Wish Upon a Christmas Star (4 page)

“I already told you,” Logan said. “Mike’s dead, Maria. He died
on 9/11. You’ve got to accept that.”

“Did you personally witness him going inside the World Trade
Tower that day?” she asked.

“No, but I talked to him that morning. He was up early because
he was working the breakfast shift.”

She picked up a thin wooden stick and stirred her coffee,
watching the circular pattern as she thought about what Logan had said. Finally,
she looked up to find his hazel eyes trained on her.

“What if he didn’t go to work that day?” she asked, the idea
gaining momentum. “Mike never could stick to anything. He quit a ton of summer
jobs for one reason or another.”

“Okay, let’s go with that,” Logan said. “Then why didn’t he
come back to my apartment and get his things? Why didn’t he let anybody know he
was alive?”

Very good questions,
Maria thought.
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

“Listen to yourself,” Logan argued. “You sound like you’ve
already convinced yourself he’s alive.”

“I’m a private investigator,” she said. “I know enough not to
jump to conclusions before I have proof.”

“You’ll never find proof, Maria. I know you want to believe
Mike’s out there somewhere. Hell, I’d like to believe it, too. But he died that
day.” Logan ran a hand over his mouth, a gesture that used to mean he was upset.
His brows drew together. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

She was almost afraid to hear it. This time she was the one who
crossed her arms over her chest. “What?”

He pursed his lips and blew a breath out through his nose. “You
know I was the one who got Mike the job at Windows on the World?”

Maria nodded. Logan had also given her brother a place to stay
in Manhattan. At first she had been angry about that. She’d told her parents
that Mike might have come home if Logan hadn’t let him sleep on his sofa. Her
folks had countered that Mike might just as likely have lived on the
streets.

“He didn’t much like being a busboy,” Logan said. “The morning
the towers fell, he talked about quitting.”

“I knew it!” Maria cried.

“Hold on.” Logan put up a hand. “I hadn’t charged him anything
up to that point. I told him he needed to help with rent.”

“So he was going to quit,” Maria said, her mind spinning. This
revelation made it more likely that Mike was alive.

“You’re not hearing me,” Logan said. “He couldn’t help with the
rent if he was unemployed. I told him he needed to keep the busboy job until he
found another one. I talked him into going to work that day.”

“You don’t know that,” Maria retorted. “Mike was bullheaded. If
he wanted to quit, he would have.”

“I don’t think so,” Logan said. “Even if that’s true, he would
have gone in to work and given notice.”

“Not if he phoned,” Maria said. Something else occurred to her.
“Maybe he didn’t feel any loyalty to the people there. Maybe he just didn’t show
up.”

Logan shook his head. “You’re grasping at straws. No way would
Mike let your family believe he was dead.”

“He dropped out of high school and ran away from home, Logan,”
she said. “He was on the outs with us.”

“He wasn’t a vindictive kid,” Logan said.

“He was a rebellious one,” Maria countered. “My parents caught
him drinking or skipping school or staying out all night lots of times. He
wanted to do his own thing without getting hassled.”

“It’s one thing to be rebellious,” Logan said. “It’s another to
let your family go through the heartache of believing you’re dead.”

Logan probably thought he sounded like the voice of reason. It
wouldn’t do any good to tell him she couldn’t rest until she’d eliminated any
chance that Mike was alive. Logan was just as closed-minded as always. If he’d
been able to open his mind to possibilities, they’d be married right now.

“I hadn’t looked at it from that perspective.” She pretended to
look thoughtful. She had to wrench the next words from her mouth. “Perhaps
you’re right.”

His mouth dropped open. He closed it and let out a heavy
breath. “Believe me, that doesn’t bring me any happiness.”

She nodded.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“What do you think I should do?”

“You should drop it,” he said. “It’s a cruel trick that isn’t
worth your time.”

Maria tried to look pensive. “You’re probably right.”

“So you’re not going to Key West?”

“What would be the point?” She put her credit card inside the
leather billfold the waitress had dropped by their table, and rose. “Would you
excuse me for a minute?”

He hesitated only a moment before answering. “Sure.”

On the way to the restroom, Maria stopped at the hostess stand
and placed a request. Within minutes, she rejoined Logan. Her credit card was on
the table, but nothing else.

“Didn’t the waitress bring me a receipt?” she asked.

Logan said, “I switched out our credit cards and went ahead and
paid the bill.”

“Nobody asked you to do that,” she said.

“I wanted to.”

Because he was flaunting what a success he’d made of himself?
Even as the thought came into her head, she knew it wasn’t true. Logan had
always been generous with what he had, even when he was a broke high school
kid.

“Thank you,” she managed to say. “We should go. You won’t be in
town long. I don’t want to keep you from your family.”

“My parents like you,” Logan said. “They won’t mind waiting
while I drive you back to your office.”

“They won’t have to wait,” Maria said on the way to the coat
rack. He helped her on with her coat, brushing against her in the process. A
shiver ran the length of her body.

“Oh?” he said. “Why’s that?”

She pointed through the glass doors to where a taxi idled at
the curb. “I had the hostess call a cab.”

He looked wounded. “I would have driven you.”

“I know,” she said. “Have a nice Christmas, Logan.”

“You, too,” he said.

She pushed open the doors and hurried to the cab, forcing
herself not to turn around for a final glance at him. When she closed the taxi
door behind her, she felt as though she were shutting out a past that included
Logan. Once upon a time, she never could have fooled him with that guileless
act. The fact that she had done so proved they’d become strangers.

She choked back a sob. Now was not the time to let herself get
teary over the way she and Logan used to be. She needed to concentrate on
finding out whether or not her brother was alive.

* * *

E
ARLY
THE
NEXT
AFTERNOON
Maria drove over the Seven
Mile Bridge that led to the Lower Keys. Her flight had landed in Miami almost
three hours earlier. Flying into the major city had saved her hundreds in plane
fare. Even with the cost of the rental car, she was still ahead of the game had
she flown into Key West.

She’d expected the hundred-and-fifty-five-mile drive to go more
quickly. How was she to know that the scenic route through the Florida Keys
would be a two-lane road, with cars clogging traffic whenever they entered or
left the highway?

If not for occasional holiday decorations on shops and houses,
it wouldn’t seem a bit like Christmas. Long stretches of the Overseas Highway
were flanked by shimmering blue water on both sides, sometimes dotted with
sprawling areas of emerald-green. When she’d stopped for gas, the cashier had
told her the green patches marked sea grass beds and shallow reefs.

The Seven Mile Bridge, which spanned a channel linking the
Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, was the most beautiful part of the drive
yet. Seabirds soared through the clear sky, boats traversed the water and people
fished from an old bridge, parallel to the new one, that was missing a piece in
the middle.

Lexington and Logan Collier seemed very far away.

Maria was still irked at Annalise for calling Logan. It was
crazy, but the old hurts had resurfaced as she’d sat across from him in the
restaurant. Never mind that she’d been married and divorced since she’d been
with Logan. She still felt like that girl who’d bared her heart and been
rejected.

She’d almost convinced herself it would be okay not to inform
Annalise that she was going to Key West. Almost, but not quite. After 9/11, the
entire DiMarco family, Maria included, kept close tabs on each other.

She’d taken the coward’s way out, though, sending a text
instead of phoning. Predictably, Annalise had responded by calling her cell.
Maria hadn’t answered. She had more important uses for her mental energy than
arguing with her sister.

She was already operating on a lack of sleep. Last night when
she’d gotten home from the restaurant, she’d spent hours on the computer. She
hadn’t been able to locate the right Mike DiMarco on any social network sites or
find mention of him or Key West on the pages of his high school friends.

Every classmate she’d tried had a Facebook page except Billy
Tillman, who’d been tight with Mike since grade school. She’d called Billy’s
mother in an attempt to track him down. As Maria left the bridge for one of the
string of islands that made up the Keys, she mentally replayed part of the
conversation she’d had with Julia Tillman.

“Key West?” the woman had exclaimed. “Why would Billy be in Key
West?”

“That’s what I’m asking you, Mrs. Tillman,” Maria said. “Has
Billy ever talked about Key West?”

“I already told you. Billy’s in San Francisco. He moved there a
few years ago.”

“Did he ever mention if any of his friends lived in Key West or
vacationed there?” Maria asked.

“No. Never,” she said. “Who did you say you were again?”

“Mike DiMarco’s sister.”

“Mike? The poor boy who died on 9/11? That Mike?”

Maria had to stop herself from telling the older woman reports
of her brother’s death may have been exaggerated. “That Mike.”

“Such a tragedy, that was. My Billy was torn up about it.”

“We all were, Mrs. Tillman,” Maria said and asked for her son’s
cell phone number. Mrs. Tillman didn’t have it handy. Once she promised she’d
have Billy call, Maria rang off before Mrs. Tillman could ask any more
questions.

Maria didn’t want to explain about the phone call and photos
Caroline Webb had received. She couldn’t listen to anyone else telling her how
unlikely it was that her brother was behind them.

If even the ghost of a chance existed that Mike was alive, she
needed to investigate. Admittedly, an envelope with a Key West postmark wasn’t a
lot to go on. But until Maria scoured every inch of Key West and determined that
her brother wasn’t on the island, she wasn’t ready to concede anything.

The task didn’t seem terribly daunting. The island was roughly
four miles long and two miles wide, with hotels, shops and restaurants packed
close together. She should be able to cover a lot of territory in a short amount
of time.

Her first inkling that finding someone on the small island
might not be that easy came thirty minutes later. She’d booked a hotel on the
far side of the island. The traffic en route was bumper to bumper.

A pale pink, two-story building with a circular entranceway
flanked by tall palm trees caught her eye while she waited behind a line of cars
at a red light. The police station. An excellent place to start her search.

She pulled into the parking lot and minutes later walked into
the empty reception area. A burly middle-aged officer with a full head of white
hair manned the counter. His name tag read Sergeant Pepper. She did a double
take. No, it was Sergeant
Peppler.
He gazed at her
expectantly, a bored expression on his face.

“My name’s Maria DiMarco,” she announced. “Is there somebody I
can talk to about a missing person?”

The sergeant perked up. “You can talk to me.”

Maria knew how the police worked. He wouldn’t hook her up with
a detective unless he thought her story had merit. It wouldn’t hurt to get him
on her side.

“I used to be on the force, too,” she said. “In Kentucky. The
Fayette County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Oh, yeah?” He stroked a beard as white as his hair. With his
coloring, he could probably get a second job masquerading as Santa. “What do you
do now?”

It figured he would focus on the wrong part of her revelation.
“I’m a private investigator.”

Sergeant Peppler snorted. In Maria’s experience, only about
fifty percent of the cops she ran across had a full appreciation of the
profession she’d chosen. The other half acted as though P.I.s existed to
interfere with police investigations.

“So this missing person,” Peppler said, eyes narrowed, “it’s
for a case you’re working?”

“Not exactly.” She reached into her purse, dug out a
computer-generated age progression of her brother and set it on the counter.
She’d gotten the image off a generic website that instantly aged people in
uploaded photos. “I’m looking for my brother.”

The cop raised an eyebrow. “This is an age progression. How
long has he been missing?”

She’d rather not tell him but couldn’t avoid his direct
question. “Eleven years.” She fired the next questions. “Does he look familiar?
Have you seen him?”

“No.” Peppler shoved the paper back at her. “Sorry. Can’t help
you.”

“That’s it? You don’t want to know why I think my brother is in
Key West?”

“Lady, I’m sure you’re aware of how police departments
operate,” he said. “It’s the start of the high season for us. That means crowds
and lots and lots of tourists. We don’t have the resources to devote to someone
who’s been missing for eleven years.”

“Could you at least see if he’s in your database? I think he
might have lived here for a while.” Maria had nothing concrete to back up that
theory. It stood to reason, though, that Key West’s remote location made it a
good place if you wanted to fly under the radar.