Before He Vanished

by Debra Webb

  Even his parents, apparently.

  He wanted to believe none of this was possible but every minute of each day he was with Halle, he understood it was more than just possible.

  This was real.

  But Liam wasn’t ready to fully accept that conclusion unconditionally. Not yet anyway. Some tiny part of him still held out a desperate hope that his life was really what he believed it to be and not something else...something sinister and filled with secrets and lies and betrayals.

  “I’m taking you to lunch at my all-time favorite place,” Halle announced. She shot him a questioning look. “If that’s okay with you?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. There’s not much I won’t eat.”

  She flashed him a smile. “Good. I like a guy who isn’t afraid to be adventurous.”

  Just when he’d thought nothing could make him smile. “Good to know.”

  They shared a look and warmth spread through him. He knew that gaze: it was as familiar as his own reflection.

  He decided to relax and enjoy the urban landscape as she drove. It seemed every time he opened his mouth he said more than he intended or the wrong thing. Or she looked at him a certain way and he suddenly felt that bond that couldn’t possibly be real.

  Traffic was a bear but Halle knew her way around. If she saw a bottleneck ahead, she changed their route. She was a bold driver. Nothing he hadn’t expected. Her personality was bold.

  When she parked in front of a seriously low-rent-looking diner, he was a little surprised and a whole lot skeptical. The place wasn’t at all what he had expected. The building looked old and even a little run-down, and, frankly, kind of sketchy.

  “I promise they have the best burgers in the world.”

  Liam glanced at her and made an agreeable sound. There wasn’t a lot to say. Still, judging by the number of cars parked around the place, there had to be something halfway decent going on inside.

  “It’s one of the oldest—if not the oldest—places in Nashville,” she explained as they got out. “You’re as likely to run into a celebrity as anyone else. The atmosphere is totally laid-back.”

  He nodded, deciding to reserve judgment for now.

  Inside she grabbed his hand and led him through the bar area and to the dining room. She waved at a waitress who literally whooped at seeing her. The waitress hurried over and ushered them to a table—the only free one in the room. Classic Formica and metal tables, like from the fifties or sixties.

  “I haven’t seen you in forever, girl,” the woman gushed before giving Halle a big hug. She turned to Liam then. “Who is this gorgeous human?”

  Halle laughed. “Melany, this is Liam Hart. Liam, Melany. She’s the best waitress in town.”

  The woman grinned. “That and a good tip will get you everywhere, honey. Now, sit and tell me how you’ve been.”

  Halle took a seat, and Liam did the same. While she brought her friend up to speed, he pulled a menu from between the napkin holder and the ketchup bottle and gave it a look.

  “You won’t need that, sugar.” Melany took the menu from him and stuck it back where he’d gotten it. “You want the cheeseburger, fries and a cold draft brew.”

  “Trust her,” Halle said. “It’s the best.”

  Liam gave the lady a nod. “I’m in.”

  “Great. I’ll be back in a flash.”

  Melany hurried away, waving and saying hello to other customers as she passed.

  “The staff is definitely friendly,” he noted.

  “Always.”

  As promised, Melany was back with two frosty mugs of beer. “Enjoy!” And then she was off again.

  “So you came here often,” Liam said as he picked up the mug.

  “At least once a week. I lived on Woodmont in Green Hills. It was like six or seven minutes to get here. My ex wasn’t so keen on the place, so I didn’t come as often as I might have.”

  “The ex.” Liam nodded. “Tell me about the ex.”

  She blinked, looked a little reluctant but didn’t balk. “He was good at his job. Very good. He’s still one of the top television producers in Nashville. I was a mere lowly reporter but I was good at my job, too.”

  He’d seen her list of awards. She was good then and now, if the article on Andy Clark was any indication. “But something went wrong.”

  “He was busy. Always. He wasn’t home a lot. The longer we were married—which wasn’t that long—the less time he had for me.” She shook her head. “Putting all the blame on him isn’t really fair. When we married, I was exactly like him. Work was everything. We were the perfect fit. We grabbed the moments we could and were perfectly happy to let our careers be the priority. And once in a while we even shared the same bed or a meal. He wasn’t the one who changed, it was me.”

  “You wanted the whole package,” Liam suggested. “The career, the marriage, kids, house with a white picket fence.”

  It didn’t matter if she answered. He knew this about her. Somehow. The idea was at once exhilarating and oddly terrifying. How could he know her feelings unless all that she alleged were true?

  “Yes. I wanted it all. Once I passed thirty, something changed inside me. My biological clock started ticking or whatever. But he didn’t feel the same way. He was years away from wanting that sort of commitment. So I left him. Moved back into my old place in Green Hills and waited for him to see the error of his ways. But he didn’t. He simply moved on. One day there was a knock on my door and a messenger delivered the divorce papers.” She shrugged. “He was never one to waste time on a project he didn’t feel strongly about.”

  “Are you still in love with him?” Liam wasn’t sure why he felt the need to ask the question. It was none of his business but somehow he needed to know.

  “No. Sometimes I think I never really was.” She sipped her beer. “I was in love with the idea of him. The idea of us, when what I really loved was my work. But something inside me changed and nothing felt right again.”

  The food arrived and Melany waited as they checked to see that all was to their liking. Liam took a big bite of his burger and moaned. Halle and Melany were correct. The burger was fantastic. He told Melany as much and she beamed.

  When the waitress had moved away, Halle patted her lips with her napkin and then said, “Told you so.”

  For a few minutes they focused on devouring their food. The burgers were juicy and tasty. Liam was reasonably certain he’d never had better. Even the fries were damned good. The icy cold beer was the icing on the cake.

  “Now it’s my turn,” she announced when she’d finished off her burger.

  “You still have fries on your plate,” he pointed out. He picked up the last one of his and popped it into his mouth.

  “Don’t try and change the subject.”

  He made a confused face. “How could I do that? I don’t even know what the subject is.” This was not exactly true. She wanted to ask him questions about his social life. Quid pro quo.

  “Tell me why you haven’t married.”

  “I guess I was like you. Focused on my work. My dad passed and it felt like I needed to do even more. Claire is always telling me I work too hard. But she’s the same way. Penelope—my stepmother—has just been sort of lost since he died. She spends as much time away from home as possible.”

  “What happened to your birth mother?”

  “I asked Dad that once and he said they were hiking in the mountains and she fell. When he reached her, she was dead. She may have died instantly but he had to be sure so he climbed down to her with me in tow. Anyway, there was no way he could carry me and her body off that mountain, so he marked the place on the trail and carried me out. When he and the authorities went back, her body was missing. They searched for days but never found her remains. The local wildlife evidently dragged her off to their cave or den.”

  “I�
��m so sorry. That must have been truly horrible for your father and you.”

  “I really don’t remember anything about it but it was tough for him. He never liked talking about her death. He would talk about her life, but not the end.”

  “Completely understandable.” Halle shook her head and traced her finger around her sweating glass for a moment before asking her next question. “No girlfriend back home?”

  “No.” He downed the last of his beer. “No girlfriend.”

  “There’s never been anyone special? Someone you considered spending the rest of your life with?”

  “No. The past year was really the first time I considered the idea of what happens next. I don’t know if it was a delayed reaction to my father’s death or if it was just that biological clock thing for guys.” He grinned. “Whatever happens next, I haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “When we were kids—” she stopped. “When I was a kid,” she amended, “Andy and I used to talk about the future. He wanted to be a policeman or a fireman. A hero.” She smiled. “He loved the idea of helping other people. If things had been different, I’m certain he would have been class president and received all sorts of awards and scholarships. He was so smart and so passionate about life.”

  Her words brought up more haunting similarities. Liam had never been able to ignore the underdog or those in need. Even Claire had warned him recently that he couldn’t give so generously to every charity under the sun. Didn’t matter that he’d been class president, either. That was more likely because he was nice to everyone. No reason to mention that ancient history. It would only be another detail she would use as evidence of her claims.

  “After you showed up,” she said, drawing his attention back to her, “I did some research on you. You do more than your share of giving back, as well. You’ve been honored by community leaders on several occasions.”

  “Just following in my dad’s footsteps.” Luke Hart was a bigger hero than Liam could ever hope to be, which was all the more reason the idea of him stealing a child was simply not plausible.

  “Tell me about your father.”

  Melany showed up to see if they needed another round. Halle ordered water this time. Liam went with her choice.

  When the waitress had walked away, Halle looked at him expectantly.

  “His name was Luke, Lucas Alexander Hart. He never went to college but insisted that Claire and I did. He started with nothing and somehow managed to talk the bank into lending him the money to buy the vineyard and winery.” Liam shook his head. “Whenever he told that story, he always laughed and said it was a miracle they didn’t toss him out. But for whatever reasons they gave him the loan and he turned the place into what it was meant to be all along. If he was here, he would also tell you that Penelope was his anchor. Without her he couldn’t have managed.”

  “Sounds like the two of them had a good marriage.”

  “They did. He always insisted the key was that you had to be friends, too. They were good friends.”

  The water appeared on the table, along with the check.

  “I think he was right,” Halle said when the waitress had moved away. “Friendship was missing from my marriage. We were colleagues and lovers but never friends, not really. My parents didn’t like him, either, so that was a definite downer. But I think we would have had a far better chance had we been friends, too.”

  “He was a fool.”

  She met his gaze, then smiled. “Thank you. I think so, too.”

  She reached for her bag but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “It’s my turn,” he argued as he grabbed the check.

  He stopped at the counter and paid on the way out. As they zigzagged through the still crowded lot to reach her car, Halle abruptly stopped.

  Liam glanced around. “What’s wrong?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe nothing. I just had that hair-raising sensation.” She laughed. “You know, when it feels like someone is watching you.”

  He took a moment to slowly scan the street and the parking lot. “I don’t see anyone now.”

  She exhaled a big breath. “Maybe it was my imagination.”

  He opened her door for her. She stared at him a moment, then said, “Thanks.”

  He climbed in and fastened his seat belt. There was another question burning in his brain but he waited until she had backed out of the slot and pulled out onto the street before he asked. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since they were at Burke’s house. “Were you considering writing a book about his disappearance?”

  “I’d thought about it, but the time never seemed to be right.” She braked for a traffic light. “Some part of me thought maybe if I put all my thoughts and memories into a book, just maybe if he was still alive and out there somewhere, he would read it and remember. He would know we hadn’t forgotten him and that we still love him.”

  He stared at her profile as she moved her foot from the brake to the accelerator and the car rolled forward. The line of her jaw, the rise of her cheekbones, her lips, her nose, all of it filled him with a sudden sense of longing. How would it feel to have someone love you that much? Not a parent or a sibling, but a friend...a lover? His heart started that confounded pounding.

  He understood how it would feel. It would feel exactly like this.

  Liam looked away. He desperately needed answers. As hard as he tried to keep fighting the possibility that he was, in fact, Andy, that certainty was quickly draining from him.

  * * *

  THE PI, Frank Austen with an e, lived in a seriously low-rent neighborhood. The duplex was a box-style brick with no architectural features or interest. Very plain, very flat, save the shallow peak of the roofline. A chain-link fence separated the two halves of the small front yard. A cracked and discolored concrete driveway rolled right up to the door on each side. Like earlier, there was still no vehicle in the driveway. Halle turned in just the same and parked.

  “This time if no one comes to the door,” she said, “we’ll start calling on the neighbors.”

  “Burke wasn’t sure he lived here anymore.” Liam opened his door and got out of the car. Across the top, he said, “If he has moved, maybe one of his neighbors will know where.”

  “We can hope.” Halle draped her bag over her shoulder and made the short journey to the front door.

  While she knocked without garnering a response, Liam decided to have a look around. He walked to the side of the house, opened the gate that separated the driveway from the backyard. Around back was the same, plain, neglected property, nothing to draw the eye from the drab reddish orange brick or the mostly dead grass. Like the front, the yard was cut in half by the same style chain-link that bordered it. A small concrete patio, five-by-eight or so, bordered each back door. A six-foot wooden privacy fence about eight feet wide had been put up on either side of the chain-link to provide some visual separation from the two patio areas. The patio on this side had a chair and a table. On the table was an ashtray overrun with cigarette butts. If the PI still lived here, he was a heavy smoker.

  Liam walked to the back door. Gave a knock. Nothing. No sound inside whatsoever. He tried the knob but it was locked. From the looks of the knob it wouldn’t take much to open it. He moved on to a window and cupped his hands to have a look inside. Yellow-with-age blinds prevented him from seeing much. Fortunately, several of the louvers were broken, so he managed a glimpse here and there.

  “Do you see anything?”

  Liam jerked away from the glass. “You couldn’t warn me that you were behind me?”

  “I thought about it.” She grinned. “But the opportunity to startle you was too good to pass up.”

  “You’ve always liked doing that.”

  Their gazes locked and held for a moment longer, with him holding his breath at the realization that came out of nowhere, her looking uncertain what to say or do next.


  “You can’t see much inside,” he said, moving on, “but what you can see makes it look as if whoever lives here is planning a trip or maybe moving.”

  Halle walked around him and peered through the window, moving from broken louver to broken louver just as he had.

  There was a suitcase on the bed and it was already half filled with men’s clothes. The dresser drawers were pulled out, their remaining contents hanging haphazardly. The closet doors stood open, many of the hangers now empty.

  They moved to the next window, which looked into the kitchen. Dishes were stacked in the sink. An abandoned coffee mug sat on the counter.

  “Maybe he’s taking a vacation.” Halle led the way back around to the front of the house. “Let’s go door-to-door and see what the neighbors have to say.”

  Since the other half of the duplex had a For Rent sign in the window, they moved on to the first neighboring house, the one on the left of the driveway, where a woman with four kids lived. The duplex couldn’t have had more than two bedrooms. She had no idea who lived in the house next to her. She quickly closed the door before Halle could ask anything else.

  Surveying the street as she moved toward the house on the other side of the duplex, Halle said, “If we don’t get anywhere with his residential neighbors, maybe we can find someone next door or across the street from his office. No matter that it’s Saturday, there might be someone working around there.”

  When they’d checked out the guy’s office, Liam had spotted one of those check-cashing places that looked open. “It’s worth a try.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure what Halle hoped to learn from this PI. But anything he knew might provide insights, he supposed.

  Halle knocked on the door of the next house. Dogs barked, shattering the quiet inside. The yaps told him the animals were small ones. Halle knocked again. Someone inside shouted, “Hold your horses.” Female, he decided.

  A moment passed. Liam suspected the woman inside was having a look through her security peephole. The door opened a crack. “If you’re peddling something, I ain’t buying.”