The Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Series Box Set 2

by Willow Rose

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe you’re trying to push the attention away from the real kidnapper,” Brad said. “Trying to distract us.”

  A deep frown grew between his eyes as he looked at me, then at Brad.

  “What’s really going on here? Are you seriously accusing me of having hurt those children?”

  He didn’t seem to notice that there was a vagueness to his voice. It almost sounded like he doubted himself.

  I shook my head. “I’m not, but have you?”

  He shook his head and rubbed his stubble. I could tell he was getting stirred up now. His usually so composed exterior was failing him.

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Can you tell us where you were yesterday afternoon and evening, particularly around five o’clock when the boy went missing?” I asked.

  “I was at home. It was my day off.”

  “Anyone with you?”

  He shook his head. “No. I live alone.”

  “If it was your day off, then why did you show up out here before everyone else? You were the first one to arrive, the woman at the front desk in the lobby told me. At least twenty minutes or so before the others. How did you know about the disappearance earlier than every other reporter in the area?”

  “Because I have my sources,” he said, reaching out his hands in a nervous gesture. “One of them called me and alerted me to this happening, and I knew in my heart I needed to be on it. I was there ten years ago, and I have always believed those parents were involved somehow.”

  I nodded and wrote it on my notepad that he had no alibi. Then, I lifted my eyes and met his across the room. He took another deep breath, and the silence in the room stretched out. It was obvious Fischer felt hot and uncomfortable.

  “You wrote a portrait of Mike Odell recently for your newspaper. When the date of his execution became known, you did an article about him. Odell then told you something that no one else knows except for him and the people involved in the case. He told you that the girl, Maggie, talked to him before she was kidnapped by the pool the same morning and that he told her he was a secret spy.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “You never put that in your paper, why not?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t have room for it. I only have a certain amount of words available for me in the paper. I have to leave out a lot of interesting stuff all the time. It’s called Kill Your Darlings. I’m sure you’ve heard about it.”

  “But it was something that no one else had been told,” I said. “Doesn’t that make it interesting enough?”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t think it was. Listen, I’m sick of this. I don’t have the time. Tell me, am I a suspect because, if so, I’d like to talk to my lawyer, please.”

  I leaned forward. “Yesterday, Cole met a guy who told him he was a secret spy only hours before he disappeared. It’s hard to believe it’s a coincidence that someone said the exact same thing to Maggie right before the twins disappeared.”

  “What does that have to do with me? I fail to understand this logic. Can you please explain?”

  He looked at me expectantly. I could see the muscles flex in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

  “I knew about it; Odell knew about it; the Marshalls knew about it, and you knew about it. You see where I’m going now?”

  Fischer’s face grew pale. His shoulders sagged as he shrunk into his chair. When he spoke next, the pitch of his voice was raised.

  “I think I’d like to call my lawyer now.”

  Chapter 36

  I have to find a way to escape. I have to get out of here.

  It was the longest night of Jessica’s life. Even longer than the night when Dad had broken all the plates and thrown the chair out the window, then locked the door so none of them could run away.

  She was lying on the silk sheet, curled into a fetal position when the door opened, and the man with the cigarette burst in.

  “No, no, no. Up. Up.”

  He grabbed Jessica by the hair and pulled her up to standing position. Jessica cried out in pain while the man looked at her.

  “You’re gorgeous. Men pay to see you, so you do as told, you hear me?”

  He pulled her hair again, and Jessica screamed, then nodded.

  “Good girl,” he said, leaning close to her face so she could smell the alcohol on his breath. “Now, dance for the camera. Dance.”

  The man still held her hair tight in his hand, and Jessica tried to dance, tried to move her body underneath his tight grip. She was whimpering and sobbing but managed to move her body enough for him finally to let go of her. She sank to her knees, and he bent forward, holding his hands on his knees. Smoke emerged from between his lips and filled the room.

  “That’s it. Now, keep dancing. Look sexy, huh?”

  He grabbed her chin and lifted her head so she’d look him in the eyes, then he smiled. Jessica felt so worthless.

  “Please,” she said. “Please, let me go.”

  That made the man laugh. The cigarette was pulled out shortly, and he stared down at her, then pointed at her with the cigarette between his fingers.

  “I know what to do.”

  He walked to the door, then yelled something in what sounded like Russian, then turned to look at her again. A tall blonde girl came to the door, wearing lingerie.

  “Come, Nadja, you help this girl. Show her how it is done.”

  The girl walked close to her, then grabbed her hands in hers and pulled her close. She spun her around. She grabbed her by her waist and whispered in her ear: “Dance. If you want to live, you dance now. You hear me?”

  Jessica swallowed, then did as she was told. She let Nadja swing her in front of the camera while Nadja played with her tongue against her lips. She grabbed Jessica from behind, touching her breasts, and licked Jessica’s cheek while looking into the camera.

  “Yes, yes,” the man grinned. “Show girl how it is done. Now, you dance together.”

  The man left, leaving a thick trail of smoke in the air. Jessica breathed raggedly and stifled her tears while she followed Nadja’s lead. Nadja kept acting for the camera, grabbing herself and moving in fluid catlike movements, and Jessica tried to follow. But it was hard, and after a few minutes, Jessica fell to her knees, unable to fight her tears any longer.

  “No, no,” Nadja said and grabbed her arm. “They are watching you on their screens in the other room. You must continue.”

  Jessica looked up at her, eyes filling. “But I can’t. I have to get to Orlando somehow. Someone’s life is at stake. I have to save him. I have to find the woman with the red hair.”

  Nadja grabbed her arm and pulled her upright. “We all had somewhere to be before we ended up here. All the girls you see here are supposed to be somewhere else. And someone’s life is at stake here, little girl. Yours. If you don’t do as they tell you, they will hurt you. I have seen it many times, little girl. You do as they tell you, and you’ll be fine. But if you don’t, then who is going to save you, hm?”

  Chapter 37

  Time was passing too fast, and I was beginning to get seriously anxious for the boy. While we were waiting for Fischer’s lawyer to arrive, I was talking to Mary, holding her hand, and assuring her we were doing everything we could right now. They were still searching for Schultz, and we knew he was here in Orlando at the time of the disappearance. There was an alert out for his car and him. I had sent Brad and a team to Fischer’s apartment here in Orlando with a warrant to search it. Maybe that would lead to something…hopefully, a sign of the boy.

  “There are still search parties out there,” I added, trying to help her unease. “They’re combing through the wilderness with sniffer dogs and the neighborhoods close to the resort. They’re talking to every person who might have seen something. Everyone in all of Florida knows your boy is missing and what he looks like. Someone is bound to see him and report it to us.”

  “He must feel so alone,” she said, rubbing her hands excessively. “At
least Maggie and Blake had one another till the end. Cole has no one. He must be so scared and crying for me.”

  “Where is Peter?” I asked when realizing I hadn’t seen him in a while.

  “He went out to join James and Brittney. I told him to go,” Mary said. “They took him through the parking garage downstairs, where the reporters wouldn’t see him. He said he’d have to deal with them if they did see him. I can’t blame him. He can’t just sit here when he could be out there searching. I desperately want to go too, but I know I couldn’t face the media frenzy right now. I just hate sitting here, doing nothing but waiting.”

  I nodded and sipped from my water bottle. I knew I wouldn’t be able to just sit here like this either.

  She lifted her gaze, and her moist eyes looked up at me. “I just have this feeling that he’s not far away, you know? I feel like he’s so close still. It’s strange. Just a little while ago, I was so certain I heard him cry, but then it was gone. I think I might be losing it. I fear I’m going insane. But then I think that maybe it won’t be so bad. I mean, it can’t be worse than losing three children. Nothing is worse than that.”

  She paused, and I let the silence fill the room between us. There really were no words that would suffice at this moment. I had called Isabella and told her about Fischer, but she still insisted that we look more closely at the parents. The media was out there, painting an awful picture of Mary.

  “If that child turns up dead, we’re sending her to death row. I don’t care what you say, Eva Rae,” she had said.

  “Don’t believe everything those vultures write or say on TV,” I replied. “There’s still nothing in our investigation that points toward her.”

  “Sheriff Blair might disagree,” she said. “He just held a press conference where he told the reporters that we are looking into the mother.”

  “Oh, great,” I said, rubbing my face, seeing all the headlines and breaking news signs for my inner eye.

  Poor Mary couldn’t catch a break, could she? It was like this was all orchestrated to hurt her deliberately. I was beginning to think more and more that it was. This kidnapper had some kind of obsession with Mary…a fascination with harming her, taking away the one thing that makes her happy, her children. But who on earth could hold such a grudge or fixation?

  I lifted my gaze and met hers.

  “I think I might need a list of every man you’ve been with in your life. Don’t ask me why. I just need to see the names of anyone you might have hurt, whose hearts you have broken. Did you ever get pregnant with someone else? Maybe before you met Peter?”

  Chapter 38

  It had been a strange day so far. Usually, Tuesdays were calm days at the resort when they were cleaning the rooms. Most guests checked out on Sunday, and Monday was spent cleaning up after them before new guests checked in that same afternoon. Tuesdays were calm because most rooms didn’t need cleaning and just needed their beds made and fresh towels or refilling of soap and shampoo bottles. Tuesdays were the easy days.

  But today was different at the resort. Milani had heard from the other cleaning ladies that a child was missing. He was one of the guests, and therefore, no one was allowed to leave the hotel. They had been told to stay put till the child was found. How long that was going to take, they didn’t know. Milani and her co-workers had been allowed to come in and clean, though.

  “I heard the mother killed him,” her friend Elena had said when they came in that same morning and filled their carts with towels and supplies in the cleaning room behind the kitchen downstairs. “That’s what everyone says. I saw it on TV.”

  Then she had shown the others the video on her phone where a doctor said the mother was sick.

  “She’s done it before,” Elena had added. “To her twins ten years ago. The woman is crazy.”

  Milani hadn’t really understood how this was possible. How could anyone hurt three of her own children? Milani had a son that stayed with her mother while she worked. She’d do anything for him. That was why she worked in this place…to make enough money for him to get a better life than she had. He was growing up in a better country with better opportunities. She had never met a mother who wouldn’t throw herself in front of a bus for her children. This was so strange…to think that a woman could hurt them on purpose.

  “It’s a disease,” Elena had tried to explain as they went into the elevator and rode it to the top floor where they always started together. Elena took all the odd numbers, to the right, Milani the even ones to their left when they got out.

  “She can’t control what she does to them,” she added as they rolled the carts out onto the soft carpet. “That’s how bad this disease gets. Some women keep their children sick for years, just to get the attention of the doctors.”

  “Why would anyone need the attention of a doctor?” Milani asked.

  Elena shrugged. “It makes them feel better.”

  Milani still wasn’t sure she understood, but she did get that this meant all the guests would be in their rooms when they came to clean since no one was allowed to even go to the pool area, where they still searched for the boy with the dogs. They were all told to stay in their rooms or go to the restaurant or lobby downstairs, but they were packed with journalists, shouting and yelling every time anyone tried to get through, so no one wanted to hang out down there. It made it complicated to clean the rooms properly. And you felt like you were constantly being observed. Besides, Milani sometimes liked to lie down on the soft beds, on quiet days when she wasn’t too busy. Sometimes, she’d take a nap if she was very tired from all the cleaning. Other times, she’d just lie there and imagine she was a guest at the resort and that her children were playing in the exotic pool area, or that she was getting ready to go to the five-star restaurant downstairs, eating mussels and oysters and lobster. She would sometimes go through the guest’s belongings, just to look at their lives and dream that they were hers. She liked to imagine that she lived in the big houses and drove the big fancy cars that they did. It was mostly the women’s clothing that she looked at, and sometimes—not often—tried on, looking at herself in the mirror. She’d always make sure to put everything back where it belonged, and she never stole from anyone, not even when they had cash, and she was certain they’d never notice if a bill were missing or not. Milani would never do that. She was, after all, a woman of some pride and honor, despite what most people thought. It was only the bad behaving guests that she’d use their towels to wipe the toilet with, then put them back, folded nicely. Those were the ones like the men who would sometimes grab her behind while she cleaned their rooms with them inside. She hated it when they did that more than anything but had learned never to complain. One of her co-workers did that once, and the guest just said she was the one coming onto him, and then the girl was fired. Milani couldn’t risk losing her job. It paid for a roof over the head of both her son and mother and food on the table. She could deal with a little pinch now and then if it meant the difference between having food or not.

  The only good part about the guests all being in their rooms was the fact that many of them put the Do Not Disturb sign out. Even if they didn’t do that, it usually only took about fifteen minutes to clean the room since they usually just wanted fresh towels and their beds made, then that was it. And then there were the extra tips. A lot of them had tipped her today, and that made her extremely happy. So, she guessed it wasn’t all bad. There was some upside to it, one of them being that Milani would be done early. Once she had done the last room on the third floor, she walked to the elevator, then pressed the button, thinking about her boy. She couldn’t wait to get back to him early and have the rest of the day with him.

  The elevator arrived and opened with a ding. But it wasn’t empty. Inside, Milani spotted a cleaning cart. What was odd was that its owner wasn’t there with it.

  A deep frown grew between her eyes as Milani walked into the elevator, then looked at the cart. Then she chuckled. It had happened to her once before, wh
en she rolled a cart into the elevator, then walked back out to get something when someone on another floor pressed a button, and the elevator went down with the cart alone inside of it. She grabbed the cart, then rolled it back out into the hallway. She recognized it as being Elena’s by the way the supplies were put in the tray and the small pink blouse she always brought with her for the cold rooms. Milani then grabbed her phone from her own cart and texted her.

  LOL. YOUR CART IS ON THIRD WITH ME. IT CAME DOWN ALONE. WILL YOU COME GET IT?

  She couldn’t help giggling because they had all laughed so much when it had happened to her, calling it a rookie mistake. Now, it was her turn to laugh.

  When she heard the beep coming from beneath the dirty towels, she stopped laughing, though. She lifted a handful of white towels, expecting to find Elena’s phone inside the basket.

  Chapter 39

  Mary shook her head. Her brown curls followed her movements. “I haven’t. I have never been pregnant before I met Peter. To be honest, I didn’t really have any men in my life before Peter. I don’t think I’ve broken any hearts—none that I can think of, at least.”

  I leaned back in my chair with a sigh.

  “I really thought this would be it. Anything else like it?” I asked pensively. My brain was working overtime, as I felt like I was onto something, I just didn’t know what it was. It was like I could sense it, feel the connection, but not quite grasp it yet. “Maybe something to do with losing a child? Has anyone near you lost a child recently? Maybe this person somehow blames you…or Peter?”

  Am I going about this in the wrong way? Could it be Peter that he is trying to hurt? I wondered to myself. Maybe it wasn’t Mary he was after, but it was her husband? Taking his children away, and then his wife because she’d ended up getting the blame.