SHE’S TALL AND slim with straight dark hair parted over her right eye. She’s got a leather bag slung over her shoulder and she’s wearing a tan, lightweight business suit, her skirt cut just above the knees, her matching jacket covering a tight white button down. She’s wearing black pumps for footwear, which makes her even taller. She recognizes me before I realize who she is. When she holds out her hand, I catch a glimpse of the firearm that’s holstered on her waist.
“I’m Giselle,” she says, taking my hand in hers, gripping it tightly, with confidence. “Giselle Fontaine. I understand we’ve got ourselves a situation.”
She releases my hand, offers Penny a nod.
“This is my wife, Penny,” I say.
Giselle shakes her hand. Then, “Why don’t we head to your room, folks. We can talk in private there and I can get a look at the place.”
Without waiting for an answer, the detective turns and heads into the stairwell that leads back downstairs to the ground floor rooms.
Pulling out my keycard, I open the door for her, half expecting to see Chloe sitting on the bed, watching television. But I’ve already given up hope on her just suddenly showing up like that. Still, my heart jumps up into my mouth when I open the door. I’m almost tempted to utter the name, Chloe. But the room is dark and silent and all too dead.
Here’s what I do.
I flip on the light switch, which engages every ceiling and wall-mounted lamp in the room. Together the three of us head into the room, which contains two beds, three suitcases, numerous electronics chargers plugged into the outlets, plus a cooler filled with beer and cold soft drinks.
Immediately I’m attracted to the cooler. I pull out a cold bottle of Dos Equis.
Penny gives me a look. So does Detective Giselle.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know this isn’t the time, but after a day like today, I really need one.”
Giselle grins, holds up her hands.
“Hey, don’t mind me. I’d have probably downed a fifth of vodka by now if any of my rug rats had gone missing. Knock yourself out.” She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a notepad. “Now I’m going to ask you some vital questions about your daughter, then I want to get a sort of timeline idea of what occurred.”
Penny holds out the bathing suit top and the iPad like she’s presenting evidence to a court of law.
“Our daughter’s gone,” Penny interjects, acid-like. “That’s all we know.”
“I understand that,” Giselle says, locking eyes on the items in Penny’s hands. “But the more information I have, the more I can help.”
I pop open the beer, steal a deep drink.
“We found that stuff on the beach in back of the hotel, just minutes ago,” I offer.
Giselle takes the stuff in hand, stares at it for a long beat.
Penny nods.
Giselle’s eyes go wide. It’s a while before she blinks. That’s when she stuffs the items into her bag.
“It’s state’s evidence now,” she explains. “I’ll make sure the police get it tonight, as in immediately.”
“Show her the picture of Chloe on your phone, Pen,” I add.
Penny pulls out her smartphone, presents it to the hotel detective who stares down at it.
“Very fine-looking young lady,” she says while eyeing Chloe’s face as though committing it to memory. Then, reaching into her jacket pocket and coming back out with a business card, “Here’s my cell number. Please forward the picture to me so I can send it on to the hotel staff. While we’re talking, the staff will be making a sweep of every room, space, crawl space, nook and cranny in the facility. No area will go unsearched. Do we have an understanding?”
Penny and I both nod. Somehow hearing that the detective is being proactive fills me with the dreaded H word again. Hope.
She hands Penny the card.
… Hope is but a dream …
Giselle makes specific inquiries about Chloe. Her age, height, weight, school, hobbies, social media site subscriptions including her WhatsApp account, you name it. She writes the pertinent stuff down. Then she asks to see my daughter’s things.
“You mind if I go through her suitcase, Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe?”
“Why?” Penny begs. “Even I don’t do that. It’s a privacy thing.”
“You should,” Giselle says. “Kids your daughter’s age can sometimes get involved with people and things they shouldn’t. Kids Chloe’s age are dying.”
“Are you saying my daughter is doing drugs?” Penny says. “She’s only eleven.”
“Oh gee, I’m not saying that at all,” Giselle offers. “But what if there’s a receipt for a train ticket, or heck, even a plane ticket? What if there’s a note from a girlfriend or boyfriend that indicates she had every intention of running away? What if she’s not doing drugs, but has a secret boyfriend who is? You gotta think about all the possibilities.”
I drink some more beer, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I might have been incarcerated for a long time, but I’m very much aware that the death rate among teens and pre-teens has increased by almost thirty-five percent during those ten years. Oxy, fentanyl-laced heroin … it’s killing kids Chloe’s age, and their parents are blind to their addiction. They’re not recognizing the signs. The death stare, the weight loss, the insomnia, the mood swings.
“Let her check, Pen,” I say. “The detective is right.”
“We’ll look together,” Giselle says. Then, her eyes shifting to me, “Oh, and one more thing, folks. If we don’t come up with anything in our search through the hotel, it is my duty as hotel detective to call in the police. That iPod and bathing top in my bag is reason enough to call them in right this second. But because of your special, let’s call them circumstances, Mr. O’Keefe, perhaps it’s better that you and your wife pay a personal visit to the police chief himself. His name is Joe Walton.”
“What special circumstances?” I ask, already anticipating the answer before she annunciates it.
“Now, darn it all, Mr. O’Keefe, I know who you are, and what you were accused of doing all those years ago. I know that you are newly paroled and I’m happy for you and Mrs. O’Keefe. You seem like fine people to me and my heart aches for you. But procedure is procedure, and I’m going to tell you right now that you both should have come to me sooner with this. I can only assume you did not want to rock the legal applecart, so to speak. The last thing you need right now is a hotel full of cops. Am I right?”
My heart sinks from my mouth to somewhere around my feet. When I look at Penny, I’m not sure if what I see is disappointment in her face or just plain disgust. I want to say something in my defense. But I don’t. What the hell am I going to do? Explain to her that I exposed a mob boss and now he might be enacting his revenge on me?
“But let’s not dwell on the past,” Giselle suggests. “Let’s see that suitcase and go from there. And listen to me, closely. I can assure you that between me, the hotel staff, and the village police department, we will do everything in our power to find your daughter. Understood?”
A teardrop falls down Penny’s cheek.
She stands, pulls Chloe’s pink overhead compartment-sized case from off the floor, drops it onto the bed.
“Go for it,” she says.
It takes all of two minutes to rummage through the clothes and underclothes. But in the end, we find nothing to indicate our daughter has run away with a girl, boy, or the circus. Nothing to indicate she’s into drugs, hard, soft, or prescription based. While the women were going through the case, I could hear someone from the hotel knocking on each door of the floor in their search for Chloe. Naturally, they skipped our room.
“Listen here folks, let me check in with some of the staff.” Giselle pulls the radio from her belt, calls on a man named Frank, asks him if the crew has uncovered Chloe yet.
After a beat or two, a tinny voice responds.
“Negative on that, G.”
“Percentage of task completion there, Frank?”
“Closing in on one hundred percent, G. Wish I had better news.”
The dreaded H word.
… Hope. Hope is but a dream …
Go to hell.
Detective Giselle Fontaine purses her lips, pulls out her cell phone from the interior pocket on her jacket.
She says, “Before I call Chief Walton to get going on a possible Amber Alert and to file a missing person’s report, can I ask you one last question?”
My mouth goes dry at the mere mention of an Amber Alert. I nod since I don’t have enough saliva in my mouth to form a word.
“Was Chloe angry at you for anything? Was she maybe upset over a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Anything like that?”
Penny shakes her head. “No. Nothing was wrong. She’s just a normal eleven-year-old kid, playing in the beach sand and poof, she’s gone.”
“But then, she’s not a normal eleven-year-old kid,” Giselle interjects.
“What are you implying?” Penny asks.
“What I’m implying is that she’s the child of a man who went to prison for a violent action.”
My stomach goes tight because the detective is spot on and she knows it, as much as it hurts to hear it.
“She wasn’t upset about your husband coming home?” Giselle presses. “It can be a traumatic thing for a child to never know what it’s like to live with her father, and suddenly he’s home.”
“In other words,” I add, “is Chloe afraid of me? You insinuating I might have had something to do with her disappearance?”
My blood is getting hot and Penny is aware of it.
“Calm down, Doc,” she cautiously says.
Giselle looks into my eyes. “Well, gee, that’s not what I’m getting at, Mr. O’Keefe.”
“Funny,” I say, “because that’s the way I feel.”
“And, Mrs. O’Keefe,” Giselle goes on, “were you seeing anyone romantically before Mr. O’Keefe came back home? Someone your daughter liked and had gotten used to? Someone whom you cut ties with in order to welcome Mr. O’Keefe back with, ummm, open arms?”
Penny’s face goes stone still. Like Giselle didn’t just ask her a rapid-fire series of personal questions. More like she stomped on her feet.
“I assure you, Detective,” Penny utters, “nothing of the sort has occurred.”
Penny looks at me like she’s asking me if I believe her. What choice do I have but to believe her?
Giselle nods, then proceeds to speed-dial a number on her cell phone. But instead of completing the call inside the room, she takes the phone with her outside into the corridor. Curiously, that’s when my own phone starts to ring.
“You have to get that,” Penny insists. “If it’s your parole officer, you can’t just blow him off.”
Biting my bottom lip, trying not to break the thin vermillion skin any more than I already have.
“No choice,” I say, stating the obvious.
Flipping the phone open, I press the little green SEND button and place it to my ear.