Strangers

by Mary Anna Evans

  “She looked okay physically when you saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Tifton didn’t hurt her while you were watching?”

  “No. They were standing on opposite ends of that table.” She pointed through the open passageway into the dining room. “He didn’t even raise his voice, but he was angry.”

  “I’ve only talked to a few people so far, but, if Lex Tifton has a fan club, I’m not sure it has but one member. And even that presumes that his girlfriend likes him.”

  “After last night, I’m not so sure he still has a girlfriend.”

  Faye stopped short, horrified by what she’d just said. She hadn’t meant that Lex might not have a girlfriend because something terrible had happened to Glynis. She’d simply meant that Glynis had sounded like she was about ready to cut Lex loose.

  She tried again. “That came out wrong. I meant that Glynis sounded like she’d enjoyed just about as much of Lex’s company as she could stand.”

  The officer chuckled. “I knew what you meant.” He extended a hand. “You know, I think we’ve settled in to work here and I haven’t properly introduced myself. I’m Donald Overstreet, and I appreciate a witness who tells me the truth without pulling any punches.”

  Faye shook the hand. “I’m Faye Longchamp-Mantooth. I think my husband sometimes wishes I’d pull a few punches.”

  She didn’t have to look behind her to know that Joe was nodding.

  Overstreet laughed out loud. “Well, I’m not your husband.

  Joe stuck out a hand. “Joe Wolf Mantooth. I’m her husband.”

  Overstreet chuckled and said, “Lucky man.”

  Faye wasn’t sure how to take that comment.

  “Tell me what you overheard of Glynis’ and Lex’s conversation. No holds barred.”

  Before doing that, Faye interrupted the interview to blurt out an idiotic question. “Why would someone want to hurt a twenty-something-year-old girl?”

  Overstreet just looked at her and shook his head, and she felt completely stupid. She knew the answer to her question, and so did he. Any woman alive who’d ever wished she wasn’t alone in a dark place could answer it.

  ***

  Overstreet noticed that Faye Longchamp-Mantooth’s husband was standing right behind her, with his hand resting lightly between her shoulderblades. He remembered how he’d felt when his wife was this pregnant. If a violent kidnapper had suddenly turned up in the neighborhood when she was in that condition, he’d have probably turned paranoid and homicidal. Only in a good way.

  Joe Wolf Mantooth looked constructively paranoid and homicidal. Overstreet had no doubt that this man would be protecting this woman. He wished he had enough officers to protect all the other women within striking distance of Dunkirk Manor.

  Surely, Mother Nature had had her reasons for making women smaller and weaker than men. And surely she’d had her reasons for making some men aggressive enough to use that imbalance in ways that weren’t very nice or even very human, but Donald Overstreet couldn’t imagine what those reasons were.

  Why would someone want to hurt a twenty-something-year-old girl?

  Alas, the answers to that question were age-old.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By noon, the gossip machine had spread the word that Glynis’ boyfriend Lex was not a nice man. Faye had seen Lex exactly once and she knew that already.

  A single glimpse had told her that Lex Tifton was tanned and as handsome as she’d expected. Women like Glynis attracted high-status men.

  Glynis was pretty enough to satisfy the male urge to crow, “Look what I’ve got!” but her attraction for powerful men would have gone beyond mere looks. She was smart enough to make pleasant dinner party conversation. And she was soft-spoken enough to avoid challenging her boyfriend in any meaningful way at all. Or she’d seemed that way until she’d gotten her dander up last night.

  Faye was not surprised to learn that Lex was a lawyer, because Glynis would be the perfect lawyer’s wife…if they found her…when they found her.

  The scuttlebutt said that Lex was the kind of boyfriend who complained when his girlfriend was just a few minutes late getting home from work. He was the kind of man who didn’t like the idea of a girls’ night out. Again, Faye had seen Lex just once, and she knew that already.

  Those who knew her well said that Glynis didn’t talk about these things, but people notice when a woman is constantly on her cell phone, saying things like, “Suzanne wanted me to work a few minutes late, but I’ll be right there,” or “I’d love to have dinner with you and the girls, but Lex and I enjoy our evenings together.” People notice, and they talk about it.

  Glynis said and did these things with a gracious smile. And there was nothing wrong with showing your partner the courtesy of telling him you’d be late for work, or with preferring to spend most of your time with him. Still, a certain kind of man has been controlling a certain kind of woman for all of human history. People who care about a woman notice the signs when she’s been backed into that kind of corner.

  Glynis’ friends didn’t like Lex. Faye knew this meant that the police were giving him an uncomfortable amount of scrutiny.

  Or they would be, if they could find him.

  ***

  Daniel and Suzanne had been sitting on the porch glider for two hours, motionless. Faye had been watching. She wasn’t sure they’d spoken to each other in all that time. They’d just sat side-by-side in the wrought iron glider, hands folded in each of their laps. Only the sides of their thighs and their upper arms were touching.

  Faye hadn’t been married as long as they had, but she knew the comfort that came with the wordless touch of that one chosen someone. Every atom in both their bodies seemed to cry out, “Where is Glynis? How could something like this happen here?”

  She didn’t want to disturb their pain, but she’d waited as long as she could. Pregnant women can only go so long between visits to the bathroom, and Daniel and Suzanne were sitting directly between Faye and the facilities.

  She trudged across the lawn and up the porch steps. She wasn’t sure whether it would be better manners to exchange some quick pleasantries, or to just pass them quietly

  Daniel solved that problem by asking her a question as she passed. “Faye, do you know anybody on the city commission?”

  “The county,” Suzanne said. “I think it was the county.”

  He nodded. “Maybe so.”

  “Besides, this guy said he lost the election. So he’s not on any commission, anywhere. And I’m glad.” Suzanne crossed her arms across her chest and nodded hard.

  Faye wasn’t quite sure whether they were actually still talking to her, or whether she should resume her bathroom dash.

  “You probably come across these guys all the time, Faye,” Suzanne said, angrily pushing against the porch floor with her feet and setting the glider in motion.

  “I hope the police are grilling him right now,” Daniel said. “Poor Glynis.”

  “Grilling who?” Faye said a little more forcefully than she should have. “And what did he do to Glynis?”

  “Last Friday, Daniel had to go out to the parking lot—right where they found Glynis’ car—and ask a man to quit badgering her,” Suzanne said, still pushing the glider back and forth, hard. “His name was Dick Wheeler, and he was a real horse’s ass.”

  Daniel looked gape-jawed at his suddenly foul-mouthed wife.

  “Well, he was!” Suzanne insisted. “Tell her.”

  “Dick Wheeler sat on the Board of County Commissioners for fifteen years,” Daniel said. “I figured he’d be there till he died. The developers loved him so much that I think they’d have kept him on the board even after that.”

  Suzanne giggled. “You think they would’ve just propped his corpse up and let him keep rubber-stamping their projects?”

  Daniel nodded.

  Suzanne giggled again.

  “Why was he bothering Glynis?” Faye asked.

  “Because her
historic preservation group campaigned against him, and he lost.” Suzanne couldn’t keep from smiling as she delivered this news.

  “I don’t think his secretary’s sexual harassment lawsuit helped his campaign any,” Daniel pointed out.

  Faye still wasn’t completely sure she was part of this conversation, but it was interesting.

  Suzanne waved her hand in a dismissing gesture. “Oh, that. He flirts with anything in a skirt, but he’s all talk. The voters have always known what he was like, but they kept electing him. You stay away from him, Faye. He’d even hit on a woman in your condition. Nope. The lawsuit didn’t sink his political career. Glynis did.”

  Daniel nodded. “You’re right. She did. You should have seen her preservation group’s commercial, Faye. It just destroyed Wheeler’s façade of being a moderate when it came to growth management. Actually, the PR firm that Glynis’ group hired gave me a copy of it, since we were the corporate sponsor. It was just hilarious.”

  Suzanne nodded emphatically.

  “Glynis and her friends are very clever with computers,” Daniel continued, “so they put together some video that made it look like the developers had just trashed St. Augustine. The PR guys loved it, so they took the original idea and spruced it up into something TV-ready. Golden arches over the Castillo de San Marcos. Strip joints on either side of the Bridge of Lions. A casino in the Old Slave Market. Then they filmed footage of lovely Glynis walking through the real St. Augustine, talking about how the city’s preservation ordinances had saved it for all of us. She begged county residents to elect commissioners who would do the same for them.

  “And they did,” Suzanne said. “Much to Dick Wheeler’s disappointment.”

  So Glynis had been the face of a controversial political movement, and that face had cost some influential people dearly. Faye knew what that might mean, and so did Daniel and Suzanne. Their pride in Glynis and her accomplishment faded from their faces, and they returned to sliding slowly to and fro on the glider.

  “You’ve told Detective Overstreet all this?”

  The dejected couple nodded silently.

  Faye, like many people, had strayed from organized religion, despite all the efforts of her mother and grandmother to keep her on the straight and narrow path. That didn’t mean she never prayed. Thinking of Glynis lost and alone and maybe hurting, Faye prayed more fervently than she had in a long time.

  ***

  When Detective Overstreet returned in mid-afternoon, Faye worried that he’d come back to harass Levon or Kirk or even Joe. Her interview with the detective had gone well, up until the point where she was forced to answer some very pointed questions about her crew:

  Where had each of her employees been during the hour before the police arrived, especially the men?

  They’d been working since at least eight, according to Joe. But from the police’s standpoint, even Joe was suspect. If forced to tell them only what she’d seen with her own eyes, she could only say that Joe was with her when she woke up about six. After that, he’d gone to the dining room, loaded up two breakfast plates, then come back to the room to eat with her. He’d left her and Magda just before eight, and Faye’d seen nobody else from that time until the moment the house staff had come to tell her that they heard sirens outside.

  She suggested to Overstreet that he check with Suzanne and Daniel to confirm Levon’s and Kirk’s alibis. Both of her technicians had the typical appetite of the very young man. She felt sure that they’d taken advantage of Dunkirk Manor’s generous breakfast spread before coming to work. The people feeding them couldn’t help noticing diners who ate so very well.

  Had any of her employees shown an unusual interest in Glynis?

  She’d felt compelled to mention that Levon had obviously found her attractive, but she felt silly and disloyal doing it. Of course he did. Glynis was an unusually pretty woman and any man would show a noticeable interest in her.

  Kirk had certainly perked up whenever he saw Glynis coming, as well, so she told Detective Overstreet that she thought he’d been interested in her, too. Faye had bristled a bit when Joe’s name came up, but she’d assured Overstreet that her husband had barely ever spoken to the missing woman.

  Had any of them ever shown signs of having a temper?

  This was a question Faye felt comfortable answering. She couldn’t imagine three mellower men than Joe, Levon, and Kirk. The only ill-tempered person on her crew—other than, on occasion, Faye herself—was Magda. And Magda, who knew that Faye and Joe got up with the chickens, had been standing on Faye’s doorstep shortly after sunrise, demanding to know why Joe had borrowed her cotton gloves. Therefore, Magda had two people to give her an alibi, Faye and Joe.

  Then came the question that Faye couldn’t possibly have anticipated.

  How close were you, personally, to the missing woman?

  There was only one answer. “Not at all.”

  Faye thought back over the past week. “I only knew her for a day. Well, we spoke on the phone a few times while I was bidding this job, and afterward, while I was planning the field effort. I don’t think Glynis and I ever had a personal conversation, though. She delivered messages to me from her bosses, and she said hello when she came outside to visit with Levon and Kirk. That’s about it.”

  “Well, you may have been the last person she communicated with before she disappeared.”

  The officer paused a minute, looking at her with a neutral expression. With his salt-and-pepper hair, plain features, bland expression, and receding hairline, Detective Overstreet could have been a television policeman, acting out the role of competent supporting cop to the dashing and glamorous star. Only there was no dashing and glamorous star at his side. Glynis’ safety depended on this calm, deliberate man who couldn’t have been less dynamic.

  Faye couldn’t make sense of his confident statement that she was among the last people to talk to Glynis. “But I told you this morning that I hadn’t seen her since yesterday evening.”

  She realized the omission in her statement and hurried to fill it. “Even then, I didn’t talk to her, and I haven’t talked with her since. Or emailed or texted or twittered. I wish I had talked to her, so that I could help you find her, but there’s been no contact of any kind since yesterday. She must have seen and spoken to people since then. Her boyfriend, for sure. Didn’t they live together? And the rumor mill says that she spoke to a convenience store clerk right before she disappeared. I can’t possibly have been the last.”

  Now she was talking too much. It sure was easy to look guilty.

  “Oh, I believe that you haven’t communicated with Ms. Smithson.” He gave her a “Trust me,” smile. “It’s just that I know something you don’t. She communicated with you.”

  “Come again?”

  He used the touch-screen on his phone to pull up a document and read aloud. “Dear Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth—”

  “Are you saying she wrote me a letter?”

  He nodded and kept reading. “Dear Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth,” he began again. “I’ve been up all night, wondering what’s the right thing to do. I really don’t know, so I’m asking you. Can you look at these things and tell me whether they’re as important as I think they are? I don’t want to get anybody in trouble, but it’s wrong to destroy history, just because somebody wants to build something. I’ve looked all over the Internet, trying to figure out what’s legal, but I just don’t understand the laws well enough. Can you help me? I want to do the right thing.”

  Detective Cole looked up at Faye and said, “It’s signed Glynis Smithson.” Then he laid a damaged crucifix, and a handful of beads on the table. Beside them, he placed a bone, three musket balls, the bottom half of a broken stone blade that had once been very large, and a piece of a broken battle club. Then he handed her a photo. The photo showed another piece of a damaged battle club, probably the same one. From the looks of it, the two pieces, when fitted together, would be a complete reconstruction of the original club. It hadn
’t been shattered in a million pieces. Sometime in the past few hundred years, it had simply been broken in two.

  Overstreet said nothing, letting the artifacts speak for themselves.

  Faye picked up the crucifix and the musket balls, one by one. They were all Spanish, she’d guess, and really old. She’d also guess that the filigreed beads had once dangled from this crucifix as a rosary.

  The bone bothered her. She picked it up and rubbed her fingertips over it. It was a phalange, one of the small bones in the hands and feet of humans and other mammals. It was old and worn and one end was broken off. It might have been part of a pig or a deer, but she was more concerned about the possibility that it was part of a human being. Humans were more like pigs and deer than most people would like to admit. Sometimes and with some bones, only lab work could distinguish the species.

  Faye wasn’t a walking analytical lab, but she had handled a lot of bones. She’d want lab data or detailed taxonomy before she’d sit on the witness stand and say for certain that this bone was human. But her experience and the tactile memory in her hands said that it was. “Have you reported this?”

  “The medical examiner’s office said we should.”

  If anybody should have developed the ability to recognize a human bone on sight, it would have been a medical examiner. “Then I’m sure you followed that advice. If this is a human bone, the legal ramifications of Glynis’ letter skyrocket, from an archaeological standpoint. At the very least, the construction project she mentions would need to be shut down right away.”

  She could tell that she wasn’t telling Overstreet anything he didn’t know already.

  She switched her attention to the battle club, more accurately called a “celt.” She’d guess that it was Timucuan, but she found it difficult to date without access to reference materials. Still, she could tell that the old weapon was large and heavy and beautifully made.

  She glanced at the photo of the celt’s other half. It would have taken a major blow to break a piece of stone this size into two pieces like this—this chunk alone was as long as Faye’s palm—but even big, heavy pieces of rock can break. The Timucua had designed these things for bashing in skulls on the battlefield. If this celt had been used in battle, it had taken many blows and the last one had ruined it.