Thread of Suspicion (Joe Tyler Mystery #2)

by Jeff Shelby

  “You’re on good terms with your ex?” she asked, after I’d pushed back from the computer and thanked her for the use of it.

  “Good as can be expected.”

  “You talk. That’s more than a lot of people.”

  I nodded. “Our divorce wasn’t about us, if that makes sense.”

  “It does. But there’s usually still lots of raw nerve endings.”

  “There are,” I said. “But we’ve somehow managed to learn how to navigate around them.”

  Isabel nodded and smiled. “That’s nice. For both of you.”

  I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought that sometimes Lauren would’ve preferred to never hear from me, to never provide any sense of hope or information about Elizabeth. That’s why I’d always left it up to her to initiate contact. If she ever decided that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore, I wouldn’t push her. I’d let her have that peace if she decided she needed it.

  “What are you going to do today?” Isabel asked, settling into the chair behind the desk.

  “Going over to the school to start,” I said. “See where that leads.”

  “School can’t release records,” she said.

  “I know. I’ll need to be persuasive.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t know yet. Probably have to be a jerk or something.”

  She shook her head, smiling. “Hang on a sec.”

  “Not anxious to go back out in the cold, so okay.”

  She tapped at the keyboard, stared at the screen, her lips scrunched together in concentration. She squinted for a moment. “Okay. Don’t go to the school.”

  “I’m going to the school, Isabel.”

  “Go to the district office,” she said, scribbling on a piece of paper and glancing at the screen. “And ask for Tim Barron.”

  She slid the piece of paper to me. A number and address were scrawled beneath the name.

  “And since you didn’t wait to talk to Tess like I asked, I’m emailing him now, telling him you’re coming to see him.”

  “He’ll talk to me?”

  “Should,” she said, tapping again at the keyboard. “He’s a pretty good guy. He’s helped me out before. He’ll have access to records that are probably more thorough than the school’s anyway.”

  I folded the piece of paper and slipped it into my pocket. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, then nodded at her screen. “Email sent. He’ll know I sent you.”

  “Can you get us an address for Codaselli?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips, then sighed. “Yeah, probably.”

  “We should talk to him. Today.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Come back after you talk to Tim. I’ll find the address by then. And we can go.”

  “You don’t sound excited.”

  She shook her head. “To talk with Peter Codaselli about his missing son? No. I’m not.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Isabel’s been quiet lately,” Tim Barron said, leaning back in his chair. “She doing alright?”

  The district office was an easy find with GPS. I’d asked for Tim at the front desk and he showed up in an elevator less than two minutes later. He took me up the elevator to the third floor and I followed him to his office, where everything appeared to have been organized by a professional organizer. No piles of paper, no overstuffed file drawers. It was the antithesis of what I expected to see in a public information officer’s office.

  “I actually haven’t known her that long,” I said. “But she seems okay, yeah.”

  He nodded. He had close-cropped orange hair and a flurry of freckles on his face. Somewhere in his thirties, he was slightly built. He wore standard office attire, his blue-striped tie loosened at his neck.

  “She tries not to abuse me,” he said with a soft smile. “Which is why I like her so much. She only comes to me if she really needs me.”

  “She seems sharp,” I said.

  “She is,” he said. He crossed his legs and folded his hands behind his desk. “Now. She said nothing about why you’re here. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for my daughter,” I said.

  “She’s a student in our district?”

  “I believe she was at one time,” I said. “But I’m honestly not sure what name you’ll find her under.”

  He raised both eyebrows. “You lost me.”

  I gave him the briefest explanation I could, an explanation that ended up not being very brief at all. Trying to explain how I’d gotten to the place I was at was never an easy task and it often made the listener more uncomfortable than it did me.

  “Wow,” he said, when I finished. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So we aren’t looking for a girl with the last name Tyler,” he said.

  “Pretty sure that’s the one thing that’s certain. I don’t see any way possible that she’d still have her real last name.”

  “Of course.” His mouth twisted for a moment, then he rocked forward in his chair and grabbed a yellow legal pad. “Tell me again the name of the girl. In the picture with her?”

  “Bailey Detwiler.”

  “And which school did she attend?”

  “Hawkins Elementary.”

  He scribbled on the pad. “She still a student in the district?”

  “No. Believe she’s moved out of state.”

  “What grade do you think she would’ve been in?”

  “Fourth or fifth is my best guess,” I said. “But I have no idea where she was in the educational process. But her age would put her about there.”

  “Right.” He tapped his pencil against his notepad. “I’m not sure class rosters will do us any good if we don’t know her name. I’m not exactly sure what we’d look for.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I’ll pull them anyway and see if anything shows itself,” he said. “But what I think we really need are yearbooks. You need to see faces, pictures. I think that would be your best bet, correct?”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Yeah.”

  He laid the pencil down. “Okay. I need at least a day to put this together.”

  “A day?” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment.

  He nodded. “I’ll need to find the yearbooks, may even have to go to the school to get them. I’ll need to have a legitimate reason to loan them out. I’ll also need to print the rosters, which I’m not doing here at my office. I’ll need to do that at home.” He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t mind helping Isabel, but I need to be discreet in doing it. That’s the best I can do for you.”

  I chewed on my thumbnail for a moment. I felt like I was close to finding something. I wasn’t sure what, but for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I was on the verge. I didn’t want to wait. But I also appreciated the fact that Tim was willing to help and I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.

  “Give you my cell number then?” I said.

  He nodded. I recited it, watching his fingers fly across the sheet of paper as he wrote it down.

  “You’ll be around?” he asked.

  “Trust me.” I stood. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Did he help you?” Isabel asked.

  I’d driven back to the apartments, forced to wait once again. She’d been waiting for me with an address for Codaselli. We were in her car, heading to wherever it was that he lived.

  “He’s trying,” I said.

  “Anything for sure?”

  “Dunno. Have to wait and see. He said he’ll call me.”

  “He’s careful,” she said. “The privacy issues with schools are sticky. As long as he knows he’s helping a kid, he’ll get me any info he can. But he’s very careful in the way he does it so it doesn’t come back to bite him in the ass.”

  I nodded, watching the cars beside us on the highway.

  “If he can get anything, he’ll be in
touch. Soon.”

  “Where’s Codaselli’s home?” I asked, not wanting to talk about it any longer because there was nothing to talk about.

  “Edina,” she said. “Very wealthy area. Again, he likes to give the appearance that he’s legit. But that’s not where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going then?”

  “His office. It's in St. Louis Park, just a few miles south,” she said. “It’s the middle of the day. Think we might have better luck finding him there.”

  “Okay.”

  We drove for a while before exiting the highway and I was lost in thought, wondering if Elizabeth was nearby. Wondering if she was still enrolled in school. Wondering if I’d see her soon. Wondering who her friends were, what she did for fun. Was she like I remembered or was she so different that I wouldn’t recognize her?

  “This is it,” Isabel said, shaking me from my reverie.

  We were in the parking lot of a low profile, square building with mirrored windows. The lot was near full and she pulled into a slot near the street.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “We go find him,” I said, opening the door.

  Despite the sunlight, the air was still chilled and my breath left my body in a puff of icy smoke. My shoes crunched against the snow in the lot and I jammed my hands in the pockets of my jacket in an attempt to keep them warm.

  The heat in the building lobby hit me in the face like a wool blanket and I immediately unzipped my jacket. A security guard at the kiosk near the elevators smiled at us. “Help you?”

  Isabel glanced at me anxiously.

  “We’re looking for Mr. Codaselli’s office,” I said.

  “Sixth floor,” he said and motioned to the bank of elevators behind him.

  We stepped into the elevator and I pushed the six on the panel of buttons.

  “That was easy,” Isabel said as the doors closed.

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean we’ll see him. And the guard is calling up right now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because that’s what happens.”

  The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. We stepped out into a wood-floored lobby fronted with a crescent shaped desk.

  The woman behind the desk smiled. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” I said. “We’re looking for Mr. Codaselli.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. We were hoping to talk to him about his son, though.”

  “So it’s personal?”

  “Yes. His son is missing.”

  If that statement alarmed her, she didn’t show it. “If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat right over there, I’ll see if he’s available.”

  Isabel and I sat down in two oversized leather chairs.

  “Now what?” Isabel asked.

  “We wait.”

  “For.”

  “To see if he’ll see us.”

  “Will he?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why we’re waiting.”

  She frowned at me.

  “He’ll see you momentarily,” the woman behind the desk said, still smiling.

  “Now we’re waiting to see him,” I said to Isabel.

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “Just making it clear.”

  She rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest.

  I scanned the small waiting area. A small table with financial magazines and a plant. Framed art that looked expensive but probably wasn’t. And two small, black orbs attached to the ceiling at either end of the room.

  “Smile,” I said.

  “What?”

  I pointed upwards. “We’re on camera.”

  She followed my finger. “So?”

  “Just saying.”

  She shrugged and went back to looking uncomfortable.

  Five minutes later, a tall guy in his early thirties wearing a navy pin-striped suit appeared.

  He adjusted the black horn-rimmed glasses on his face. “Mr. Tyler, I’m John Anchor, Mr. Codaselli’s assistant.” He smiled at Isabel. “If you’d both follow me, please.”

  We stood and followed him down a long corridor and around a corner. He held open the right side of two large black doors and stepped aside for us to enter. He followed us in and closed the doors behind us.

  The office itself was expansive, but nothing extraordinary. A small conference table off to the right near the windows with several chairs. A sitting area to the left with a sofa and matching armchairs around a small glass table. Several bookshelves and cabinets. A large oak desk at the center.

  The man behind the desk stood. Maybe sixty years old, he was rail thin with pale skin. Thinning dark hair over a bony face. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his forearms, his suit coat draped over the back of his chair.

  He smiled. “Peter Codaselli.” He gestured to the sitting area. “Please.”

  Isabel and I made our way to the sofa, while Codaselli moved around the desk toward us. John Anchor drifted back toward the conference table, having a seat on the edge of it.

  Codaselli extended his hand to Isabel. “I’m Peter.”

  “Isabel.”

  He turned to me and offered his hand. “Peter.”

  “Joe Tyler,” I said.

  He nodded at both of us and sat down in the chair opposite me. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  We both declined.

  “Alright then,” he said, crossing his legs at the knees. “Melissa said that you were here regarding my son.”

  Isabel squirmed next to me. Her anxiousness was visible.

  “You’re aware he’s missing?” I asked.

  “I am.”

  “Is anyone looking for him?”

  He thought for a moment. “Yes.”

  “But not the authorities,” I said.

  Codaselli gave me a tight smile. “Do you know where he is?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “Neither does Isabel.”

  “What is your interest in my son?”

  I looked at Isabel.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ve been working with him for the past few months.”

  “Working? How?”

  “I run a service for kids who are living on the street,” she explained. “I helped Marc out a while back and he’s been helping me for about the last six months. Kind of anything and everything I needed. Mostly at night.”

  “Is he earning money for this?” he asked.

  I thought it was an odd question, but didn’t say anything.

  “I just started paying him, yes,” she said. “It’s part-time and it’s not much. But he’s earned it.” She paused. “I’m concerned because he’s disappeared.”

  “I think we all are,” Codaselli said, giving her a sympathetic smile. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “We were hoping you might know more.”

  “I haven’t heard from him,” he said. “I’ve tried to get in touch with him and I haven’t heard from him.”

  “Get in touch with him how?” I asked.

  He folded his hands in his lap. “The usual channels.”

  Codaselli’s answers were evasive and vague. I wasn’t sure why.

  He turned to me. “What is your interest in this?”

  “I think you can guess.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “You probably learned enough about me in the last fifteen minutes to put some things together,” I said.

  He squinted at me, confused. “But we just met.”

  “Right,” I said, then nodded at his assistant over at the table. “But he knew my name when he came out to get us. My guess is you ran us through some sort of recognition software tied to the cameras I saw in the waiting area. Hard to believe we would’ve gotten to see you so quickly if you didn’t know who we were.”

  Codaselli uncrossed, then recrossed his legs.

  “My error, sir,” Anchor said, not sounding too worried about it. “I apol
ogize.”

  Codaselli held up a hand. “It’s alright, John.” His eyes zeroed in on me. “Excellent catch, Mr. Tyler.”

  “Here’s my question,” I asked. “Do you actually want to find your son?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not from Minneapolis,” I said. “But my understanding is you have influence here. My guess is that if you really wanted to locate Marc, you could have people swarming the streets at a moment’s notice. Maybe you do. I don’t know. But that’s not the vibe I’m getting. So my question is do you really want to find him? Because if you don’t, then I think Isabel and I are wasting our time.”

  I glanced at Isabel. Her jaw was locked tight, her hands clasped together.

  Codaselli tapped an index finger to his lips, staring at me. Then he pointed the finger at me. “I did hear that you were direct.”

  I nodded.

  “I can appreciate that,” he said, nodding. “Yes, I would like to find my son. Perhaps we can work together.”

  “Working together means answering questions,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, tilting his head back, staring at the ceiling. “Yes, it does.”

  “So, the first question I’d ask is why did your son leave home?”

  His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. “That’s actually not the first question.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. The first question is why do I want to find my son.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Just ask me.”

  I glanced at Isabel. She shrugged. I looked back at Codaselli. “Alright. Why do you want to find your son?”

  He lowered his eyes and fixed them on me. “Because I’m dying.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “The cancer is in my liver,” Peter Codaselli said. “Stage Four.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Me, too,” he said with a tight grin. “I did not plan on going out this way.” He paused. “Marc doesn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t know you have cancer or that it’s so advanced?”