Abandoned

by Allison Brennan

  Bliss. Even better than yesterday.

  She’d spent Sunday and yesterday, her first full day in Cape Haven, getting the lay of the land, but today she planned to dig in and focus on her agenda: the library, then meeting with the sheriff, and hopefully she’d find the first answer of many as to what happened to her mother sixteen years ago.

  But now, in this moment, Max sipped her coffee and let her mind catch up with her body.

  Max had leased a two bedroom, three-story beach cottage right on the water. It was large for one person, but she liked her space. Downstairs was a small living area, bedroom, and bath; the middle floor had a large great room with a kitchen, dining area, living area, and a den that she had turned into her office. A balcony with decking on all four sides gave her an amazing view. Upstairs was the master suite and a large bathroom that opened out to a hot tub and another smaller, private deck. Her first night here she’d sat outside until it grew too cold, just watching the boats come in and out of the harbor.

  Northampton County comprised the southern half of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. It connected to the rest of Virginia via a bridge, and fishing and tourism were the two major industries—both of which had taken hits over the last two decades. Since it was a sparsely populated and close-knit community, Max had decided she needed to immerse herself for a few days as a “tourist.” Familiarize herself with the town, talk to people, absorb the environment.

  Okay, tourist wasn’t the right word. She wasn’t hiding her identity, for example. But for the first time since last year when she had gone to Lake Tahoe for a week with her now ex-boyfriend, she felt like she was on a real vacation. The private cottage she had in the lone Cape Haven resort gave her exactly what she needed: peace, quiet, and a private beach. She could sit on the deck and not see anyone.

  But this wasn’t really a vacation, and while soul-searching might be part of the journey considering she was looking for answers to her past, she would never forget the real reason she’d come to the Eastern Shore of Virginia: to find out what happened to her mother.

  That her mother had abandoned her car here, of all places, seemed odd. True, it had the ocean that Martha Revere loved so much. Martha loved boats, preferably yachts owned by rich, sexy men. They’d once spent three weeks on a luxury liner with one of Martha’s boyfriends when Max was eight. They’d taken a cruise to the Caribbean—not quite as fun because Max had not liked that boyfriend, a jerk who looked like he wanted to throw both her and her mother overboard.

  Quaint and quiet towns were not Martha’s style. The resort in Cape Haven was very loosely called a resort. When both the restaurant and room service shut down at ten on the weekend—and nine during the week—Max knew that her mother wouldn’t have stayed here. She could have been just passing through. Norfolk was on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

  Or, she could have been here because of Jimmy Truman.

  Max had never understood her mother when she was a child who simply followed where her mom led. Now? Max had met women like Martha. Women who were innately selfish, but always felt they needed to be with a man. As if her self-worth was partially determined by her boyfriend. Martha wanted to be attached to someone, but she didn’t cling. She dumped her boyfriends when it was no longer “fun.” A narcissist? Perhaps. She seemed to like to cause conflict for the simple reason that conflict excited her.

  Max recognized she was remembering her mother through glasses tinted by her youth and immaturity, a view obscured by deep anger and sorrow. Max never lied to herself, and accepted that her memories could be flawed. What was formed out of the emotions of being left behind—out of fear and rage she hadn’t understood that young—was clouded by her decade-long pursuit of cold cases. Had those cases given her additional insight? Could she trust it? Or was that insight somehow slanted because of her past?

  When she investigated cases involving people she didn’t know, cases where she had no personal stake, hadn’t known the victim, didn’t know the families, her job was easier because she had no emotional connection.

  It was much, much harder investigating a missing person that she knew. She’d done it before, her first case that led to her first book. Her best friend and roommate, Karen Richardson, had disappeared and was presumed dead during spring break in Miami when they were college seniors. Max had spent a year searching for answers. She knew in her heart that Karen was dead, that the guy she’d hooked up with had killed her. But there was no proof other than far too much blood at the scene for anyone to lose and still survive. Her body had never been found. Her killer had no alibi, but there was no physical evidence that pointed to him as the killer. He gloated and left the country because as a foreign national, there was no reason for the police to detain him.

  Max had been emotionally involved, but she’d also been young. She wanted to believe she had gained a certain distance to assess things with clear impartiality, but too often in the last few months she’d found herself with the same feelings she’d been left with years ago, chief among them loneliness.

  You picked the wrong time to split with your boyfriend.

  Breaking it off with Nick, the detective she’d been dating for almost a year, had been easier than she thought—and harder to live with. She had cared for him, but she wasn’t going to sit back and wait for him to get his life together. She recognized for the first time in her life that she deserved better than half a relationship, because that’s what it had felt like with Nick. Sure, the sex had been great, the man could cook, and he quickly learned to accept her independence and career choices. She had thought that would be sufficient.

  It wasn’t. Nick had baggage with an ex-wife and kid, and chose to shut her out instead of including her. Maybe it was selfish of her to want to be included, if not in the decisions then at least in the conversation.

  She’d decided that the split was for the best. She, too, had baggage. She hadn’t realized until the last year that everything in her past had made her a better investigative reporter. Except that her past hung over her, a cloud dark enough to make Eeyore think he walked under a ray of sunshine. What had happened to her had made her stronger, but had also damaged everything in her life. Her relationships—romantic, personal, and professional—had been impacted. Her inability to trust, her way of keeping people at arm’s length, and her drive to uncover the truth in everything had all come at a cost.

  Max wasn’t naïve enough to think that solving her mother’s disappearance would brighten her life or change her in any fundamental way. She’d always told crime victims and survivors that she would uncover the truth, warts and all. Some people didn’t want the truth, they wanted the facts to fit their own narrative. But some people truly wanted to know what happened to their loved one, the good and bad. They needed the truth so they could take the next step without darkness clouding their path. Max was good at uncovering the truth for others; now she had to learn her own truths.

  When the sun breached the horizon, Max went back inside, prepared another cup of coffee in the Keurig, and reviewed her timeline. She’d spent most of yesterday converting the cottage’s den into her office. A timeline had been tacked over two walls—the corner representing the Thanksgiving when her mother left her with her grandparents. One thing Rogan had been very good at was using Max’s own childhood journals and her mother’s trust fund records to create a timeline of where Martha had been prior to that Thanksgiving, and during the nearly six and a half years after, when her car was found abandoned and she stopped collecting her trust allowance. There were a few holes, but a timeline had emerged.

  Max was a visual person. She liked to see everything at once, to recognize the patterns. Rogan had been correct in that there were a few places Martha returned to with regularity. Miami was one of her regular stopping points. So were New York, France, and cruises to St. Thomas or another Caribbean island. Did she have friends there? Had she felt comfortable? A sort of home base?

  But the outliers were even more revea
ling.

  Martha had spent three months in Hawaii right after she left Max, but had never returned. She had been with Jimmy Truman at the time. Max remembered vaguely spending time in Hawaii when she was very little, but she had no real recollection of it. The financial records indicated she’d been there with her mother the fall before she turned four.

  Martha had spent several months in Dallas, Texas, two years later, and had never returned. There was no information as to whether Truman was there at the same time.

  Martha had spent three months in Montreal two years after that, and again never returned—nor had she ever been there with Max. There was no indication as to whether Truman was with her.

  And while Miami and other Florida cities had been a regular stop for Martha over the years, Miami had been the last place she’d been before she bought the car under the name D. Jane Sterling, drove to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and disappeared.

  Had she taken another false identity? Because she was in danger or trouble?

  Max didn’t see that. If Martha had voluntarily disappeared, she would have found a way to access her money. But her accounts had been untouched after April first of that year. She’d never been found—dead or alive—by law enforcement. Eleanor had hired a private investigator when Martha had been missing for seven years, to expedite the death certificate, but he hadn’t found anything. Or so Eleanor claimed.

  Maybe Rogan was just that much better. Or maybe Eleanor didn’t want Martha to be found.

  Eleanor resented Martha. Not because she left Max with her, but because of her wanton lifestyle and the continual slap in the face her behavior was to the family. Eleanor admitted to Max—once—that she had the PI do the bare minimum necessary for the court to issue the death certificate.

  “Truly, Maxine, I don’t want Martha back in my life, or in yours. I believe in my heart she is dead. How and why is irrelevant. When she returned with you, she gave your grandfather false hope—he always had a soft spot for Martha, always dismissed her selfish behavior as youth and a free spirit. When she left two days later without a good-bye, she killed that hope and he was never the same.”

  While Eleanor could be difficult, Max respected her. But her grandfather was wholeheartedly different. He was a good man, successful and hard-working, with a kind soul and overwhelming love for his family. James Revere was the strong, silent type, a true patriarch whose death had hit everyone hard because he was the glue that had held the family together—even Eleanor’s family, the Sterlings. And it was through her grandfather’s eyes that Max had learned to love her grandmother.

  Max was surprised when tears burned. She squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and refocused on her plans for the day.

  Under the timeline headings were questions on sticky notes. And the most pressing question was about the police file of the abandoned car. And that was where she would start—after she did some legwork.

  * * *

  “May I get you anything else, Ms. Revere?”

  Max glanced up. Mrs. Burg, the head librarian at the main Eastern Shore library in Accomac, had been extremely helpful. But some things Max had to do herself, like sitting at the microfiche machine reading old papers.

  “I think I have everything,” she said. “I sent some articles to print.”

  “I have them here.” The trim, middle-aged woman smiled and handed Max a stack of paper clipped together. “Forty-seven pages, at twenty cents a page, is nine dollars and forty cents.”

  The staff had been helpful in providing her with the microfiche or hard copies of newspapers from the April that her mother’s car had been found abandoned. But nothing in the newspapers gave her the answers she needed, just more questions.

  Max started to collect the films and Mrs. Burg told her she would take care of it. “I hope you find out what happened to your mother,” she said. “What an awful thing, not to know about your own family.”

  Max agreed with her grandmother that Martha was dead. But even though she’d been declared dead and her trust fund—and board seat—had converted to Max as her sole heir, Max wanted to see the proof.

  “May I help you with anything else?” Mrs. Burg asked.

  “I assume property records will be at the county office?”

  “Yes, that is correct. Unless you’re looking for historical documents. We have documents going back to the seventeen hundreds, particularly important for those studying genealogy and family history.”

  “I’m not interested in anything that far back, but thank you.”

  “If you need anything else, please call or come in. I’ll be happy to help.”

  Max was about to leave, but she turned and said, “Actually, I need an obituary. I don’t have the exact date, but the woman was Emily Truman, a resident of Cape Haven. She died about ten years ago.”

  “Emily?”

  Mrs. Burg knew Emily Truman. This could be a problem.

  You should have assumed. This is a small community—everyone probably knows everyone else.

  “You knew her?”

  “Yes, she was a teacher at the high school. Both my sons had her for English.”

  It was clear Mrs. Burg wanted to ask why Max was interested, but as a librarian, she didn’t—the professional in her said it was none of her business, which Max used now. She didn’t want it getting around that she was looking into either of Truman’s sons.

  “Are the obituaries on microfiche?”

  Mrs. Burg, who had been warm from the minute Max walked in, turned a few degrees cooler. “Yes. I’m sure you know how to look through the card index. I need to help Mrs. Crabtree. Please excuse me.”

  She walked over to an older woman who didn’t look like she wanted or needed help. Max ignored the slight and searched through the files.

  It was difficult because she didn’t have an exact date. She asked for four tapes which covered a two-year period. It took her two hours to sort through the information, scanning every obituary, before she found Emily Truman.

  She printed it out because she didn’t have time to read in depth—she was already late to her appointment with the sheriff. Mrs. Burg barely said two words to her as she left, and Max wondered if her presence was going to get around town sooner rather than later.

  She really didn’t want Gabriel Truman knowing she was looking into his family, not before she told him herself. She might have to do that earlier than she’d planned.

  Chapter Three

  Maxine Revere walked into the Northampton County Sheriff’s Department Tuesday after lunch.

  Northampton County, a thirty-five mile stretch along the southeastern shore of the Delmarva Peninsula—more popularly known as “The Shore”—boasted 12,000 residents, lots of water, farms, and fishing. The sheriff’s department had a couple dozen sworn deputies and an elected sheriff, whom Max had opted to contact ahead of time and set up a formal meeting.

  While she had no problem pushing the envelope—and pushing hard—working this cold case needed a bit more finesse. And she had no reason to believe that the sheriff wouldn’t cooperate. After all, he didn’t even have a dead body to go with the abandoned car.

  “Maxine Revere here for Sheriff William Bartlett,” she said to the civilian manning the main desk. Civilian because she didn’t wear a uniform and appeared far too old to be a cop.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the blue-haired woman asked.

  “Yes. I’m a few minutes late—I called.”

  She smiled pleasantly. “Please have a seat. I’ll see if the sheriff is ready.”

  Max opted to stand and walked over to the wall where there were photos of the different sheriffs—past and present. There was an old black-and-white turn-of-the-century photo of the sheriff at the time swearing in a deputy. She was antsy, practically nervous—and she didn’t know exactly why. She was never nervous on an interview, never worried about ticking off the authorities, and she had no intention of playing hardball unless Bartlett put on the brakes. So far, his office
had been accommodating and downright friendly, at least on the phone.

  Don’t lie to yourself, Maxine. You damn well know why you’re nervous.

  Truth. The truth about her mother was here, in Virginia, sixteen years after she fell off the face of the earth.

  She might not get answers—what happened to her mother, why was she using Aunt Delia’s name, why had she abandoned Max all those years ago—but Max should be able to prove that Martha was dead, one way or the other.

  And damned if she would sit back and guess on the rest. She would exhaust every avenue to find out the whys and, if possible, the who. She was a crime reporter, after all, and if she couldn’t ferret out the truth no one could.

  Because she was damn good at her job.

  “Ms. Revere?”

  The voice was male, deep, and commanding. Max turned and faced Sheriff William Bartlett, full uniform, sans the hat. He was a large man in every sense of the word with dark graying hair and a thick mustache.

  She extended her hand; he took it and didn’t give her a lackluster shake. She liked him immediately. No-nonsense, with a sparkle in his eye. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

  “You want answers, and I hope to find them for you.”

  She’d told him on the phone about her search for her mother. He also knew that she was a crime reporter with a cable show out of New York City, but unlike many in law enforcement, he didn’t seem to hold that against her.

  “Let’s go to my office.”

  She followed him. It wasn’t a large department—wouldn’t need to be for the community—but people worked at desks and two deputies passed them on their way out. Bartlett exchanged a few words and she tried not to eavesdrop though that was difficult. There was a disturbance on Old Mill Road.

  Even the names of the streets were quaint.

  Bartlett’s office was large, cluttered but clean, and opened into the main room. The door was propped open, and he didn’t make a move to close it—seemed that he had a well-established open-door policy. Max didn’t object.