The two women stared from the pink visor to Caroline’s iPad which was now open on Max’s Facebook page.
“It’s a match,” Caroline said, tapping one long fingernail at the picture of Candy at the top of Mt Pilatus, smiling widely as she stood in front of that stunning view, arms spread wide, candy pink visor on her head.
Roxy squished her lips to one side and studied the picture. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had first seen the image up at the Hotel Bellevue and the same feelings of jealousy and hurt gushed through her veins, but this time they were quickly quashed by a deep sense of sadness. Whatever ill feelings she had felt for this perky-looking blonde now subsided. This was probably one of the last happy moments of Candy Marlow’s relatively short life.
She shook herself a little and tried to focus. Why was Candy’s cap in Max’s hotel room? And how had they not spotted it earlier?
“Where exactly did you find it, Caroline?”
She put the iPad down and showed Roxy, plunging her hand into a small pocket on one side of Max’s duffle bag. “I am sure I checked this yesterday,” she said, sounding defensive. “Someone must have slipped it in overnight.”
“Whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe you forgot to check this pocket. It’s only small, easy to overlook.”
“No way, I checked it, Roxy. I am not a moron.”
“I didn’t say you were. But, you know, it does have his stinky boxers in it. You might not have checked it thoroughly.”
Caroline had to concede the point but was still adamant that someone might have slipped it in afterwards.
“Okay, I’ll play along,” said Roxy. “Assuming, then, that it got put in after our search, why would someone want to plant the cap here?”
“To make it look like Max had something to do with Candy’s disappearance, of course.”
“But who could’ve done it? I mean, apart from Ola, we’re the only ones with a key, surely?”
“Oh, I doubt that. There’s probably a cleaner or two, maybe someone who’s stayed here in the past.” She began clicking her fingers furiously. “What about that woman we just passed on the stairs, the one with the embarrassing dye job?! Isn’t she the waitress from Ted’s? What was she doing here, that’s what I want to know?”
Roxy considered this. “Yeah, I wondered that myself. Of course she could be a cleaner. It’s not unheard of to have two jobs, you know. Plus she obviously knows Ola; she helped me out last night when I first came here. Or, rather, didn’t help, but you know what I mean.”
Caroline looked like she had no idea what she meant but said, “Doesn’t mean she didn’t plant the visor.”
True, thought Roxy, pulling her phone from her bag. “We have to call Officer Giuseppe. Tell him what’s going on.”
Just as she said it, her phone began to ring. She lifted her eyebrows, surprised, and spotted Gunter’s number. He was keen to hear the latest on the car and Roxy explained that it was still at the parking station, assuring him it was safe although he didn’t seem to care about that.
“The problem is, we just can’t open the car. Can’t find a key.”
“It is not a normal key, no?” he replied down the crackly line. “It is one of those new smart keys.”
“Smart key?” She’d never heard of such a thing. Her own car, an old VW Golf, was almost at vintage stage. There was nothing smart about it.
“Yes, it has a keyless entry remote. You can activate the ignition without needing to insert a key. It’s only small, it looks like a—”
“Remote control!” Roxy yelped, jumping to her feet and reaching across to the side table where the wicker basket sat with its motley collection. She rifled through until she found the black and silver remote. She studied it properly this time and saw the tiny Mercedes logo in one corner. She also looked around and realised there was no television set in the room. She eye-rolled herself this time.
“I have it!” she told him.
“Good work. You are a super sleuth, yes?”
“Oh I’m no super sleuth, Gunter. If it wasn’t for you I’d still be looking for the TV.”
“What did you say?”
“Never mind. Thanks again and I’ll call if we find anything.”
Roxy was about to explain the smart key to Caroline but the younger woman’s confused expression stalled her.
“What is it?” she asked.
Caroline was still holding the sun visor but now had a black and white Converse sneaker in her other hand and was staring at it like she’d never seen anything so strange.
“What?” Roxy persisted, and Caroline glanced up at her.
“Where’s the other one?” she asked.
“The other shoe?”
“Yes.”
“Was it here last night?”
She looked uncertain. “I’m not sure, to be honest. Maybe. Do you remember?”
“I remember the shoe, but can’t remember if there was one or two. Have you checked everywhere? Under the bed? Near the front door?”
She nodded but they both did a second search and failed to turn up the matching Converse.
“It might never have made it to Riomaggiore, of course. Max probably just packed in a hurry and left it behind in Berlin.”
Caroline began nodding vigorously. “Or he could have left it at Mt Pilatus. Leon did say Max took off in a major hurry.”
“Or maybe,” Roxy said, holding the smart key in the air, “it dropped out of his bag and is currently sitting in the boot of his Mercedes just waiting to be discovered. Come on, let’s go check it out.”
On the way back to the parking lot, the two women grabbed another slice of pizza to keep them going, mushroom this time with thick shavings of parmesan, and then made a detour to the police station to report the cap and see if a police officer could accompany them to Max’s car. If there were any items of interest in his Mercedes, they wanted an expert on hand to bag it. Caroline had already smudged her paw prints all over Candy’s cap and Roxy didn’t want to compromise any more potential evidence. Yet when they reached the station, the front door was securely locked and no one answered their knock.
“Probably out on smoko,” Caroline suggested but Roxy was already reading a sign on the outside wall.
She hadn’t noticed it before because the station had been open, but it gave a full list of operating times and an out-of-hours number to call in the case of emergencies.
“According to this sign,” Roxy said, “the station is closed Monday to Friday. It’s only opened on weekends outside of summer. Mustn’t be enough business to warrant it.”
“But didn’t you say you spoke to someone here earlier today? It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess with all the commotion over Candy’s disappearance, they’re manning the station more regularly. Oh well, let’s check out the car anyway. I’m not waiting around for them to show.”
Back at the parking station, Roxy showed Aris the key and he happily waved them in where they made their way straight to the Mercedes that had been parked in by the yellow Peugeot. Roxy gave the smart key a gentle air kiss and then clicked it into place just as Gunter had instructed, and kabam! The entire car unlocked with a very soft, subtle “click”.
“Smooooth,” Caroline said, reaching for the door handle.
“Hang on a second!” Roxy produced a tissue from her handbag. “Use this so we don’t leave our prints all over it this time.”
“Oooh, look who’s been watching CSI.”
“It’s called common sense, Caroline, you should try it some time.”
Roxy wrapped her own hand in a second tissue and then went to the boot of the car and was about to open it when she had a sudden, horrifying thought. She hesitated.
He wouldn’t be in there. Would he?!
She braced herself then leaned down towards the boot slowly, forcing herself to inhale as every nerve in her body stood on high alert. All she could smell was a smoky petrol scent. She gave herself a shake—you’re being ridiculous, of course he’s not in there!—then, using the tissue, clicked the boot open. It sprang out and up with one swift move, and she jumped back, not daring to look.
“You all right?” It was Caroline beside her.
“Yes, I’m fine!” Still, she took a sideways glance into the boot and was rewarded with a gloriously empty interior. Upon closer inspection, she did discover the usual paraphernalia hidden away under the floor matting: a spare tyre, a first aid kit, and emergency stopping gear including a bright orange reflective vest.
“No shoe?” asked Caroline and Roxy looked at her confused for a second. Her nerves were still jangling about.
“Oh, no, not here. Anything inside the car?”
“Nothing very interesting. But see here,” she dragged Roxy back to the front seat where she leaned in and tapped a pen at the passenger-side Styrofoam cup. “No lipstick marks. Whoever his passenger was, it had to belong to a man.” She grinned. “See, I can be a super sleuth, too.”
“Of course, not all women wear lippie all of the time,” Roxy pointed out, but when Caroline looked at her like she was speaking nonsense, she quickly added, “Still, I reckon you’re right. I’d bet any money that cup is dripping with Jake’s DNA.”
Caroline grimaced and backed away from the cup. “So you definitely think Jake was the guy Max showed up with that first night?”
“Yep, and, if you’ll excuse me for a second, I have a hunch these might prove it.” She indicated for Caroline to step back out and then she leaned in and, using her tissue again, reached across the dashboard for the toll receipts.
She then laid them out on the car’s bonnet in chronological order. There were several familiar ones, for the autobahn between Germany and Switzerland, for the Alpnachstad parking station, and for the road down to Riomaggiore. They, too, had coughed up for those tolls and they were not cheap. Yet it was the Milan receipt that had her interested. It was dated early Wednesday afternoon and was for a parking station at a Milan Bus Depot.
“Didn’t the freeway bypass the city?” Caroline said. “We didn’t stop there.”
“No. So why, if Max was in such a hurry, did he stop and park in Milan?”
“Bite to eat?”
“At the bus depot?” Caroline shrugged. “Nope, I’ve got a theory that’s where Max met up with Jake. I bet Jake caught a bus from Berlin to Milan and then hitched a ride with Max for the final leg here. We know Jake wasn’t at Mt Pilatus, so they must have met up somewhere.”
“But why would Max even want to meet up with Jake? That’s the bit that seems totally bizarre to me. I mean, if my brother was planning a romantic rendezvous with Candy on the Italian Riviera, he’d hardly drag his freeloading flatmate along, would he?”
“Maybe Max called Jake from Switzerland to let him know he was heading to Italy and Jake begged a ride off him. Maybe he had some business here; who knows? He was a muso, probably a pretty spontaneous guy, might have thought it’d be fun to tag along.”
She set the receipts aside and did her own internal check of the car, searching through the various nooks and crannies, the glove box, the ashtray, the seat pockets at the back, and produced nothing more of interest, just the photography equipment and Coke bottle they’d spotted earlier, a half empty packet of gum and an old iPad charger—yet more evidence that Max’s devices were not short on battery power.
“Oooh, I know!” Caroline reached in towards the car’s CD player. She frowned. “You want to start the car up so we can see what’s inside?”
Roxy doubted it mattered but placed the key, as instructed, on the round keypad below the steering wheel, impressed as it all came to life, the control panel illuminated with vivid neon colour. At the same time a blast of sound came rushing out of the speakers. It was heavy and it was rock, and it had Caroline recoiling again.
“Ewww! That has to be Jake’s. No way Max would listen to that crap!”
Roxy located the volume and turned it right down, then clicked the CD off and watched as Metallica’s self-titled album popped out. Roxy had to agree that, unless Max’s musical tastes had changed dramatically in the six months he’d been in Germany, this was indeed more likely to belong to an American rocker with bad tatts.
Roxy’s phone rang again and she pressed the answer button to find Officer Giuseppe on the other end. She began to tell him all about Max’s car, begging him to get a team together to do an official search, but he soon cut her short.
“Do not worry about this for now,” he said, sounding breathless. “Commander Rossi has returned and he wants to speak to you immediately. He has heard from your boyfriend Max.”
Friend, Roxy would have corrected him, if her jaw hadn’t just hit the ground.