by Libby Howard
“I’ll take that as a yes. So if Walsh thinks she’s missing, why hasn’t he filed a police report?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want even more of a dust-up over the woman if she just went off the grid for the weekend.”
He shrugged. “I think you’re wasting your time. She’ll turn up. And once this all blows over, she’ll eventually be able to rebuild her business—the legal one, that is. Unless your research revealed a secret bank account in the Cayman Islands, I think J.T.’s investment is safe.”
He slid the burgers on the plate and put the pan in the sink. I wasn’t sure how to bridge between the conversation about Caryn Swanson and Madison, but I needed to tell him. Now. Not after dinner.
“Actually, I need to speak to you about something else. Something related, but not really. It might come up in the trial, so I thought you should know.” I was rambling incoherently, dreading the blowup that would follow.
“Yeah?” He hesitated, plate of burgers in one hand.
I pulled the pictures out of the folder and sat them on the island counter—one showing Caryn Swanson at a party, the other the enlargement showing Madison by the keg.
“If there were clients at this party, or some of the prostitutes, then these pictures are going to be part of the trial. I wanted to make sure you saw this first. Before the trial.”
He sat the plate of burgers down and stared at the photos, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “When was this taken?”
“A week ago Saturday. I spoke to Madison about it just now because I’m trying to track down Caryn’s friends. She knows I’m telling you about it.”
Judge Beck inhaled. It was a ragged breath, as if his throat were closing up. “My daughter was at a party last Saturday night. She was at a party with these much older kids, one of them arrested for running a prostitution ring, a party where there might have been johns and prostitutes. She was at this party holding a cup of what I suspect is beer.”
His voice was numb, wooden. Then he looked up at me and his eyes blazed. “I’m going to kill Heather for this. How could she let this happen? She wants to deny me half custody, and our daughter is out drinking and partying with people in their mid-twenties, with prostitutes, on her watch?”
“Well, we don’t know for sure that there were prostitutes or johns at the party,” I hastily interjected. This was not going well. I hadn’t expected it to go well, but the reality of his anger was so upsetting. “We don’t even know if Caryn Swanson is guilty.”
“It’s my daughter,” he snarled. “My fifteen-year-old daughter partying and drinking beer with people ten years older than her. I don’t care whether Caryn Swanson is guilty or not, my daughter is too young to be at this sort of thing.”
I took a step back, worried that he was going to do something violent with that spatula. It probably wasn’t the right time to remind him that we’d all snuck out at that age. Well, I assumed he had, too. He might be a judge now, but I didn’t get the impression that he’d obeyed every rule when young. Honestly, he probably didn’t even obey every rule now.
He threw the spatula across the room, where it clattered off the end of the counter and across the floor. “What was Heather doing while my daughter was getting drunk and who knows what else at a party? Out with Tyler? Did she ditch Henry with a sitter, or send him off to a friend so she could run around like an irresponsible tramp? She’s probably clueless about what the kids do in the evenings. She’s completely unfit to have any custody at all.”
This was bad. So bad. I wanted to hide under the table or grab Taco and lock myself in my room. It was as if I were Madison, if I were Heather and guilty in all this instead of just the messenger.
I couldn’t hide, though. I needed to live with this guy, live most of the time with his kids, and see his soon-to-be-ex-wife several times a week. I had to ride this very unpleasant emotional moment out. Then I’d get Taco and hide in my room. Maybe with a bottle of wine.
“Stop it. Stop it now. Kids are sneaky, and as much as you want to blame Heather, don’t blow this out of proportion. Madison said she was supposed to be spending the night at Chelsea’s. Would you have followed up? Would you have doubted her?”
The judge hesitated. “Chelsea is one of Madison’s friends. She’s a good girl, gets good grades. We played golf with her parents. No, I probably wouldn’t have doubted her, but I will now.”
“Then have an adult parenting discussion with Heather. Tell her what happened, and between the two of you come up with a way to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Madison knows she’s lost your trust. She won’t be surprised if you doubt her, if you follow up on her overnights or after-school activities, going forward.”
He glanced over at the spatula on the floor and suddenly looked embarrassed. “I’m so angry at Madison for this. She’s too smart to make these kind of dumb decisions. Maybe if she was seventeen or eighteen, I would have expected this sort of thing, but fifteen?”
He was right. She was young, but kids seemed to do things at such a younger age than we did. Well, then I did. “She didn’t know that Caryn was about to be arrested for being a madam, she didn’t even know Caryn at all. Chelsea’s older sister invited her to the party, and she didn’t want to go without someone else her age, so she asked Madison to go along. There was alcohol, but she swears there were no drugs and the guys were respectful, they treated them like kid sisters.”
The judge caught his breath. “Oh, God. What if there had been drugs? What if one of those guys had slipped her something, then raped her?”
“That didn’t happen. She lied and went to a party. She drank beer. Teens do this sort of thing. You’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again, at least until she goes off to college.”
I probably shouldn’t have said that last part, even thought it was true.
“I might not be able to control what she does in college, but I’m going to make sure she’s not sneaking out to parties and drinking alcohol while she’s a minor under my roof. I’m not going to sweep this under the rug.” He scowled.
“I don’t expect you to,” I hastily replied. It wasn’t my business. I’d told him, now it was up to him to deal with his daughter and his ex-wife. He didn’t need, or probably want, further comments from me.
He sighed, running a hand over top of his dark hair. “Lots of teens make this mistake and lots of teens end up dead in car accidents, in the hospital for a drug or alcohol overdose, or raped. I don’t want to get that phone call. She’s… she’s my baby girl.”
His voice choked and I felt tears sting my eyes at the emotion in his words. It was every parent’s worst fear. I could only envision how hard it was to watch your little ones grow up and hope every time they left your arms that they returned safely again.
“I know, and I can’t begin to imagine how that feels.”
He nodded and turned back to pick up the plate of burgers. “I’ll talk to her after dinner.”
There was no offer of a burger for me, and given how tense their dinner would most likely be, I was actually glad to pull my salad out of the fridge and eat elsewhere. I figured it was a good time to take my food outside and enjoy the spring evening, away from the storm brewing in my house.
Chapter 11
J.T. went through my notes a second time. “She’s definitely gone. Out of all the bonds I’ve posted, I never would have guessed this would be the one I would have to track down.”
“What do you need me to do?” J.T. would most likely handle questioning the Facebook and Snapchat friends. I was a bit reluctant to give up Madison’s friend and her sister, especially given that the girl had said they barely knew Caryn. Maybe if these other leads didn’t turn up anything, I’d check with them. I hated to whack that bee’s nest again.
“See what else you can find. Any kind of credit card trail, anything. Being accused of running a prostitution ring isn’t enough to get her more than the most basic police interest, so finding her is going to be up to us.”
“I’m on it,” I announced, sitting down at my computer. An hour later, and I’d discovered scant else about Caryn Swanson. She had graduated from Locust Point High School. She had gone to Milford County Community College, then on to the state college, graduating two years ago with a business degree. Her parents had loaned her the money to start her party planner business, and it had been enough of a success that she’d paid them back within six months.
From all the pictures, the website, and the recommendations, she seemed to be a good business woman. She’d had quite a lot of success for someone her age. Was she truly innocent? Some kinky girl who had mistakenly gotten caught in a sting? No, there had to be something behind the charges, or she would have just been up for prostitution. There had to be a reason the police were so eager to get their hands on that black book.
It was one o’clock before I realized that I hadn’t brought anything for lunch. If I was going to run out, I might as well swing by the grocery store and grab something to cook for dinner. And some baking supplies. It would be nice if the breakfast pastries that I shared with Daisy each morning weren’t store bought. I used to love to bake. It was something I wanted to pick up again. And if I made two coffee cakes instead of one, then perhaps those two kids wouldn’t have to eat frosted donuts and frozen waffles for breakfast.
MegaMart was fairly empty but I still parked in the back as far from the doors as I could, determined to get a little exercise in as I always did. As soon as I hopped out of my car, I felt an icy chill and saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye.
I’d forgotten about the shadow, or floater, or whatever the ophthalmologist had called it. The visions hadn’t reoccurred since Sunday night, when I’d been downstairs watching movies.
I turned, expecting the dark shadow to vanish as always. This time it stayed, an indistinct, gray figure in the center of my vision. It was like seeing a ghost. Well, it was like what I imagined seeing a ghost would be like, except not in broad daylight at the edge of a MegaMart parking lot. Was there something seriously wrong with my eyesight? Did I need to see the ophthalmologist again?
The shadow paced, then headed over to the grassy section between the parking lot and the highway, the huge patch of briars and weeds that down a ten-foot embankment hid a drainage ditch. There it hovered, floating and twisting in the air, one long appendage stretched outward, as if beseeching me to do something.
Do what? Get sunglasses? See an eye doctor? I blinked hard a few times and rubbed my eyes, but the shadow was still there. Pointing. Reaching toward me.
And then it was gone. The air turned warm and I heard birdsong that had been unusually silent just a moment before.
What was that? A trick of the light? My cataract surgery gone horribly wrong? Feeling like a total fool, I walked carefully across the broken edge of asphalt toward the area where I’d seen the shadow. The briars and grasses near the edge of the parking lot looked crushed. Had someone been here? Homeless people used to have some tents in this spot when it had been more wooded and before the MegaMart had come. Now it was just a bunch of weeds and a steep hill down to the drainage pond. I couldn’t even imagine using it as a cut-through to the truck stop since any pedestrian would need to navigate this bramble-filled slope, skirt the wet pond area, then cross six lanes of interstate. I was just about to turn around and leave when I saw something in the weeds—something blue and shiny. Reaching down, I pulled it free.
A shoe. A woman’s blue pump. It hadn’t been here long from the look of it. What woman loses a perfectly good shoe? A rather attractive shoe? And just one of them? My imagination went into overdrive and I peered down the slope to the drainage pond, trying to see if there was anything down there.
A body? It would be the perfect place to dump a body. Or it would be the perfect place for some drunk woman to fall and lose her shoe in the middle of the night. I was such an idiot. It was a shoe. And I was seeing floaters from my cataract surgery.
Yes, I was an idiot because I was going to risk breaking my neck to check this out. Maybe I’d luck out and find the mate to this shoe. Maybe I’d luck out and they’d be my size.
It was April. The pond would have a good bit of water in it. And judging from the two-foot grass that grew up around it, the area was never mowed. I was willing to believe it was never bothered with at all. I walked around the edge where asphalt met grass, trying to find the best spot to descend. I saw a few bags of trash and an old window air-conditioning unit—left by someone who didn’t want to pay the landfill fees at the dump, no doubt. I also saw a trail of smashed grass that looked a bit more level then the other spots.
I mulled through the scenarios as I carefully climbed down the pathway. I was certain a woman in high heels couldn’t navigate this path. If the owner of this shoe had been drunk and fallen, how far would she have rolled? I envisioned the girl falling with the first step of her high heels in the soft ground, tumbling down to the bottom of the steep hill, and possibly plunging into the edge of the pond. It wasn’t terribly deep, but the grasses grew thick and tall right up to the edge. If she’d hit her head on a rock…
I hesitated, my own shoes soggy in the mud. This was ridiculous. I’d seen a shadow. I’d found a shoe. And here I was climbing down a muddy, weed-infested hill with that shoe in hand. My shoes might be forever ruined, and I’d need a whole lot of pre-soak to get the mud out of the hem of my pants, but I had to know. Taking a deep breath, I kept going, hearing the mud suck up around my feet with each step. After about five yards I saw it—another shoe. It was a blue patent shoe, a match to the one I held. I stooped down to look at it, afraid to pick it up. Would I fall on my face down into the pond? Would quicksand pull me into the ground? And there was another reason I was afraid to pick it up.
It wasn’t just a shoe. I knew in my heart there was more, and I really didn’t want to keep going. But I couldn’t call the police and tell them that I’d seen a shadow in a parking lot, and I couldn’t tell them that I’d found a shoe at the bottom of a grassy median between said parking lot and the highway. They’d assume it had been tossed here as a prank. I needed more than a shoe, so I went on.
I found more. Just a few steps away, facedown in the pond and surrounded by weeds, I found what I’d feared to find.
Chapter 12
The police had cordoned off the pond and the parking lot, roping my car in along with the rest of the evidence. There were three squad cars, the M.E., an ambulance, and J.T. My boss paced back and forth, stopping occasionally to look down the hill at the little numbered markers and the body covered in plastic. As for me, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
In all my years as a reporter, I’d never seen a dead person. Yes, I’d been there when Eli passed away, but I hadn’t seen him days later after his body had been half-submerged in water. This was horrific. Eli’s death had been peaceful, serene. This woman’s was anything but that.
“Do you think it’s her?” I asked J.T.
He glanced down at the tarp. “I’m assuming so. Blond. She’s the right age. It’s not like there are any other missing persons in Locust Point.”
“Maybe it’s someone from out of town,” I said. “Maybe she was traveling on the interstate, pulled into the truck stop, got drunk, fell down the hill, and drowned.”
J.T. shot me a look that clearly said I was crazy. “She got drunk at the truck stop, crossed six lanes of traffic and climbed through the ditch to the parking lot, lost her shoe, then fell trying to get back down?”
Okay, he was right. That didn’t make sense at all. “She’s drunk at the truck stop. She hooks up with some guy who drives her over here for car sex in a parking lot after hours. Afterward, she falls down the ditch and drowns trying to get back to the truck stop.”
J.T. considered my theory. “Well, if that’s true, then some jerk drove her here to have sex with her, then left her, drunk and alone, in a dark parking lot.”
About that time, one of the deputies climbed up the hill to us. “Looks like that Swanson
woman to me. It hasn’t been that warm the last few days, but she was facedown in the water, so we’ll want to wait for the M.E. report before we announce the victim’s ID.”
Which was code for keep your mouths shut.
J.T. shook his head. “I want to give Craig Walsh the heads-up, just in case. She got out on bail Friday morning and didn’t show up for a meeting with him Saturday afternoon, so if it’s Caryn Swanson in that bag, that should narrow down the time of death.”
The deputy shrugged. “I guess that won’t hurt. I’m going to rush an identification, just so we can let everyone know. I’m sure it’s all over town that we found a body.”
We all looked up at the overpass above the interstate where cars were parked and people were lined up, gawking and taking cell phone pictures. Yeah. Small town excitement. First a prostitution arrest, and now a body behind the MegaMart.
“Do you think…” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but part of me did. “Do you think it was an accident, or that she was murdered?”
The deputy’s expression suddenly became completely blank. It was the best poker face I’d ever seen. “No idea. We’ll need to wait for the M.E.’s report.
Which meant he assumed murder. I assumed murder; although, to be fair, she could have stumbled down the hill drunk and drowned. But if that was the case, where was her car? Did she walk here? There was nowhere nearby that she could walk from. As J.T. had said, the truck stop was either a mile up and over the interstate bridge in those pretty blue patent shoes, or she’d parked somewhere in the MegaMart parking lot. But if she’d parked up near the front of the store, why in the world would she have come back here?
I hated to even think it, but murder was the only thing that made sense. And there was only one reason I could think of for someone to murder Caryn Swanson.
What was in that black book?
Chapter 13
