Collared

by David Rosenfelt

  I’ve been to the Portland airport before, and it is so perfect that I wouldn’t mind having an apartment there. It’s never remotely crowded, the gates are all close to baggage claim, the restaurants serve fantastic lobster rolls, and the rental car places are literally attached to the terminal. It’s like JFK, except completely opposite.

  Once we get the car, we head straight to Camden, about an hour and a half from the airport. That’s where the Fitzgeralds live, and they are the people who gave Teresa the reference that got her hired by Jill in the first place.

  We had called ahead, and they said they were happy to talk to us. The town of Camden is picturesque and stylish, and a bit upscale, maybe Maine’s version of the Hamptons. The Fitzgeralds live right in town, and Peter and his wife, Susan, greet us with smiles when we show up.

  They’ve got both coffee and tea made and waiting for us, as well as an assortment of cakes and pastries. So we all sit down to eat, drink, and chitchat for a while until we get down to business. And business in this case is Teresa Mullins.

  I ask what they know about her, and Susan says, “Teresa is wonderful, just wonderful.”

  We need a little more detail than that, so I prompt her a bit. “How did you come to know her?”

  “We had a housekeeper back then who recommended her. I think they were friends. Our youngest was ten or eleven at the time, so we needed more of a babysitter than a nanny. But I would have recommended her for anything. She was very responsible and reliable, especially considering what she was going through.”

  “What was that?”

  “She didn’t talk much about it,” Susan says, “but her husband had recently left her. Apparently just walked out. Then her mother had early onset Alzheimer’s, so she had that on her plate as well.”

  “Is her mother still alive?” Laurie asks.

  “I don’t think so,” Peter says. “I had heard she was in a facility, and a pretty expensive one at that. I’m not sure how they pulled that off; they had very little money. But then I heard that she passed on.”

  “How long since you’ve seen her?” Laurie asks.

  “Probably three years,” Susan says. “Not since she left here.”

  “Do you know how to reach her?”

  Susan shakes her head. “I tried a few times, but her phone in Nobleboro was disconnected with no forwarding number.”

  “Didn’t Fred say he saw her?” Peter asks, which is the most interesting thing I’ve heard since we walked in.

  “Fred?” I prompt.

  Susan nods. “Right, I remember that. Our friend Fred Patton said he saw her … I think it was in Bridgton … but she didn’t recognize him, and she denied that Teresa Mullins was her name. It was strange, because Fred knew her pretty well, so I don’t see how he could have been wrong.”

  At my urging, Susan calls Fred to ask if the woman he saw gave a different name, but he doesn’t remember if she did or not.

  Peter and Susan, much as they are trying to be helpful, have really nothing to add that’s useful to us. They give us the address and phone number that they had for Teresa, but they’re the same as the ones the agency had given Laurie.

  We head for the address in Nobleboro, but it’s dark by the time we get there. We take a room at an inn in nearby Damariscotta. Laurie immediately loves the place, because it has charm, character, and antique furniture, all things that are completely meaningless to me.

  What it doesn’t have, amazing as it may seem, are televisions in the rooms. No televisions! What kind of barbaric people are these? There is a football game on tonight, and there are no televisions! This is America? Who would stay in this place besides Communists?

  Laurie calms me down some by taking me to a pub called King Eider’s, where they have great lobster rolls, about four million kinds of local beers, and a television tuned to the game. The natural order of things has been restored.

  In the morning, we head back to Nobleboro to talk to neighbors of the house that Teresa lived in, as well as her former landlord. No one has heard anything from her in years. It’s a complete waste of time, and the same could be said for this entire trip, with the exception of the lobster rolls.

  Our last stop before heading for the airport is Bridgton, the town where the guy named Fred said he saw Teresa, though she denied who she was.

  We have even less to go on here; even if Teresa did live in Bridgton, we don’t know where and, therefore, have no idea who her neighbors might be. We brought the selfie photo of Teresa and Dylan that was in Stanley Butler’s file, and we show it to a few passersby and shopkeepers, but none of them have a clue who she is.

  We’re leaving to go to the airport when Laurie asks me to pull over into a parking lot. When I look up and see the sign that tells us where we are, I understand why.

  “Bridgton Animal Hospital.”

  t’s a long shot, but no longer than our other shots. Laurie doesn’t even have to tell me why we’re here; we just get out of the car and head inside.

  Laurie shows her private investigator’s license to the woman at the front desk and says that we need to speak with the owner of the place. It works, and we’re brought through the back area to an office within five minutes.

  Her saying that she is a private investigator is a hell of a lot more effective than my saying I’m a lawyer. Had I done so, we’d probably be back in the parking lot by now.

  The vet’s name is Dr. Patricia Brenner, and she answers our first question by saying that she’s owned this practice for twenty-seven years.

  “So what can I do for you?” she asks.

  “We’re looking for a woman named Teresa Mullins; we have reason to believe she was a client of yours,” I say, even though we have almost no reason to believe that.

  Dr. Brenner thinks for a moment and then says, “I can’t say I remember the name, but a lot of people and animals have come through these doors. When would she have been here?”

  “Sometime within the last three years,” Laurie says.

  Another shake of the head from Dr. Brenner. “If it’s that recent, then I’m sure I’d remember.” She starts typing some keys on the computer on her desk, and after a few moments, she says, “No such name in our records.”

  I take out the picture of Teresa and show it to her. “Do you recognize her?”

  “I’m not sure; she does look familiar,” Dr. Brenner says. “What kind of animal would she have brought in?”

  “A dog. A border collie, to be exact. The dog would have been suffering from a tick-borne disease called anahlichtia.”

  A longish pause from Dr. Brenner as she looks back at the picture and stares at it. “Of course. I remember this.”

  “Are you sure?” Laurie asks.

  “Yes. Absolutely. This was the first case of anahlichtia that I had seen; I almost missed it. It’s making its way slowly down from Canada. We’ve only had five or six cases since.”

  “Can you remember the name the woman used?”

  “No, but I can find it based on the medicine we prescribed. Like I say, we’ve only had a handful of cases, and the medicine is unique to that. It’s all here in the computer.”

  She types some more, and this time the search takes longer. “Here it is. Her name was Linda Sanford. It was a four-year-old border collie named Joey.”

  “How can you be sure she’s the one?”

  “Because all the other dogs that received this medicine are long-term clients and have been back a number of times. We only saw Ms. Sanford and Joey that one time.”

  “Could the ailment have caused a permanent limp?” Laurie asks.

  She nods. “Absolutely. Especially if the medication protocol was not followed as prescribed. But even if it was, a chronic limp is not unusual.”

  Dr. Brenner checks and tells us that “Ms. Sanford” paid her bill in cash. She gives us the address that was given to her. We thank her and leave, stopping off at the address to possibly talk to whoever lives there now.

  That turns out
to be tough, because there is no such address. It’s a fake.

  Heading for the airport, Laurie sums up the situation perfectly. “What we have here is a whole new ball game.”

  icky seems to have had a great time with “Uncle Willie and Aunt Sondra.” I get the feeling that they didn’t deprive him of much, as my secret M&M stash in the cupboard has been decimated. I had an aunt and uncle just like that who used to stay with me when my parents went away. It was so much fun that I was constantly slipping my mother travel brochures.

  Tara and Sebastian seem considerably happier to see me than Ricky does, so I reward them by heading out for a walk, while Laurie updates Willie and Sondra on the progress we made in Maine.

  As we walk, I tell Tara that it doesn’t take deep thinking to understand the importance of what we learned. It appears certain that Teresa Mullins, using a fake name, had possession of Cody after the abduction.

  The implications of this are huge. There is no way to reconcile her testimony that she was simply a victim of the crime with her possession of Cody. It just does not compute. The only way she could have gotten him would be if she were in some way conspiring with the abductors.

  It’s not exactly a leap from there to question her entire testimony. She could not have been truthful in her identifying Keith Wachtel as the abductor; it would make no sense for her to implicate and help convict the person she was conspiring with, not to mention the fact that Wachtel has not said anything about it.

  Which leads me to a typical defense attorney conclusion: Keith Wachtel has been wrongly convicted.

  And the next step in the progression is just as obvious and unavoidable: my temporary one-dollar client has just become a permanent one-dollar client.

  Of course, I can’t prove any of this. While I find the recollections of Dr. Brenner to be perfectly believable and reliable, it’s fair to say that the police and prosecutor will have a different view.

  I’m seeing this through the eyes of a defense attorney, since that’s what I am. The law enforcement side would look at the anahlichtia tick, and a vet’s vague recollections, and a supposed missing nanny, and they would say that, in legal terms, I am full of shit.

  They would point to the other evidence, Cody’s hair and DNA in Keith’s apartment and car, and the blanket fiber in the car. If I accept the police expert’s opinion that simple transference couldn’t account for that much shed hair, then if Keith is actually innocent, the hair and fiber must have both been planted.

  It’s fair to say that Pete, and the prosecutors, would not think that highly of my dog-hair-and-blanket-fiber-planting theory.

  Unfortunately, though we’ve learned a great deal about Teresa Mullins, we still don’t know where she is. And that’s a problem.

  In addition to not having a promising way to proceed, I also have something of an ethical dilemma. Laurie and I undertook this investigation as a favor to Jill. She didn’t ask us to but certainly didn’t fight very hard when we offered. I think Laurie was right that Jill was feeling alone and needed us beside her.

  Keith was only my client in the most technical of terms, and he understood the relationship. The sole reason for him to hire me was so that I could have legal access to the discovery information. I made him no promises and did not mislead him in any way.

  So my loyalty was far more to Jill than to Keith. Now that has changed in a tangible way. Not that Jill is less worthy of my help than she was before, it’s just that Keith has had a major status adjustment.

  He has gone from someone I considered probably guilty, if I thought about it at all, to someone I now believe has been wrongly convicted. At the very least, the key government witness against him has been demonstrated to have a relationship with the abductor. It is certainly not a relationship she ever revealed in court.

  One tangible difference is that I have to start treating Keith like a real client, and that includes confidentiality. I can no longer discuss our communications, or the progress of our case, with anyone who is not on our legal team. That means leaving Jill out of the loop.

  Tara understands the subtlety of the legal process, while Sebastian does not. When we get back, Tara and I talk to Laurie about it, while Sebastian exerts just enough effort to climb up on the couch and go to sleep.

  “I’ll speak to Jill about it,” Laurie says. “She’ll understand.”

  I’m not so sure she will; I think she will feel shut out. She’s anxious for any information that in any way relates to Dylan, and that’s understandable. But I’ll let Laurie deal with her.

  My next move is to call Sam and say, “I’ve got a new name for Teresa Mullins.”

  “Go,” he says. Sam believes that if you use short, staccato words and speech, it sounds cooler and more detective-like.

  “Linda Sanford.”

  “Got it,” he says. When we’re talking about a case, Sam can speak entire sentences without using a two-syllable word.

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “I’m on the case … back to you soon,” Sam says, proving my syllable point before hanging up.

  t’s time for another visit with my client. This time when Keith is brought in to meet with me, I’m not as distressed to see the hopeful look in his eyes, because this time it may be warranted.

  “We’ve got a change in circumstances,” I say.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Nothing negative,” I say. “I’ve just learned some things, and it will affect our relationship one way or another.”

  “What have you learned?”

  I tell him about Teresa Mullins being missing and how we have reason to believe that she was in possession of Cody well after the abduction.

  “So she was a part of it?” he asks, not bothering to mask his amazement.

  “It would seem that way. I can’t think of another credible explanation, though one may exist.”

  “Can we get a new trial?” he asks.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Keith. We are on another planet from a new trial at this point. What we have is reason to keep investigating. That’s all.”

  He nods. “Okay … I understand. Great. How does this change our relationship?”

  “Because my representation until now, as you know, has been a convenience to allow me to get discovery documents as your designated legal counsel. We’re way past that now. If I continue on the case, I will be your attorney in every respect.”

  “Is there a problem with that?”

  “No, not a problem. I just need you to understand that and accept it, or not.”

  “Are you kidding? I accept it.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Next question. Last time I was here, you said Stanley gave you some reason to hope shortly before he died. You said he was working on something.”

  “Right. It was surprising, because before that, he always went out of his way to make sure I was being realistic about stuff.”

  “Did he say anything more about it?”

  “Just that he had gotten some information worth checking out and that he would stay on it. I asked him what it was, but he wouldn’t say. Said it could be a crank.”

  “Crank? Did you take that to mean he had gotten a call or maybe a tip from someone?”

  “That’s what I figured, but he wouldn’t tell me any more. Didn’t want to get my hopes too high.”

  “Did he mention whether or not he was working with another lawyer on your case? Someone who might have been in possession of his files?”

  “No. Never.”

  I promise Keith that I’ll keep him updated but caution him that these things rarely move quickly. There’s no reason to renegotiate the legal terms of our relationship or to change the fee structure, because he still has no money to pay me.

  When I leave the prison, I drive for about twenty minutes before I see that there’s a message on my phone. It’s from Sam, and the message is a short one.

  “I’m on the way to your house. I’ve got news.”

  Ten words, ten syllables.

/>   I resist the urge to call home and find out if Sam is there yet, or if Laurie knows what’s going on. It’ll be easier to have the conversation in person, and I’ll be there in a few minutes.

  Sam is at the house when I arrive, and I of course immediately ask him what is going on.

  “I found Linda Sanford.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside of Greenville, South Carolina.”

  “She lives there?”

  “She did until a few days ago, at which point she died there. Actually, she’s that rare person who died twice.”

  “Sam, please don’t make me drag this out of you. Tell me everything you know.”

  “Okay, okay. I found Linda Sanford through a credit card she used up in Maine. I was pretty sure it was her, but I became positive when I found a death certificate for the same Linda Sanford, who died nine years ago. Teresa Mullins took the identity of a dead woman; she got a driver’s license and birth certificate. It’s not that hard.

  “She continued to use the card, not very often, but enough that I could trace her movements over time. She seems to have lived in three different states before South Carolina, maybe even four. I’ve got the stuff written down for you, but I have to flesh it out more. I did this fast, so I might have missed something.”

  “How did she die?”

  “You mean the second time? She lived in a small cabin that burned down. She appeared to be asleep, but all I know is what the newspaper story showed. The only other thing it said was that the fire department was investigating but had no comment at that point.”

  “We need to get somebody down there,” Laurie says, and I agree.

  Sam continues, “It also said that Ms. Sanford’s next of kin was notified. I wonder what their reaction was when they heard she died again.”

  “Sam, you did great.” Sam’s ability to find out anything about anyone online is scary and a little disconcerting. I wonder if he knows about what Marcia Bergman and I did behind the gym in tenth grade. We swore we’d keep it a secret, but it’s always possible that Marcia told someone. I know I never did, even though it still ranks as one of the highlights of my life.