by Rebecca Rane
“I can’t stop you from doing that,” Margie said. She didn’t direct anger toward Kendra, only sadness. A bottomless pit of sadness that she lived in and had now returned to.
“Can I at least drive you home, Mom, uh Margie,” Josh offered.
“Please don’t contact me again. I do not have the strength for it,” Margie said and walked out the door.
Kendra turned to Josh; her questions were now directed to him.
“Why did you lie to us and to that woman who was clearly in pain?” Kendra asked. Her guilt at putting Margie through the wringer was now anger at Josh for lying.
“I’m not lying, I’m not. Everything I told you, everything I remembered was real. It flooded in when I saw that missing kid on the news. Truly,” Josh said to Kendra.
Kendra worked to bring her own emotions under control; this was just as much her fault. She was guilty of wanting to believe his story. She had been sucked in by the idea of a happy ending. And if she was honest with herself, Kendra had relished an easy resolution to a high profile cold case. The haste to move forward was on her, and the blame for the damage it had caused Margie was on her.
Kendra processed the options about what to do next, how to salvage the situation. She could only do one thing, ask questions. In the end, that was her job, ask the questions, no matter what the answers.
She turned her eyes back to Josh. Why, how did he know what he knew? Why did he think he was Ethan?
She took a breath. There were a million things to consider, but Kendra had to start somewhere, so she did.
“What’s your first memory?”
“Mom making me snickerdoodles. I think. When I was little.”
Josh was struggling, too, to reconcile the science with what he believed to be true. He wanted Margie to be his mother as much as the whole town wanted him to be Ethan. Everyone wanted that happy ending. No one wanted Ethan dead.
Kendra thought back to what Tim Wagy had said. Marylin Monroe thought Clark Gable was her father.
This wasn’t that different. Maybe Josh had grafted a happy ending in his life where one didn’t exist. He wanted to be Ethan so badly that he believed it to be true.
“How would I know those things I knew? How?”
It felt like Josh was questioning himself now. Kendra didn’t have the answer.
But she did have a new conviction.
She had a burning need to find out what happened to Ethan Peltz. Not because there was a happy ending anywhere in sight. But because she’d opened this room of pain for Margie Peltz. And if she couldn’t give her back her son in Josh, she could give her a kidnapper. On a platter. And let justice finally come for whoever committed this crime.
Kendra was going to find out who kidnapped Ethan Peltz.
She’d figure out how Josh could so convincingly claim his story.
“Josh, I think that’s all we’re going to do for today. I need to regroup for the podcast.”
“Are you dropping it? Kicking me out?” Josh asked. His voice was small and fearful.
“No, I’m not done, we’re not done.”
“We hurt Margie; I didn’t want to do that,” Josh said, and Kendra softened.
“We did, and I’m going to do all I can to fix it,” Kendra said.
Josh nodded. “Okay, so what do you need from me, now?” Josh looked shell-shocked, like he’d been through an earthquake.
“Go home, think, try to remember. Like I said, we need to regroup here and start again in the morning.”
“Okay, in the morning sounds good.” Josh removed the mic. He left WPLE.
“Holy crap, what now?” Shoop exclaimed once they were alone.
“Yeah, well, I promised Josh we aren’t done, and even though Margie wants nothing to do with us, we owe her.”
“We have to finish this for her,” Shoop said.
“Yes.”
The rest of the day, they worked to tell the story as it was, not as they wanted it to be.
There was no happy ending in the middle of the season.
Episode Four was about Kendra and Shoop breaking the news to their listeners that The Cold Trail had taken a devastating fork in the road.
What you’re about to hear isn’t what we wanted you to hear. It isn’t where we thought this was going.
“You know how Marilyn Monroe was an orphan or something. I read once that Marilyn thought Clark Gable was her dad. That story popped into my head.”
That was Tim Wagy, Josh’s adoptive dad. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but it stuck out. I remembered it during the next series of things I’m going to tell you in this episode.
Some are going to say we were naïve. Others will say we were stupid. But here’s what we knew.
We knew that Josh Wagy had facts and information that were held back by police. He knew things that only Ethan Peltz, Margie Peltz, and the early investigators on the case would know.
Everything we reported for the first three episodes was true. Josh did know things only Margie and investigators know. He does look incredibly similar to age progression photos of Ethan Peltz. And his past begins, seemingly where Ethan’s ended.
But the story hasn’t gotten clearer. The opposite has happened. The happy ending, for now, is eluding every character in this mystery.
Margie Peltz and Josh Wagy agreed, happily, to a DNA test. A Find My Family Tree test is easy, and by all accounts, incredibly accurate when it comes to DNA matching. So accurate it’s used by law enforcement across the country.
While they waited for results, Josh and Margie spent time together. Margie believed that after years of accepting that she’d never see her son again, he was there, in her home. She was the first to call Josh, Ethan.
I brought him to her. And for that, I’m not sure if I will ever be forgiven. Or if I even should be.
We all wanted to believe in one version of the story; the science told us something very different.
“The alleged mother is excluded in the maternity of this child. Based on the samples collected, the probability of maternity is 0.0000%. The samples tested revealed zero probability that the two subjects are biologically related.”
The gasp you hear is Josh Wagy, listening to me read the Find My Family Tree results.
This is The Cold Trail. I’m Kendra Dillon.
Chapter 25
The whiteboard was a mess. Kendra was possessed. And Shoop was trying to manage it all.
“This is my fault. I let Art and J.D. Atwell push us into it too fast.”
Kendra had raked her hair in and out of her ponytail, by Shoop’s count, at least five times in the last twenty minutes.
“Blame isn’t going to help us,” Shoop said as they both stared at the board. The calls wanting to know more about their incredible ability to solve cold cases had turned ugly.
Sharon Holcomb played a few messages:
“You’re awful for making that woman suffer.”
“You should have left well enough alone.”
“Your voice is so fake. I don’t know how you have a job.”
A few messages were enough to know the general sentiment. The Cold Trail had made a mess of this cold case, and whatever peace the victim had found was upended thanks to “the media.”
Their previous investigatory successes were forgotten. Kendra’s and Shoop’s reputations were hitched to this mess. It was a mess they had to clean up, somehow.
Kendra knew that the key was ignoring the pressure from Art or Atwell. They needed to put blinders on to all of it and dig.
“We need to investigate this from scratch.”
Kendra paced the floor. Shoop was ready and waiting for Kendra to lead her to the next step in the investigation. But they had dead ends in every direction.
“Investigate what? Ethan or Josh?”
The situation reminded Kendra of her junk drawer. No matter what she did, there were headphone coils knotted and nearly useless in there at all times. Her podcast, this story, was in a million kno
ts.
She could only think of one thing to do.
“Let’s look at the tips again.”
Shoop nodded. “Exactly one thousand, four hundred and twenty-four phone calls were logged in the wake of Ethan Peltz’s kidnapping.”
Shoop had leveled the number almost as an impossible challenge, but Kendra saw it as the only way forward.
“Fine, I’m going to look through every one of them,” Kendra said.
“Lucky for you, I’ve already categorized most of them.”
One of Shoop’s tasks while Kendra was out interviewing Tim Wagy and Margie Peltz had been to sort through the information they’d gotten from the sheriff.
“And?”
“This pile here is alien abduction conspiracies,” Shoop dropped a surprisingly thick file on their circular conference table.
“I hate to ask how many of those there are?”
“A lot, so that’s good news. Over five hundred of these tips over the years are from complete whack jobs or people who’ve seen too many episodes of The X-Files.”
“So, we’re down around a thousand tips, that’s better,” Kenda said and took the file Shoop offered.
They spent the rest of the day and into the evening, sorting through notes. Many of them were transcripts of phone call tips.
Kendra wasn’t surprised to see that Sheriff Meriwether had followed up, incredibly, on most of them. He was exacting, and though they’d just come off a case where the main investigator hid the real story at every turn, Howard Meriwether was the opposite.
He made inquiries on each call, ruled things out, and updated the file accordingly.
Most of the tips they looked at hadn’t yielded a trail to follow further, except one.
Tip number nine hundred and fifty-seven. It stood out to Kendra. It offered a little nugget of something to hold on to.
Kendra read the tip to Shoop: “In 2007, two years after the kidnapping, this woman claims to have overheard a discussion in a diner about the kidnapping of Ethan Peltz.”
“What did our friendly neighborhood sheriff do?” Shoop asked.
“Well, his notes indicate that he did talk to Naomi Sadler, the waitress witness. She was supposed to meet him in person, but the one phone conversation wound up being pretty much it. She missed a meeting with the sheriff when he tried to reach her again, no luck. He had a million other leads, so, this one, well, it just sort of sits here.”
While Kendra relayed the information, Shoop clicked around a bit. Kendra’s phone dinged.
“This, if the interwebs are to be believed, is Naomi Sadler’s current address.”
“You’re good, fast,” Kendra said, and Shoop bowed her head and made a flourish with her finger in acknowledgment of the truth.
They had no other leads; the easy season of The Cold Trail had evaporated with the DNA results.
They’d cracked open two unanswered questions now: What happened to Ethan and who was Josh, really?
“What are you waiting for? I’ll hold down the fort and answer the hate emails,” Shoop said.
“Perfect, I’m going to chase this down, right now.”
They didn’t have time to waste. If they were going to move forward on the story, and a new episode in a week, they’d need something. Right now, instead of easing Margie Peltz’s suffering, they had made it worse. Much worse. And Kendra wasn’t going to be able to rest until that was fixed. No matter what the underwriting situation was with the show.
“Good luck,” Shoop said.
“I think we used up our luck with the first three episodes. It was too easy. Think about all the digging we did for the I-80 Jane Doe or Sister David!”
Shoop had picked through fields of grass with tweezers. Kendra had walked through an abandoned house of horror to unravel the murder of a nun.
They had to do that again. The real work of the case had only just begun.
Kendra double-checked her Coach Hallie shoulder bag, acquired as she hunted the outlet mall in Brighton, Michigan. It was a drive, but worth it for a beauty like this one, Kendra thought. And perfect to contain her mobile office. It was time to find out things outside of what Joshua said or Margie remembered. It was time to do their own legwork.
She drove to the address Shoop had found for Naomi Sadler. The internet also coughed up the woman’s age: sixty-three. She would have been in her late forties or so when she called the tip into the hotline.
She lived in apartments in the west part of Port Lawrence. They were nice, neat, and in a safe neighborhood. The kind of apartment she wouldn’t mind her dad moving to… if her dad would move.
If Kendra had a phone number, she’d have called. What she had was an address. She knocked on the apartment door.
“Coming!” Kendra heard a woman’s voice through the door and saw the peephole darken and then lighten again. “If you’re the UPS guy, can you just leave it? My cats will run out, and then it’s a whole thing.”
“Uh, no, my name is Kendra Dillon.”
“So?”
“So, well, I’m a podcast investigator.”
Kendra realized that was not a thing, or at least it didn’t sound like it was a real thing to most people. She was still surprised, herself, that it was a job. A job that had turned into her calling. Still, you couldn’t major in, or get a degree in, college as a podcast investigator.
“I am not getting rid of these beauties. The landlord said I was allowed, and I pay the pet fee.”
“Uh, no, I’m investigating the story about the disappearance of Ethan Peltz.”
Kendra waited.
“Okay, fine, I’m going to open the door. Come in fast. I can’t keep the door open or, well, Apple and Bananas will escape.”
“Got it.”
The door opened, and Kendra stepped into the apartment.
The interior was standard apartment issue, but the décor was pure country grandmother. A floral tablecloth adorned the table, a doily in the center protected the tablecloth, and a faux floral centerpiece sat in the middle on top. A little riot of ruffles and figurines filled a curio cabinet in the corner. And Apples and Bananas were at her feet. Kendra smiled and instinctively crouched down to their level.
One of the kitties sat sweetly, waiting to be greeted under the chin. Kendra gently tickled the spot she knew her own Swisshelm liked when Swissy deigned to be pet. Meanwhile, the other kitty circled quick figure eights around Kendra and the first cat. Perhaps judging whether this stranger was to be trusted?
“I’m going to figure you’re Apple,” Kendra said to the cat who allowed affection from her. “And you’re obviously Bananas.” She smiled at the second cat, who was clearly more discerning. Apples was a little round, and Bananas was longer.
“Bingo,” Naomi Sadler said.
“My cat is much more like Bananas than the friendly Apple here,” Kendra said and then stood up to come face to face with the cat’s owner.
“Yeah, they’re a pair, these two. Oranges is around here somewhere, but, honestly, she’s in a terrible mood today.” The woman smiled at Kendra, and the apprehension she’d felt stepping into the apartment of a stranger evaporated.
“I’m here to ask you about the tip you called in, about Ethan Peltz, years ago,” Kendra dove right in. “About what you heard at the Nickerson Farms Restaurant, on Carrington Road.”
“Ah, yes, that,” she said.
“Can we talk?”
“I suppose now, yes, we can,” Naomi agreed.
“Do you mind if I record our conversation?” Kendra asked, pushing her luck, she realized. But she had the woman saying yes, so now was as good a time as any.
Naomi looked at the digital recorder and back at Kendra. Bananas had decided to decrease her figure eights' diameter and was now nearly sitting at Kendra’s feet. Bananas’ acceptance of Kendra was a crucial step in getting this interview, it turned out.
“Well, Bananas doesn’t usually warm up this fast. I’m going to say yes. But, uh, do I have to be identified?
”
“No, I do not have to name you.”
“Fine, then let’s sit here. Can I get you coffee?”
“No, thank you, though.”
“I’m going to get myself some,” Naomi said, and so Kendra nodded.
“If it’s no trouble, that would be great.”
Kendra sat at the table. There were a few framed photos of children on the wall, school pictures. They looked current, so maybe they were grandchildren? Nieces and nephews?
Naomi brought two cups of coffee over and then a decanter of cream that she set next to a dispenser of sugar, already in the center of the table.
“Call it a perk of my years as a waitress.”
“Were you waitressing when you heard something that made you call in?”
“I was, yep.”
“Do you still waitress?”
“No, that’s just so hard on the feet. I’m customer service for World Shopping Network now. I can do that here because the internet is good. They even give you a headset.”
Kendra nodded then indicated the picture on the wall. “Those kids are adorable! Grandchildren?”
“Yes! Thank you! They live in Phoenix. My daughter moved out there for work. I get out there twice a year, the joy of my life.”
Kendra nodded and took a sip of the coffee. It was hot, good, and as it went down, she got to the point.
“I’m trying to solve the disappearance of Ethan Peltz, find out what happened. And there’s not a lot to go on,” Kendra explained.
“After all this time, I bet not,” Naomi said.
“Can we just start with what you heard?” Kendra asked, glancing at the dial on her recorder. It was working and rolling.
Naomi looked up at the ceiling, the corners of her mouth turned down as she appeared to be accessing the memory. She looked at the photos of her grandchildren. They were older than Ethan would have been.
Naomi was pretty, Kendra thought, with bright, friendly eyes, and though she was in her sixties, she had only tiny wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Kendra could see she probably did very well as a waitress, with those smiling eyes. Her brown hair, arranged in a short but loose bob around her face, added to the overall warmth she conveyed.
