by P J Parrish
He scanned the crowd for Joanna McCall, looking for a woman who matched the ones he had seen in the society rag City & Shore. He was looking for someone who was all teeth, tan, and gold jewelry. King Tut’s trophy wife.
A blonde in the corner was waving to him. He went over to the table.
“Mr. Buchanan?” She offered him a smile and her hand. “I’m Joanna. Please, won’t you sit down?”
He shook her soft warm hand and sat down across from her.
“Thanks for meeting me on such short notice,” Buchanan said.
Her smile faded. “I want to do whatever I can to help find Mel.”
Joanna McCall wasn’t young, probably past fifty, and she had worked hard and paid a lot of money to turn back time. But with her good skin and thick blonde hair cut in a long bob, there was a softness to the woman that was undeniably attractive. Her green eyes were liquid and slightly reddened, and he knew it wasn’t from the untouched Bloody Mary in front of her. The woman had been crying.
There was a scattering of pastel paint chips on the table, and she began to gather them up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re building a new house up on Hillsboro Mile, and I was trying to pick out paint colors.” She set them aside, shaking her head. “I can’t decide anything right now.”
Her voice carried just a hint of Southern drawl, but from where, he couldn’t pinpoint.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked.
She motioned to a waiter, and he was at the table in two quick strides. Buchanan ordered coffee. The half a bottle of Jack from the night before was still sloshing around in his gut.
Buchanan watched the waiter disappear, and when he looked back at Joanna McCall he knew she was studying him, almost like he was a biology specimen or an alien life-form. He was used to it. The people his clients employed—the gardeners, maids, and au pairs—were just shadows moving along the peripheries of their lives. But he was different, and Joanna McCall knew it. He was one rung up, like a dentist, someone who you didn’t need until you were in pain.
“I’m sorry I was so abrupt when you called this morning,” Joanna said.
“Suspicion is not a bad thing these days.”
“It wasn’t suspicion.” She picked up the Bloody Mary and started to take a drink but then set it down. “It’s just, this whole thing with Mel, it’s just so unbelievable. Outside of getting a ticket once, I’ve never had to deal with the police. But Owen says you can be trusted and that you are very good at what you do.”
“I get results,” Buchanan said.
She nodded slowly. Buchanan wondered how much her husband had told her about how he worked. He decided she was probably like many of his clients who didn’t want to know the dirty stuff.
The waiter brought his coffee. He poured in some cream and stirred in two sugars.
“Mrs. McCall,” he began.
“Call me Joanna, please.”
He took a sip of the coffee, considering his approach. Might as well go right for the jugular because she wouldn’t be expecting it.
“Do you know where Amelia is?”
Her green eyes locked on his. “No. Why would you ask that?”
“Has she contacted you?”
“No. I would have told Alex if she had.”
“Not if she wanted to get away from him.”
Joanna’s eyes were steady on his for a moment and then she looked away, taking a drink.
“You’re her friend,” Buchanan said. “Her only one here in Fort Lauderdale, from what I can tell. Do you know where she is?”
When Joanna looked back at him, her eyes were brimming. “No,” she said softly. “I wish to God I did.”
If she was lying, she was good at it, Buchanan thought. But her jizz was telling him that she was telling the truth.
Buchanan knew people were staring at them, probably wondering who was this guy who was making Owen McCall’s wife cry. With his rumpled khakis and blue blazer he wasn’t fooling anybody into thinking he belonged there.
“Mom? You okay?”
Buchanan looked up. A young woman had come to the table. She was wearing a short white tennis dress and carrying a racket. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail with little wet tendrils around her neck.
“Oh, hello, honey,” Joanna said, smiling quickly.
“What’s wrong?” the young woman asked.
“Nothing’s wrong. I just have some business to talk about here.”
The young woman’s gaze moved to Buchanan. Her lips were pink pillows, and her wide-set eyes were a compelling hazel green flecked with gold. She was, Buchanan imagined, what Joanna McCall had looked like thirty years ago.
Joanna touched the woman’s arm. “Are you and Elaine done with your game?”
“She had to leave early, and I don’t have my car. Can Jack drive me home?”
“Not right now. I won’t be finished here for a while. Why don’t you go get showered and changed and—”
“I’ll wait here with you.”
Before Joanna could object, the young woman sat down. Joanna’s eyes carried a hint of apology as she glanced at Buchanan. “Megan, this is Clay Buchanan,” she said softly. “He’s a private investigator looking into Amelia’s disappearance.”
Joanna reached up to gently push a strand of hair from the young woman’s face but Megan eased away from her touch.
“This is my daughter, Megan, Mr. Buchanan,” Joanna said.
“My pleasure,” Buchanan said.
The young woman’s eyes frosted over. She held Buchanan’s stare for a moment and then turned back to her mother. As she did, he caught a slight movement of her chair as she scooted it farther away from him.
“Do you have to meet him here?” Megan asked softly, leaning close to Joanna.
Buchanan wanted to say something—like he didn’t have a disease she could catch across a linen tablecloth—but he kept his mouth shut. He needed to keep Joanna relaxed, and insulting her daughter probably wasn’t the best move.
“Yes, I do,” Joanna said. “You don’t have to stay.”
Megan gave a small sigh and settled back in her chair. She crossed her legs and laid the tennis racket across her knees. “So they haven’t found her yet?” she asked.
“You know about Mrs. Tobias?” Buchanan asked.
“Of course,” Megan said.
Joanna’s eyes were steady on Buchanan’s. “Alex is trying to keep this quiet, as you can imagine. But Megan knew something was bothering me. I had to tell her.” She shook her head slowly. “I still can’t believe this is happening. I keep thinking about Amelia wandering around out there somewhere, alone and hurting.”
She took a sip of the Bloody Mary.
“Mrs. McCall—”
“Joanna.”
“Joanna . . . In my experience I’ve found that people who go missing always end up making contact. So if she contacts you, I need to know, okay? You won’t be betraying her. You’ll be helping her.”
Joanna nodded slowly. “So that’s all I can do? Just sit back and hope she calls?”
“No, of course not. For now, I need you to tell me anything you can think of about Amelia that might be useful to me.”
“Like what?”
“Tell me about her and Alex.”
Joanna glanced at Megan. The young woman was playing with something on her wrist, a red plastic stretch band with a locker-room key attached, but Buchanan knew she was listening intently to every word.
“I think it’s best if you excuse us now, dear,” Joanna said.
Megan let out a sigh. “Fine,” she said. She rose but made no move to leave. “But if you ask me, this whole situation is just ridiculous.”
“How do you mean?” Buchanan asked.
“Megan, please.”
“Amelia ran away,”
Megan said, ignoring her mother. “Wives do that all the time, don’t they? I don’t understand why everyone’s so bent out of shape about it.”
“Megan, that’s enough,” Joanna said.
The young woman didn’t look at her mother. Her eyes stayed steady on Buchanan’s, as if daring him to ask her more, but finally she picked up her tennis racket. “I’m going to shower,” she said. “I’ll find someone to take me home.”
Megan sauntered off toward the door. Buchanan watched her and then looked back at Joanna.
“I must apologize for my daughter,” she said. “She can be a little immature sometimes.”
“So tell me about Alex,” Buchanan said.
Joanna kept her eyes lowered, and Buchanan had the feeling she was remembering something she wasn’t going to share.
Let them fill the silence.
Joanna finally exhaled a deep sigh and looked up. “Alex . . . Where do I start?”
“How did they meet?”
“It was at a ballet gala.”
“Yes, I know. But details are important and Amelia’s husband isn’t very good at details.”
Joanna gave him a sad smile. “No, he’s not.” She took another sip of her drink before she went on. “Owen and I have been Miami City Ballet patrons for years now. One night, just after Owen and Alex started their own firm, Owen wanted Alex to come along, to get him to meet the right people. It was Christmas and it was The Nutcracker, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Well, Alex was bored, and at intermission, he wanted to leave. He’s like a hummingbird, can’t sit in one spot very long.” Joanna paused, her expression turning distant, almost dreamy.
“But then, Amelia came onstage,” she said. “She was Coffee.”
“Coffee?”
“It’s a solo. Amelia is very tall, and they always give the Coffee solo to the tall girls. She was wearing a harem costume, and the music is very slow and sensual, the movements very seductive.” Joanna paused, smiling slightly. “You can imagine what it was like. The men in the audience—well, the straight men at least—they always sit up a little when Coffee comes on.”
“Did Alex?”
She nodded. “The solo ends with the dancer doing a split and then sort of slithering across the stage toward the audience. Alex was spellbound. When Amelia crawled across that stage, it was like she was crawling to him.”
Buchanan made a mental note to find the ballet on YouTube when he got back to his room.
Joanna sat back in her chair. “After the ballet, we went to the gala. There was a fundraiser thing where you could buy the pointe shoes of the dancers. Alex bid five hundred dollars for one of Amelia’s old shoes.”
Buchanan almost laughed. He picked up his coffee and took a long drink instead.
“Alex asked her out that same night,” Joanna said. “He was relentless once he decided he wanted her. He wanted to get married right away but Amelia had just been promoted to soloist. It was two years before she finally said yes. It happened very quickly, just time for a little ceremony at the Church by the Sea before they were off to France on the honeymoon. Alex didn’t even get her a real diamond until later.”
“Was Amelia a good dancer?” he asked.
“Oh yes. She got a scholarship to study in New York and then was hired into the corps of the New York City Ballet when she was just a teenager. And in Miami, Mel had wonderful reviews.”
Reviews? They would have popped up in a simple Google search. Why hadn’t he found them? Then he knew.
“Did Amelia use a stage name?”
Joanna nodded. “Yes, there was a soloist in the New York City Ballet with a very similar name, so to avoid confusion they told Amelia she had to come up with a stage name. She was Melia Worth.”
Amelia Bloodworth.
Melia Worth.
Mel Tobias.
“How did she end up down here?” Buchanan asked.
Joanna gave him a long stare. “The Miami City Ballet is a world-class company.”
Okay, he had offended her somehow, maybe because she had forked over a lot of money to the ballet. But to his mind, Miami was Vegas South, a place people went when someone was chasing them or their options had dried up. Or when they wanted to reinvent themselves.
“I only meant that New York is a bigger arena,” he said. “Why do you think she came down here?”
“I don’t really know. Mel never told me anything about her years in New York. I know she got the scholarship when she was only sixteen and had to go live in New York. They have dorms for the younger dancers and people to watch over them. But it couldn’t have been easy. And the New York City Ballet . . . well, it’s huge and terribly competitive. It’s not uncommon for dancers to leave there if they feel they can get better roles at a smaller company.”
“You said she had great reviews in Miami. Why did she quit?” Buchanan asked.
“She got injured,” Joanna said. “She took a really bad fall during a performance and broke her hip. It was bad enough that she couldn’t dance anymore.”
Buchanan wondered why Tobias had neglected to mention the injury. He remembered that the guy had turned pretty morose for a while during their interview, and Buchanan had assumed it was because they hadn’t been able to have children. But there were obviously more currents flowing under the surface of this marriage. There always were.
And it explained why Amelia had finally given in to Alex. Dancers didn’t make much money, and Alex Tobias had to have looked like a pretty good exit ramp after she got injured.
“Did Amelia ever mention a friend she had named Carol Fairfield?” he asked.
Joanna nodded. “Yes, they were in the corps together in New York. Amelia used to visit her every summer. I think Carol lived in Chicago.”
“Minneapolis.”
“Yes, that’s it. I never met her. But Amelia used to really look forward to seeing her.”
“What about other friends, maybe someone from her childhood?”
Joanna shook her head slowly. “I can’t remember her ever mentioning anyone. Her family is all gone now, you know.”
“Did she talk about her childhood to you?” he asked.
Joanna smiled slightly. “She was from Morning Sun, Iowa. I think they have like eight hundred people living there or something. I always had the feeling Amelia was a little, well, embarrassed about where she came from. The only thing she really talked to me about was her ballet classes there. She told me her mother used to drive her down to Burlington three times a week. I don’t know anything about her father. Amelia never talked about him.”
“Did you know she had an older brother?” he asked.
Joanna nodded. “Yes. I never met him, but I got the feeling they were close. His death hit her really hard. She was quite depressed for a while after that, as you can imagine.”
“Would you say that you and Amelia are close?” Buchanan asked.
“Well, Amelia’s a very private person. But yes, I’d say we’re close.”
“Alex told me that when they first got married you took Amelia under your wing.”
Joanna nodded and smiled. “You have to understand. Amelia grew up wearing clothes from Sears and eating Swiss steak on Sundays.”
Buchanan wondered if those details came from Amelia herself or just Joanna’s imagination.
“She had to leave high school when she got her dance scholarship, and it took her a couple years to get her GED up there,” Joanna went on. “She didn’t go to college, so marrying a man like Alex and moving into his world, she was a little . . .” Joanna gestured toward the room at large.
Buchanan took it all in with one sweeping glance. The glossy women, the tanned men, the tall bank of east windows that looked out on a huge sapphire pool, backdropped by sleek white yachts.
“Intimidated?” Buchanan
said.
“I was going to say lost,” Joanna said.
The waiter reappeared, asking Joanna if she wanted another drink. She declined, but Buchanan got a refill on his coffee. He needed to take a piss, but he had the feeling that if he took a break now, Joanna McCall’s trip down memory lane might hit a dead end. The woman suddenly looked really beat.
Joanna was looking around the room again, but finally her eyes came back. “After she quit dancing, Amelia was sort of adrift. So I thought if she got involved in social things, it would help. I made sure she met all my friends, and I helped her fit in. She tried very hard. I mean, she had no real education, but she was really quick to pick things up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, after she stopped dancing, she seemed determined to remake herself. She changed her hair color and hired a personal shopper at Neiman’s to pick out her clothes. She threw herself into redoing that old house, agonizing over every detail. She took gourmet cooking classes and got those Rosetta Stone tapes to learn Italian and French. One summer we all rented a villa in Lucca and by the first week, Amelia was speaking Italian to the maid. Every time I saw her she had a book in her hand.”
“Or a Kindle?”
Joanna gave him an odd look.
Buchanan reached into his canvas bag and pulled out the pink Kindle, laying it on the table.
“Oh, you mean that reader thing,” Joanna said. “Yes, she always seemed to have that with her. But it was more than books. It was like there was always so much more to Amelia than what you saw on the surface.” Her eyes brimmed again. “And now this brain injury . . .”
She picked up a cocktail napkin and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m just really tired. I haven’t slept well since this all started. Are we finished?”
“Just one more thing. How’s their marriage?”
“Alex adores her.”
“Does she adore him?”
Joanna leveled her eyes at him. “She never talks to me about her marriage. She’s very private that way.”
“You saw them together all the time. What do you think?”
