The Dana Potter Cozy Mystery Collection

by Liz Turner

  “But even then, how would I know which is the right one?” she pondered. “Should I bring Celeste with me to talk to Maya, or will that just upset her and make her demand that I shut down the investigation for good? Am I just supposed to contact them all and hope whichever one is the right one remembers her?”

  Dana yawned and rubbed her eyes. It was now nearly one o’clock in the morning, and she had yet to make a decent plan.

  She wasn’t fond of contacting who-knows-how-many men named William to ask if they remembered meeting a woman named Celeste at a young adult convention. However, she was willing to do so if that’s what it took.

  “Well, I guess I’ll be spending quite some time at the library tomorrow… And even more hanging out with a teenage girl. Hopefully Maya doesn’t have any plans, because she’s about to get put to work.”

  Chapter 3

  Help in Strange Places

  The next morning, Dana woke groggily after only getting four hours of sleep. Since the library wasn’t open yet, she made herself eggs and bacon for breakfast, and then stepped out onto the porch to pick up the newspaper. The smell of Mrs. Williams cooking breakfast wafted through the air, reminding Dana that it was Saturday.

  “Well, good. I won’t have to wait for Maya to get home from school to get her help later,” Dana said.

  After eating, she washed her dishes just in time for the library to open. It was a beautiful day, and the walk there wasn’t long, so Dana decided to take a stroll through town while mulling over her conversation with Celeste once again.

  Shop owners flipped their ‘Closed’ signs to ‘Open’ as Dana passed by, marking the start of the day in the heart of the town.

  Pippin’s library was small, but always bustling with folks—whether it was young moms taking their kids to read in the children’s section, or older folks like Dana who needed access to the internet. Dana always enjoyed seeing who she might run into each time she walked through the doors.

  “Miss Potter!” someone said.

  Dana glanced toward the children’s section, where a young woman from her church sat with a small child in her lap, reading a book. The woman smiled and waved.

  “Well, hello there, Annie!” Dana said and then looked at the child. “And hey there, sweetheart. Are you reading that book to your mama?”

  The little boy smiled and buried his face in his mother’s shoulder.

  Dana chuckled.

  “I dunno what it is, but he’s much shier than his brother ever was,” Annie said. She smiled at Dana. “So, what are you up to today?”

  “Oh, I’m just here to use the computers. I figure why pay for internet in my home when I can get it down the street for free? Besides, I hardly use it much.”

  “I’m with you. I figure why buy one or two books for my boys when I can give ‘em access to all sorts of books for free? We come here two to three times a week. And my oldest just started kindergarten, but he’s years ahead of the other kids with his reading comprehension!”

  “That’s wonderful!” Dana said. “With this being Georgia, most kids are way behind the national average, so good on you for giving your kids that advantage!”

  Annie nodded. “I do my best.”

  “Well, I best get to work. Good seeing you,” Dana said.

  “You too! I’ll see you tomorrow at church,” Annie said, waving goodbye.

  Dana sat at the nearest computer and took a minute to log in. First, she searched for the name of the convention. Fortunately, the convention only happened once, and it was advertised heavily, making it easy to locate. Next, she started looking for a guest list or registration.

  After several minutes, however, she gave up on looking for a guest list and began searching through photos from the convention instead. She knew the chances were small, but she hoped a group photo of everyone who’d attended had been taken. Then perhaps she would be able to find names that way.

  After scrolling through images for a while, Dana came across a photo of Celeste, sitting beside a young man while they ate lunch. They both were laughing, and it didn’t appear that either of them realized the photo was being taken.

  Dana smiled. “They make such a beautiful couple,” she muttered.

  She followed the link for the photo which led her to an article published in a small time Los Angeles paper following the convention in 2002. As she scrolled through the article, the photo appeared with a label beneath it, reading, Celeste Winterbottom and William Pollock enjoying each other’s company while eating lunch at the Christian Singles Convention.

  “Yes!” Dana exclaimed under her breath. Her heart racing with excitement, she had to take several deep breaths to keep herself from yelling too loudly in the library.

  Looking at the photo, Dana suspected Celeste’s and William’s chemistry must have been just as apparent to everyone around them for their picture to be chosen to represent the convention in the paper.

  She enlarged the photo and ran up to the library attendant’s desk. “Excuse me, ma’am, could you help me print off a photo from that computer?”

  “Sure thing. First ten prints are free.”

  “Oh, is that right?” Dana said. “That sure is nice.” She watched as the library attendant downloaded the photo and set the computer to print.

  Photo in hand, Dana rushed from the library and scurried toward home, stopping at the Williams’ residence. The door opened not even two seconds after Dana knocked.

  The youngest Williams peered out. “Oh, hi Miss Potter,” he said. “My mom’s not home right now, but I’ll tell her you came.”

  “Oh, I’m not–” Dana began.

  “Jaron!” Maya’s voice echoed from inside. “You know you’re not supposed to answer the door when Mom’s not home! What if it was a salesman?”

  “But it’s just Miss Potter,” Jaron said.

  “Miss Potter?” Maya said, appearing behind Jaron.

  “Just who I was looking for.” Dana smiled. “I got that last name, and I’ll do you one better—I got a photo of him too!” She waved the sheet of paper in the air in front of her, smirking.

  That’ll teach those teenagers not to judge me so easily, she thought.

  Maya pursed her lips and nodded in approval. “That was fast. I’m impressed! Well then, I guess you better come on in. The computer’s in the family room.”

  “I’ll show you where, Miss Potter!” Jaron piped, darting toward the back of the house.

  “Whoa, there,” Dana said, “I’m too old to run like that!”

  Daron peered back around the corner, smiling shyly as he waited for Dana to catch up. He then pointed toward the corner of the family room, where Maya was already turning the computer on. “That’s the computer we all use,” he said. “Mom likes to keep it in the family room because she thinks it keeps us from doing stuff we’re not supposed to when we’re on it. But there’s only one chair. I’ll go get two more!” And with that, Jaron darted from the room.

  “Why two?” Maya yelled after him. “That boy’s always so desperate to be included in everything. Like really, that’s some serious FOMO he’s got going on.”

  “FOMO?” Dana said.

  “Fear of missing out,” Maya explained.

  “They have an acronym for that?” Dana shook her head. “Kids these days will never be able to form a full sentence.”

  Maya rolled her eyes. The two of them sat in silence while Maya opened the internet and logged into her Facebook account. A few moments later, Jaron reappeared, struggling to drag a fold-out chair and a pillow into the room.

  “Thanks for fetching that chair for me, sweetheart,” Dana said. “But what’s the pillow for?”

  “I could only find one chair, so I brought this pillow for me to sit on. It’s really soft, so I don’t mind using it like a chair.”

  “Jaron, why don’t you just put the pillow away and sit on the couch?” Maya said. “We’re just Facebook stalking some guy. I’m sure you’ll be bored. If you really want to, you can watch
us from over there.”

  Jaron set the chair down and dropped his head. “I wanna Facebook stalk him too,” he complained.

  Maya rolled her eyes. “What was the guy’s name again?” she asked Dana, ignoring her brother’s oncoming tantrum.

  “William Pollock,” Dana said. “And Jaron, honey, why don’t you sit in this chair here? I think I’d be just fine standing. You did all that work bringing it out here, so I wouldn’t want all that work to go to waste! I don’t imagine I’ll be here long anyway, and I’ve been sitting all morning!”

  Jaron beamed and jumped up onto the chair, swinging his legs and clasping his hands excitedly.

  Dana smiled. At least one of the Williams kids is excited to spend time with me, she thought. She glanced back at the computer screen, where a list of men named ‘William Pollock’ extended for what seemed like miles. “Wait, what are you doing?” Dana asked.

  “So, you see this bar above the list with a little funnel thing on it?” Maya said. “That’s all the different filters you can use to narrow down your search. There aren’t too many filters you can use, but I usually can find the person I’m looking for just by putting in their name and the place they live in. Or sometimes they’re really proud of the school they go to, so you can find ‘em that way.

  “Now, in this one, you can put the location they live or where they’re from, but I never put in an exact city. We wouldn’t wanna miss him entirely by putting that he’s from New Orleans if he’s really from a suburb or something, ya know? So I just put in the general states of California and Louisiana for this search. It’ll still bring up a lot of people, but at least it won’t cut him out of the search. Do you know what he does for a living, where he went to school, or anything like that?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Dana said.

  “Okay. Well, the picture will be helpful, at least.”

  “What are you supposed to use to filter race, age, and gender? Isn’t this kind of useless if you can’t even narrow that down?” Dana asked.

  “Your eyes…” Maya said. “This isn’t a police file. You look through the list for the person you’re trying to find, and if you don’t find them, it’s whatever.”

  “That’ll take ages! There’s still nearly two thousand results!”

  “Yeah, but after a while, the names start to be only half right, like this one here is ‘Bill Pollock’. And there will be plenty of others that are obviously not him that we can scroll right passed,” Maya explained.

  “Oh, well…” Dana said. “I suppose I knew this was gonna be much harder without the resources I had back in Atlanta, but I have time, I guess…”

  “And I’m just babysitting, so I’ve got time too.” Maya shrugged.

  “Now, remember,” Dana said, “this photo is about fifteen years old, so the man we’re looking for is gonna look quite a bit older than this one. If any of these profiles look at all like him–resemble him in any way–we need to check the guy out. Let’s not miss him for any reason.”

  “If he has a Facebook, that is,” Maya said. “What about this guy?” She pointed out a profile image on the screen. “He kinda looks like him, if he gained a bit of weight, and maybe dyed his hair–or stopped dyeing it. Hold on, I’ll show you. You can click on the ‘About’ section on a person’s profile, and that’ll sometimes give you more information about their age and whatnot.”

  “Hm, doesn’t seem to give an exact age though,” Dana said, looking carefully. “I dunno about this…”

  “Well, let’s look through his photos. Maybe he has some older pictures on here that will look more like he did back then… Wait…no, this isn’t him. This guy’s lost weight, not gained…”

  “Back to the drawing board then,” Dana said as Maya returned to the search. “Ooh, what about that one?”

  “No, this guy’s hometown is in Nebraska,” Maya said. “What about this one?”

  “Wow, that really is a striking resemblance… Let’s see his ‘About’ section, or whatever you called it.”

  “Dude, this is totally him!” Maya said. “All the information is right and everything!”

  “No, look,” Dana said. “This guy is twenty-eight years old now, which means he would’ve been about your age fifteen years ago, not a young adult like in this picture.”

  “Oh… right…” Maya scrolled through the last of the names, but not one of them was the right man.

  Dana pursed her lips, disappointed. She’d known the social media avenue would be hit-or-miss, but she had really hoped she to find something since it was her best chance at contacting him. Now, her last option was to call in a favor with some of her old associates in Atlanta and see if any of them could come through.

  By now, Jaron had grown bored with watching them look through photos and lied on the couch, playing a handheld video game. Dana took his place in the fold-out chair and muttered under her breath, trying to figure out what to do next.

  Dana was surprised to see Maya looked just about as disappointed as she was. The girl sat with her head resting in her hand, staring blankly at the computer screen and tapping the desk with her fingertips. “I’m sorry, Miss Potter,” she finally said. “I just have to say, I really wanted to help you out, but I was worried from the start that he might be one of those older guys that never really got into Facebook.”

  “Well, I guess I can’t blame him. I never did either,” Dana sighed. “But don’t you worry yourself about it. I’ve got one or two more tricks up my sleeve. Anyway, thanks for your help. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your Saturday to do this for me.”

  “Yeah,” Maya muttered.

  Dana stood to leave, but paused when she noticed Maya open her mouth as if to say something. Ultimately, however, the girl appeared to change her mind and kept quiet.

  Dana frowned; she never liked seeing people afraid to say what was on their minds, especially to her. “What is it?” Dana said, staring at Maya. “I can tell you’ve got something on your mind. You were about to say so just now.”

  “Uh, Miss Potter…? Would it be okay if I kept helping you with this investigation? I mean, it’s okay if not, but I just really enjoy stuff like this. And I’m gonna be curious if you ever find him or not. I wanna stay in the loop, ya know?”

  “Well, as much as I understand the thrill of investigations and the satisfaction of solving cases–which I’m sure is what you’re referring to–unfortunately, I made a promise that I would keep this–”

  “Between you and Celeste?” Maya interrupted.

  “How did you…?”

  “Yeah, I may have heard you guys talking about him last night… Why do you think I offered to help in the first place? I’m just saying, if you’re gonna try to keep something a secret, you should probably be more careful about who’s around you when you say, ‘But this has to stay between us’. I just happened to be walking over to help my mom at the dessert table when Celeste said that, so of course I got curious. So I may or may not have stopped to listen for a bit…”

  “You sly little trickster!” Dana said. “So you knew exactly why I was asking you and your friends for help from the very beginning, and you just let me believe you didn’t have a clue for all this time.”

  “Well, when you put it like that…”

  Dana grinned. “I’m so proud!”

  Maya’s eyebrows shot upward. “Proud?”

  “Of course!” Dana laughed. “The first rule in investigations is that you never wanna let a person know they’re being investigated—at least until they no longer think they’re under suspicion. You get the most honest results when a person doesn’t feel like they're being tested or suspected of something that they might not wanna be suspected of. And personally, I would never have asked for your help if I already knew you overheard us talking last night. But on the other hand, I would have never known you already knew if you hadn’t said so just now. That’s some great detective work, Maya. Seriously.”

  “Why, thank you.” Maya bowed.
“So does that mean you’ll let me help?”

  “Honestly, I haven’t been one-hundred percent up front with you,” Dana said. “As it happens, I’m not sure there’s much more of an investigation to be had. There’s a good chance we just hit a dead-end because I don’t have any additional information. And with Celeste’s opinion that this is a lost cause, there’s nowhere else I can go to get more.

  “As for what we accomplished today—all we really know is that either William doesn’t have social media, or he goes by a different name on it and I’ve got no idea what that might be. Now, I have–more or less–a friend of a friend who can access the federal database to track down names. But it’s not exactly advisable for him to do so for personal reasons, so there’s a good chance he won’t be of any help this time. He’s done this for me before, and he made sure to put up a fuss about it so that I wouldn’t ask again.”

  “Well, that’s an easy fix,” Maya said.

  “Is it now?” Dana scoffed.

  “Yeah, duh! If he’s not supposed to search for people for personal reasons, all you’ve gotta do is make it so that it’s not personal. Just find out what he’s supposed to search people for and then make this specific search into something to do with that.”

  “So simple, yet so clever!” Dana said. “Maybe I really could use your help!”

  “I knew there was a reason you came to me!” Maya beamed.

  “Yes, you may be right,” Dana said. “But just remember, you’re not even supposed to know about this, so that means–”

  “Yeah, yeah, I can’t say anything about this to anyone else,” Maya said. “I already know that. And don’t worry—I’m pretty sure I’m the only other person who overheard you guys last night. And knowing Jaron, he’s sitting right there and still hasn’t overheard a thing.”

  “I’d have to agree,” Dana laughed, glancing at Jaron.

  “Well, since we’re officially partners now, how do we get this FBI guy to help?” Maya asked.

  Chapter 4

  Calling in a Favor

  “Well, hello there, young lady,” Dana’s old associate Inspector Allister said as he answered the phone. “How’s the small-town life treating you, Dana?”