by Ana Medeiros
“You’re assuming we’ll find the journals. What if we don’t? Or what if we do, but they’re just the ramblings of a mad man?”
“You know the exact location of the club. Ideally, we’d know the history of it, but if we can find out who owns the property, that’s already something. It might lead to more information.”
“I need more time,” she insisted.
“You don’t, Meredith.”
The box slipped from her hands and its contents spilled on to the floor. She cursed.
“Just remember, we’re in this together,” he said.
Meredith looked down at the papers scattered around her feet. She recognized the potential value of the journals, but she was having a hard time finding the motivation to dig through endless stacks of dusty boxes. Walking toward the window she stared at the dark street below her. It had been a beautiful day earlier but now it was raining hard. She couldn’t remember a wetter summer.
“That night…what did I say to you?” she asked, her back to the room. “I don’t remember any of it.”
“You were drunk. We both were.”
“I’ve never been so drunk that I can’t recall several hours of my life. You seem to remember more than I do so I want you to tell me—what did I say that night?”
“A lot of it was impossible to make sense out of, and don’t forget, I wasn’t sober myself.”
Isaac moved several boxes around. He then picked up the papers she had dropped on the floor. Watching him organize the room instead of answering her question increased her trepidation.
“Julian Reeve. You talked about him.”
Great, she thought, he knew his last name as well. If he hadn’t already, Isaac could now find out a great deal of information on Julian. “What did I say about him?”
“That he took you to the club. Sounds like you really like it there. And what happened to Sofia. You also mentioned Tatiana. And how, recently, you two have grown closer.”
Isaac had used the word recently, which meant that he knew they were at least in contact with Tatiana, if not aware of her whereabouts. “What else?” she pressed.
“You talked about Thompson and Tatiana. What he did to her.”
“Why did you tell me to be careful with Julian?”
“The necklace. You found it inside one of Julian’s drawers. There’s a chance it might be Lena’s. You also told me why Julian goes to The Raven Room. The cutting.”
What hadn’t she shared with Isaac? Meredith wondered. “If I ask you to keep everything I told you to yourself, will you? I need to know.”
“As long as nothing happens to you,” he replied.
She wanted to trust him, but she suspected the two of them had a personality trait in common—no qualms about lying when it suited their needs. She felt Isaac had it in him to betray her.
“Why would Glendon leave behind his journals?” she asked, changing the subject. She opened a new box. “When you told me about the conversation he had with you about the club, it sounded like he was consumed by it.”
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was forced to.”
“He’s not wrestling crocodiles?”
“Full of sunshine, aren’t you?”
“I thought I was doing pretty good, considering.”
“Were you close with Sofia?” Isaac asked. “How have you been holding up?”
The questions caught her off-guard. No one had asked her how she felt about Sofia’s death. In comparison to Julian, who, for the second time, had lost one of the only people he appeared to have ever loved and Tatiana, who mourned her twin sister, the only family member she had left, Meredith considered her own feelings unimportant. “I only met her once.”
“How did you meet her?”
“At Julian’s.”
“Is Tatiana OK? It sounded like she was in bad shape after what her husband did to her.”
Meredith didn’t want to reveal more about Tatiana than she already had. She focused on the only person who she didn’t mind being vocal about. “Thompson is the kind of man that needs to hurt women.”
“Just like your friend, Julian.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t have to protect him from me.”
“I’m not.”
“I saw the look in your face when I said he was just like Thompson.”
“He’s not just like Thompson.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Meredith glared at Isaac.
“How did you get him to take you to the club?”
“What do you think?” Her voice was filled with scorn. “I used my best asset—my pussy.”
Isaac threw the papers in his hand back into the box and approached Meredith. Refusing to acknowledge him, she continued to flip through a stack of yellow-stained paper.
“Being nosy is in my DNA,” he said. “Like it’s in yours. We can’t turn it off. Whatever type of relationship you have with Julian is your business and not anyone else’s. I’m a straight-up vanilla guy. It seems to me that a lot of men out there use their so-called fantasies and kinks as an excuse for abusive and violent behavior and that should never be tolerated.”
“How about the straight-up vanilla guys who manipulate, beat up, and destroy a girl’s self-worth? I guess being vanilla is their cover.”
Before Isaac returned his attention to a box full of papers, he smiled. “Remind me to get you pissed off more often. You reveal how smart you really are.” He closed the box and moved on to the next one. “It’s hot.”
Even though he meant it as compliment, it didn’t feel like a compliment to her.
“So, do you think Thompson’s involved in the murders?” Isaac added.
“I did for a while. But he was out of town when most of them took place,” Meredith explained. “Have you ever found yourself losing someone who you believed would always be part of your life?” she asked, changing the subject once more. She thought of Julian.
“My ex-wife.”
The knowledge that Isaac had once been married caught her by surprise. “How long were you married?”
“Six years. The last two years were just fighting against the idea that we might not be right for each other. Hurt like hell. But our divorce was one of the best things that ever happened to both of us.”
“What’s her name?”
He grinned.
“What?”
“You’re a true journalist at heart.” Isaac carried one of the boxes across the room. “Simone.” He stacked it on top of the ones they had already gone through. “Her name is Simone.”
“That’s a strong name.”
“She’s a strong woman.”
“Do you ever miss her?”
“At times. When I look back I don’t miss the things I imagined I would, like the sex, the weekend-long trips outside of the city, or our late night political debates. I miss her for who she is. Completely separate from anything that we did together.”
“If you still miss her then why was the divorce one of the best things that happened to you?”
“We’re both happier now. Simple as that.”
“You do seem happy,” Meredith said as she picked up a pile of books at the bottom of the box. A photograph fell out from inside one of them. She kneeled down and forced her hand between the stacked boxes to reach it.
“What is it?” Isaac asked with curiosity.
Meredith grabbed the photograph and, after looking at it briefly, passed it to him. “Any idea who this is?”
“I’m afraid not.” Isaac flipped the photograph. “There’s a name on the back, Rebecca, and a date.”
“Could be Glendon’s daughter.”
Meredith took the photograph from Isaac. The girl in the photo, not more than five or six years old, wore pink flannel pajamas, and her hair was in disarray as she ran, with an expression of pure joy, toward her Christmas presents.
Meredith slid the photograph into her back pocket then checked the time on her phone. “I’ve got to go. Got pla
ns.” She and Colton were getting together at his place.
“What? I was hoping to blow your mind by ordering us dinner from my favorite Greek restaurant. And then you’d stay the night.”
Meredith didn’t want to have sex with Isaac again. She liked him but henceforth she would be sure to keep their relationship platonic.
“Next time,” Meredith said, walking toward the door.
“I’m holding you to it.”
“You don’t have to. Have you looked around? We went through four boxes.” Paper and books littered Isaac’s living room. “Tomorrow, same time?”
“Just ring the bell. You’ll find me, and the best Greek food you’ll ever eat, right here.”
“And seventeen cardboard boxes?”
He winked at her. “It’ll be worth it.”
Chapter 20
Almost two in the morning and here I am, Meredith thought, sitting in a small, decrepit diner in Mount Greenwood.
She had been drinking coffee since she arrived three hours ago, and now she stared into her empty mug. She had her laptop with her and, at first, she had tried to do some work on the article. But after writing and deleting the same few words at least four times, she had given up. She felt too exhausted.
“Want a top off?” The waitress showed Meredith a pot of freshly brewed coffee.
“Thanks, I’m good.”
Meredith pulled the hood of her sweater over her head and wished she could block out the Tim McGraw song playing in the background. While the temperature reached eighty degrees outside, the large air conditioner above the entrance door worked at full blast. Every hair on her body stood straight up. She shivered and, sinking further into the worn-out vinyl booth, wrapped her arms around her torso. She considered stepping outside to smoke a cigarette but if she got up from that booth she wouldn’t come back. That wasn’t an option. She had already wasted three hours and she refused to walk away empty handed.
She and Isaac had finished going through the boxes and they hadn’t found the journals. With Colton’s help, she had discovered Glendon had a son, Liam, his only family member still living in Chicago. Earlier in the day, Meredith had called the diner where Liam worked and, after a brief phone conversation, he had agreed to speak to her after his shift ended.
Meredith closed her eyes and dozed off. She was startled awake by the presence of a stocky young man in a stained kitchen uniform standing next to her table.
“Liam?” she asked, sitting up straighter.
“You must be the one who called—a friend of one of my dad’s old coworkers?”
He didn’t sit down, and Meredith worried he might have changed his mind about talking to her. After having waited so long, the idea jarred her wide-awake.
“Ten minutes. Just give me ten minutes,” Meredith said. “Please.”
He stared at her for another long moment.
“Ten minutes,” she repeated.
He sat down across from her. “What do you want?” He sounded worn out.
Meredith fumbled inside her purse. “I wanted to give this back to you.”
She slid the photograph she had found in one of Glendon’s books across the table toward Liam. Besides telling her where she might find Liam, Colton had confirmed that Rebecca, the little girl in the photograph, was Glendon’s daughter. According to her file, she would be twenty-six years old now, but had been missing since shortly after she’d turned eighteen.
“My friend and I found this photograph inside an old book that belonged to your dad. I wanted to give it back to you.”
Liam picked up the photograph and stared at it, his expression unchanging. Meredith noticed how short his nails were. His cuticles looked darker than the skin of his fingers.
“That’s it? You wanted to give me an old photograph of my sister?” he asked.
“I’d have given it to your dad if I knew where I could find him.”
“He’s dead.”
Taken by surprise, she leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them. “He is? What happened?”
“He took off and then one day I got a call from some folks in North Dakota saying he killed himself.”
She didn’t understand why Colton hadn’t come across that information. “No one at the newspaper knows what happened to him.”
Liam shrugged. “Didn’t think to let ’em know, I guess. It’s not like he’d been much use for a while, anyways.”
“Your dad was a good reporter.” She had no idea if that were true but it felt like the right thing to say.
“Not after my sister started acting up, and for sure not after she took off.”
“Rebecca?”
Liam didn’t reply.
She shouldn’t expect Liam, a complete stranger, to speak to her about his family. Meredith needed to draw the information out of him but she couldn’t rely on her charm alone to achieve that.
Liam passed the photograph back to Meredith. “I have no use for this.”
Meredith glanced at it but didn’t take it.
“You didn’t come here to give me that photograph back. What do you want?”
She didn’t see the point of trying to come up with an excuse. “Your father was believed to be an expert on the subject I’m covering for an article. I was hoping you knew where I could find him. But, you already answered that question.” Meredith pointed at the photograph on the table. “If you don’t want it, can I keep it?”
“If you had met my sister you wouldn’t want it. She only brought hurt to everyone who went near her.”
Meredith took the photograph and put it back into her purse. “Do you know if your dad kept his files anywhere else besides the office?”
“What’s your article about?”
Now Meredith had to lie. “Personal finance. How young families can save up so one day they can send their kids to college. Same type of stuff your father used to write.”
“And you need his old files for that?”
“I want to reference some of the research studies he covered. I can read his articles but his notes, the information that was left out, is just as useful to me.”
“There are a couple of boxes of his stuff left in the house,” Liam said.
“Can I have a look at them?”
“Will you give me a ride home? My shift went long and I missed my ride. Don’t want to take the bus.”
Being alone in a car with a man who was essentially a stranger, in the middle of the night, driving to an unknown place, should have frightened her more than it did.
Meredith grabbed her purse and her laptop. “My car is parked right out front.”
They didn’t speak much during their drive, and by the time they reached Liam’s home on South St. Louis Avenue, it was past three thirty in the morning.
“I’m sorry about your father,” she said as she turned off the engine. No cars drove by. She could barely make out the contours of Liam’s face in the dim light of the poorly lit street.
“They never found his body. Just his tent, his things, and the note he left. He was camping. He always liked being in nature. When my sister and I were kids, he always tried to take us.”
Meredith felt uneasy with the fact that Glendon’s body had never been found. “What did the note say? That he planned to kill himself?”
Liam nodded.
In that instant, Meredith wondered how she would feel if she suddenly lost her father. “I don’t have siblings,” she said. “My mom died when I was a kid. My grandparents are long gone. I only have my dad. If anything happened to him…I can’t imagine it.”
Liam remained quiet. He didn’t try to leave the car.
“The less people you have to care about the easier it is,” he finally said, matter of factly. “As least I imagine it would be.”
She picked up on Liam’s resentment. “Your sister never came back, did she?”
A car drove by and its headlights gave Meredith the chance to get a glimpse of Liam’s somber expression.
“She was tr
ouble,” he replied. “On and off of the streets for years—drugs, hooking. When we finally stopped hearing from her, I thought it’d give my dad the chance to get his act together but it only made it worse.”
“You never wonder what happened to your sister? Where she might be?”
“I’m better off without her around.”
Liam got out the car and moved toward his house. Glancing at her surroundings to make sure no one had followed her, Meredith walked behind him.
“His stuff is in my sister’s old room,” Liam said, turning on the light. “Down the corridor, last door in the left. Just don’t make any noise. My girlfriend and daughter are asleep.”
As Meredith made her way to the room, the old hardwood floor creaked and she silently cursed to herself.
Mismatched pieces of furniture filled the bedroom. She gravitated toward the large pile of paper spilling out of a couple of boxes on top of a single bed frame. Not wanting to overstay her welcome, she started to search through the paper as fast as she could. Isaac had described the journals as being black leather bound, and Meredith kept an eye out for anything that fit that description.
Continuing to forage through the last two boxes, she came across another photograph of Rebecca. She looked about eighteen years old in this one and Meredith guessed it had been taken around the time she had disappeared. She resembled her brother with her long, dark curly hair and blue eyes.
Meredith put the photograph aside and continued to explore inside the box. She was about to reach the bottom when she came across a stack of three black notebooks held together by a rubber band. Adrenaline coursed through her. She opened the top one and instantly knew these were the journals they had been looking for. Glendon’s name was jotted on the back of the front cover and, as Meredith leafed through it, page after page revealed neat handwriting from beginning to end. Additional notes filled the blank edge of the pages.
Having found what she came for, Meredith put the new photograph of Rebecca inside her purse and slid the journals under her arm. She quietly left the room and peeked inside of the living room. When she saw Liam sitting on a reading chair, fast asleep, she exhaled in relief. She had grown up hearing her father say that life was all about taking advantage of good opportunities. She now had a chance to leave without having to answer any questions.
