When they got back to their house, Heck’s car was parked in front, as well as Nita’s. “Good,” Nick said as he pulled into the garage. “I asked Heck to do some business research for me.”
He wanted to talk to Heck before he got Steve hyped about possible new information or leads—namely, that all roads led to Lincoln Yost’s research about the orangetips right now. At least Steve had decided it would be good to try to do something “normal” with Jilly, so he was taking her to walk the beach. And Claire was ready to spend some time with Lexi.
“But shouldn’t we tell Steve about Lincoln Yost?” Claire whispered.
“I want to finesse that, and I still think Steve’s ready to strike out at someone. Not now, okay?”
“I don’t want to hold things back from him, but let’s go see Yost, then tell Steve,” she said. “And maybe tell Ken, too. He’ll also have a fit if he thinks we’re going behind his back.”
“We’ll tell both of them when we have something beyond the fact that orangetips know how to sleep and then wake up.”
“It does sound so far out, but then Darcy had that page bookmarked.”
“Maybe just because there were so many of them in that butterfly house. You said she tried to read up on different breeds. But we’re on it, we’ll pursue it, then inform the others—or not.”
They hugged quickly and went into the house. Claire sniffed hard, and he saw her blink back tears despite her decisive nod. He thought she finally might be out of tears, but he hoped to God she wasn’t out of hope.
Nick could tell Nita was excited but holding something back, perhaps waiting until Steve and Jilly were out the door. Jilly waved madly to Lexi as they pulled away. His pulse kicked up. Heck, too, seemed on edge, so he must have found something they could use, but if it was really key, why had he let Steve and Jilly leave? Unless it was bad news—and they were all trying to protect Darcy’s family from more agonizing pain, if that was possible.
“Okay, you two, what’s up?” Nick asked before Claire could chime in. She was hugging Lexi to her despite that wretched doll pinned between them, but then Lexi pulled away and walked back to the front screen door to look out.
Heck said, “I have the intel you asked for, but Nita just told me she’s got exciting news, too.”
“Let’s hear it,” Nick said as Claire glanced at Lexi, then left her to stare out the front screen door as if Jilly—or her aunt Darcy—would magically reappear.
“Okay,” Nita whispered, so excited she was shaking. She glanced over at Lexi to be sure she couldn’t hear. “You won’t believe this. I didn’t have time to tell you this morning, but I won a walking-talking doll from the store where I ordered some baby furniture. It’s a gift from God—for Lexi. It’s a real pretty one called Smart Dolly. You been so good to Bronco and me, helping us through our finding that body and giving him such a good job working security at the law firm.”
She lowered her voice. “Even if Bronco and me are having a girl, I want Lexi to have the doll, ’cause she’s slipping back so bad, and our baby wouldn’t want it for a long time. I hid it in the library. Come and see.”
Heck followed, too. “It really is a smart doll,” she went on. “She can respond like a person, even programmed to answer questions, chatter about horses, so won’t Lexi love that? Bronco and me thought,” she said as she bent to reach behind a big armchair and brought out a blonde, pretty, little-girl doll. “Lexi might go for it and ditch Princess. Since this doll talks for itself, maybe Lexi will stop that awful voice and the things it says.”
Nick saw tears in Claire’s eyes. “It is lovely,” she said. “What a blessing, what timing, that you won this. Thank you so much!”
“It all happened real fast. I got a phone call from a man at the baby store that I won just from being a random customer there. It was delivered by UPS, free shipping, too,” Nita said, beaming.
Claire hugged her. “It’s worth a try until I or someone else can get through to Lexi with counseling—or when we get Darcy back. I’ll call Lexi in.”
“Maybe you women better handle this,” Nick said. “But we should buy the doll. It’s obviously an expensive one.”
“A free one,” Nita insisted. “You two been so good to Bronco and me that we’re excited to give back some. When that woman was found all laid out in our freezer—couldn’t have gotten through that without both of you. Let’s hope little Lexi and little Smart Dolly get on real good.”
Claire was trembling as she called Lexi to the doorway of the library where Nita waited with the doll behind a pillow on the couch. How to handle this? How to keep from setting Lexi off? She’d love to grab that ugly doll and trash her, but that would just make things worse.
“Lexi,” Claire said, still standing in the doorway with her, “Nita and I realized that Princess is very tired and kind of—well, injured—and that she would like you to have a new doll while she just sleeps and gets better.”
“Princess would be better if Aunt Darcy came back, and I wasn’t lost once, too,” the child insisted.
“Yes, I know. Of course. But Princess wants a new doll to talk to you, just like she did, only with her own voice, not yours.”
Lexi squinted up at her. Claire could see the wheels turning in that little mind. “Where is she—the new Princess?” She loosened her hold ever so slightly on the old doll. Could Lexi’s fierce protection of that battered body and face be her way of protecting herself? Claire prayed that the pretty, confident image of the new doll would help.
“Here she is,” Nita said from across the room, and pulled the doll out to stand on her knees. “Smart Dolly,” Nita said to the doll, “say hello to your new friend Lexi.”
“Hello, my new friend Lexi,” the doll said in a sweet voice. “I am so happy we can play together, and I will be friends with your family, too.”
“Ohh!” Lexi gasped, and set Princess on a chair as she rushed toward Nita.
“I’m a smart little girl, just like you,” the doll said. “What will you name me?”
“Mommy, she’s a real princess!” Lexi said, still staring only at the doll. “She looks like Cinderella with her yellow hair even though she has a short skirt and sneakers. I will name her that, but we won’t call her Cinderella, but Cindy for short.”
Claire was so grateful that she was almost tongue-tied for a moment. How had that so-called “smart doll” picked up on Lexi’s name so fast?
“That’s a lovely name for her,” she said, and knelt to hug Lexi and the doll—Cindy. Claire thought of the dead woman in the freezer, who’s name had been Cyndi. But she shoved away the idea that was a bad omen, because this was like a gift from heaven.
“I like all of you. I want to stay with you,” Cindy said.
“Wait till Jilly sees my—our—new friend,” Lexi said, hugging Claire back, then Nita, too. “Wait till we find Aunt Darcy, because she’ll be happy, too!”
“So let me know what’s what,” Nick said after he poured coffee for Heck and himself and they carried their mugs out to the patio.
“I’ll start with Tara Gerald first, boss. Her paternal grandparents were early Irish settlers on that same piece of land. Her parents inherited, both died in the last couple of years, then left the place to Tara. Her father worked at the South Naples Citrus Grove down the road, driving equipment, working in the orange orchard store in season. Tara had no siblings. Never married. Guess her teaching—and then butterflies—were her life. No legal problems I turned up. Probably just making ends meet with her retirement and some sales from the Flutterby Farm. Has a real close lady friend.”
“Meaning?” Nick said, putting his mug down on the patio table.
“Meaning nothing,” he said with a shrug. “Another retired teacher who lives in East Naples.”
“But she doesn’t help with the farm, evidently.”
“She may be an investor. Anyway, she would, no doubt, drop by now and then. Found a picture of her. Looks like she walks with a cane so I can’t see her as a kidnapping suspect. Okay, on to William Spencer Warren. I have his address if you want it. Like you said, wrote a book on butterflies. Library degree. Botany degree. Married briefly in his twenties, divorced, no children.”
“Botany, not biology? No kidding.”
“I don’t make this stuff up. Besides, botanists are valuable to lepidopterists. You impressed with what I picked up so far? See, certain butterflies like and need certain plants to flourish, to feed and breed. Anyway, for years, Warren worked at the library here, which you knew, but then took a five-year sabbatic—what’s that word?”
“Sabbatical?”
“Right. To Japan, no less. And as far as I can figure out, because I obviously couldn’t read the online ads in Japanese, he sold butterflies.”
Nick sat farther forward. “Ones he got or caught there in the US?”
“Don’t know, but some damned pricey ones. I could at least read the prices from the yen, then convert that to dollars. Big bucks. Thousands for one sale sometimes.”
“I wonder if they were exotics.”
“What?”
“Never mind, butterfly expert. Anything on Larry Ralston, deep-sea fishing guide, who may be my new client?”
“You were right that the name of his boat is Down Under. Nick, it’s a big one. A fifty-four-foot sport fishing vessel, with several ads for taking out fishing charters online. It’s at the dock at Crayton Cove, you know, near that restaurant you like called The Dock? And yeah, he’s under investigation for netting a dolphin and killing it. He says it died while he was trying to free it, but no one buys that with the video evidence.”
“That’s one thing I researched myself,” Nick told him with a sigh. “It was a bottlenose dolphin he might have accidentally netted but then not released. Witnesses were in another boat. It’s a twenty-thousand-dollar fine for that and up to one year in federal prison, though someone in Texas recently had a good lawyer who got that reduced to one year of probation and a ban on fishing with fifty hours of community service. But for a professional fisherman, that year ban on fishing could ruin him. I think I’ll be meeting Ralston Monday morning at the office, so I’ll psych him out there, as Claire would say.”
“He’s well-connected. His father owns funeral homes up and down the Florida west coast, two here in town, and has contributed lots of dough to political campaigns. Larry Ralston also got a brother who lives in Collier County, not sure what he does yet, but I’ll keep looking—ah, father’s name is Aaron, brother’s name is Clinton. Couldn’t find a picture of the brother, though I looked.”
Nick told him, “Besides giving everyone a defense and highlighting the need to protect our environment, the only reason I’d take Larry Ralston’s case is to highlight how important, valuable—and smart—dolphins are. A far cry from little, delicate butterflies.”
“Man, I’m still thinking about that year in prison and twenty-thousand-dollar fine for harming one of them.”
“At least butterfly theft from a farm, display facility or protected park is only a misdemeanor, so I wonder what the Fly Safe people would say about that discrepancy. But let’s go see how that smart doll is going with Lexi. We have smart phones, smart everything lately—except the smarts to find where Darcy is.”
“I feel so much better about leaving Lexi again, now that she seems entranced by the new doll,” Claire told Nick after lunch. Heck had stayed and the three of them still sat around the patio table in the shade. Steve and Jilly were not back yet, though Lexi was going crazy waiting to show talkative Cindy to her cousin. Nick had told her he had put Princess “to sleep” in their closet this time, not Lexi’s. Claire doubted Lexi would even care now that she had the new doll in her arms as she wandered over to sit with them. And the rule, gently given by Claire more than once, was that since the new doll had her own voice, she would not talk for Lexi.
Claire put her arm around Lexi as Nick said, “Hey, Heck, before you leave, almost forgot to ask you to look up an address for Lincoln Yost, that biology teacher at Naples High School I mentioned to you.”
“Oh, yeah, and board member of the Fly Safe organization,” Heck said, reaching down on the floor to dig his iPad out of his backpack. “I couldn’t find the names of their board members, but Yost is well-known in town. Local basketball star about fifteen years ago, lots of old newspaper articles. Okay, I’ll grab his home address.”
“Good. Even if school was in session, I’d try his house,” Nick said. “Security at the high schools is pretty strict these days, and I could not just go walking in to see him.”
They all jumped when the doll piped up. “I love to go to school. Summer vacation will end soon. I will work hard to get good grades. I wish my friend Jilly was here.”
“It must pick up on keywords and have rote things to say,” Heck said. “The tech term is interactive.”
“I believe the correct term is invaluable,” Claire put in, stroking the doll’s silky hair. “So where does this guy Yost live?”
Nick glanced at the screen Heck held up toward him.
“Okay, 661 Turtle Bay Drive. Impressive,” Nick said, “especially on a teacher’s salary. A house on the edge of Pelican Bay, no less. He’s got to have a sideline or be making way over what Tara must have earned, or maybe he has a rich wife.”
“Maybe he inherited it like Tara did her house,” Heck said.
“That’s the least of what I want to find out from him,” Nick said. “Claire, if you’re going, too, let’s head out. I think your presence—and observation—will really help.”
“I like to help people,” Cindy said as Lexi put her up on the table, and everyone watched as she took a few stiff-legged steps, as if on her own. “Tell me how I can help you, Lexi.”
Claire noticed again that the doll had learned Lexi’s name. So amazing, the things even a toy could do in this modern world. Why hadn’t she even seen this doll advertised for sale? It must be so expensive. She would research it online later.
Lexi told the doll, “You can help me, Cindy, by helping us find Aunt Darcy, who got took from the butterfly farm.”
“I think butterflies are pretty, and you are, too,” said the doll.
On that obviously prerecorded thought, Claire got up, hugged Lexi again and ran to get her purse. In a way, she felt guilty they didn’t wait for Steve, but the fact that he wasn’t here was a good excuse not to involve him further until they found out more from the high school biology teacher.
After Heck left, he waved to Lexi and Nita, who were standing in the front door. When Nick backed them out of the driveway, Claire told him, “Wait a second. I see a bouquet of flowers in a vase off to the side on the porch.”
Leaving the car door open, she got out. Evidently curious why, Nita came out as Claire bent to lift the heavy glass vase loaded with roses, lilies and foliage. A note was stuck in one of those little forked plastic holders. She handed the flowers to Nita, but opened the note and read aloud.
“Darcy’s church family will be praying for her safe return at both services tomorrow morning. Please do not hesitate to call Pastor Hayes if we can do anything to help. A bouquet just like these flowers will be on the altar tomorrow morning. Love to Darcy’s extended family and, of course, to Steve, Drew and Jillian.
“How lovely,” Claire said. “Nita, please give these to Steve and Jilly when they get back from the beach. We need all the help we can get and strength from above...” Her voice caught, and she blinked back tears. “We will move heaven and earth to find Darcy and soon.”