“I’m gonna be honest with you,” Merrick is saying.
It’s a little after nine on Monday night. We’re in a booth in the back of the Donut Hole on 98 having coffee and pie. The restaurant/bakery is mostly empty and there is no one in the booths around us. I’m having key lime and he’s having caramel. We’re both having decaf.
“Wouldn’t expect anything less,” I say.
I’ve been here a while. This is where Susan was supposed to meet me with Johanna. When she didn’t show, I called her and she told me she wasn’t coming. Vague about why, she only said that she had composed a text to tell me she couldn’t make it but had evidently failed to send it. It wasn’t my week with Johanna, but I had been hoping that Susan would let her join us anyway because of all the fun she would have—and for a while it looked like she was going to, but maybe that was just to set up this classic passive-aggressive move tonight.
Extremely disappointed I wouldn’t see Johanna tonight—I miss her so much when she’s with her mother that it produces a physical ache inside me—I had called Merrick McKnight, my reporter friend who had recommended me to Keith and Christopher, to see if he had time to meet me. I then spent the next hour waiting for him to drive out here from Panama City. Fortunately, I could access the security camera footage from my phone so I didn’t waste any time.
I was able to get to the end of the first day. At 9:18 p.m. Derinda Dacosta exits the front door carrying what looks like opened Christmas presents. At 12:37 p.m. Hal Raphael enters the front door.
“Calling you wasn’t the first thing I suggested Keith and Christopher do,” Merrick is saying.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says. “First, I tried to solve the damn thing myself. I was like, this would make a great story for the paper, an even greater podcast, and one day a potentially bestselling book.”
“Even a book,” I say. “Wow. How many different ways did you spend the advance in your mind?”
“Too many not to be embarrassed about it,” he says. “It’s got everything a great true crime story needs—a seemingly impossible crime, little to no clues, plenty of suspects, sympathetic victims—Magdalene and her parents. I thought if I could solve it . . .”
“I know you don’t mean it to,” I say, “but it sounds so cynical and cold when you talk about it that way.”
He nods and frowns. “I know, but I knew you would get that I was just talkin’ about it from a story standpoint.”
I nod.
He adds, “Hey, if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t’ve sent them to you. I sincerely hope you can find her—or at least find out what happened to her and who’s responsible. I didn’t get anywhere with it. Not really. And I honestly thought if anyone could it would be you.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“I’m not being nice. I mean it. And it shows that I care. I’ll help you in any way I can, but . . . I just don’t have much to offer. I have no clue how it was done, let alone who did it. If you go just by the evidence it didn’t even happen.”
“Mind laying it out for me?”
“Not at all,” he says. “Won’t take long. The little adopted daughter of a gay couple goes missing on the night of their winter solstice party while only they, a few of their closest friends, and one guest of the B&B are in the house. The house, which is extremely interesting in and of itself—we’ll come back to that later—has great security. Only guests with a room key that has been programmed that same day can enter the front door—and that only gives them access to the B&B part of the house, not the Dacosta’s residence in the back. There are two security cameras—one covering the front door and one covering the back. Neither show anyone coming into or leaving the house after the party people arrived or before the B&B guest came out to catch his Uber early the next morning. And when he and the other party guests did come out none of them had Magdalene.”
I nod and think about it.
“What can you tell me about the people at the party that night?” I ask.
He shrugs and frowns. “Probably nothing helpful. Have you met them?”
“Most, not all.”
“To me the least likely to be behind it are Wren Melody and Henrique Arango,” he says. “They’re both pretty old and he has prostate cancer. But who knows . . . Maybe they’re involved in stealing American kids and sending them back home—him to Cuba and her to England. I had the hardest time finding information on Vic Frankford, the guy who owns the little market. And I’m in the finding-information business. Something sketchy there. Brooke Wakefield, the hot young boutique owner, has continuous men and money troubles. Rake Sabin seems to be what he appears to be—a health nut and a confirmed bachelor. No red flags came up for Clarence and Sarah Samuelson. I’m not sure why they work the way they do. Running a restaurant is hard and they have enough money to retire and live large until they are 200, so . . .”
“Did they have a grandchild get killed a year or two ago?” I ask.
“They did lose a grandkid, but they led me to believe it was from disease. They lost a kid several years ago too. They still have three, but their oldest died while helping the dad with his boat—drowned in a storm and his body was never recovered. Definitely worth a closer look.”
“Definitely.”
“Jodi North, the Sandcastle rep theater director, is flighty and dramatic—or pretends to be. She’s also broke. I think she’s the only one of them who doesn’t actually live in Sandcastle. Can’t afford it. She commutes from . . . somewhere—Panama City or Fort Walton, I think.”
“Haven’t met her yet,” I say. “Scott Haskew either.”
“He’s the director of the Sandcastle Foundation. They raise money from all the rich people living in and visiting Sandcastle and put on events and do charity work. I’m sure they’re who brought you in to give the lecture series. I don’t know this for sure, but I think he and Keith were dating when Keith met Christopher. I wasn’t able to confirm that. Wasn’t even able to confirm that Scott is gay. If he is, he’s way, way in the closet.”
“What about the only stranger in the house?” I say. “Hal Raphael.”
“Every indication I got was that he was looked at very, very closely for it, but . . . there’s just no evidence he had anything to do with it. He secures lease contracts for cell towers. Travels a lot. Seems like an average family guy. Single. Got a kid that doesn’t live with him. If I’m remembering right he lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Keith and Christopher’s own security cameras place him in the clear.”
“If you go by that then they do the same for everyone else there that night too,” I say. “And Magdalene never left the house.”
“True,” he says. “It’s a real mystery. That’s why I told them to call you.”
“Do you have a theory?” I ask. “Or a sense of what most reporters who covered it believe?”
“I don’t have any idea what really happened,” he says, “but I can tell you most of the others think that Keith and Christopher did it and the others helped them cover it up. Like it was an accident or something and instead of coming clean they came up with this elaborate story for public sympathy.”
“What did you mean about the house being interesting?” I ask.
“Well, it’s interesting that it has such good security and this still happened,” he says, “but I was talking about the other stuff.”
“The themed rooms?” I ask.
“No. Have you heard of these escape room things?” he says.
I nod.
“The Florida House has one,” he says. “And not just that but a series of secret passageways and some hidden rooms.”
“Seriously?”
“100 percent,” he says. “Keith’s dad and uncles were builders and architects. He used to work construction. He may even have his contractor’s license. I can’t remember. Anyway, he designed the house to have all that stuff. It used to be a big selling feature of their B&B. They’d play games with the guests and . . . I’m not sure what all. I think they had this thing like if you escape from the escape room under the allotted time you get a free night’s stay or something like that. I’m pretty sure they said no one ever beat it. Thing is . . . with all that hidden shit in the house you’d think it was used by the abductor, and maybe it was, but there’s no evidence it had anything do with it. Still, you should get them to show it to you.”
“I plan to,” I say.