down the street.”

  We shook hands and he smiled at Elizabeth. “It is terrific to see you, kid.”

  She nodded timidly, then looked at me. “I'm going inside.”

  She didn't wait for an answer and headed up the drive to the front door.

  I looked at Chuck. “She's still adjusting.”

  He nodded. “Rightfully so. But it is good to see her.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “It's good to see you, too,” he said.

  “Same here. You look pretty good.”

  “Better than in the hospital bed you mean?” he asked, grinning. “Yeah, I'm better. I'm good.”

  “How's Gina?” I asked.

  “We're good.”

  Gina helped me figure out how and why Chuck had been wrongly accused. They'd been together years ago, back in high school, and had broken up and then reconnected. She'd been instrumental in helping me clear him.

  “That's good,” I said.

  “How are things here?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the house.

  I shrugged. “Just trying to settle in.”

  “You and Lauren back together?”

  I took a deep breath. “I honestly have no idea.”

  He nodded, like he'd expected that answer. “Fair enough. Can't be easy.”

  “It's not. But we'll figure it out.”

  We stood there awkwardly for a moment. It was weird. He'd been my best friend for years and now I wasn't sure how to make conversation with him.

  “I wanna help,” Chuck said.

  “With?”

  “With whatever you're planning.”

  I tilted my head, confused. “What?”

  He chuckled, leaned back against the truck. “How long have we been friends?”

  “I dunno. Since high school.”

  “Right. So you think I don't know what's going through your head right now?” He folded his arms across his chest and stared at me. “No way you're content just to have Elizabeth back without knowing what happened to her.”

  “I have a pretty good idea what happened to her.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I meant without knowing who was responsible for whatever happened to her.”

  I didn't say anything, just watched an older couple stroll by on the other side of the street. They were a pair I didn't recognize and I wondered how many of the neighbors who'd lived there when I'd still been in the house were still around.

  “I don't know any of the story, other than what I've read in the paper,” he said. “But it doesn't sound like they arrested anyone responsible, other than the guys you found her with in that warehouse. So I'm just assuming you're biding your time, waiting for the right time to figure out who took her.”

  I wasn't biding my time. If I'd known right then who took Elizabeth, I would've had my hands wrapped around their throat, choking the life out of them. The problem was I wasn't sure who was responsible and I had to be patient in order to make sure I got the right person. I didn't want to be wrong. I wasn't going to be wrong. I would find the right person.

  “I'm looking,” I said.

  He smiled. “I knew you would be. And I want to help.”

  “You don't have to. And to be honest, it might get ugly.”

  “You think I care?”

  I shrugged. “I'm just telling you. The stuff I'm starting to put together, I think it's going to be bad.”

  “Again. You think I care?”

  I didn't say anything.

  He uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, Joe. I'd be offering to help no matter what. But you saved my ass. You believed in me when no one else did. No one. And that was after you hadn't seen me in awhile and everyone else was telling you I was guilty.” He paused. “You were the only one. If you hadn't come back, I'd probably be sitting in a cell somewhere, waiting for my trial, where I'd be virtually assured of some good old fashioned jail time. But you made sure that didn't happen.” He looked me in the eyes. “I owe you.”

  “You don't owe me,” I said. “We're friends. That's what friends do.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “Most of my so-called friends left me for dead and didn't come near me. But not you. So that isn't what friends do. It's what you did.” He smiled at me. “I'm here to return the favor, brother.”

  I nodded slowly. The smart thing to do would've been to tell him, no, his help wasn't necessary, to not involve him in anyway. Because I had this feeling in my gut, a feeling that was growing by the day, that whatever I turned up in Elizabeth's disappearance was going to be worse than I thought. And that was probably going to lead to even worse consequences, something I didn't want to drop in Chuck's lap.

  But I knew Chuck. He meant what he said. I wasn't going to scare him off and if he thought he owed me he was going to stand there, holding his breath, until I let him help.

  “Alright,” I said, grateful that I had at least one person I knew I could trust without question. “I'll let you know.”

  SIX

  After Chuck left, I went inside, showered, dressed and checked the news. Finding Elizabeth had completely detonated the routine I was used to. I would wake up, run, eat and then spend the day surfing the Internet, checking message boards, looking for any nugget of information that I might be able to cull that would point me in her direction. I'd spent years doing exactly that in cities all over the country, chasing down leads and helping other people in the process, searching for their loved ones who had gone missing. It had become my job, my vocation, my mission. Now that I had her home, though, I wasn't really sure what to do with myself. I knew that if I opened up my email there would be at least two messages from people looking for help. But I wasn't sure I was ready to go back to that.

  Elizabeth ambled down the stairs as I sat in the kitchen, perusing news sites on my laptop. Her hair was wet from her shower and she had on a pair of orange basketball shorts and a yellow T-shirt. I had to pinch myself that it wasn't a dream, that she really was coming down the stairs.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey. Who was that guy?”

  “Chuck Winslow. You don't remember him?”

  She walked to the cabinet near the sink, pulled out a coffee cup and filled it from the pot on the counter. She brought it over and sat down across from me at the table. She blew on the surface of the cup, then shook her head. “I don't think so.”

  “He's been a friend of mine for a long time,” I said. “Since high school. I came back to San Diego a few weeks ago to help him, which actually helped me find you.”

  She took a sip from the coffee and said nothing.

  “Do you want cream for that?” I asked. It was the first time I'd seen her grab a cup and I didn't want to admit the
surprise, the weird sense of melancholy I felt, to see my daughter drinking coffee.

  “No.”

  “You drink black coffee?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shuddered. “That's gross.”

  She cracked a small smile. “No, it's not.”

  “Is to me,” I said, smiling back at her.

  “What's gross is drinking it when it's already so warm outside.” She swiveled in her chair and looked out the living room window, at the now-cloudless sky. “Don't you people drink iced coffee when it's hot?”

  “Now that's gross,” I said, teasing her, enjoying the back and forth.

  Her smile grew a little bigger, then disappeared. She took another sip of the steaming beverage. “What do you mean you came back to San Diego?”

  I closed the laptop. “I wasn't living here.”

  “Where were you living?”

  “I wasn't really living anywhere,” I said. “I was looking for you.”

  She cupped the mug between her hands. “So, what? You just, like, traveled all over the place, hoping you'd see me?”

  “It was a little more organized than that.”

  “Tell me. Please.”

  I explained to her how I'd follow leads that would show up on message boards and go wherever I needed to in order to follow up. I told her how that had led to a semi-professional career as an investigator, helping to track down other missing people because I'd learned so much looking for her. And I told her that I'd stayed away from San Diego because it was too hard to come back without her.

  She stared into the coffee cup. “Is that why you guys got divorced?”

  I thought for a moment. “In part, yeah. I couldn't focus on anything else until I knew what had happened to you.”

  She shifted in the chair. “But she could?”

  I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not. But your mom needed to handle it differently. She couldn't spend every waking moment chasing down what almost always ended up being dead ends. It was too frustrating for her. Too painful. It nearly broke her. She had to create some separation. We each had to handle it our own way and that led to us being apart.”

  “You guys don't seem like you hate one another or anything.”

  “That's because we don't. We don't. But sometimes when...things happen...it's hard to be together.”

  She nodded slowly. I wasn't sure if she understood or not. I wasn't sure that I understood.

  She looked around the house, like she was trying to see things she'd never seen before. I wondered what it was like for her, to be brought into a home and told it was your home, only to have it feel completely foreign.

  “I'm hungry,” she said.

  “You wanna go get some lunch?” I asked. “Get outta here for awhile?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you could show me where she works, too?”

  I nodded. “I can show you where your mom works, sure.”

  “Gimme a minute,” she said, standing.

  “Gonna put on some clothes that actually match?”

  She looked down at her clothes, then looked at me. “Very funny. I look fine.”

  “You look like you got dressed in the dark.”

  She started to say something, then realized I was kidding and let another small smile crack her stoic expression. “Ha. Ha. I'll be back down in a minute.”

  I watched her walk up the stairs and disappear down the hall. I couldn't stop smiling. Joking around with her during our conversation was something new. Something I'd missed. And something I wanted to be able to do without thinking about it.

  It was a start.

  SEVEN

  Mike Lorenzo was walking toward us.

  Elizabeth and I had walked to downtown Coronado, enjoying the early afternoon sunshine and quiet streets on a weekday. There were a few people strolling the sidewalks, mostly women pushing strollers or loaded down with shopping bags. If we were an odd sight, a middle-aged man and a teenage girl walking silently, a few feet apart, no one seemed to notice. We'd settled ourselves at an outside table at a small bar and grill just down the street from Bay Books. We were under the awning, Elizabeth chomping away on a hamburger and me picking at a salad when I saw him walking toward us.

  “Hey, Elizabeth,” I said, keeping my eye on him as he came down the street.

  “Hmm?”

  “Guy coming up the street,” I said. “He's a friend of mine. Just didn't want him to startle you.”

  She turned and looked over her shoulder. He realized we saw him and he held up a hand in greeting.

  She turned back to me. “Okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  She picked up the hamburger. “Sure, whatever.”

  Interesting.

  Mike wore a navy blue polo and tan slacks. His badge was clipped to his belt, but it didn't look like he was carrying. I hadn't spoken to him since we'd found Elizabeth. He was there that day and I was sure he'd spoken to Blundell at the Bureau, given that he was the detective who'd handled the case in San Diego. He'd left me several messages, but I hadn't returned them. I was reluctant for several reasons, not the least of which was that I'd gone from thinking he was the only person I could trust on the force to no longer being sure that I could tell him anything. He'd been my mentor and friend, but I was viewing everyone and everything through a different lens.

  He was smiling as he reached our table. “I was driving by and thought I saw you guys.” He offered his hand and we shook. He glanced at Elizabeth. “And you probably have no idea who I am.”

  She looked at him, then at me. “No. I don't.”

  “Elizabeth, this is Mike Lorenzo,” I said. “We worked together when I was a police officer here in Coronado. And he helped me find you.”

  He offered his hand to her and she hesitated, then shook it.

  “It is very nice to see you, Elizabeth,” he said, still smiling.

  “Thank you,” she said before turning her attention back to her plate.

  Mike looked at me. “Been trying to catch up with you.”

  “I know,” I said. “Sorry. We've had kind of a long week.”

  “I'm sure,” he said, nodding. “How's Lauren?”

  “She's alright,” I said. “We're all just trying to get back in the swing of things.”

  Elizabeth pushed her chair back and grabbed her cup. “I'm gonna get some more to drink, okay?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  She turned and went inside the restaurant and I tried to stem the stirrings of panic igniting in my gut. There was only one entrance and exit to the deli and she'd just gone through it. I'd see her come out. I wouldn't lose her again.

  “Why do I feel like you're avoiding me?” Mike asked, lowering his voice.

  “Just been busy,” I said, keeping my eyes trained on the door. “It's a lot to get used to again.”

  “You still looking? To find out what happened?”

  I nodded.

  “Anything or anybody yet?”

  I glanced at him. “No.”

  He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “Joe, I busted my ass nearly as hard as you did trying to find that girl. Then all of a sudden when you get on her heels, you cut me out. I wanna know why.”

  “Now's not the time, Mike,” I said, cutting my eyes back to the restaurant door. “Not with Elizabeth here.”

  “When's the time then?” he asked.

  “We'll get to it,” I said.

  I caught his gaze and his eyes were unkind, filled with the kind of contempt he usually reserved for suspects. “Years, Joe. I gave it years. I passed on other cases. I worked overtime. Because I wanted to get her back. For you.” A muscle in his jaw tightened. “I'm not sure exactly what it is you think I've done, but I deserve an explanation.”

  I started to say something, but his eyes shifted and his expression cleared and he smiled. I swiveled my head back toward the door of the restaurant and saw Elizabeth headed back to the table, fiddling with the lid and straw on her drink. She slid back into her chair.


  “I'll let you two finish your lunch,” Mike said. “I just wanted to say hello. And to tell you how nice it is to see you on Coronado again, Elizabeth.”

  “Thank you,” she said again. She kept her eyes locked on the plate in front of her.

  He looked at me. “We'll talk soon.”

  It wasn't a question and he wasn't leaving the door open. He was letting me know that we'd be talking, whether I liked it or not. I knew he was right. He did deserve an explanation. But if he had somehow been involved with Elizabeth's disappearance and his looking for her had all been some sort of ruse to throw me off, I wasn't going to just start offering answers to his questions. I needed to do some more digging before I decided which direction I wanted to take with him. Was that unfair if he'd always been on my side? Yeah, it was. But I wasn't willing to give him the benefit of the doubt anymore.

  I extended my hand. “Absolutely.”

  He hesitated for just a fraction of a second, then we shook hands.

  “Look forward to it,” he said. “I'll see you later.”

  He turned and walked back in the direction he'd come from and I watched him until he turned a corner and I couldn't see him anymore.

  EIGHT

  “You used to work with him?” Elizabeth asked as we walked back toward the house.

  I nodded. “Yeah. He's the only detective in the Coronado police department. We were friends before you were taken, but then he helped me a bunch after that. He was actually the one that found the picture of you in Minnesota.”

  “The black and white one?”

  I nodded. I'd shown her the picture earlier in the week when she'd asked a few tentative questions about how I'd found her. She remembered it and asked if she could have it. I'd handed it to her, no questions asked, but I wondered what she'd done with it. Had she tucked it away some place safe or had she ripped it to shreds? Or was it sitting in a drawer somewhere, stuck in the same sort of limbo she was in?