Page 23 of One Last Smile

My ears perk up. “Was Miss Montclair your assistant before Eliza?”

“She was.” He looks at me sideways. “A shame what happened to her.”

“Do you know anything?” I ask.

“Well… I really shouldn’t say, but in her last few weeks with me, I noticed Minerva leaving with a very suspicious figure. A man, younger, but too old for her. She refused to introduce us, would always beg off, saying he was no one of consequence, but I never liked the look of him.”

“What did he look like?”

He looks sideways at me again, and a small smile plays across his lips. “Playing at detective, are we?”

My face flames. “I’m only curious. I shouldn’t intrude.”

He laughs. “Nothing to apologize for. Unfortunately, all I can say for sure is that he was tall and had long brown hair. He dressed rather poorly, too. Nice clothing but ill-fitting and mismatched. I suspect he’s the black sheep of some high-class family or another. Just the sort of lure to draw away an impressionable girl like Minnie.”

My heart skips a beat. He’s just described Alistair to a tee.

“I hold hope that she’s still alive, that she and her black sheep are somewhere in Costa Rica enjoying a free-spirited life away from the rules that their breeding forced on them. But if I’m being honest, I don’t think so. The one time I saw her young man, I saw danger in his eyes. If only I could have done something to protect her.”

He turns to me and smiles. “Well, I hate to be rude, but I should take my leave. It appears my reason for visiting never existed to begin with. It was lovely to meet you, Mary. I hope to see more of you before the school year ends.”

“You too, Doctor.”

I walk him to the door and keep my composure until it closes behind him. Then my smile vanishes.

I realize now that Alistair couldn’t have been gone for three years. Minnie went missing a year ago. Oliver wrote his letter shortly before. If Alistair was here to advise Oliver against sending that letter, then he could only have been absent for a year or so.

Veronica lied to me. They all did. They know something. They all do.

I’ve spent the past few days wondering which of these people is guilty. Now I wonder if any of them are innocent.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After Dr. Chalmers leaves, I intend to talk to Hazel and get her perspective on the events surrounding Minnie’s disappearance, but the woman’s skill for disappearing is unmatched. She’s not in her room when I knock, and I know this because I stand with my ear pressed to the door for several minutes and finally open it to find it empty. She’s nowhere in the house that I can see. She could be on the grounds, I suppose, but if she is, I’ll have to run into her accidentally. Henri won’t arrive for several hours, and Horace is out with Veronica, and with Niall out prowling around and no one else in the house, I am loath to wander.

So I look up what I can online. I am woefully illiterate when it comes to technology, having grown up fond of nature and books rather than computers and cell phones, and with no skill at digging into the dark web or searching for expunged or well-hidden data, I’m limited to what information is easily available.

It’s not much. The Carltons may be well-known in some circles, but not all, and the Montclairs are utterly unknown. The story runs for four issues in the newspaper, starting as a fourth-page article and ending with a brief, five-paragraph summary that announces that the Carltons have been exonerated of wrongdoing and there are no leads in the case.

I look up Minnie herself and get very little. The search links to five different Minerva Montclairs, and when I find the one that matches my Minerva, I see only images from her social media accounts. This reveals nothing to me other than that she does indeed resemble both Annie and Lucas to a disturbing degree. This is hardly a revelation, since her resemblance to Annie is largely what motivates me to seek justice in the first place, and her resemblance to Lucas fits with the suspicion that she is somehow Veronica’s long-lost child.

I wonder about that, though. Veronica is fiercely protective of Lucas and dismissive of Minnie. Perhaps Minnie is Lucas’s half-sister but with a different mother and the same father. Perhaps the resemblance is entirely coincidental.

And does it even matter anymore with this new information from Dr. Chalmers? If Alistair truly is responsible for Minnie’s death, then it would explain all of the family’s behavior so far: their refusal to talk about Minnie openly, Sebastian’s insistence that she not be discussed at all, and their indulgence of Alistair.

I search for Alistair next. I get even less on him than I do on Minnie. His Bohemian lifestyle so far has left no mark on society, which I suppose shouldn’t surprise me.

The younger Carltons yield little besides their academic records, which is understandable given they’ve only just started their adult lives. The older ones have a more extensive record, but it’s only ordinary information. Veronica’s name is connected to several charities. Evidently her philanthropy is well-known enough that she’s even earned a magazine interview or two.

Sebastian, not surprisingly, figures most prominently in the public’s eye, but it’s all business-related. He appears to command some respect in the world of technology. He’s not a giant in the industry in the vein of Gates, Zuckerberg, or Page, but he’s well-respected.

There’s nothing here that tells me anything, nothing that indicates what might have happened to Minnie. Or rather, there’s much that indicates what happened to her, but nothing concrete that can tell me which of the rumors are true, if any.

I finally admit defeat and close my laptop. I chastise myself for wasting my own time. Why would I think I could discover the cause of Minnie’s death on the internet? If such information was available, then the police would have used it already.

I sigh and press my palms to my temples. I should let this go. I’m not trained to be a detective. I can’t be of help to Minnie. I’m only torturing myself. But each time I think that, Annie’s face floats across my mind, as though to remind me of the consequences of giving up.

The detective looks at me and says, kindly but firmly, “It’s time to let go, Mary.”

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