“At the time she was found, she’d been missing for almost two years,” Drex said. “A widow, no children. Most of her friends in Key West were snowbirds, vacationers, jet-setters from the U.S. and abroad. Word eventually would have gotten around to them, I’m sure, but I doubt there was a groundswell of reaction. Local news in southern Florida may have made the recovery of her remains a headline. ‘Authorities hope the discovery will provide clues into the Key West’s woman’s kidnaping and apparent murder.’ Then, on to weather and sports.
“I don’t know if there was a memorial service or observance of any sort. But it didn’t warrant national news coverage, so it was easily overlooked, Mike.”
Marian Harris’s fate was upsetting to Mike and Gif, but, because of his mother, it affected Drex in ways they couldn’t relate to.
He didn’t have any substantial memories of her, only infinitesimal snatches of recollection lurking in the dark corners of his memory. But they were meaningless because he couldn’t fit them into any context. He had no points of reference. By the time he was old enough to retain memories, she had been long absent from his life.
When he reached an age to become aware of and curious about this deficiency and had asked to see a picture of his mother, his dad had claimed not to have one. Then, as now, Drex figured that he’d been lying, or, if telling the truth, it was because he’d destroyed any pictures of his ex-wife.
Their separation had been bitter, absolute, and permanent. His father even went so far as to have his and Drex’s names legally changed so that, even if she had rethought her decision and wanted to reconcile, she wouldn’t have been able to find them. Though Drex didn’t learn of that until years later.
In his early teens, when he was going through a rebellious phase, he’d demanded to know how he could contact her. His father had refused to provide him with any information, describing their severance as an extraction and an exorcism.
The only picture Drex had of her was the one that had been circulated by the Los Angeles PD when she went missing, and he hadn’t seen it until years after the fact when no one was still actively looking for her.
It was then that he had assumed the search. He didn’t really expect to find his mother living somewhere in obscurity. He had reconciled that she’d been killed and that her remains had been left where they were unlikely ever to be found.
No, he didn’t begin searching for his mother. Rather for the man responsible for her disappearance. He had vowed not to stop until he found him. And he wouldn’t.
However, from the outset of his quest, he had avoided speculating on his mother’s manner of death. But after what he’d heard today about Marian Harris, to imagine the woman who’d birthed him suffering a similar fate, to envision how horrific her end might have been, made him break a sweat despite his recent shower and the whirring fan.
Plowing his fingers through his damp hair, he left his chair and went to stand by the window. The Fords had returned home only a few minutes behind him. He hadn’t seen either of them since. There was no sign of them now.
Were they upstairs or down? Sharing a room? A bed? A kiss? Was he caressing Talia with the same hands that had nailed shut that shipping crate with a breathing Marian Harris inside?
He inhaled deeply through his nose, exhaled through his mouth, whispering, “He buried that woman alive.”
“You say that like it means something,” Gif said. “I mean more than the obvious.”
Drex said, “We’ve been on the hunt for a con man who kills his victim solely to eliminate a witness. After learning about Marian, what’s obvious to me now is that this guy is more than that. He likes the killing.”
“Thrill kills?” Mike asked.
“Maybe not that extreme,” Drex said thoughtfully. “Close, though. He could be evolving into that.”
“His version of middle-age crazy?”
“You’re joking, Gif, but that makes a weird kind of sense. He’s getting older. He watches the news. He sees the new generation of degenerates outdoing him. To compete, he’s got to up his game.” He cursed softly. “Which means I do. I’ve got to rearrange my thinking, start looking for traits in Jasper that—”
“You don’t know that your neighbor is Knolls,” Mike said. “Or Weston Graham, or whatever the hell his real name is.”
“It’s him. I know it.”
“No, you don’t, Drex.”
He was annoyed by his cohort’s denial of what he felt—knew—in his bones, in his gut. “Did you get the picture?”
Drex had asked the deputy in Key West to send the party shot to a dummy email account to which none of the three could be linked.
“Yeah,” Mike replied. “I magnified it and compared the guy in the background to Ford’s South Carolina driver’s license picture. There’s no resemblance.”
“I trust my gut more than I do photography. Look more closely.”
“Drex—”
“Blow that picture up to the size of a fucking football field. Count every pore on the bastard’s face if you have to. It’s him.”
Quietly, Gif said, “You want it to be him.”
“All right, yes!” Drex fired back, in an angry hiss. “I want it to be him.”
Staring at the Fords’ house was only making him crazy. He went to the fridge, got a bottle of water, and returned with it to the chair. Neither of the other two spoke.
After taking a long drink and calming down a degree or two, he said, “Find out everything you can about Elaine Conner.”
He told them what he had learned about her through conversation. “The yacht is named Laney Belle, her husband’s pet name for her. It’s registered in Dover, Delaware, where he hailed from. I get a sense that he was older and had old money, but I’m guessing. She’s an attractive, rich widow.”
“Our guy’s type.”
“That occurred to me,” Drex said. “Although Elaine is more bubbly than the others. More self-assured and less needy. Gregarious. Life of the party. But he’s very courtly toward her, and she eats it up.”
“His wife isn’t jealous?” Gif asked.
“If she is, I didn’t pick up on it. She and Elaine come across as good friends.”
“What’s she like?”
“I just told you, Mike. Bubbly.”
“Not her. Talia Ford.”
“Shafer. I learned today that she goes by her professional name.”
Mike, who had no regard for political correctness, huffed, “Women these days.”
Gif repeated Mike’s question. “What’s she like?”
I took her tray, she took my breath. Her eyes are the color of wood smoke and just as hypnotic. A smile I wanted to eat.
He cleared his throat. “She’s damn smart, I’ll say that. Told me the history of her company. Inherited, but she expanded it, sold it, and then trumped the buyer. I was intimidated.”
“A ball-breaker doesn’t sound like our man’s type.”
“She’s not a ball-breaker.”
“Huh. By the way she was flaunting her success—”
“She wasn’t flaunting,” Drex said, making his irritation plain. “Why don’t you get a clue, Mike?”