by Rebecca Rane
“These two guys weren’t regulars. But I did think I’d seen one before. The lunch rush at that location, back then, was insane. You could make almost dinner level tips in the middle of the day.”
“Were they your table?”
“No, actually, I was hostessing that day. I hated hostessing. I lived on tips, you know? Anyway, the regular girl called in sick. So, I was up at the front. They were seated in the booth behind the hostess station. And their conversation wafted my way. Did it ever.”
“So, they didn’t realize you could hear?”
“Nope. They had no idea. Though a lot of people say things in front of wait staff like we’re deaf or can’t understand. You’d be surprised the stuff I’ve heard.”
“What did you hear from them?”
“The one guy facing the back of the restaurant, he says it’s got to stop. That’s what caught my attention. ‘It’s got to stop.’ I didn’t look at them. I kept my eyes on the dining room chart, you know? But now, my ears are up like Bananas over there. So, he says, ‘It’s got to stop,’ and the other guy says, ‘If they haven’t figured it out by now, they’re not going to.’ And honestly, I’m thinking right then that maybe they’re having an affair. You know? Maybe they don’t want their respective wives to know they’re having a homosexual extramarital situation. I mean, that’s really what I thought, or something like it.”
“But that’s not what it was,” Kendra prompted.
“Nope, I hear the one guy say, ‘We should have stopped after Sand Point,’ that ‘the Peltz heat was intense.’ I heard them say that, and I knew exactly what they were talking about. I watch America’s Most Wanted and Court TV, Nancy Grace was all over that story. She was spitting mad that they never arrested anyone.”
“You knew about the Peltz kidnapping then?”
“Yeah, sweet little boy. I half suspected that mom at first, you know? She was so pretty it just made me suspicious. Who blow dries their hair when they’re asking the TV cameras to find their missing kid? It just seemed suspicious.”
Kendra understood that women were each other’s harshest judges. Margie Peltz was beautiful then and well-coiffed for the cameras by the time they sat down to do network interviews. Why wouldn’t she be? But to some, that looked like she didn’t care. It was nuts.
“I missed a part of their conversation—I had three four-tops come in one after the other—but I get back to my stool after the new customers are seated, and these two are still at it. The guy facing my station says something like, ‘We can use your kid. He’d still be good.’ And the other guy whose back is to me, he says, ‘He’s not scouting anymore.’”
“Scouting?” Kendra had to repeat it, not believing what she heard.
“My reaction too, I’m like, ‘scouting’? Did they mean Boy Scouts? I didn’t get it. But I did get Peltz’s name.”
Kendra nodded. She was flabbergasted.
“So, the guy says something I’ll never forget. He says, ‘With all that heat from the Peltz kid? We can do anything. You’re crapping out now? Even after I rewarded you like you wanted.’”
“What did you take that to mean?” Kendra was having a hard time believing all this.
“That they got away with something and still could.”
“What did he mean ‘rewarded’?”
“I don’t know, money maybe? Even after all this time, I know they said ‘Peltz kid.’ I know one guy wanted to stop, and the other one didn’t. I turned to look and tried to see them, but only saw the one facing the hostess area. He was the one pushing the other one. That’s the way it seemed it me.”
“When did you call the tip in?”
“Right away. I talked to a sheriff on the phone and everything.”
“But that was it? You didn’t meet him for the follow-up.”
The waitress’s bravado shrank a little. A shield came up where before there was only openness. She seemed to measure her next answer.
“I know, I know, but you see, my boss at the time, he got wind of what I’d been saying about the customers. My mouth, you know? I like to talk, good for waitressing… but well, he was livid. He said if I talked to the police, or was on the news, that the restaurant was home to sickos, well, he was pissed. He told me to shut up, or I’d be fired.”
“When Sheriff Meriwether tried to meet you, what did you do?”
“I got spooked. I left Nickerson Farms. It was the one over on U.S. 23? Sort of like a Cracker Barrel, but not as fancy. It was good, though, when I applied at Cracker Barrel, that experience. I could work as a waitress, hostess, retail. I was versatile. Good thing though, Nickerson went out of business a few months after this all happened.”
“But you maybe had a huge clue.”
“I don’t know… I know what I heard, but I didn’t know their names.”
Kendra wondered if this was another dead end. Two random men, talking in a restaurant, years ago.
“Did you know them? Recognize them in any way that I could check?”
“I did see the one, the meaner one. Two white guys in their forties, that’s the best I can do,” Naomi said, and she knew it was almost like saying, “two humans.” It wasn’t a description to go on, at all. Kendra was crestfallen.
She didn’t have a mug shot to show or even a faint lead on who the two men might be. It was riveting, could be pivotal, that two men were responsible for the kidnapping of Ethan Peltz. And that they’d had a conversation about it in a now-defunct chain restaurant.
But she didn’t know where to go from here.
“What if the authorities call you again? It’s happened before. The Cold Trail’s mission is to get these cold cases hot again. Would you tell them what you told me?”
“I’d be happy to talk to whatever, and whoever, and you know what? My name is Naomi Sadler. You can put that on the record too. I heard something, I called it in, but then, well, I was nearly fired for it. But you know what, that manager, he’s long gone. I just hope I helped.”
“I hope you did too,” Kendra replied.
Chapter 26
The interview with Naomi left Kendra energized and defeated at the same time. There was a thread there, but how to follow it?
Kendra needed help. There was one person who’d been open, since the beginning, to help her figure this out. One person who had spent a lifetime looking for answers on this case.
Retired Sheriff Howard Meriwether.
She called him up, hoping he could offer words of wisdom.
“I heard the news. I sure hope Margie is okay,” he said, skipping the pleasantries.
There was a little edge to that statement. Kendra had exposed Margie to more pain, and that was the last thing she wanted. The last thing Meriwether wanted too, she knew.
“I don’t know. She took it as hard as you’d expect.”
“She was always willing to believe it was almost solved and was always crushed, as you probably saw, when it didn’t pan out. I had to deliver that news over and over.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I did, took her both places. And now I’m just sorry.”
“This is why, after a while, I didn’t really give her big updates. Especially after Doug died. It was too much for her, the hope and disappointment.”
“I thought he was Ethan Peltz. He thought he was Ethan Peltz. I just don’t know where to go with this now, how to help.”
“How did he convince you that he was Ethan?”
“He was dead certain, but then he knew about the Astro Blaster fight. He knew about Margie singing ‘Rocket Man,’ and even the sheets Margie had purchased.”
Howard exhaled. It was a small validation, at least. Josh Wagy seemed to have grabbed each breadcrumb that leads to Margie Peltz’s family.
“That’s something. I might have believed him too.”
“I talked to a waitress that overheard something sinister, in 2007. Two white guys talking about getting away with kidnapping Ethan.”
Howard took a moment to think, but then
he did recall the tip.
“Yeah, quite a tip, right? She disappeared. She’d worked at a restaurant. I tried to follow up, and it was one of a hundred that went nowhere.”
“Yes, and you had to move on. I can see why. Even with that information, I have nowhere to go. I have to at least keep trying. But looking at your case files, you were so thorough. I’m not for a moment under the impression I can do better than you did. But I can’t let it go, not like this. I made Margie feel hope. And then crushed it.”
“You have something I didn’t have, and who knows, it might be big.”
Kendra couldn’t imagine what he meant. She felt further away from the truth than ever before.
“What?”
“You have a person who knows things he shouldn’t.”
“Josh?” All this time, Kendra had thought of Josh as a victim.
“You’ve tread very lightly on the trauma he’d experienced as a victim. I respect that instinct. But maybe you need to turn your investigation toward him. I’d be very interested to know how he knew those details if he isn’t Ethan.”
“He believes it,” Kendra said.
“But he had facts to back his beliefs. And it was the facts that got him this far. It’s time you look into how he got those facts. Maybe it will lead you backward to Ethan, or someone who knows what happened to Ethan.”
“Gotcha, yes, maybe you’re right.”
“I didn’t have Josh. You do, use it.”
Kendra had dropped Josh’s real-life narrative in favor of going over the tips in the Peltz investigation.
But maybe Josh was a link that could still solve the disappearance of Ethan Peltz. Sheriff Meriwether might be retired, but he was as sharp as they came.
“I used to think about this case like a Scrabble board, and somehow I was boxed in a corner with only the ‘q’ tile in my hand. You have to think of Josh opening up your board. He handed you a ‘t’ and open real estate to play with.”
Kendra envisioned the Scrabble board and appreciated the metaphor.
“Thanks, Sheriff, you helped.”
“Go get ‘em, Kendra.”
Kendra hung up the call and called Josh. He didn’t answer.
She called Tim Wagy. He’d be a good place to start, a person to grill about how Josh came into the knowledge he had.
There was no answer.
There was a lot of day ahead of her and a looming deadline.
Kendra called Shoop.
“Hey, can you double check where Josh went to junior high?”
“Uh, well, I have his high school, but junior high… give me a minute.”
Kendra waited as Shoop looked through the notes of their interview.
“Okay, our info is all local, public, so it was, uh… McKinley Middle School.”
“We need to trace him backward, and it needs to be a path we follow without Tim or Josh leading the way. We need to find information about them, independent of them.”
“What are you after?”
“Wagy said Josh was a loner. But still, I’m after other people to talk to. The sheriff suggested that unraveling Josh’s mystery could still help with Ethan’s.”
“You think the middle school is going to be a fruitful place to go next?” Shoop asked her with a distinct tone of doubt in the question.
“I don’t know, but I talked to the sheriff. The one thing we have that connects us to Ethan that he didn’t is Josh. How in the heck did Josh know what he told Margie?”
“Okay, I’m going to see if I can get a look at the McKinley Middle School yearbook from about nine years ago. Wish me luck.”
High school yearbooks were available online, in some cases. But the middle school yearbook was ephemeral. It was a flimsy thing not quite grown into the full hardcover time capsule of a high school yearbook. High school students put together the yearbook. It was a class or a club, but a middle school junior high yearbook, if memory served Kendra, was issued by the school. Someone on staff probably had the job.
In the case of a junior high yearbook, there was no archive or online directory. She was going to have to go to the school and hope. Kendra had no idea if the school was going to let her in, but it was worth a try.
She parked in the front of McKinley.
Most schools required visitors to check-in at the office, so Kendra headed there.
She filled out the sign-in sheet, honestly, with her name. But then when the secretary got to Kendra, she was less than honest.
She lied spectacularly.
“Hi, My name’s Kendra Dillon. I’m putting together a surprise party for a friend, and we want to do this thing, with old pictures, without letting him know. Anyway, he went here about a decade ago. I was wondering—I know this is so silly—I was wondering if I could look at the old yearbooks to see his school picture.”
“He’s not on Facebook?”
“Oh, he is, but only the grown-up handsome shots. I’m looking for that awkward stage! I mean, if he was anything like me, sixth grade was all braces and blemishes.”
“Oh, it’s true, these kids are going through such a transition.”
“Right, so, we’ve got this whole this is your life thing planned, he’s going to love it, and just go NUTS if we get his junior high stuff.”
“Well, you sound like a good friend. Mrs. Almond, the librarian, would be the one to see. Put this visitor badge on. I’ll tell her what’s up. It’s down the hall to the right.”
“Thank you so much!!”
Kendra was lying through her teeth. Which she continued for the librarian, Mrs. Almond. She didn’t feel good about lying, but she reminded herself, Josh had lied to her. Whether he believed it or not, his recounting of memories of Ethan Peltz had to be a lie. The DNA had exposed that much.
And that lie had shaken the very fragile mental health of Margie Peltz, so much that Kendra worried the woman might not recover. Josh had rushed her, Art had rushed her, but Kendra knew the responsibility lay at her feet. She was going to use every resource she could to make it right. Mrs. Almond had no idea and never would.
This was for background, not for prosecutors.
“I’ve got twenty yearbooks, is this far enough back, because any further and I have to go to the storeroom where—”
“—No, this is fine, just fine,” Kendra stopped Mrs. Almond. “Thank you so much. This is going to make his day.”
Kendra estimated Josh was in junior high about a decade ago.
She made quick work of getting to the “W” section of each one in her target years.
It didn’t take much looking. She found him. There he was, only a hint of a smile, straight side part in his floppy hair. He looked like the Josh she knew, but also could be Ethan. Maybe?
She snapped a picture with her phone.
Then she flipped through the clubs and activities section. And that’s where she found it: Josh was in the robotics club.
She snapped a picture of all the names in the club with him.
She was going to find someone who knew Josh as far back as she could go. The sheriff was right. She had Josh and Josh knew something.
And she was going to know everything that there was to know about Josh.
Chapter 27
Kendra and Shoop tracked down every kid listed in the McKinley Robotics Club circa 2012.
There were seventeen in the group. It had been nine years since they were in the sixth grade. Not all that long, but the distance between a nine-year-old and a twenty-one-year-old was a metaphorical ocean.
Of the seventeen kids in the club, they found ten that had no recollection of Josh Wagy.
Six answered Kendra’s social media direct messages with their phone numbers.
Those conversations were, more or less, like this:
“I do remember him. He was quiet, I remember that. He was a really short kid.”
“He seemed younger than us.”
But none of the six claimed to be friends with Josh. They’d had no birthday parties to
gether. They didn’t play together. They were just in robotics with a boy they barely remembered.
But finally, a call to Ryan Cogey produced a different answer.
“Oh yeah, sure, Josh Wagy—crap, that’s going way back.”
Kendra was overly excited about the positive response.
Kendra explained, as best as she could, that she was doing background for her podcast. One advantage of a younger potential interview subject? He was familiar with podcasts.
She didn’t have to explain her job.
Ryan Cogey met Kendra at the City Diner. It was in her dad’s neighborhood, near where she grew up. It was one of those places that was old and out-of-style for Kendra’s entire childhood, but had been tenacious enough to survive until it was in style again.
The booths were just as likely to be filled with hipsters as those who were at high risk of breaking a hip, thanks to Yelp Reviews and Instagram posts of its totally delicious, bound-to-give-you-a-heart-attack menu.
Lunch at the City Diner had become a badge of honor and marked a local as a local of Port Lawrence. Though Kendra had made enemies of the Victory Plant workers, a segment of the Port Lawrence Catholic Diocese, and the Police Command Officers Union, she was still on good terms with the City Diner.
She’d featured their spectacular pies back when she’d started her career on television. Before she was promoted to an investigative reporter, she—like every newbie reporter in the world—covered everything from snowy commutes to spectacular pies. The owner Sal Riker hadn’t forgotten and also hadn’t joined the anti-Kendra Club.
She’d chosen it for the meeting, honestly, so she could convey a trustworthiness that she didn’t feel. She’d gone far behind Josh and his dad’s back for this dive into their past.
Ryan Cogey seemed older than Josh. Or more worldly, maybe? They were the same age, but Cogey was broad-shouldered and solid. He looked like he could handle himself and wouldn’t need Kendra or anyone to save him from anything.
