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Max was so deep in thought that when she returned to the station from the bayou instead of going to the employee entrance at the back, she found herself at the main front entrance. She usually avoided possible interactions with the public, but it wasn’t worth moving the car now, so she pushed through the doors into the foyer they shared with City Hall. She was anxious to get to her desk and start researching Ella Jay. An elderly man with a shock of white hair was arguing with one of the clerks sitting at the counter.
“But this isn’t a new request.” The man leaned forward, holding his cane in front of him and resting both his hands on it. “It’s just a formality. We always get the permit, every year. We thought it was a mistake that it wasn’t mailed out.”
“I’m sorry,” the clerk said, looking more bored then apologetic, “but that area’s going to be rezoned.”
“You said it lady, going to be. Nothing’s changed yet. Meanwhile, we need the permit so our congregants can park on the greenway for the holidays.”
Max felt her antennae go up. The only holidays at this time of year were Jewish ones. “What kind of anti-Semitism is this?” he asked, turning toward Max as she made for the double-doors.
Heat crept up her cheeks. Surely he didn’t know she was Jewish? Was he appealing to her because she was a cop? She didn’t want to get involved; it was none of her business.
“I’m sure nobody here is anti-Semitic, sir,” she said. “There must be some misunderstanding.”
She pushed the door and fled quickly into the station. Her face was still burning. The cop in her knew the incident had nothing to do with her. But her Jewish stomach was churning as guilt set in for turning her back on a fellow member of the tribe. She paused, wondering whether to go back into the foyer or head into the office. She hoped none of her colleagues were there. They had an ongoing joke in the department that every time one of them entered, someone would yell out a new nickname based on their first or last name. Maxine Golders was a name open to a lot of jokes. She was about to go back outside when her colleague, Handler, called over to her.
“Hey Gold Digger!”
She swung around in fury. “Fuck off!”
Handler was an older guy, a softie, and popular with the residents. The only other time she’d yelled at him was when he called her Maxi-pad. She told him that was sexual harassment, even though she knew he hadn’t meant anything by it. Handler probably didn’t mean anything by today’s epithet either but coming on the heels of the encounter that just happened on the other side of the door, she wasn’t interested in giving the benefit of the doubt.
“Seriously?” He had a hurt puppy look in his brown eyes. It ought to have calmed her down, but it only made her want to hit him.
“You do not call a Jewish colleague a gold digger. Got it?” She emphasized her point by poking him in the chest as she spit out each word.
“You’re too sensitive,” he muttered, backing away.
“Or maybe you’re just an asshole,” she growled back.
At her desk, Max opened up her laptop and checked her email. But she was distracted by thoughts about Ella Jay. Although her kayak was missing, was there anything else to raise her suspicions about foul play? Breezy thought so, but she was clearly a drama queen. Although Max had to admit that Ella having murdered parents was pretty big. But if they were really murder victims, why hadn’t Ella shared any details with Breezy? When Max had asked Breezy if the culprit had been brought to justice the answer had been surprising.
“I don’t remember the exact words Ella used when I asked her that question, but it was something like, “kinda.” I tried to ask her what she meant, but she just clammed up and we didn’t talk about it after that.” How could someone be ‘kinda’ brought to justice? Either Breezy wasn’t willing to share it with Max, or Ella had never shared much of it with her fiancée.
Max decided to call Breezy to clarify a few more things. She tipped back her swivel chair, put her feet up on the desk and called Breezy’s cell phone.
“Is it urgent?” Breezy asked when she answered her phone. “I’m on my way over to a friend’s.”
Is it urgent? One minute the woman was wailing that something terrible had happened to her girlfriend, and the next she’d rather shoot the breeze with a friend than move the investigation along?
“You can assume that whenever I call or show up on your doorstep, it’s fucking urgent,” Max said, deciding not to censor herself.
“Sorry,” Breezy mumbled, “I’ll pull over.”
Max waited a moment, then said, “I don’t know whether or not we can legitimately continue this investigation.” She heard a gasp. “In order to decide, I need to know much more about Ella than you told me. Let’s start at the beginning. Why and when did she come to Gulfport?”
She tried to picture Breezy’s expression but came up a blank. Was she scared? Pissed off?
“She moved here about four years ago, from out West.”
“Hon, I’m going to need you to give me specific answers. Out West isn’t that helpful.”
“She doesn’t talk about her past. I think she lived somewhere in northern California, but I don’t know where exactly.”
“Why’d she move across country?”
“She heard about Gulfport. Thought it sounded like a place she’d like to live.”
Max tipped her chair forward and began pecking at the keyboard. A place she’d like to live. Why? What was so special about this godforsaken little place that she moved all the way across the country to live here? And how did she hear about it from so far away?
“So just like that, she picked up and left?”
“I guess. I don’t think she had anyone keeping her there. I told you before that she doesn’t have any family.”
“Everyone’s got some kind of family, even if they’re the ones they don’t speak to.”
“I never heard her mention anyone. She’s an only child. Said her parents were teachers and were all about saving the world. They volunteered a lot. I got the impression the murders happened overseas somewhere.”
“Any idea what their names were?”
“Their names?”
Max felt frustrated. In the future she was going to have to have all her conversations with Breezy in person.
“Her parents. The ones who were killed. First names. Last names.”
“How would I know? I guess they probably had the same last name as Ella, but apart from when she first told me about them, we never talked about them.”
Max wondered for a moment whether Breezy ever showed interest in anyone other than herself. It might explain why she didn’t seem that interested in her fiancée’s background.
“You never asked what it’s like to be the child of murder victims? Whether there was a media barrage about it? If it got politicized?”
“Actually, I did ask, but she shut right down and said she didn’t like to talk about it. I never brought it up again.”
“What about her friends from California? Who does she Facetime with, or email?”
“She doesn’t. Her friends are all local.”
“She must have people from the past on Facebook.”
“She doesn’t do social media. Says it’s artificial, everyone just trying to look their best, and that people on it aren’t truly connected with each other.”
All very true, but what person under the age of seventy didn’t do any social media unless they were either a celebrity who got burned, or they were trying to fly under the radar?
“Before you called the cops to report her missing, you didn’t do any checking on your own? No phone calls to local hospitals or other friends of hers?”
“Of course I called the hospitals. I’m not that stupid.”
Max shook her head in wonderment. Most people who wanted help from the cops tried to be endearing, or at least polite. But then, Breezy wasn’t most people. “And as far as you can tell, she’s got her car, her phone and all her credit cards with her.”
“They’re not at home. That’s all I can tell you. You’re the police. Can’t you track all those things?”
Max hung up without bothering to answer. For someone who needed all the help she could get, you’d think Breezy would have been more friendly and cooperative. Unless she had something to hide. Max should give up on this case right now. Ella probably just wanted a break from her fiancée, either temporarily or permanently and didn’t want to set Breezy off by telling her she was leaving.
Max would at least put out the BOLO alert. She sighed, wondering why Del couldn’t do a simple thing like find Ella’s license plate number. She tapped in the name with quick, hard pushes on the keyboard. Nothing came up. She tried Ellie, Eleanor and every other version of the name she could think of. Nothing. Maybe Ella was a moniker or a middle name not a legal one. Max focused on finding women with the last name Jay. There were plenty of folks with that last name in the Tampa Bay area. Based on gender and birthdates, they weren’t Ella. Maybe she’d never updated her driver’s license from California to Florida.
She decided to search for Ella through a regular search engine. She quickly found a couple of hits. Both were from the Gulfport Gazette and showed Ella attending charity events. A more general search netted a couple more results, but nothing older than three years ago. Breezy had said Ella relocated from California, but when Max searched in any database outside of Florida, or prior to 2016, she drew a blank. Ella’s name was only three years old. What did that signify? If Ella had changed her name through marriage or divorce, Max would have found it easily. Either Ella did a confidential name change with sealed records because of some sort of danger, or, in a very unlikely scenario, she was in a witness protection program. Of course, there was one other possibility which was that Ella Jay didn’t exist and Ella, or whatever her real name was, had picked the name at random.
Max pushed back on her swivel chair, her hands interlocked behind her head and closed her eyes. She was deep in thought when she heard the back door open, the one that led directly from the parking lot, and felt a rush of hot air. Her colleague, Del, entered and made a beeline for the small refrigerator at the back of their open-plan office space.
“Damn, it’s hot out there,” he said stating the obvious. It had been hot for months. “The wind’s really picking up. That tropical storm headed toward the east coast might be blowing our way. What happened to the idea of Fall?”
“It never made it south of the Carolinas, I guess. Where I’m from, I’d be starting to pull out my long-sleeved sweaters. Instead I’m sweating my ass off.”
“What’s up Goldilocks?”
“Our missing gal is also missing in the DMV database.”
Del paused for a moment, his hand suspended above the fridge. “The one you called me about with the license plate?”
She nodded.
“So how you gonna proceed?”
“Not sure. There’s a few things that don’t add up, the most relevant being that the missing gal didn’t take anything with her except her kayak.”
“Maybe she wanted to escape without being followed. She could have kayaked over to St. Pete or St. Pete Beach, then gotten a ride or met someone.”
“That’s what I thought. But there’s no sign of her vehicle.”
“Easy enough to hide it.” Del pulled a bottle from the fridge, tipped his head back then poured the entire contents into the back of his throat.
“You gonna check her debit or credit cards to see if she’s made any withdrawals?”
“Sure, but you know it takes a day or two to get that info.”
“It may not help you anyway. She could have been socking money away for months and be doing everything with cash. Especially if there’s domestic violence, she wouldn’t have wanted her partner to know about it.”
“I know. I’ll try to get a trace on the phone, but I’ll need you to follow up on that for me, if you would.”
“Sure, but if she’s really trying to escape, she’d have gotten herself a new cell phone too. Does the address have a history of calls or domestics?”
“Never.”
Max’s phone beeped, indicating she had an upcoming appointment. “I have to leave. Interviewing the friend”—this time Max didn’t restrain herself from using air quotes at the mention of Lucinda, — “Ella was having dinner with.”
Del smiled. “Sounds like you got some ideas about this case. See there? Your first case in Gulfport. Told you there’d be some real action if you were patient.”
Max stomped out of the room and let the door thud behind her. This was what they called real action? Still, it would keep her mind occupied enough that she didn’t have to think about spending the holiday with her parents.
On her way over to Lucinda’s, she replayed her interactions with Breezy. There was something about her that didn’t add up. Within the space of one morning Max had experienced Breezy as terrified, angry, friendly, obnoxious, anxious and relaxed. In addition, she’d been extremely vague on providing details about Ella. Was Breezy in cahoots with Ella? Had Ella needed to disappear, and her girlfriend was helping cover her tracks? It didn’t make a lot of sense, since Breezy was the one who made the report, but stranger things had happened.
She hoped like heck Ms. Lucinda Johnson could provide some answers.