Chapter Eleven

Jamie awoke to the sounds of glasses clanking against dishes and muffled conversations below. Living in the loft above Hemingway’s had many benefits—cheap rent, food, beer on demand, and free emergency dog sitting. But the downside? Sleeping late was almost impossible.

But not for Deuce.

Jamie gave a low whistle in the hopes of waking up her furry roommate.

Deuce ignored her, apparently upset with her for pawning him off on Marty, although she knew that her pudgy companion received more attention and fried food than he could handle when serving as Hemingway’s mascot. Still, the portly bulldog could hold a grudge far better than a socialite snubbed at a cocktail party. He slept on the floor, seemingly unaware of her presence, even when she intentionally made noise by scraping her dining-room chair on the floor.

The term “dining-room chair” was a bit of a stretch. It was more like a padded chair that Jamie “borrowed” from Erin’s Senior Seaside Adventures. In fact, most of her modest abode’s décor came from Erin’s castoffs. Jamie found no joy or purpose in most domestic duties. One time, Cookie had accused her of frat-house living but without tacky girlie posters plastered on the wall.

She would never admit it out loud, but she refused to settle in and get comfortable even though she called Port Alene her home. She still kept her ditch bag stocked and underneath her bed, ready for the moment she would need to disappear and begin somewhere else.

Old habits died hard.

After leaving Cookie’s company, she’d called Brian’s cell phone three times and had yet to get a call back. His callousness surprised her, although she scolded herself for being surprised. It was par for the family course.

“Jamie! You up?”

She heard a key turn in the front door lock, and the door opened, revealing Cookie in all his bright-Hawaiian-shirt splendor. This morning’s selection combined bright yellow hibiscus in a pattern against a navy background. Jamie actually liked this choice, but she never would have told him for fear of encouraging him to further blow his earnings on clothing that only seemed appropriate in bars, luaus, and casinos, which, once considered, were really Cookie’s favorite places, anyway.

Cookie balanced two disposable coffee cups with lids along with a brown paper bag emitting the enticing aroma of breakfast tacos. Food and coffee would always garner Jamie’s attention. Cookie’s backpack hung off one shoulder, the strap wrinkling a hibiscus flower into a dot.

“I thought we could get a jump on the investigation this morning.” Cookie pulled a chair out from her dining table and placed the breakfast bribes on its surface.

Jamie brushed her hair away from her face but was sure she was suffering from severe bedhead. Deuce had immediately relocated from a sleeping position to full attention at Cookie’s feet.

“Taqueria San Juan’s is the best,” Jamie said. “Did you bring him a taco? Please tell me it isn’t bean and cheese.”

Cookie shook his head. “No, I decided to be nice to you today. Bacon and egg today, his favorite.”

Jamie looked at Deuce, who ignored her for Cookie. “You need to go outside first before breakfast. Just give me a minute. Cookie, don’t feed him yet. Seriously.”

Cookie held his hands up to Deuce. “Sorry, buddy. Have to wait.”

Jamie tucked into her tiny bathroom to handle her morning routine and brush her teeth and hair. She made a clicking sound to Deuce and pointed to the front door. “Let’s go handle your business.” Deuce ignored her until she opened the door. He then waddled his way to the front door, where Jamie knelt down and hoisted him in her arms. His stocky body could handle the stairs, but it was hard on his joints, so sometimes she carried him. She was sure Deuce felt that was how all transportation should be handled.

Jamie had become adept at balancing Deuce in her arms while walking down the flight of wooden stairs. Thankfully, they weren’t too steep, and it was a snap as long as she wasn’t in a hurry or tipsy. Once down the stairs, Jamie turned right and slipped out the private back door into the restaurant’s grassy yard. Jamie appreciated the private door, which allowed her to bring clients in and maintain discretion rather than walk through the bar.

Deuce stepped onto the grass, gingerly at first, sniffing his way through the stubby blades to find his favorite potty spot. He handled his business without dillydallying. The sound of traffic passing the restaurant buzzed in Jamie’s ears, and she shook off the sleep that had followed her outside. Deuce stomped his paws then made his way back to the door.

Once inside, Deuce stood at the base of the stairs, waiting for Jamie’s response.

“You can do it. I don’t need to carry you both ways.”

A standoff ensued for only a few seconds until Deuce decided he would rather get to his tacos than hold out for a lift up the steps. He hoisted his stocky body up the stairs, with Jamie trailing him. Once at the top, he scratched at the door, and Jamie reached over to let him inside.

Cookie had started without them.

“Really? You couldn’t wait five minutes?”

Her friend had no shame. “Hey, I brought everything, and I had to smell it on the drive over. I’m hungry.”

Cookie reached inside the bag and pulled out a taco wrapped in aluminum foil. As he unwrapped it, Deuce stomped his paws in excitement and barked. Jamie handed Cookie Deuce’s dog dish and a knife. “Make sure you cut it up really well.”

He scoffed at her instruction. “Uncle Cookie is the breakfast master. I got it. You go handle yourself.” He winked. “Don’t you want to put something on that you didn’t roll out of bed in?”

Jamie nodded, unable to argue with his comment. She walked the few feet it took to reach her dresser, yet another hand-me-down from Erin. She pulled open the top drawer, quickly selected a T-shirt and shorts, then excused herself to the bathroom to change. She could hear Cookie talking to Deuce the entire time, and she smiled, grateful to have him around, especially now.

Jamie emerged from the bathroom a bit more pulled together. She’d fastened her hair in a ponytail and had even opted to add a hint of mascara and lip gloss. She walked to the table and sat across from Cookie. Deuce’s breakfast taco was long gone, his face now staring at an empty bowl. She could see the expectation on his furry face.

“That’s it, buddy,” Jamie said as she waved him away. “You don’t need another one.”

Deuce ignored her, his attention still on the bowl. Jamie glanced at Cookie, noting there were three aluminum balls on the table. Cookie was on his second one. She reached inside the bag and pulled out a selection, placing it on a napkin. She then took a sip of coffee and immediately felt better.

“I needed that,” she said.

Cookie nodded. “Eat your tacos.”

Jamie obliged, and the two sat silently for a few minutes, absorbed in their own thoughts while finishing their breakfast. Deuce had finally given up, retreating to sleep by the edge of the couch.

Cookie crammed the last corner of tortilla in his mouth then reached for the napkins and other remnants to return to the paper bag. “Okay, let’s get set up to work.” He reached into his backpack and retrieved his laptop. He booted it up, staring at the screen as the operating system loaded. Jamie, still lingering over her coffee and the last bits of her breakfast, felt him looking at her.

“What?” she asked. “Don’t give me those judgy eyes. Unlike you two”—she waved in Deuce’s direction—“I like to taste my food.”

Cookie said nothing but smiled, his attention on his laptop screen. Jamie retrieved her own laptop plus a notebook and pen from her satchel then returned to her seat next to her partner. She opened the notebook, a Dollar Store special composition book with a faint coffee stain on its surface, and selected a fresh page.

“Okay, we’re going to need to map out all the connections we understand at this point.” In the middle of the page, Jamie drew Kristen’s name and circled it. She then drew lines to the names of those in her niece’s social circle. Brian went to the center above her; Dylan and Beth went beneath her. Jamie then drew a line off to the side and started listing other names: Boxer, Manny, the Deltones.

Cookie glanced at her list. “We need to understand how the Deltone family is structured: who is in charge, liaisons, foot forces, anything we can figure out. Kristen has to be tied to them somehow if they’re claiming responsibility for…” His words fell off before he could finish the sentence.

Jamie let his hesitancy hang between them. She didn’t want to say the words, either.

“Let’s split up the background work. Do you want to take the Deltone org chart, or do you want me to handle it?” Jamie felt that giving Cookie that task would help him channel his anger into something tangible, useful—but only if he was ready.

He nodded. “I’ve got it.”

“Okay. I’ll handle Kristen’s circle. We’ll see how they might overlap.”

Cookie nodded and picked up his cell phone. “Let me see who might be able to help me. I can also check out some social-media sites. Always amazed at what people post.”

When it came to tech skills, Cookie’s far exceeded Jamie’s—in part because he was a social being and loved being online. Jamie would have rather had a root canal than an active online presence. One on one, her investigative skills were strong. She excelled in more intimate connections, whereas Cookie would walk into a chat room or ballroom and be the center of attention. Together, they covered each other’s shortcomings, and their investigation efforts benefited from their differences in style.

Jamie’s skip-trace training taught her that she needed to track Kristen’s last movements, to discover how and with whom she had spent her last days. A girl with her upbringing might be hard to track because she had likely grown up learning how to stay off the grid. Still, she was young and, from what Jamie had learned so far, at times careless. So Kristen’s case started where every case started—the Internet.

Jamie began with simple searches of Kristen’s name in FriendConnect, one of the most popular social-media sites, but her first attempts turned up nothing of any value. That wasn’t unexpected. While Jamie found social-media sites useful in some cases, her experience proved that pounding the pavement and speaking directly with people turned up the most useful leads. She could study their responses and had learned when to push for information and when to fall back and use surveillance. Technology had its place, but nothing trumped looking others in the eye and asking pointed questions.

Still, Kristen was a millennial, a generation born with a USB cable for an umbilical cord. She had left her digital footprints somewhere. It was simply a matter of uncovering them.

Jamie mulled over what she could remember from past interactions with her niece and half brother. She could picture Kristen’s face, her confidence—it was an effusive trait. But the truth was that she knew little else.

Jamie could feel Cookie studying her face. “You need to talk it out, Jamie, to make the connections.”

“I know, but I don’t want to bother you while you’re working.”

Cookie grinned. “I’m a master multitasker. So go ahead. Bounce some stuff off of me.”

“Okay.” She still stared at the screen, her FriendConnect search bar coming up with nothing of value. “When I think about Kristen, I think about when she was younger and I taught her how to create a basic secret code. You know, with a book and a written decryption key.”

Cookie grinned at her. “That sounds perfectly appropriate for some weird reason. I mean, knowing your family.”

She smiled at the memory. “She wanted to know how I handled taking surveillance notes and other stuff.”

“Keep going.”

Jamie leaned back in her chair. “Well, we both loved to talk about traveling. Maybe it was our upbringing and all the moving, but we used to make a list of places we wanted to visit one day. I even bought her a travel book years ago just to, you know…”

“Remind her of you?”

Jamie nodded. “Yes, and to remind her that she could choose her own life, although I’m not sure she was ready for those decisions.”

“We’re all invincible at that age,” Cookie said in a way that felt more like fact than opinion, although Kristen had proved the exception to Cookie’s rule.

Searching the deep corners of her memory, Jamie struggled to bring more to the forefront. She tapped her finger on the table, the pace quickening to the point of near frenzy. “There wasn’t that much between us, Cookie. We didn’t have deep conversations as a general rule, or explore our darkest souls.”

Cookie leaned back in his chair and sighed, placing his hands behind his head, his neck supported by the latticework of his fingers. “Remember what we tell clients. It’s often the little things that give us the next lead.”

He was right, of course. Jamie had to put herself in both chairs—client and investigator. She had to turn the script on herself to be a better witness for the case.

She sat quietly, staring past her computer screen, and let herself remember Kristen. For so long, she had pushed her niece—and her brother—to the corner recesses of her mind, never allowing them to claim any emotional space. Now she needed to let her guard down. It was difficult, allowing in that bit of longing for a relationship she had denied for so long.

Deuce had retreated back to his dog bed, likely dreaming of more breakfast tacos. Cookie hummed the melody of some popular pop song sung by whatever flavor of the month graced the radio with her auto-tuned voice. It did have a catchy beat, though. Cookie made it work.

Jamie thought back to one of her earlier conversations with Kristen when they were sharing tricks of the trade. They both loved getting creative with aliases, drawing names from favorite characters from books, movies, and television shows. She recalled Kristen talking about a time when she hid out in a local motel under a false name.

What was it again?

It was a comic book character, but not as popular…

What was her name? Irons… something. Jeremy Irons? Definitely not the actor…

Natasha Irons.

That’s the one.

The memory brought a smile to her lips. Cookie pretended not to notice, his humming uninterrupted by his not noticing.

She takes over superhero work for an injured uncle and battles Lex Luthor. Kristen had loved comic books, especially the lesser-known cult favorites. Jamie’s “random facts memory” was broad and bountiful. She was certain it was why she could never remember birthdays or passwords. Too much miscellaneous data already claimed her brain space.

Living under an alias—or six—was a common technique, making her wonder if Kristen might have used the Natasha Irons name elsewhere.

Jamie typed the name into her online search engine, and within seconds, relevant results filled the page.

She clicked on a link. It led to the name Natasha Irons but with Kristen’s photo attached—a FriendConnect account.

“Aha. I’ve got something.”

“Your trip down memory lane shook something loose?” Cookie leaned over and surveyed the results on the screen. “Natasha Irons?”

“Comic book popular, not of Wonder Woman fame, sometimes a cult favorite, sometimes not. Kristen liked her.”

Jamie skimmed over Kristen’s main page. Natasha had some friends, many also using superhero names, some more recognizable than others. Variations on Superman and Batman made their appearance, and at first glance, the conversations seemed fairly trivial. There was small talk about the latest movies, characters, and events around town. Jamie scrolled through a couple of selfie photos, one of Kristen grinning in front of a boat, the word “Freedom” peeking out from the corner. Another photo showed her in what seemed to be a nightclub, the lighting dark with colored strobes and nothing telling in the background. Discussion topics on her page consisted of comic conventions and famous actor sightings. Still, there had to be some deeper meaning somewhere in one of those online conversations, one of those relationships. Jamie continued reading, searching for something, anything, which might prove useful. She clicked on each profile photo. Each one was another twenty-something she didn’t recognize. Then, finally, she saw a face she knew.

Her screen name identified her as Connie Coy, but Jamie recognized her simply as a waitress from Tricky Dick’s, a local sports bar on the island, known for its nonstop broadcast of sporting events and cheap happy-hour specials. Marty called the place a pimple on the face of Port Alene—ugly, touristy, and lacking all the subtlety required of a local watering hole. The dive offered mediocre food and kitschy décor. Every time Jamie ate there, she suffered guilt, as though she were cheating on Marty. He once claimed he could smell their fries on her. He had taken it personally and hadn’t talked to her for the rest of the day.

Jamie read a conversation thread between Connie and Kristen—as Natasha—discussing plans to meet for drinks at Tricky Dick’s the week before she’d disappeared. It was the last conversation thread between the two. There were no follow-up or “great to see you” comments. Jamie wondered if Connie had indeed met with Kristen or if her niece had gone missing before their date.

“There’s no comments on being a no-show or changing the meeting, so maybe she and Connie talked before…” She didn’t want to finish the sentence. Cookie had the decency to leave it be. With his confused expression, Jamie tilted the computer so he could read Connie’s comments on Kristen’s page.

“So you think you need to meet with her?”

Jamie nodded, her expression rife with apology. “She’s a waitress at Tricky Dick’s.”

Cookie raised an eyebrow. “Ooh, you know how Marty feels about that place.”

Jamie knew all too well. “No take out, no evidence. Dine-in only. And besides, I’m working a case. You follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

“You need to work on that guilty look. Marty smells betrayal like Deuce smells tacos.”

She pointed to Cookie’s computer. “You need to focus on your investigation of the Deltones. I expect to see a flowchart with details once I get back. We need to see where Kristen might have fit, if anywhere. I’m guessing she may be connected somehow with one of the Deltones’ lower-level people.”

Jamie stood up, stretched, collected her bag and keys, and dropped her cell phone into her bag. Deuce opened his eyes, looked at her, glanced at Cookie, then returned to his nap. She wondered if she should be offended that her pup wasn’t concerned about her departure. As long as Uncle Cookie was close, food and belly rubs were guaranteed.

“I’m going to run by you-know-where to see if Connie’s on shift. I’ll let you know what I find when it’s over.”

Cookie stood up and waved to Jamie to come close. She obliged, giving him a quick hug. “I’ll text you and let you know if I find anything.”

She left Cookie and Deuce to tend to her loft and closed the door behind her, hoping another would soon open.