Before He Vanished

by Debra Webb

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Halle said. “We’re looking for Mr. Frank Austen. He lives next door to you.” She gestured to the house next door. “We’ve been to his office and now here and we can’t seem to find him.”

  The door opened a little wider. The two little dogs she held, one white and one gray, wiggled in her arms. “You probably know he’s one of them private investigators,” she warned. “They don’t like nobody getting in their business.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I know,” Halle agreed. “But it’s very important that we find him.”

  They might be in luck. It sounded as if he still lived here and that this woman knew him.

  “He ain’t home much,” the woman said. “He travels a lot. Does a lot of them stakeouts like on TV. Sometimes we have us a few drinks and talk about it. He’s got a lot of stories to tell.”

  Now Liam got the picture. “Have you and Mr. Austen known each other for a while?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah,” she said with a wink. “We’ve been neighbors for thirty years. I watch out for his place when he’s out of town and he brings me little gifts from his travels. I like snow globes. I’ve got a whole room full of them.” She narrowed her gaze at Liam. “I know you were back there nosing around behind his house. He won’t like that.”

  “I thought maybe he was out back smoking and didn’t hear us. It’s really important we find him,” Liam urged. “Not to mention I worried he might be ill. It happens. A man without anyone to check on him.”

  The neighbor shook her head. “Don’t nobody ever check on him except me. I don’t think he’s got no family and he always said if anyone come around it was probably trouble.” She looked from Liam to Halle and back. “Are you two trouble?”

  “No, ma’am,” Halle denied. “We just need to find him. A friend of ours went missing a few years back and I’m hoping he can help us.”

  “Oh, I hate to hear that. Far as I know, he’s in town. I saw him come in yesterday at the butt crack of dawn. I took coffee to him a little later and he looked like hell. He said he’d been up all night on a stakeout. Grumbled about being too old for that stuff anymore. I haven’t talked to him since. He left out this morning around eight and he hasn’t been back. Since he didn’t ask me to get his mail, he’s probably coming back tonight or tomorrow. He doesn’t like for his mail to sit in the box.”

  “If I give you my cell number,” Halle asked, “will you call me when he comes back home? It really is very important.”

  “Sure. Let me get a pen and paper.” She disappeared into her house.

  “He may not be coming back,” Liam whispered.

  Halle nodded. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “Here we go.” The lady appeared back at the door with no dogs in tow. She put her pen to the pad she held. “What’s your number, hon?”

  Halle provided her cell number.

  “Do you have his number, by the way? We could try calling him,” Halle said.

  The woman hesitated, then gave them the number quickly, as if she was unsure whether to share it.

  “He don’t often answer,” she told them. “Just takes the messages and he calls back if wants to.”

  They thanked her and left. Neither Liam nor Halle spoke again until they were in her car.

  As she backed out of the drive, he said, “His packing up could be coincidence?”

  Halle looked at him before continuing into the street. “I don’t know. He’s lived here all these years. His career is here. My article comes out and suddenly this PI who may have done some work for the Clarks twenty-five years ago is packing up to go.”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Liam held up his hands as she shifted into Drive and started forward. “Are you accusing a man you’ve never met of some illegal activity more than two decades old? How are you making that leap? You don’t even know him.”

  “It’s just...” she said, then shook her head. “I don’t know. A feeling. I’ve had this creepy feeling since we left Burke’s house. Something isn’t right about him and this Mr. Austen with an e.”

  Liam agreed with her there, for sure.

  “Let’s try calling him,” Halle said, “even if he hardly ever picks up. You remember the number?”

  “Etched in my brain.” He pulled out his cell, tapped in the digits and waited. Just as the neighbor had predicted, it went to voice mail. He left a message, saying he was a potential client and needed to talk to him about a job.

  After he clicked off, he looked at Halle. “Where to now? Do you know anyone in town who might be familiar with this PI? A cop or someone?”

  She braked at a stop sign and grinned at him. “You’re brilliant.”

  Liam closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Not brilliant enough, he decided. Or he wouldn’t be having all these doubts about who he was. While she drove, he forced his mind to go backward, to dig into his childhood. He focused on his dog, Sparky. He had loved that furry mutt. He relaxed and let the memories flow. For better or worse, he let himself float into the past.

  THEN

  Twenty-five years, one month ago...

  ANDY SAT ON the porch. He felt sick. He wanted to cry but he was too big to cry. He dropped his head into his hands.

  Sparky was gone.

  He’d looked everywhere.

  His dad had driven him all over the neighborhood. They had talked to all the neighbors and no one had seen him.

  It was the worst day of his life.

  “Come on, Andy, we’ve got stuff to do.”

  He raised his head and looked at Halle. He hadn’t heard her walk up. “I don’t feel like doing anything.” He frowned at the big bag hanging around her neck. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the stuff we gotta do.” She sat down beside him and opened the bag. “I got Mom’s little hammer. I got thumbtacks and I got tape. And these.” She pulled out a paper and showed him.

  He stared at the photo of Sparky and his stomach hurt. The flyer read, “LOST DOG. His name is Sparky. Please bring him home.” Andy’s name and address were under the photo. Then in big letters were the words “REWARD $20.”

  His eyes got big. “Is my dad offering a reward?”

  “Uh-oh.” Halle made a face. “I didn’t think to ask him.”

  Andy’s face puckered with disappointment. “Then what’s this?” He pointed to the line about the reward.

  “That’s how much was in my piggy bank. Mom helped me count. Twenty dollars.” She poked herself in the chest with her thumb. “I’m offering the reward.”

  Andy hugged her tight. “Thank you, Halle. You’re the best friend ever.”

  She wiggled out of his arms. “Come on. We gotta put these up all over town. Mom’s gonna take us.”

  Andy smiled. His eyes, burning again, forced him to blink them fast. “’Kay.”

  Hand in hand, they skipped over to her yard.

  What would he do without Halle?

  Chapter Eleven

  NOW

  Halle’s detective friend was following up with a witness on another case but he promised to catch up with her as soon as he was finished. Until then, he suggested she wait at a place called the Pub on Eleventh Avenue South. It was close to his location.

  Wasn’t a hardship to hang out. The place was a British-style pub with a variety of cocktails, wines and whiskeys from which to choose. The atmosphere was not unlike one of the pubs he haunted back home. Lots of elegant wood details on the walls and around the bar. Upholstered chairs and classy tables. Soft music. People engrossed in conversation at the tables. The waiter had brought elegant stemmed glasses filled with sparkling water. Liam wasn’t a big fan of the stuff, but it was something to do while they waited. Halle pretended to look over the menu, but she wasn’t likely hungry any more than he was. They were basically killing time. Waiting to connect with yet someone else who might know
some tidbit about Andy Clark’s disappearance.

  The lost boy.

  Liam had almost ordered a whiskey neat but he’d talked himself out of it. He needed a clear head. But that trek down memory lane he’d taken while she drove across town had shaken him. The memory was vivid, too vivid. He’d been worried about Sparky and Halle had made posters offering a reward for the missing pup. There were parts of the memory that he could definitely say her words had prompted—had put the idea in his head—but there were others that had come straight from somewhere deep inside him. Straight out of his own past, or what felt like his past.

  There had to be a way to unfurl these scattered clues and sensations and emotions so that he could look at them as a whole, rather than only in pieces. The fragments promised something they had not as of yet delivered—the whole story. As much as he wanted to dismiss his growing suspicions about his identity, there was something here. Some part of this was accurate and he needed to understand why.

  Unless this PI or the detective had information that would point them in the right direction, he didn’t see how he would ever know the whole story. There was, of course, the possibility that if any of this was actually true, his father may have confided in Penelope. But to interrogate her could cause her pain, he was sure. Why should he put her through that until he knew more?

  Liam shook himself. What was he thinking?

  His father would never have done this and if he was Andy, someone else had stolen him from the Clarks. But why wouldn’t his father tell him if he was adopted or had been taken in under less than normal circumstances? Luke Hart had not been a liar or a kidnapper—he was a good man. A loving, compassionate man. That left no other option except his bio mom, but she had died when he was two.

  Or had she?

  He didn’t remember her or her death. What if his father was covering for her?

  Enough.

  Liam pushed aside the troubling thoughts. He needed to focus on something else for a while. He leveled his attention on Halle and said, “Tell me about this Derrick Carson.”

  Halle looked up from the menu. “He’s a detective with Metro.”

  Liam toyed with the stem of his glass. “I know that part. I mean, besides that. You laughed a couple of times when you were talking to him. Sighed one of those little breathy whispers. Fiddled with your hair. You two have a thing?”

  “Breathy whispers?” She laughed, then clasped her hands atop the menu as if she worried she might reach up and fiddle with her hair again. She did that when she was thinking, he had noticed. What had she been thinking when the detective was chattering away in her ear?

  She moistened her lips and looked directly at him. “No. We do not and never have had a thing. He has asked me out to lunch or dinner, to a movie once, but I’ve always declined. He’s a friend. Nothing more.”

  “Ah.” Liam nodded. “The detective has a thing for you but you don’t feel the same way. Maybe he’s still hoping you’ll change your mind.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “The detective is a nice man who dates lots of women, but I never wanted to be one of his women.”

  “A player,” Liam suggested.

  “A player,” she agreed. “But he’s a good cop. We can trust him.”

  As hard as he tried to stay away from the subject of those unsettling memories that had haunted him today, Liam couldn’t keep them out of his head. “When the dog went missing,” he began, determined not to use the name Sparky, “you mentioned that was a few weeks or a month before Andy disappeared.”

  “Three weeks,” she said. “Andy was devastated. I wanted to do something to help. My family and I had searched with him and his family but Sparky seemed to have vanished. So I took all the money out of my piggy bank and my mom helped me make flyers offering a reward for his return.” Her face turned sad. “We really tried but we could never find him, and the next thing I knew, Andy was gone, too.”

  He nodded, his throat too tight, too dry to respond. His memory was accurate. Real. Too real.

  She stared at him for so long he had to look away.

  “Can you still pretend I’m wrong? That you aren’t Andy?”

  “Liam,” he reminded her. “Liam Hart. I’m not Andy Clark.” The words ripped from his aching throat, tasted bitter on his tongue.

  “Is it because you don’t want to think that the man you believed to be your father stole you from your real family?”

  “That man was my real family.” Liam spoke louder than he’d intended. A couple at another table glanced their way. “Sorry,” he said to Halle. “I can show you photos of my father when he was a young man and a child. I looked just like him. Same hair, same eyes. Same dimple in the chin.” He tapped his chin. “I don’t know how to explain all these other flashes of—” he shrugged “—insight into the childhood you shared with Andy, but I am telling you my father was Luke Hart.”

  “Andy’s dad, Andrew Clark, had blond hair and blue eyes, too. No dimple, not a chin one anyway. I’ve seen pictures of him as a young man and maybe one as a child. I can’t say that he and Andy looked very much alike beyond their coloring. Andy’s features were more like his mother’s—like Nancy’s. Her hair was darker than his when she was very young, her eyes a shade or so lighter. No dimple, either. The similarities were more in facial structure. The jawline, the nose.”

  “Well, there you go.” He relaxed more fully into his chair. “My father and I could have been twins.”

  She sat quietly for a minute or so, watching him, assessing him.

  “Go ahead.” He sipped his water. “Say it.”

  “We have to do the DNA. It’s the only way you’ll ever know for sure.”

  He drew in a deep breath. “What about extended family? Did the Clarks have any siblings? Cousins? Any family that you’re aware of.”

  “None. They were both only children and their parents had passed before Andy was born.”

  How convenient. His instincts stirred. He was onto something but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what that something was. “They moved to Winchester from Nashville when Andy was eighteen or nineteen months old.”

  “Nineteen,” Halle confirmed.

  “Were they ever visited by out-of-town company? Maybe old friends from Nashville. Even if their parents had passed, surely they had friends. Colleagues? People from the church they attended?”

  Her brow lined as she considered his question. “I can’t remember anyone visiting them. Let me call Mom and ask.”

  She dug into her bag and withdrew her phone. Before she could call her mom, it vibrated in her hand and the screen lit up.

  “Hello.”

  She listened for half a minute, then thanked the caller and disconnected. Her gaze locked with his. “That was Austen’s neighbor. He’s home.”

  Liam left a bill on the table for the water and a tip and they were out the door.

  Halle drove slightly above the speed limit to arrive at the duplex in the shortest time possible but the driveway was empty. As she and Liam exited her car, the neighbor bounded out her front door, wiggling dogs in her arms.

  “He didn’t stay long,” she explained. “He went in the house, came out with his suitcase and drove away. I tried to wave. Holler at him but he didn’t even look back. I got a feeling whatever is on his tail, he don’t want to be caught. Something ain’t right. I’ve known him too long. This ain’t like him.”

  Halle had a feeling the lady was more right than she realized. “Thank you. Please, call me if he or someone else shows up.”

  “I sure will,” the lady promised.

  Halle hesitated, turned back to her. “What kind of car does he drive?”

  “A black four-door Ford Taurus. Had it forever.”

  “Thanks again!” Halle waved and hurried to the car and slid behind the wheel. Liam was already in the passenger seat. “Let’s ch
eck his office again,” she said as they snapped their seat belts into place. She tossed her bag onto the back floorboard and placed her cell on the console. “His neighbor is right. Sounds like he’s on the run. We should have staked him out instead of going after my detective friend,” she said with regret.

  “He could be headed to the airport for all we know.”

  She backed out of the driveway and pointed her car in the direction of Nolensville Pike. No way was she letting this guy get away.

  “If he’s headed to the airport, there’s nothing we can do. Chances are we wouldn’t catch him before he got through security. If we get to his office and he’s not there—” she glanced at Liam “—I’m going in to see what I can find. If we’re really lucky, he left something behind.”

  “I doubt your detective friend will be too happy about that move.”

  “Won’t be an issue unless he finds out.”

  They exchanged a look. “In that case,” he said with a widening grin, “I’m in.”

  Halle shook her head. It was very possible they would both be in jail before morning. As long as they had cells next to each other, she could live with that.

  The traffic was heavier now. The quickest way across town to their destination was 440 but it would still take time. Halle merged into the traffic, her fingers tight on the steering wheel.

  Her cell vibrated. She glanced at the screen. Derrick. She ignored it for now. There was no time to slow down. He would only want to know where she was. She would call him after...this.

  By the time she reached the exit for Nolensville Pike her nerves were frayed. She had barely pulled onto the pike when traffic came to a dead stop. No! She clenched the steering wheel even tighter and leaned forward to see what was causing the bottleneck.

  Blue lights...red lights throbbed in the distance. Police cruisers, two ambulances...a firetruck...this was bad.

  “Looks like a major pileup,” Liam said, taking the words right out of her mouth. “Hold on.”