Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 07 - Vague Images (4 page)

“He stuck his head in my room at the ER, after the deer ran in front of me.”

Morehouse gave a small groan, and stood
. “Everything’s different on narcotics. Sorry, Lieutenant. We’ll just…”

“We should talk a bit more
. Sergeant, I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to step out. Jolie can meet you in your office.”

Morehouse didn’t even look annoyed
. Just surprised. He said nothing as he left. When he had shut the door to the office, Tortino looked at me. “How sure are you?”

“I know it was a long time ago, but I spent a lot of time with those kids
. And that night, that night is hard to forget. But I’ve never talked about it.”  I said the last sentence very quickly.

“Not even with Scoobie?”

“Only in the ER, after I did this.”  I nodded at my throbbing foot. “He didn’t see the guy, he figured I was mistaken.”

“Bottom line is, the kid would be in his early twenties, I think. He doesn’t have to stay with his parents.”  Tortino thought for a moment
. “My understanding is that when kids in protected families get to be about eighteen, they get briefed again on how important it is to maintain their new identity. One of the things they are told is never to go back to a town they lived in under a previous identity.”

I nodded, slowly
. “That makes sense, but I know what I saw.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t.”  He looked at me for several seconds
. “Has anything else in the last ten or twelve years made you think you saw him or the others?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t think I’d be able to learn where his family is. In fact, it’s better that I not say anything, even to someone at the U.S. Marshal’s Service. If the kid is here, you don’t want anyone asking questions, even the good guys.”

“Sure
. I just…figured if he was here it must be important.”  I bent over and lifted my sore left foot up and placed it on my right knee.

“If you see him again, don’t approach him. If he shows up at your house, you don’t need to let him in
. If you feel at all unsafe, call us. Call me.”  He took a business card out of the top drawer of his desk and wrote a phone number on it. He stood and walked around his desk and handed the card to me. “My mobile. Don’t leave it where George can see it.”

I made polite exit conversation, all the time wondering if people would ever forget that I dated George for a brief time.

I crutched to the door to Sergeant Morehouse’s office and looked in. He was on the phone and pointed to an empty chair. I nodded toward my foot and he gave half of a wave as he reached for a pencil to take notes. If I’d been him, I’d have wanted to know what Tortino and I had talked about, but Morehouse didn’t look especially interested. That was good, since I couldn’t talk to him about Thomas Edward.

Since it was early October, Ocean Alley was not too crowded and the weather was still kind of warm. This was good because I was not moving too quickly as I crutched to my car
. I had been lucky to get a spot in the visitor parking area by the police station.

“Nuts.”  My car keys were in my purse, which was on my shoulder. It was quite the balancing act to keep it there rather than have it constantly slide down my arm to where my hand gripped a crutch
. I got to the car and placed one crutch against it and kept the other under one arm. That way I can slide my purse down my arm and wrestle with its zipper. I had just grasped the keys when I heard footsteps and looked up.

A man was getting into the car a few cars away from mine, but just a few feet beyond him someone was quickly walking away
. Something about the gait reminded me of Thomas Edward.

“Hey, T…you! Come on over.”

He didn’t look back, but he hesitated for barely a second and then kept walking. His head was ducked and a hoodie kept me from seeing his face. The man at the nearby car gave me a funny look but didn’t say anything.

  I couldn’t tackle Thomas Edward even on a day when I wasn’t on crutches, so I didn’t try to follow him on foot. Or feet with crutches
. Instead, I opened my car door and threw my crutches into the back seat, and purse on the passenger seat. I climbed in awkwardly and then drove around for several minutes trying to find him.

All of the Ocean Alley streets that are parallel to the ocean have letters as names. They start with B Street because a hurricane in the mid-1940s wiped out the boardwalk and A Street
. It’s why Aunt Madge wouldn’t buy a B&B closer to the ocean than D Street. Hurricane Sandy came ashore eighty miles south of Ocean Alley, so we still had B Street, though the boardwalk and its shops had sustained a lot of damage.

I sat at the stop sign at the intersection of G and Conch and looked around for about ten seconds, taking in the bungalows and two-story apartment buildings that comprise most of Ocean Alley
. “It’s no good. He isn’t going to let you find him.” The car behind me gave a light honk. I waved into the rear view mirror and drove through the intersection.

After another fruitless two or three minutes of driving around, I pulled into the In-Town Market parking lot
. I had called Mr. Markle yesterday to say I was sorry he was robbed, but he said he was too busy to talk to me.
Typical.

I was crutching into the store as Nelson Hornsby came out
. We stared at each other for a second before he spoke.

“If you’re here to ask me to sit above the dunk tank this year, I’m not dried out from the last time.”  His smile seemed forced.

“No, not that. Just checking on Mr. Markle.”

Nelson gave me a blank look.

“His store was robbed the same day the woman was killed at the hospital. Tanya Weiss.”  He knows her name, you dolt.

He stared at me for a couple of seconds
. “I guess we were all so stunned at her death that it was hard to pay attention to much else that day. It must have been a shock to you, finding her.”

“I’ll say
. Guess no one there knew her really well,” I said, wondering how he would respond.

“True
. She was just getting to understand what all of us did.”  He made to continue to his car.

“Have you heard anything about who might have done it?”  I watched his face as I said this
. “I heard she wasn’t too popular.”

He flushed
. “People seem to think she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe walked in on someone selling drugs or something like that.”

“Ah, do you…” I began.

“Have to get home and fix dinner.”  He gave his shopping bag a shake, apparently to emphasize that he had bought food to cook.

I crutched into the store, and was surprised to see Mr. Markle at the cash register, which was unusual
. My gaze swept what I could see of the store. There were almost no customers.
Because of the robbery? That’s not good.

I crutched to the part of the store whose sign proclaimed ‘Health and Beauty’ and scanned for some nonprescription pain reliever
. The price was annoyingly high, much more than the chain drug store down the street, but I wanted to buy something, and I needed pain reliever. The prescription stuff made me too woozy to drive.

Mr. Markle was still at the cash register, but since there was no one waiting to check out, he was ticking items off on his clipboard
. He looked up at me as I neared the register and then back at his clipboard. “Hello Jolie. Need any dented cans?”

“No, Harvest for All is in good shape at the moment
. I just came by to say I’m sorry you got robbed. It must have been scary.”  I put the bottle of pills on the counter.

Pen in hand, he gestured around the store
. “Obviously other people thought so. Two of my staff quit.”  He picked up the bottle and scanned it while I dug in my purse.

“Gee, what about Clark?”  The senior in high school dated Alicia, daughter of the best volunteer at the food pantry.

“Didn’t want to. Parents made him. Four-forty-nine.”

“And, um, customers?”

“Still get the older ones, but they come in the morning, in a group.” He handed me change for my five. “Quite the social hour here around ten o’clock.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that.”  He was back to his abrupt self.

I felt almost panicked
. If Ocean Alley’s small downtown lost its grocery store, it would be bad for Harvest for All, and there would be little reason for anyone except tourists to come downtown. Unless you counted people going to the courthouse, but most of them had their minds on traffic tickets or divorce proceedings. “I’ll, um, think of something to help.” 

He had a bemused expression as he handed me the plastic grocery bag with my medicine.
“Planning to move Harvest for All here?  Save you some travel time.”

The food pantry that First Prez houses is about three blocks away, and Mr. Markle gives us a steep discount if we have an urgent need for baby food or something that can’t wait
. I ignored his jibe. Mr. Markle sometimes makes it hard to like him. “Not this week. Give me time to think.”

As I crutched away, he said, “Don’t take too long.”

I kept my head down, trying not to step in a hole in the patched parking lot. A light honk startled me, and I looked into a car with Harriet, the nursing assistant from the ER, smiling from the driver’s seat. I stepped back a foot or two, and she motioned that I should cross in front of her. She pulled into a parking space next to my car.

She was laughing as she got out of her car. “Are you trying to come back to the ER?”

Ah. More hospital news
. “Hey Harriet. Thanks.”

She walked around a small pothole and passed even closer to me as she walked into the store.

“Harriet. Have you got a sec?”

She glanced at a watch on her wrist
. “A couple. What’s up?”

“I wondered if you had heard any more about the death of the woman from the hospital?”

She gave me an intense look. “What are you up to?”

I was mildly annoyed. People seem to assume I’m up to something if I ask questions. I’m not. I just like answers better than questions
. Mostly I asked her because I knew that Sergeant Morehouse wouldn’t tell me anything he didn’t tell reporters. I was the one who came face-to-face, well almost face-to-face, with Tanya Weiss. Okay, the former Tanya Weiss.

“Nothing. It was just…upsetting to find her like that.”

She grew somber. “Of course it was.”  She paused. “No one has really heard anything about her death. Lots of speculation. I guess that’s normal.”

That’s what I want, speculation
.
“Oh, sure. I heard her job was to cut the budget. Guess that wasn’t too popular.”

“It was more the way she went about it
. She acted like all the decisions were hers, and she wasn’t a health care professional. All she was supposed to do was give ideas to the Board of Directors, but I heard she was on real friendly terms with some of the Board members.” 

I was leaning against my car, probably getting my capri pants dirty
. “You mean you knew the cuts already?”

“No, but I heard it was all going to be announced soon
. She came to the ER a couple of times to be
briefed on our activities
.”  Harriet’s tone was derisive. “I think that was her favorite phrase.”

“Hmm. Gee, I hope your job’s safe.”

She kept her elbow at her side, raised her fore finger, and drew a couple of circles in the air with it. “I like working there, but the thing about being a nursing assistant?  Everybody wants to hire you. Especially the nursing homes. Pay’s better at the hospital, so I hope I get to stay.”

She asked about Aunt Madge, as do most people in town, and then walked into the store.

I hadn’t learned much, but Harriet had confirmed that Tanya Weiss would not win any popularity contests at the hospital. Then something else dinged in my brain. Could Tanya Weiss’ so-called friendly terms with a Board of Directors’ member have gotten unfriendly?

CHAPTER FOUR

I WAS DOING my sixth Goggle search for words such as Thomas Edward Finch, Finch and witness protection, and new identities in the witness protection program
. Nada that related to the Finch family.

Tortino’s comments confirmed that it might not be a good thing if Thomas Edward showed up, but if he was in Ocean Alley I really wanted to see him
. There had to be a good reason. If it was just nostalgia, why not visit the beach and leave?

My fingers slowed on the keyboard and I thought back to that night in early spring of my junior year of high school
. Thomas Edward and Hannah and I had been getting along really well since Christmas. In the fall they were kind of whiney, but I had not wanted to spend my junior year in Ocean Alley, so I wasn’t in such a good mood either.

I smiled, seeing an image of the six-year old Hannah earnestly reading me the list she had prepared for Santa
. It was a long list.
Thomas Edward wanted one thing. What was that?

A board creaked on or near the back porch
. When I first moved into the two-bedroom frame house a few months ago, every unusual noise sent me to the window, mobile phone in hand as I checked for burglars. Now, I’m an old hand at tree branches that brush the side of the house when it’s windy and various other explainable sounds.

At night I knew it could be a raccoon creeping onto the porch
. I could usually tell if one did because I’d hear Jazz growling at it from her perch on a kitchen window sill. Her partner in hijinks, Pebbles, would paw at the back door when Jazz issued alerts from the window.

Jazz jumped from her spot next to me on the couch and Pebbles sauntered after her, toward the kitchen. Neither of them appeared to be in a particular snit. I pulled my crutches toward me and stood, wincing slightly, and clumped into the kitchen. The light was off, and I decided to leave it off until I could look out the window.

I slid the curtain to one side and peered out. “Holy crap!” 

Thomas Edward Finch looked at me
. “Can I come in?”

Even Aunt Madge would have to say that the shock of finding Thomas Edward at my window would make all but the rudest words understandable
. I forgot Lieutenant Tortino’s instructions. With fingers that shook slightly I pulled back the swing bar lock that was supposed to make it impossible for an unwanted person to get through the door.

Thomas Edward walked in without speaking, and while I locked the door again he looked around the kitchen
. He started and backed up a step. “What the…?”

I nodded at the skunk, which was sniffing Thomas Edward’s shoe. “She doesn’t have scent glands.” His eyes met mine
. “What are you doing here?  Is it safe?”

“I, um, I’m not sure.”  His eyes followed Pebbles as she made a quick exit from the kitchen
. At about six feet, he dwarfed me. His hazel eyes looked as if he hadn’t slept for a couple of days and his expression was strained. His brown hair was cut neatly but looked as if it hadn’t been washed lately, and his navy blue hooded sweatshirt had what looked like a smeared ketchup stain on the front.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

He grinned and for a moment I saw the face of the fun-loving ten-year old. “Yep. Can you make me a grilled cheese?”

“I’ll make it and sit
. You can flip it.”  I clumped the couple of steps to the refrigerator.

“I’m sorry you broke your foot because of that deer.” He shrugged out of the hooded jersey jacket and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair.

So, it was him outside of my ER cubicle.
“Just a bad sprain or something. How did you know to look for me in the ER?”

“I was sitting in that little roadside park and saw you screech and sorta spin because of the deer
. I was coming to help after you skidded onto the shoulder, but that car pulled up right behind you and a lady got out. I didn’t want to talk to anyone but you. And I hadn’t really decided about you.”

I finished buttering two pieces of bread, slapped a piece of cheese between them, and took a frying pan from the cupboard
. “Am I allowed to say I know you now?”

He sighed and sat at the very small kitchen table
. “Not by my old name. And I didn’t think anyone would recognize me now, so I figured I could check here.”

I put the sandwich in the pan and crutched to the little table
. As I sat I swung my foot onto the table. Thomas Edward stared at the foot. “It needs to be elevated,” I said, “or it swells. It’s nice to see you, but you didn’t come from wherever to sit in my kitchen.”

“No, no I didn’t.”  He studied my face for several seconds
. “I need your help. Hannah is missing.”

That was not at all what I expected him to say
. “Good heavens!  She’s how old now?”

“She just turned eighteen, but she doesn’t look that old
. She left home a week ago, and she texted me every day. But the last time was three days ago.”

I pointed to the stove
. “Flip it.” As he got up I asked, “Why do you think she’s missing?  Maybe she has a new boyfriend or some…”

“No!”  He stood there, spatula in hand, with an expression that begged me to understand.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

He nodded but didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he studied the sandwich as if willing it to cook faster
. Without asking, he opened one of the kitchen cupboards, took out a plate, and put it on the counter. He then flipped the sandwich in its pan. Same responsible Thomas Edward.

The kitchen in my little house is painted bright yellow, which is a big step up from the muddy color it was when I bought the little hurricane-damaged house. However, not even light-colored paint could expand the size
. It’s barely big enough for the two-person table and chairs. When one of the people in the kitchen is six feet tall, the place feels a lot smaller.

Thomas Edward slid the cooked sandwich on the plate and then sat across from me.

I studied him as he almost inhaled the sandwich. Thomas Edward had a slim build, and I could imagine him on a high school basketball team. Not college, too little muscle. He could run track, I thought.
Why are you thinking about this? Get to the point!

“I can fix you some soup or another sandwich in a minute, but how about you tell me why you think Hannah is missing.”

“Okay.”  He took a deep breath. “You didn’t know where we went, did you?”

I shook my head
. “The police said we couldn’t even discuss your family among ourselves. Scoobie and Aunt Madge and me.”

“Atlanta
. Can you hear my southern accent?”  He grinned and then grew serious again. “My mom, she didn’t like big cities. But the Marshal’s Service—you know who they are?”

I nodded
. I knew witness protection was one of the many jobs of the Department of Justice. “They’re the ones who actually relocate you, right?”

“Yeah
. Anyway, the marshal who was our main guy said the reason the bad guys found us was because we were in a small town. So they said we had to go to a big city, where we’d just be one family in a huge town.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t pick New York or LA,” I said.

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered where we were, my mom was going to hate it. She missed my aunts, her sisters. It wasn’t so bad for me. I did sports some, and I was on the debate team for a while in high school, but the marshal said it was too much visibility, so I quit.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged again. It seemed to be almost like a tic with him. “It was harder for Hannah. She was never anywhere she could feel content. I mean, she was when we were little, but she doesn’t really remember it. We were in temporary places while my dad…did some stuff for the government. Then we came to Ocean Alley. Hannah really liked it here. She loved the beach.”

“So, you were in Atlanta the whole time after you left here?”

“Yeah. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but my mom was scared, well maybe more like worried, all the time. She put black construction paper over the window in our wood front door, and she peeked out of the curtains all the time.”

“Plus, she wanted to be able to call her sisters, and she wanted to live in a place that had more snow
. And maybe not ice storms.”  The shrug again. “And Hannah was with mom all the time. Hannah just got more and more sad, and pretty soon she thought people would find us if we weren’t careful every minute.”

I felt tears welling. I remembered the sweet little girl who looked up to her brother so much
. She had seemed totally at home in Ocean Alley. “Why do you think she ran away?  And would she really come here?”

“We weren’t supposed to talk about anyplace we used to live, about any part of our old lives
. But sometimes I’d let Hannah talk about the beach. And you. You used to play Go Fish with her.”

I smiled
. “She loved card games.”

He leaned back in his chair
. “Yeah. And she loved the beach, and looking for shells. I figured this is where she’d gone, and she didn’t call me because she knew I’d be mad that she came here. I kept telling her it was too risky. Last year I even said I’d take her to another beach, like Myrtle Beach. But she said it wouldn’t be Ocean Alley.”

“You were always so good to her,” I said, softly.

He smiled briefly, and then teared up a bit.

I passed him a napkin from the holder on the table and he blew his nose.

“I guess it doesn’t relate to where Hannah is, but why did your family have to go into witness protection?”

“Wit-sec, they call it.”  He said this in an absent-minded tone as he apparently thought about what he would say next
. “Witness security. And I know it was something my dad did. Before we moved the first time, I heard him and my mom arguing about laundry. I was maybe eight, and I thought she was mad because he always left his clothes on the floor. When I was older, I realized they were probably talking about money laundering. I looked up exactly what that meant.”  The shrug again. “My dad had a used car lot, and he kept his own books. He had a lot of cash transactions. My guess would be someone who sold drugs to wealthy people had him somehow disguise illegal money as car income. Or something like that.”

That made me curious. “Why do you say wealthy people?”

“I never saw anyone in there who looked like a street thug.”

“Ah
. What do your parents think about Hannah being gone?”

“My dad won’t talk about it
. And my mom committed suicide ten days ago. That’s mostly why Hannah left.”  He said this in a very matter-of-fact tone.

I’d known the ten-year old Thomas Edward. He was hurting a lot
. “I’m sorry, Thomas Edward, I wish…”

“It’s Lucas Householder now.”  He flashed a smile
. “I like to hear you say Thomas Edward, but you probably should make sure you don’t.”

A key turned in the front door
. Lucas stood and looked toward the kitchen door, panic on his face.

“Don’t worry, it’s Scoobie.”

From the front hall came, “Is my favorite gimp home?”  Scoobie shut the front door.

“In the kitchen, as long as you aren’t carrying anything that might spill.”  I smiled at Lucas as Scoobie walked toward the kitchen.

“What do you…?  Holy crap!  Thomas Edward.”

Thomas Edward…Lucas, relaxed
. “That’s exactly what Jolie said.”

Scoobie regained his normal expression and looked at me
. “I guess you really did see him in the ER.”

“I saw her almost hit the deer, and I wanted to see if she was okay.”

“I didn’t almost
hit
it. It just ran in front of me.”

Scoobie gave a sort of grunt, and he and Lucas exchanged a look that said they were putting up with me
. “Come on, let’s go into the living room.”

“Can you be sure the shades are down?” Lucas asked.

“Sure.”  Scoobie walked ahead of us and lowered by a few inches the one shade that was still raised. He knows that if I don’t leave one up a bit Jazz will fight with the blinds to see outside, but that was hardly the biggest concern now.

Scoobie took my crutches as I sat on the couch and propped my foot on a pillow
. Thomas Edward – Lucas! – pulled over a chair from my dinette set and sat in it, leaving the rocker for Scoobie.

“I’m looking for Hannah
. Only she’s Kim now. I like calling her Hannah, but I shouldn’t. I’m Lucas Householder, by the way.”

Scoobie nodded and sat
. “You don’t know where she is?”

Lucas recounted what he had told me, and I studied Scoobie’s face as Lucas spoke. Scoobie is doing okay now, but he had years of depression and sometimes still struggles with what he calls his demons
. I know I’m not responsible for his mood or feelings, but I do worry about him. I couldn’t help but wonder if Lucas’ secretive presence and a perhaps futile search for Hannah, no Kim, would be hard on Scoobie.