Addison nursed her jitters by sipping on a cup of hot chocolate. Briggs sat across from her. He had thick, gray hair, a salt-and-pepper mustache, and a pea-sized mole on his right cheek in the shape of the state of Florida. No matter how hard she tried, and how rude it was to stare, she couldn’t peel her eyes away from it, and at the moment, it took her mind off everything else.
Briggs stabbed a fork into a chunk of cherry pie. It dangled partway off the fork while he said, “I hear you were with Barry when he passed. What was that like?”
There it was in his opening line, a topic Addison didn’t care to discuss.
“You’re not the sentimental type, are you?” she asked.
“I have a heart, and it beats just like everyone else’s. I may lack the aptitude to communicate with words you would deem appropriate in these kinds of circumstances. Doesn’t mean I don’t care. It means I’ve seen my share of death in my lifetime, and I suppose you could say I’ve become a bit callused to it. I loved the guy, though. He was a good friend.”
“It was hard to watch him take his last breath,” she said. “But at least he’s at peace now. Did you know?”
“Barry was on his way out? Yup. I knew. Cancer’s a real bitch, isn’t it? Horrible way to go.”
“I liked him. He was a nice guy. It’s too bad he’s gone.”
“From what he told me, he had a lot of respect for you.”
Barry inched his glasses over the rim of his nose, swallowed the last piece of pie, and leaned back, rubbing his belly. He squinted at Addison in a way that made her feel like the interrogation had commenced.
“What’s your interest in the Carrington girl?” he asked.
“I heard about the case, and I’m curious about what happened.”
Briggs was clever, too clever, which meant her answer wasn’t up to par. She gave it two out of five stars at best. And everything about him was intimidating, which also didn’t help.
“That’s all it is, huh ... curiosity?” He leaned forward. “What makes you curious about a young lady who died before you were even born?”
She’d need more meat on the bone if she expected to get into his good graces.
“Some years ago, I inherited a house after my mother died,” she said. “Not long after, I learned a young woman had died there. For decades, no one knew what happened to her until I renovated the place and ... well, found her body in the process. Putting her to rest woke something in me, I guess you could say. I’ve had an interest in unsolved murders ever since.”
“Why not become a police officer instead of nosing around on your own?”
“I prefer nosing. It suits me.”
The waitress scooped Briggs’ empty plate off the table and said, “All good here?”
Briggs eyed Addison. “You need anything else? Don’t be shy. Get whatever you like. Lunch is on me today.”
Addison raised her mug. “Another hot chocolate, please.”
“You sure?” he asked. “Pie is real good today.”
“I’m not sure I can stomach anything sweet right now.”
Briggs handed Addison’s empty mug to the waitress and said, “I’ll have another piece of pie. I’m guessing we’ll be here for a while.”
The waitress nodded and walked away.
“So, Addison, the girl who likes to solve her own mysteries,” Briggs said, “after talking to Barry, I did some digging. Since you moved to the area, you’ve been connected to three cold cases in six years in this state, all of which have now been solved. I’m guessing that’s not a coincidence.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I have a knack for finding the truth.”
“Or maybe there’s something you’re not telling me.”
In an attempt to take the heat off herself, she switched to the reason for her visit.
“I hoped you could tell me what you know about Libby Carrington’s disappearance,” she said.
He wagged a finger in the air. “Whoa, hold on now. We’re still in the ‘getting to know you’ phase of our relationship. You wouldn’t hold someone’s hand before your first dance, would you?”
Briggs two points. Addison zero.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“Tell you what, let’s start by me sharing something with you, and then you do the same in kind.”
“Okay.”
“Five months after the Carrington girl went missing, I knew no more about what happened to her than I did in the first five days. There was a fair amount of pressure from all sides. My worst fear was what we always fear in my line of work—that her case would go unsolved, and I’d never be able to give her family the answers they needed. I was desperate, and when you’re desperate, sometimes you do things that seem a bit on the crazy side. I didn’t care anymore. All I wanted was to get to the truth.”
“What did you do?”
“I heard about a woman who lived in a remote area outside of the city. She was a lot more connected than most people, I guess you could say.”
Addison pictured a wealthy member of elite society with her ear to the ground. “Connected, how? To the Belle family, or the movie industry?”
He shook his head. “Connected in more of a spiritual way. A psychic. She was said to have visions. When I first heard about her, I thought it was a load of crap. I assumed she was nothing more than a scam artist out to make money. And then a detective friend of mine said she helped him solve one of his murder cases.”
“How?”
“She was able to pinpoint the location of the body, and what’s more, she didn’t charge a cent for the information.”
“You decided to meet with her then?”
“Not right away. I let her address sit on my coffee table for months. One morning after another tearful meeting with the Carrington girl’s mother, I decided I couldn’t face her again without something of significance to report, and I caved.”
“What happened?” Addison asked.
“I drove out to the woman’s house ... well, if one could call it a house. From the outside it looked more like a shack until she opened the door and I went inside the place. I swear I’d traveled to another dimension. It was colorful and vibrant, and about three times bigger than it appeared on the outside.”
“And the woman? What was she like?”
“Small and thin. Old. If I had to guess her age, I would guess she was in her mid-eighties back then. She was cooking a stew in the kitchen. She offered me a bowl and asked me to sit down. I still remember what that stew smelled like, the cinnamon, the basil and oregano, the whole bit. Best damn stew I’ve ever had. Guess you could say she turned out to be a lot different than I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
He smacked a hand on his knee and laughed. “A gypsy with a crystal ball, I guess.”
The waitress brought a second piece of pie and another round of hot chocolate. She set the pie in front of Briggs. He pushed it to the side and kept talking.
“She said she’d been expecting me, and she wondered why I kept her information on my coffee table so long. I have to admit, I was impressed. I mean, how in the world did she know where I kept it?”
“What else did she say?” Addison asked.
“We ate together, and she asked if I’d brought a personal item with me, something belonging to Libby. The detective friend of mine told me I’d need it, so I had.”
“What did you give her?”
“A scarf Libby crocheted about a week before her disappearance. I handed it over, and the woman closed her eyes, rubbed it inside her fingers, and mumbled a chant to herself. I tried to hear what she said, but she was too quiet. A couple of minutes went by. When her eyes opened, she handed the scarf back to me and said my journey would begin at the bottom of a lake not far from the city.”
“Did she say where it would end?”
“She did not.”
“Did she say anything else?” Addison asked.
“This is the screwy part. Before I left, she said she had offered me what I wanted, and in turn I needed do something for her. I thought maybe she wanted to charge me, so I whipped out my wallet and asked how much.”
“Did she take your money?”
He shook his head. “This next part is why you interest me so much.”
“What would any of it have to do with me?”
“The old crone said one day a woman would come into my life. She didn’t say when or how, and she gave me no other details except to say the woman would ask me about one of my old cases, one I never solved. When she did, I was to relay the story I’ve just told you.”
Addison pointed at herself. “You think I’m the woman she said you’d meet?”
“Has to be you, I reckon, and the woman’s information was right. I found Libby’s car at the bottom of a lake a few days later. Hoping to get even more from her, I returned to her house a second time. I arrived to find she’d gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”
“Everything was gone. The woman. The house. All of it. It was like it never existed.”
“What do you mean? How is that possible?”
He shrugged. “You tell me. I went back there half a dozen times. All I found was an empty patch of land where a house should have been. I couldn’t make sense of it then, and I can’t make sense of it now. But I believe for whatever reason, I needed to meet you before the case could be solved. So, tell me, Addison Lockhart. Who are you? Who are you really?”