Detective Guy Marino remembered a time when he used to dream of being a singer or a comedian or a celebrity chef. When none of those fantasies materialized, he landed a gig as private security with a popular boy band. Now, a decade and a half later, he was a police detective on Long Island.
He was a long way from the days of watching A-list public relations campaigns in action, but he knew that something was off with Charlie Miller. His top-tier criminal defense lawyer had arranged for a high-profile press conference, but instead, Miller was hiding in the coffee room of the police station, huddled with his sister and lawyer.
His partner, Heather Hall, was on the phone, but once she was done, he was going to propose that the chief of police hold the press conference without the family. The reporters had already complained about being gathered outside given the expected storm. They wouldn’t wait much longer.
After Hall ended the call, her face was pale and her gaze was distant.
“You okay?” he asked.
“That was the sergeant working with the search teams on Shelter Island. They found a child’s tank top on the beach. It’s the Princess Elsa pajamas. It’s hers, Guy. It’s Riley’s.”
He could tell from her response to the information that this wasn’t an optimistic development. “Where on the beach?”
“Washed up onshore off the sound. It definitely came out of the water.” There would be no reason for a suspect to throw the girl’s clothes into the sound. More likely, if her body had been weighted down, a garment like a loose tank top could float away with the tide. “I got to be honest, Guy. I don’t know if I can handle this. Whenever I think about that poor little girl, I just want to go home and hug my Milo.”
“Hey, we both know you’re tougher than I am, so if you can’t take it, there’s no hope for me. Okay? And we still might find her. I’m not ready to give up yet.”
“We need to tell the dad, though.”
“Once we do, there’s no way he’ll be able to pull himself together for those cameras.”
“The chief’s going to want to pull the plug on that anyway,” she said. “Finding the pajamas changes things. We’re not ready to announce that yet. So let’s go talk to the chief first,” she said, thinking out loud. “Then we tell the dad. And we can ask him about the medications before we break the news.”
The initial toxicology screen had come back from Melissa Eldredge’s blood test. The only substance found was the active ingredient in a prescription sleeping pill that neither detective had heard of until today.
After they met with their chief, Guy tapped twice on the door before entering the break room. He could tell from the lawyer’s expression that he was growing impatient with his client. “We’re still not ready here,” Mac said. “Maybe you should go ahead without us—”
“Sure, we can talk about that,” Guy said, “but in the meantime, we could use your help on something. You mentioned to me yesterday that your wife’s been having some sleeping problems. Was she taking anything for that, by any chance?”
“Yes, she had a prescription.” The brand name was a match for the substance in Eldredge’s blood. She could have had detectable amounts in her system from prior use, or she may have taken a pill after coming home from Shelter Island, either to calm herself down after whatever she did to Riley, or so she would be found asleep by her brother. In any event, the only drug in her system was one that they could tie directly to her.
Hall gave him a look that said it was time to tell Charlie about Riley’s pajamas. To his surprise, she was the one to break the news.
Charlie stared at them blankly, struggling to process the information, but his sister immediately covered her mouth in horror, choking back a sob. As Charlie registered Rachel’s reaction, the color drained from his face. Guy worried he might become physically ill.
“So that was my daughter in the ferry video,” Charlie said vacantly. “And it must have been Melissa driving the car.”
Rachel reached for her brother’s hand across the table. “I’m so sorry, Charlie.”
Mac held up both palms. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions, okay? What’s the next step, Detectives?”
“Let’s not worry about this press conference tonight,” Hall said. “We’re going to have divers begin searching the sound, but that’s going to have to wait until we have light in the morning. Do you have a place to stay tonight? I gather you won’t be going back to your mother-in-law’s house.”
Charlie placed his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I’ll get a hotel, I guess. We’ll figure something out.”
A knock on the door was followed by the appearance of the on-duty desk sergeant. “Hall, Marino, I’ve got a walk-in wanting to talk to you.” A quick look to the station house with wide eyes suggested that the matter was urgent. Guy nodded his understanding.
“Why don’t you guys try to take a break and regroup in the morning,” Hall said.
“Try not to give up hope,” Guy said. “We haven’t. I promise you that.”
After they walked the Millers and their lawyer to the back door of the station house to avoid the cameras waiting in the parking lot, Hall asked if he meant what he said about believing that Riley Miller might still be alive.
He didn’t answer. “Sarge, who’s this person looking for us?”
“All I got is a name—Wendy Keller,” the desk sergeant said, glancing down at a notepad. “And she says she talked to Riley Miller right before she disappeared.”
They found the woman waiting in a nearby interview room. She abruptly stopped chewing her left thumbnail when they entered. Guy guessed she was about his age, which would make her forty years old.
“We understand you’ve got information about Riley Miller?” Guy asked.
“I do. But I’m having trouble making sense of any of it. I’m really scared about what I may have gotten myself into.” Her voice was shaking and her hands trembled as she spoke.
“Okay, start by having a seat,” Hall said, pulling out a chair at the table to emphasize her point. “Take a deep breath. You’re here voluntarily. Any information you can offer is important. You told the desk sergeant you think you spoke to Riley Miller yesterday?”
The woman exhaled audibly and nodded.
“So why don’t you start there,” Hall said.
“But I need to explain something else first or it won’t make sense,” Wendy said. “I’m part of this chat group online. Oh, this is just so embarrassing. And pathetic.”
“A little girl is missing,” Hall said firmly.
Wendy nodded. “And that’s why I’m here, but it’s still hard. So this group is called the First Wives Club. It’s totally anonymous, but we are women who, to be blunt, were unceremoniously dumped by our husbands. It’s basically a support group where we can rant and maybe try to comfort each other.”
“I don’t think that’s embarrassing at all,” Guy said gently, hoping that it would encourage her to share the unvarnished truth.
“Okay, but sometimes members of the group do more than just send messages. So if your ex-husband’s new girlfriend blocks you on Instagram, maybe another member of the group will go to their profile and get screenshots for you.”
“Harmless enough,” Guy said.
“But on occasion it’s more than that. Two weeks ago, a lurker who had been reading messages but not posting disclosed that she suspected but was not certain that her husband’s supposed business trip to Washington, DC, was in fact a liaison with an old high school girlfriend. A fellow First Wives Club member who lived in Arlington volunteered to make a trip to the hotel where he was staying. Do you get the idea?”
They both nodded sympathetically, but Guy could see that Hall was beginning to lose her patience.
“So where does Riley come in?” Hall asked.
“Last Monday, a user who called herself Jilted said that her ex was taking their three-year-old daughter and his new wife for a vacation in the Hamptons over her objections. She was looking for a member in the area who might be willing to check on them to make sure the woman was at least being nice to her daughter. I direct-messaged her saying I was willing to help. But then once we started to message back and forth, the conversation sort of escalated to where she asked me to confront her instead. It was so mean. I still can’t believe I did it.”
Guy still did not understand where this story was going. “Confront her in what way?” he asked.
“The conversation started innocently enough. I told her that her daughter was really cute and looked just like her. She seemed nice enough and said something like that was sweet, but the girl was actually her stepdaughter. And that’s when I turned on her. I almost chickened out, but then I justified it because the woman had broken up a happy home with a little girl involved. So I said what Jilted told me to—that she wasn’t taking good care of the girl because she was only a stepdaughter. And then I said I know all about you and called her a fraud and hypocrite. She seemed so rattled. I rushed out of the park, feeling ashamed.”
“Wait, was this at the park on Pond Lane? At the playground?” Guy asked.
“Yes. And I’m almost a hundred percent sure that little girl’s the one you’re looking for now.”
“So the woman in the park really exists,” Hall said once they were alone again. She wiped at her eyes. He had never seen his partner look this exhausted. “God, is it possible Melissa was actually telling the truth? Someone tells this poor sad woman a story to get her to distract Melissa at the park, then slips sleeping pills into her coffee?”
“You mean the obscure brand of sleeping pill that just happens to be sitting at home on her nightstand? No. Not possible. My guess is this person called Jilted is none other than Melissa Eldredge. Shoot, she’s probably the one posting all those other threats on her own social media. It’s one distraction after another. She keeps us chasing down the lady in the park, pressures us to drug test her. It could all be part of giving herself a cover story.”
“That’s awfully elaborate.”
“Well, as you pointed out from the start, the woman’s a defense attorney. She literally writes a podcast talking about how people could have committed their crimes better. Think about it: every time we talked to her, she kept pointing us toward the woman at the park. At the end of the day, we’ve got her on video coming and going from Shelter Island.”
“Plus the pajama top,” Hall said dejectedly.
“So we wait for forensics to come back on her car. And the divers start searching the sound tomorrow. Go home and hug your little man Milo.”