Thread of Suspicion (Joe Tyler Mystery #2)

by Jeff Shelby

  We navigated the walk carefully, avoiding small patches of ice, with Lauren holding onto my arm. I pushed the gold button next to the door and we waited for a moment.

  A man with a gruff expression opened the door. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Ponder?” I asked.

  “We don’t want any,” he said.

  “We’re not selling,” I said. “We’re here about your son. Bryce.”

  He shrugged. “He’s not here.”

  “We’re aware,” I said. “We’d like to speak to you about him.”

  “Why? Who are you?”

  “My name’s Joe Tyler,” I said. “This is Lauren. We believe your son is with our daughter, Elizabeth.”

  He blinked several times. “Your daughter?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve met the girl’s parents,” he said. “You aren’t them.”

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “If you’ll let us in, we’ll explain.”

  “I’m not interested,” he said and started to shut the door.

  “Your son is an adult,” I said. “Our daughter is not. I’ll call the police if I need to.”

  His hand rested on the door and he ran the other across his jaw, his mouth twisting in decision. He stared at me, unsure what to do.

  Then he unlatched the screen door and pushed it open. “You’ve got five minutes.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Ponder ended up giving us more than five minutes.

  He showed us into his small living room, where his wife was waiting.

  She smiled nervously. “Hello. I’m Marian. I heard you at the door. You’re here about Bryce?”

  I nodded.

  “Please sit,” she said, gesturing to a beige sofa. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “They aren’t staying, Marian,” Ponder said, glancing at her.

  “No, but thank you,” I said to Marian. “We’re fine.”

  She nodded, the nervousness still apparent as her hands fidgeted, trying to find a place to land.

  Lauren and I reintroduced ourselves to her and then sat on the sofa.

  “You aren’t the girl’s parents,” Ponder said, folding his arms across his chest. “So, who are you?”

  Before I could answer, Lauren said “The girl you know as Ellie? Her name is actually Elizabeth. She was taken from us about eight years ago.”

  And with that, Ponder’s entire expression softened. As Lauren explained the history and how we’d shown up at their door, he eased himself down into an olive-green recliner and Marian came over to stand next to him, listening.

  Lauren told the story impassively. She kept the emotion out of her voice, sharing with them the facts. It was her lawyerly training. She was bringing them around to her side. She’d been wise to cut me off before I began ranting and raving and making threats. She’d made more progress in ten minutes than I might’ve made in thirty.

  “There’s no doubt,” Lauren said, looking at each of them. “She’s our missing daughter. The Corzines admitted as much. Now, we just need to locate her. And they said she is most likely with your son.”

  Marian placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder and he glanced up at her, forcing a smile.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to us. “We didn’t know.”

  “No one did,” Lauren said. “It’s not your fault nor the Corzines. But you can understand our anxiety in wanting to find her.”

  They both nodded.

  “The Corzines told us that Elizabeth and Bryce were dating,” Lauren said. “Is that your understanding?”

  Ponder hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. And we don’t approve.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because she’s younger than he is,” he said. “And because she seems like a nice girl. Bryce…has some issues.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Issues?”

  “Bryce is a screw-up,” he said, looking down at his lap.

  “Ed,” Marian said. “No.”

  He sighed and shrugged. “Maybe screw-up is harsh. But we’re at wit’s end with him. He barely finished high school, he can’t hold a job and he keeps doing stupid things.”

  “Were you aware that he’s gone?” Lauren asked. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but…”

  “I know what you mean,” Ed Ponder said. “And you don’t sound rude. Yes, we know he’s gone. He lives here because he has no income. The Corzines came to us when they realized they were gone. So, yeah, we know.”

  “Have you done anything about it?” I asked.

  Tension pushed his shoulders up. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He reached up and covered his wife’s hand, still resting on his shoulder, with his own. “He’s been in some trouble.”

  I shifted on the couch. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Minor stuff,” he said. “Some shoplifting. Vandalism. Stupid stuff. But it’s all added up. He’s on probation for another six months.”

  “He’s never hurt anyone,” Marian added quickly. “It’s not like that.”

  Ed Ponder’s mouth set itself in a firm line. “No, he hasn’t hurt anyone. Except himself.”

  Marian looked away.

  “So, you didn’t call the police because you didn’t want more trouble for him,” I said.

  Ponder nodded. “Yeah. I honestly thought her parents…” He caught himself. “I thought they would call them. We asked them not to and they weren’t happy about that. So, I figured they would. But now it seems obvious why they haven’t.”

  I was actually relieved that they hadn’t called the police. It allowed me to still make the decision about what to do. It felt like so long since I’d had any say in my daughter’s life and just having the opportunity to exert some influence made me feel like a quasi-parent again.

  “Any idea where they went?” I asked.

  “None,” he said, shaking his head. “He doesn’t have a ton of friends. He doesn’t do much except watch TV and spend time with the girl. Since he went on probation, he’s been home at nights. He doesn’t do much.”

  “I went through his room,” Marian said. “I looked through everything. I looked in his email and on his computer. I couldn’t find anything.”

  They were more worried about their son than they were letting on if they’d done all that. They just seemed like parents who were frustrated with their son’s behavior and didn’t know how to change it.

  “Does he have a bank account?” I asked. “A cell phone?”

  “He doesn’t have a phone,” Ed said. “We took it away. He’s allowed to borrow ours if he needs one, but he doesn’t have one that we know about.”

  “What about the bank account?”

  “He has one,” he said, slowly. “We deposit a little money into it each month. I’m not sure why. I think we convinced ourselves it might encourage him to get his own money to put into it.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have access to it?”

  He looked up at his wife. “Marian?”

  “Yes, I can access it,” she said.

  “Could you do that?” I asked. “Right now?”

  “I don’t understand why,” she said. “And it’s his account. I don’t want to violate that. We’ve encouraged him to be more independent, more responsible. If I…”

  “If we can access his account, we can see if he’s withdrawn any money,” Lauren said. “We can see if he’s made purchases. Where he might be.”

  Marian closed her mouth, blinking rapidly.

  Ed patted her hand. “Get the laptop. It’s okay.”

  She exhaled, then disappeared down the hallway.

  “My wife,” Ed said. “She wants to believe the best. That he’s going to change.” He shook his head. “But it ain’t gonna happen. He is who he is. And it’s time for us to stop protecting him.”

  I appreciated his pragmatism about his own kid and I sympathized to a degree. If Elizabeth wasn’t involved, I would’ve been more inclined to ask more questions, find out more
about the kid, where he was having trouble.

  But at that moment, I was only concerned with the fact that Elizabeth had apparently taken on with a guy who seemed distinctly on the wrong track.

  Marian reappeared with a laptop, the screen already lit up. She set it on the coffee table and knelt next to it.

  “She does all of our banking,” Ed said, nodding at the computer. “His account is at our bank. We deposit two hundred a month in his account. No idea if, or how, he uses it.”

  Marian tapped at the keys with two fingers, staring at the screen. She waited, then looked at me. “Are you going to call the police?”

  “At some point, yes,” I said. “But if I can keep your son out of it, I will. I can’t promise, but if he hasn’t done anything wrong, I’ll make sure the authorities know that.”

  This time, Ed put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It’ll be alright, Marian.”

  She glanced down at the screen and I couldn’t read her expression.

  “The account hasn’t been accessed for three weeks,” she said.

  My stomach sank.

  “The last time he took any money out was three weeks ago,” she repeated. “And it was here. At the grocery store. I remember. I sent him that day to get a few things.”

  I leaned back in the couch. I felt like I’d gotten to take a look down a tunnel and now a boulder had just rolled in front of it, blocking my view.

  “Did he keep money in his room?” Lauren asked. “Anything like that? They would need money.”

  Ed shook his head. “We checked his room. We check it regularly and he knows that. He wouldn’t have kept anything there. And I don’t think he has that kind of discipline. To save money. He’s too hot to trot to go buy video games.”

  Lauren looked at me, disheartened, disappointed. I was sure I looked the same way because I was feeling the same things.

  “There might be something else,” Marian said, glancing at her husband, then moving her eyes away.

  We all waited.

  “About a year ago,” she said, her voice stuttering. “I gave him…I mean, I got him a credit card.”

  “Jesus, Marian,” Ed said, closing his eyes.

  “I know, I know,” she said, seemingly on the verge of tears. “You wanted to stop enabling him. And I have. But I was also trying to be logical. If we really want him to be independent, to be capable of moving out, he has to build credit. To rent an apartment. To do things on his own.” She looked at us, looking for approval. “I told him he had to pay it with his own money.”

  “You mean the money we give him each month?” Ed said, frowning.

  Her face reddened.

  “The card,” I said. “Can you check the records on that?”

  She tapped again at the keyboard. “I don't know. It’s through our bank so I think I can.”

  Ed leaned forward and I thought maybe he was angry with her. But he just patted her shoulder again, silently telling her he understood.

  She bit her upper lip, then something flashed through her eyes. “He’s used it.”

  I leaned forward with Lauren.

  “Two days ago,” she said, her finger on the screen. “He stopped at a gas station in Iowa. It looks like he advanced cash off of it.” Her finger moved again. “Then yesterday. A hotel in Nebraska.” She looked at me. “That’s it.”

  I pulled out my phone. “Name of the hotel?”

  She recited it and I plugged it into the phone’s browser. Thirty seconds later, I was on the phone with a hotel staffer who informed me that Bryce Ponder had checked out that morning.

  I stuck the phone back in my pocket. “They’ve already checked out.”

  “Should I cancel the card?” Marian asked. “So he can’t use it?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “We want him to keep using it. To tell us where he is.” I hesitated. “How would you feel about giving me the account info? So I can continue to track them?”

  She looked at her husband.

  He looked at me. “I have your word that you’ll try to keep Bryce out of trouble?”

  “Look, if he’s just driving the car,” I said. “If they decided to do this together for whatever reason and he’s just along for the ride? You have my word. If he hasn’t done anything wrong, I'll do the best I can to make sure there’s no probation violation.”

  He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his thighs, folding his hands together between his knees. He gazed at me for a long time.

  “Yeah, we’ll give it to you,” Ed Ponder finally said.

  FORTY-NINE

  “I think we need to call the police,” Lauren said.

  We were back in the car. After getting the credit card info from the Ponders and a cursory look around Bryce’s room that produced nothing, we told them we’d be in touch with them as soon as we learned anything new. I told Lauren that I needed to go see a friend in the hospital before we decided exactly how to proceed.

  She was not exhibiting much patience.

  “I’m not disagreeing with you,” I said, navigating the highway traffic. The sun dipped low on the horizon. “But I’d rather wait until we have a location for them.”

  “How far could they be from Omaha?” she said, throwing her hands up.

  “Actually, pretty far,” I said. “We don’t know what direction they’re headed and if they checked out at normal time, they’ve had the better part of the day to drive.”

  She turned away from me and stared out the window.

  “And if we involve the police here now, there’s no way you and I will be able to go anywhere if we do get a location for them,” I said. “We’ll be locked into questioning for hours and you know what that’s like.”

  She pulled out her phone and refreshed the browser.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, staring at Bryce Ponder’s credit card account on her screen.

  “They’ve done it two nights in a row,” I said. “It’ll happen. But if we’re tied up answering questions, we won’t get to be the ones that go to her. They’ll hold us.”

  “But if we got their information in the system, there would be more eyes looking for them,” she said, tapping the window. “For her. A wider net. Eventually, we’d get to her. They’d hold her.”

  “It might mean screwing this Ponder kid,” I said.

  “Like I care about him.”

  I glanced at her. “You seemed sympathetic while we were there.”

  “I wanted information,” she said. “They weren’t going to respond to you yelling at them. But I could care less what happens to him.”

  “I gave the guy my word.”

  “Yeah, well, the kid’s on probation. That isn’t our problem.” She made a fist and pounded it against the window. “She’s out there, Joe. I don’t want to lose her again. If they can get her in custody, she’ll be there when we get there. She’ll be there waiting. She won’t be lost. We’ll know where she is.”

  The GPS directed me to the upcoming exit and I moved over to the far right lane.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  “We can call them,” I said. “Bigger net. That’s what you want, let’s call them.”

  “What I want is to see our daughter again,” she said.

  She was being logical. I was not. She was trading the idea of being the first to reach Elizabeth for more people looking for her. She was willing to hand over the search for her to other people. I wasn’t so sure I was willing to do that.

  But looking at her in the passenger seat, knowing she’d come to Minnesota just because I’d asked her and seeing that she finally had the hope that I’d held onto for so long, I didn’t think it was fair to just overrule her for no good reason. Her logic was sound. Mine was selfish.

  I took the exit and slowed the car as we descended the off ramp. “Then let’s call it in.”

  She reached over and grabbed my forearm. “Thank you.”

  My phone rang in my pocket and I fished i
t out. Mike’s number was on the screen.

  I tapped the screen. “Hey.”

  “Joe,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m actually alright.”

  “Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. It took a while to hear back from the Vero PD. I’m afraid I didn’t get much on Detwiler.”

  “Mike, we found her,” I said and told him what had transpired since I’d been in Minnesota.

  “And Lauren’s here,” I said when I’d finished. “Right beside me in the car.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Okay.”

  But there was something off in his voice.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” he said. “But remember when we talked the other day? I said Bazer was asking about you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Something else happened.”

  The hospital was on our right, just off the freeway and I turned into the parking lot. “Okay.”

  “I might just be paranoid, I don’t know.”

  I pulled into a parking spot and cut the engine. Lauren gave me a look, wondering what was going on. I held up a finger. “Okay.”

  “This morning, I had Elizabeth’s file on my desk,” Mike said. “I was just reading through it. I’ve been going back through it ever since I gave you the picture. Just looking for anything I might’ve missed.”

  That sounded like him. If anyone had come close to my obsession with my daughter’s abduction, it was Mike. He’d put in nearly as many hours as I had looking for her. He was always reexamining and rethinking and looking for new angles. Even after I’d left the department, he’d stayed in my corner.

  “And I was trying to find the damn case name I found the picture in to begin with,” he said quickly. “Because I can’t find it.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, not sure that I needed that info anymore. Maybe down the road, but not right at that moment.

  “But Bazer walked into my office,” he continued. “The file was open. I’d made a photocopy of the photo before I gave it to you. The copy was on top of the file. He started to say something to me, then stopped when he saw the picture. And then he sort of…freaked out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wanted to know about the picture,” he said. “Where I found it. Where it came from. If you had seen it. Who else had seen it.”