Before He Vanished

by Debra Webb

  When they reached their end of South High, they parted ways, waving and laughing. It was a good night.

  Halle couldn’t wait to go to sleep. Tomorrow was a school day. She and Andy were going to trade sandwiches at lunch. On Tuesdays they always did. Halle loved his mom’s pastrami sandwiches and he loved her mom’s peanut butter and jelly ones.

  Maybe she’d sneak some of her Halloween candy in her lunch box to share with Andy.

  She couldn’t wait until morning.

  Chapter Four

  NOW

  “Dinner was great,” Liam said. “Inviting a stranger into your home was very kind of you.”

  Judith blinked a couple of times. “Oh...of course. Friends of Halle are always welcome.”

  Liam managed a single nod. But he wasn’t a friend. Whatever these people thought, he was a stranger. He had never lived here. He didn’t know them or the boy, Andy, who was lost all those years ago. They just happened to resemble each other as children. It happened. No big deal. The question was how had anyone from Winchester found him? Connected him to this old tragedy?

  Some reporter—maybe even Halle Lane herself—had likely gone to a great deal of trouble to locate someone who fit the profile of this Andy Clark. Made for great headlines, didn’t it?

  “I should get a place to stay for the night,” he said, suddenly finding himself completely out of place, out of sorts. “I have a flight back home tomorrow.”

  Just saying the words made him feel more relaxed. He needed to get back home. To feel grounded.

  “So soon?” Halle asked.

  “I—I hadn’t planned on staying long. Just long enough to...” To what? Now his decision to come all this way seemed silly. What had he hoped to find here? Had he thought he’d be able to tell who sent him the article in a glance, a chance remark? It was a fool’s errand, and he was beginning to feel very foolish and uncomfortable.

  “Before you go,” Halle said quickly, “you can look at my research.”

  He had flown across the country on a whim because of this mystery. Of course he wanted to see her research. Maybe it would provide a clue to who had sent him the article. “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “Great.” A smile perked up the corners of her mouth.

  She had those really nice lips. Full and...

  What the hell was he doing?

  “Let us know if you need anything while you’re here, Liam,” Howard offered. “Winchester is a nice town. Lots of friendly people.”

  “Thank you.” Despite their comments, he felt uneasy. Friendly people didn’t send articles about a lost child to him with no explanation. Someone in Winchester had done that.

  As he wondered again about the sender, Halle stood, placed their plates in the sink and announced she would take him to see her research before it got too late. He rose, too, and helped clear the rest of the table with her.

  “Mom, Dad, good night,” Halle said when they were finished.

  “Thank you for dinner,” Liam added. He smiled for the parents once more, grabbed his jacket and followed Halle out onto the porch. The breeze held a bite. He pulled on his jacket as they descended the steps. “We going back to your office?”

  “We’re going to my place.” She pointed to the detached garage at the end of the long driveway. “I have an apartment over the garage. It’s more an office and a place to sleep. I can’t even remember the last time I actually watched the television and I’ve never cooked a meal there.”

  “Why didn’t you stay in Nashville?” He already knew a little about her after he’d done some research on her during the flight today. She’d had a rising career there until things started to go downhill a couple of years ago. She’d been married. No kids.

  The internet was full of information about Halle Lane. Not so much about Andy Clark. Most of the information about Liam was related to the winery. There weren’t even that many photos of him to be found.

  “I made a mistake,” she admitted as she started up the stairs on the side of the garage. “I allowed my personal life to invade my professional life. It was a mistake that I paid dearly for.”

  He mulled over her answer as she paused on the landing to unlock the door. “Sometimes it’s difficult to keep things separate.”

  Running a family-owned and-operated vineyard and winery, he knew from experience that it was next to impossible to keep his personal life from his professional life. They were basically one and the same.

  She walked through the door, waited for him to enter, then closed the door. “Sorry about the mess.” She gestured to the large open space. “This is the real Halle. Disorganized and perpetually on the run.”

  An L-shaped sofa sat in the middle of the room. A square coffee table nestled in the vee. Like the coffee table, the sofa was littered with piles of folders and notebooks. On the other side of the sofa was a bay window with a built-in seat. Probably looked out over the backyard. A few feet away was an expanse of cabinetry and small appliances that represented the kitchen. A narrow island was covered with notes and photos. One of the two stools fronting it held yet another stack of folders.

  Beyond the kitchen area was a king-size bed—unmade. Its hotel-style white linens lay twisted and crumpled. A door stood on either side of the bed. He figured one was a closet and the other was the bathroom.

  “It’s larger than I expected,” he said. If she ever visited his office she would feel right at home. Shelly was constantly threatening to bring in a bulldozer to clear it out.

  She tossed her shoulder bag on the sofa, walked to the loaded stool and began to move the stack of files. “It used to be just storage. But when I was a little girl, my father turned it into an apartment for his younger sister, Daisy.” She smiled as she plopped the stack into the window seat. “Daisy was a romance writer. She never told anyone. Only the family knew. She liked having her little secret. No matter that her Lola Renae books were quite popular, she kept her career quiet. Everyone thought she was just the old maid who lived over the Lanes’ garage.”

  “Interesting. My mother loves romance novels.” Penelope kept a stack of Harlequins on her bedside table.

  “She’s probably read a Lola Renae or two.”

  “I’ll have to ask her. She’s in Paris right now. Since my dad died, she hasn’t spent a lot of time at home. She says she’s giving my sister—Claire—and me our space, but I think it’s more about not being able to bear the memories now that Dad isn’t there.”

  “Sounds like they had an amazing love story of their own.”

  He nodded. “They did. Dad said he was totally lost after my biological mom died. She died before I was two. Dad didn’t meet Penelope, the only mom I’ve ever known, until I was five. They had Claire when I was seven.”

  Liam had no idea why he’d just told her all those personal things—things that had no bearing on what they had to discuss. Flustered, he slumped onto the stool she’d cleared. She slid onto the other one.

  “This is a copy of the case file from the local authorities. Getting a copy from the FBI was not going to happen. Chief of Police Brannigan was kind enough to provide everything he had.”

  Liam opened the file. Right on top was a photo of the boy, Andy Clark. Again, something in him shuddered. The image shook him. How could the two of them look so much alike?

  “That’s his school picture from that year. Second grade.” A smile tugged at her lips even as her gaze grew distant. “Everyone in the class loved him. The teachers loved him. He was such a sweet kid.”

  Liam swallowed hard. “He was walking home from school?” Liam had garnered that much from the internet.

  “Yes. Usually, we walked together but my dad picked me up that day. Mother was really sick. She’d had to be hospitalized. He picked me up to go see her and then took me home. By then the police were swarming all over our street.”

  The image
of official vehicles parked this way and that on the street flashed through his mind. Dogs barking echoed in his brain.

  A shiver coursed through him. “How long did the search go on?”

  “For weeks, but each day after the first week, fewer and fewer showed up to participate in the search parties. They checked pools and ponds in the area. Empty houses and buildings. That first week the dogs were involved. Several different police departments from surrounding counties brought their dogs and members of their communities to help in the search. It was a massive undertaking.” She exhaled a big breath. “By the first of April, hope had diminished, the same as the search parties.”

  “You mentioned private investigators.” He could imagine that any family with the means would have hired a PI to try to find their missing child.

  “The Clarks hired several. No one ever found anything useful.”

  “Sounds like the kidnapping was a professional job.” He couldn’t see amateurs getting that lucky.

  “Possibly. Or someone who had done this before. A predator.”

  His gut clenched at the idea. “Sometimes these kids come back, right?”

  “Of the hundreds of thousands of children reported missing each year, about ninety-nine percent come back alive. A lot of work is being done to ensure children are found and returned home quickly. But some, like Andy, aren’t so lucky.”

  “So kids like Andy are in the minority.”

  “That’s right. Still, even one percent is too many. One child is too many. My family and I watched the devastation take a toll on the Clarks. Their life was never the same. When they lost Andy, they lost everything that mattered to them, because with him gone, nothing else was relevant.”

  “Understandable.”

  He felt her looking at him. She had questions. He still had questions of his own. The trouble was, neither of them had the right answers.

  “Tell me about you, Liam Hart. Besides where you’re from and what you do for a living. Tell me about your childhood, your life. Accidents? Surgeries? Illnesses?”

  “You want my social security number, too?” The surprise on her face made him smile. “Just kidding.”

  She put a hand to her throat. “Sorry. I know I can be a little pushy sometimes.”

  “Sometimes,” he agreed. “To answer your many questions, other than the one time I had to be taken to the ER as a kid, I’ve never been hospitalized. Never been sick really. I guess I was lucky that way. My childhood was uneventful beyond the fact that my sister and I roamed the vineyards. Our parents were always worried we’d hurt ourselves. I thought I had to take Claire everywhere with me. Dad said sometimes he thought I was terrified of losing her.” Liam shrugged. “Maybe I was. I didn’t like it when she was out of my sight.”

  Saying those words now seemed wrong somehow. Why would he have been afraid? He’d never lost anyone except his mother and he’d been a toddler at the time, so he had no memory of the event.

  “We were inseparable,” he went on. “Sparky was our constant companion all through childhood. I was away in college when he went to doggie heaven as Claire bravely informed me by phone.”

  Halle hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d started talking. “I didn’t realize how lonely being an only child could be until Andy was gone. We were like you and Claire. We did everything together.” She laughed. “We even got married once.”

  Images of a little red-haired girl and blond-haired boy exchanging childish vows sifted through his mind. “What brought this on at such an early age?”

  “My family and I attended a wedding. I wanted a dress just like the one the bride wore. The whole ceremony enthralled me. As soon as I got back home I informed Andy that we had to have a wedding. He was always happy to accommodate me. I dug my mother’s wedding dress out of the keepsake trunk in her room.” Halle shook her head. “I think I almost gave her a heart attack. At least I didn’t damage it.”

  Silence lapsed between them. He might have only met this woman a few hours ago, but he knew what she was feeling. He knew what she wanted, and he couldn’t give it to her. It hurt him to think of hurting her.

  “I’m not the long-lost kid you’re looking for, Halle. Today is my first trip to Winchester. I can see how badly you want this story to somehow have a happy ending but I can’t be that happy ending for you. I’m just a guy from California who received a strange piece of mail about a missing kid.” A strange piece of mail that had him hopping on a plane.

  “Can I tell you something else?”

  He heaved a big breath. “Sure, why not?”

  “Andy had a dog named Sparky, too. He went missing just a couple of weeks before Andy. There were people who worried that Andy had gone off looking for Sparky and couldn’t find his way back home. Of course that wasn’t true.” She shrugged. She’d been holding this back since the moment he showed her that photo of his dog. “Your Sparky looks exactly like Andy’s Sparky. Tell me that isn’t a hell of a coincidence.”

  He held up his hands. “You didn’t mention a dog before I did.” Had she deliberately withheld that information or conjured it up to keep him interested?

  “We hadn’t gotten that far. The subject hadn’t come up. But there are photos I can show you.”

  “This is too much.” He shook his head.

  “There’s one way we can potentially rule you out.”

  His gaze narrowed. “I’m happy to leave a DNA sample, but I can’t hang around to wait for results.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about DNA, but I will gladly take a sample to the lab. Thanks for offering.”

  He’d walked right into that one. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Andy had a birthmark.”

  Liam digested the statement. “If that’s the case, then you can rule me out now because I don’t have any birthmarks.”

  This news should have made him feel relieved. Strangely it did not.

  “You might not be aware you have one,” she countered. “And there’s always the possibility that it has faded. You—Andy still had it when he was seven. Usually this particular type of birthmark is gone by the age of one. If it stays, it’s usually there for good.”

  He held his hands up as if in surrender. “So where was this hidden birthmark?” Now he was just irritated. He had really allowed this thing to go too far. He should have left after their meeting in her office.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  She scooted off her stool and went around to his right side. “It was in the hairline just behind his right ear.”

  Her hands reached toward him and he froze.

  “I’m sorry,” she shook her head. “May I look? I’ll have to touch you to do that.”

  He nodded, suddenly unsure of his voice.

  Her fingers felt cool against his skin as she swiped the tips through his hair. The new thread of tension roiling through him annoyed him further. Of course he wouldn’t be aware of a birthmark in a place like that. If he did have one, maybe she had seen it and was making the whole thing up. This could be her way of launching her story into the stratosphere. He didn’t know this woman. She could be—

  The sound of her breath catching derailed his next thought. Her fingers fell away from him.

  Liam turned to look at her. “What?”

  Eyes wide, lips parted, she pressed her fingers to her mouth and stepped back.

  Fury, hot and unreasonable, erupted inside him. “Show me,” he demanded.

  Without a word she walked to the door on the left side of her bed, turned on a light and left the door open for him to follow.

  He stepped into the bathroom as if he were crossing into enemy territory. She pulled a mirror from a shelf above the toilet and passed it to him.

  The maneuver was awkward and it took a minute, but he finally got his head, arms and the mirror positioned just right so he could see what ha
d freaked her out.

  The pinkish mark was shaped like upside down lips.

  “It’s called an angel’s kiss,” she said, her voice whisper thin. “This is the exact same shape, color and placement as the one Andy had.”

  He wasn’t doing this. It was ridiculous. A sham, a trick to help her further her career. Why had he been so stupid, coming here?

  He carefully placed the mirror on the counter and turned to face her. “I have to go now.”

  He squeezed past her and stormed across the room. His hand was on the doorknob, ready to turn, when her voice stopped him.

  “Let me get my keys.”

  Damn it. He closed his eyes, wanted to kick himself. He’d left his rental at her office.

  He waited while she gathered her bag and her keys. She led the way down the metal staircase attached to the side of the garage. He stayed behind her, not wanting to engage in conversation. All he wanted was out of here. They reached her car on the next street and they both got in without speaking. His plan to avoid any further discussion worked until she pulled away from the curb and he was a captive audience.

  “I don’t know how you can continue to pretend there isn’t a strong possibility that you’re Andy Clark,” she said firmly.

  “My name is Liam Hart.” He stared into the night.

  “I can’t force you to believe what I’m telling you.” She sighed. “But I knew it was you as soon as you walked into my office.”

  “Stop.”

  She said no more, and he was grateful she left it at that. They drove in silence across the quiet town. The businesses on the square were closed for the night. Traffic was near nonexistent. When she turned into the parking lot behind the newspaper building, he relaxed just a little.

  “Give me your cell number,” she said simply. “Here.” She gave him her phone to enter his number. When he didn’t respond, she said, quietly, “Please. In case I get more information.”

  After a pause, he did as she asked. Then placed the device on the console between them.

  “There’s a hotel near the Kroger on Dinah Shore Boulevard. There’s an inn but it’s farther out of the downtown area.” She braked to a stop, slid the gearshift into Park.