She's Not There

by P J Parrish

  Tobias was a hotshot in social circles, donating major bucks to Big Brothers, American Cancer Society, Humane Society, the Dan Marino Foundation. Just three months ago, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel business pages, he had paid $800,000 for a vintage gullwing Mercedes at the Auctions America classic car auction. His house was featured in Florida Design, and Tobias himself had been a cover boy in Lawyer Monthly.

  A visit to the Broward County property appraiser’s site told Buchanan that Tobias lived on Castilla Isle in a house he bought in 2007 for $1.2 million. Five keystrokes later, Buchanan found the Tobias home on Trulia with a current value of $4.8 mil. A nice tidy increase in just seven years.

  Buchanan wondered if the guy came from money or if he’d had to work his way into it. Maybe he started out with a strip mall office in Tallahassee and one Men’s Wearhouse suit in his closet. He had that sort of trying-too-hard look about him. But then, most of the people Buchanan had seen here did. He decided he’d do a deep dive search on Tobias later.

  For now, he just watched as Tobias handed the keys to the valet, yanked off his tie, and tossed it in the SUV. Tobias came toward the bar, pausing at the edge of the patio. He took off his sunglasses, hung them on the pocket of his shirt and scanned the crowd.

  Picking up his Dunhills, Buchanan shook out a cigarette and lit it, deciding to let the bastard twist for a few seconds, letting him worry that maybe he had popped for that first-class ticket from Kennedy for nothing.

  Buchanan watched Tobias, watched him searching the crowd, watched him getting pissed that he didn’t know the face of the man he was meeting. This was a guy, he decided, who wasn’t used to being fucked with.

  Enough. It was time to get on with business.

  Buchanan met the man’s eyes across the crowd and nodded. The guy practically pushed his way over.

  “Are you Clay Buchanan?”

  “That would be me. Sit down, Mr. Tobias.”

  Alex Tobias slid into the chair and signaled the blonde server with a wave. When she ignored him, he swung his gaze back to Buchanan.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Mr. Buchanan,” Tobias said.

  “A five-thousand-dollar consult fee showing up in my QuickPay account has a way of clearing my calendar rather quickly.”

  Tobias forced a smile. “I should tell you, this wasn’t my idea.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “Hiring you, Mr. Buchanan.”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  “My law partner, Owen McCall. He said you’re the best at this sort of thing.”

  When Buchanan’s cell had chirped back in the bar at JFK, he hadn’t recognized the name McCall-Tobias. But experience had taught him not to ignore calls from law offices. Still, he had been surprised when a secretary told him that the firm wanted to “engage his services” to find a missing woman, the wife of one of the partners, Alex Tobias.

  The secretary didn’t hesitate when Buchanan told her his fee. Buchanan didn’t ask any details. The ticket to Fort Lauderdale was waiting for him at the Delta counter, and his money was in his bank account by the time he landed. This was just a consult. If things didn’t smell right, he could always walk away and keep the five grand. It went like that sometimes.

  Tobias took his sunglasses off his pocket, started to put them on, then carefully set them down on the table.

  “Owen said he read a book you wrote—Nowhere to Hide, or something. He told me about this Mexican millionaire’s son who was abducted and how you traced him—”

  “I know the ending,” Buchanan interrupted. He didn’t want to rehash his resume with this man. The book had just been a quickie thing he published himself to make some extra money. It had sold maybe twenty copies, but Tobias didn’t need to know that.

  “Owen said you’re not like any normal private eye.”

  “I’m not like any private eye, Mr. Tobias. I’m a skip tracer.”

  “A what?”

  “Skip tracer. I do one thing and one thing only. I find people who don’t want to be found.”

  Tobias frowned. “I don’t understand the difference.”

  “You will. If I take your case.”

  Tobias nodded slowly and then his eyes slid toward the bar, looking for the server again. When he turned back, Buchanan got his first good look into the man’s eyes. They were the color of the Cumberland River on a cloudy day—a muddy blue-green but shot through with tiny red veins. The guy had been drinking.

  “So if hiring me wasn’t your idea, what changed your mind?” Buchanan asked.

  “I don’t know how else to find my wife,” Tobias said. “The police won’t do anything. They say that since she walked away on her own, she’s not technically missing.”

  “She walked away on her own? From where?”

  “Broward General Hospital.” He frowned. “No one told you any of this yet?”

  “Someone from your office called me four hours ago, Mr. Tobias, and hired me to come down here for a consultation about finding a missing woman. That is all I know. Maybe you better fill me in.”

  Tobias sighed, seemingly frustrated he had to tell his story again. Buchanan figured he’d already been grilled by the doctors at the hospital and the cops. He’d cut him a break and get him a drink. Loosen him up a little. Buchanan caught the blonde server’s eye and she came over quickly.

  “Another bourbon?” she asked him with a smile.

  “Club soda for me.” He looked to Alex. “What are you drinking?”

  “Armadale on the rocks,” Tobias said.

  The server left and Buchanan leaned back in his chair. Armadale vodka. Just like the man himself—corporate-clean and a little too polished.

  Buchanan had always been good at reading people. It was just like watching birds, really. He could identify almost any bird just by being patient and looking for the details—its shape, size, voice, coloration, or flying style. Birders called it jizz, that special vibe you got when you watched a bird that helped you figure out its species even if it was hiding in the trees. The word was supposedly an acronym used by WWII pilots—“General Impression of Size and Shape” of an aircraft. Now it was a porno term, but birders didn’t care. Jizz was theirs. And it was never to be ignored.

  Right now, Alex Tobias was putting out some weird jizz—confusion, anxiety, worry, fear, and a musky bass note of desperation to keep things under control.

  The drinks arrived. Tobias took a long swig of his.

  “What exactly happened to your wife?” Buchanan asked.

  Tobias set the glass down. “Four days ago, Mel was in a car accident. She was alone when it happened, but some guy in a truck found her and left her in the emergency room.”

  “Police find the guy?”

  “No. They have his truck on the security camera but no plate number. They think he was an illegal immigrant and was afraid of getting busted, so he left Mel and ran.”

  “Why’d your wife leave the hospital?” Buchanan asked.

  “I don’t know. No one seems to know anything.” He took a big drink of vodka. “She has a brain injury, a concussion. She has amnesia.”

  “Amnesia?”

  Tobias nodded. “Yesterday, she finally remembered her name and they called me. When I saw her, she was asleep and they made me leave. But when I came back twenty minutes later, she was gone.”

  “Has she called you?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve tried to call her, of course.”

  “I haven’t stopped. But it just keeps going to voice mail.”

  “Does it ring?”

  “What?”

  “When you call her phone, does it ring before it goes to voice mail?”

  Tobias shook his head. “The police told me the phone was turned off. They said that’s why they couldn’t use the GPS to find it.”
>
  “They can trace the phone’s last location. Have they told you anything?”

  “Yes. They said the last known location of the phone was about two miles from where her car was found. But they never found the phone or her purse.”

  “What about the car’s GPS?”

  “It doesn’t have one.”

  “And you don’t know where your wife was going?”

  Tobias shook his head slowly. He picked up his glass, stared down into it for a long time, and then finally took a drink.

  “What do you know about the accident?”

  “Not much. They said the car spun off the road in the rain and went into a ditch. It happened out on some road in the Everglades.”

  “Everglades? What was your wife doing driving alone in the Everglades?”

  Tobias stared at him for a long time, as if he were trying to figure something out. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  What the fuck did this guy know?

  “I’ll need to see the accident report,” Buchanan said.

  “Why?”

  When Buchanan gave him a hard stare, Tobias held up a hand. “I’ll get it to you.”

  “Where’s the car now?”

  “My insurance agent said it was towed back here last night. It’s in the police impound.”

  Since the police did not consider Amelia Tobias to be a missing person, Buchanan knew their initial search of the wrecked car had probably been cursory. He knew, too, that even the smallest clue could lead to something big. With no GPS, Amelia Tobias could have scribbled directions on a piece of paper. And if he could figure out where she had been going, maybe he could find out where she went. He would need to check out the car.

  “You said the police looked for your wife?” Buchanan asked.

  “Yeah, they searched the hospital and the neighborhood, but there was no sign of her,” Tobias said. “She has a brain injury, but they aren’t even looking for her now. My wife is missing and the fucking police won’t do a thing. Does that make any fucking sense to you?”

  The two women at the next table turned to stare. Tobias glanced at them and then picked up his glass and drained it.

  “Actually it makes perfect sense,” Buchanan said. “The way the police see it, if your wife was healthy enough to walk out of the hospital then she must be in good enough shape to make her own decisions, concussion or no concussion. And since she’s an adult, if she’s decided she wants to disappear, she has a right to do that.”

  Tobias’s blue-green eyes were fixed on him.

  “Does your wife have good reason to want to disappear, Mr. Tobias?”

  Tobias rose. “I don’t have to put up with this shit. We’re finished here.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Tobias.”

  Tobias glared at him.

  “Sit down. Please.”

  Tobias hesitated and then dropped back into the chair. He ran a hand over his sweating brow.

  “You want another drink?” Buchanan asked.

  Tobias shook his head slowly as he stared vacantly out over the patio. There was a faint roll of thunder, and Buchanan looked up to see storm clouds. The temperature was dropping, and the patio was emptying fast. In the small parking plaza fronting the bar, there was a fifty-foot fake Christmas tree. Its white lights blinked on, the reflection falling like glitter on the Bimmers, Audis, and Bentleys arranged like presents under the tree.

  “Let me tell you something about how I work,” Buchanan said.

  Tobias looked up.

  “I track down people who will do almost anything not to be found. I am very good at this because I am willing to do whatever it takes and go as far as necessary. I am a liar for hire. But I don’t bring back women who have a good reason to want to get away from their husbands.”

  “I would never hurt my wife,” Tobias said.

  Buchanan waited. It was always better to say nothing and let the silence slice away at the other person’s comfort level. Human nature abhorred a vacuum.

  “I need you to find her,” Tobias said.

  Again, Buchanan waited.

  “Mel wants to be found.”

  It came out almost in a whisper with a small break in the voice. Alex Tobias was a man with a hole somewhere deep inside him, that much was as easy to discern as the grassy perfume of the women at the next table. But there was something else there, something Buchanan’s senses were not quite picking up.

  “Okay,” Buchanan said. “I’ll take your case. I’ll find your wife.”

  Tobias met his eyes.

  “But this is how it works. All I do is find her and tell you where she is. The rest is up to you—and her.”

  Tobias nodded. “Thank you. That’s all I want.” He collapsed back in the chair, as if he had no air left in his lungs. “What’s the next step?” he asked.

  “You tell me everything you know about your wife,” Buchanan said.

  “Then what?”

  “Then we wait for her to make a mistake.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The headlights swept across the chain link fence, illuminating the big green sign—FORT LAUDERDALE POLICE VEHICLE IMPOUND.

  Buchanan leaned forward in the taxi’s seat and pushed a wad of bills through the plastic. “This is good,” he said. “Keep the change.”

  Buchanan eased out of the taxi and it sped away, leaving him in the dark drizzle. Beyond the ten-foot chain link fence, he could see the misty glow of security lights falling on the rows of cars and SUVs like moonlight on tombstones. A small warmer yellow light deeper in the lot pulsed brighter for a second as a door opened and then closed.

  Buchanan heard the man’s footsteps before he saw him. A flashlight shined in Buchanan’s eyes and he blinked.

  “You Buchanan?”

  “One and the same.”

  Buchanan heard the jingle-clank-creak of the fence unlocking and opening. As he went through, he caught a glimpse of a fat man in a dirty Dolphins cap and orange plastic rain poncho. After leaving Tobias at the restaurant, Buchanan had called his contact at the Fort Lauderdale PD, who had told him the impound guard was good, that he’d let him in for fifty bucks. Buchanan was having trouble remembering the impound guy’s name.

  Quirk . . . that was it.

  “Listen, Mr. Quirk—”

  “Quark. The name is Quark, like the subatomic particle.”

  “Okay, Mr. Quark. I’m here to see a car.”

  “Yeah, Larry told me. The Mercedes SL that came in yesterday. So where’s my Christmas present?”

  Buchanan pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it over to Quark. The man peeked in the envelope and then slid it into his pants pocket.

  “Follow me.”

  Quark clicked on his flashlight again, and Buchanan followed him along the line of cars. The first few rows were all in good shape: Toyotas towed from parking lots, Escalades seized in drug raids, and Lexuses lost to loan default. But the farther they went into the lot the worse the cars looked until they deteriorated into crumbled masses of metal.

  Quark stopped and pointed the flashlight beam. “There she is.”

  The car was wedged between two other wrecks—a Kia and an accordioned Ford Fiesta. It was small, about the size of a Miata, and though the grill was damaged, the distinctive Mercedes emblem was still visible.

  Something was itching at Buchanan’s memory, something from his Google of Alex Tobias. “Can I have your flashlight?” he asked Quark.

  Quark handed it over, and Buchanan trained it on the car’s side. He couldn’t see the doors, but he knew what he was looking at—a Mercedes 300SL gullwing.

  That’s what Buchanan had been trying to remember. His Google of Alex Tobias had revealed that Tobias had paid $800,000 for the gullwing at an auto auction. It was the kind of collectible car you didn’t even drive on city str
eets. What was Amelia Tobias doing driving it out in the Everglades?

  It started to rain.

  “You about done here?”

  Buchanan looked back at Quark, turtled down into his poncho.

  “No, I’m going to be a while.”

  “Well, I’m going back to my office. Make sure you drop the flashlight off before you leave.”

  Quark left and Buchanan looked back at the Mercedes. The passenger side appeared intact. The driver’s side had taken the brunt of the damage, and its front fender was smashed, the headlight broken. The Mercedes was wedged smack up against the wrecked Ford so there was no way to see inside. Buchanan climbed on top of the Kia. He had to lie down on the hood to angle the flashlight beam into the car’s interior.

  The light picked up the glitter of glass from the broken driver’s-side window. There were brown smears on the tan bucket seat and on the dashboard—dried blood, Buchanan guessed. When he moved the flashlight beam, he saw the spider crack in the windshield over the steering wheel.

  Buchanan started to get up but then stopped. Suddenly he was seeing what wasn’t there.

  Seat belts.

  The gullwing was a classic car, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be retrofitted with seat belts, even though any such alteration would diminish the car’s value. With no seat belt to stop anything, Amelia Tobias’s head had smashed into the windshield.

  Again, the question: What was she doing driving a car like this? Most rich women surrounded themselves with as much metal and airbags as bulky sedans or SUVs could provide. He made a mental note to find out if she had another car.

  Buchanan jumped off the Kia down to the mud. The rain had turned into a downpour, beating an ear-splitting tattoo on the hoods of the dead cars.