Page 34 of Twin Jeopardy

Tammy leaned forward, her expression eager. “Do you think Valerie was kidnapped by this man and, after fifteen years, managed to escape and come looking for her family?” she asked.

“It’s one possibility,” Travis said. “Though that’s not to go any further than this room.”

Tammy shrank back at his stern look. “Yes, sir,” she said.

Travis slid the letter into an evidence bag. “Or maybe this is a hoax.” He regarded Vince for a long moment. Vince tried to remain still, to not reveal how unsettled the sheriff’s scrutiny made him. “Are you sure you can’t think of anyone who might want to harass you?” Travis asked. “An ex–romantic partner or someone you worked with? A former neighbor or classmate? Maybe another family member?”

“No one,” Vince said.

“You can’t think of anyone who has any reason to be unhappy with you?” Gage asked.

Vince shrugged. “No. I guess I’m not the kind of guy to upset people.” The truth was, he seldom got close enough to anyone to upset them—or to make much of an impression at all. He had friends. He had dated several women. But he couldn’t say any of those relationships had the depth he thought was required to end up with someone wanting to wreck his truck—or his life.

Travis stood and Gage moved away from the wall. “Those are all my questions for now,” the sheriff said.

Vince followed Tammy out of the interview room, down the hall and onto the sidewalk. She stopped at the corner and hugged her arms across her chest. “That was frustrating,” she said. “I was hoping the sheriff would have more answers.”

“Do you think Valerie could be the one doing this?” he asked. “Sending those notes and vandalizing my truck? Has she been alive all these years and we didn’t know?”

Tammy angled toward him, her expression soft with concern. “There have been other cases, of children who were abducted and turned up alive years later,” she said.

“Then why not just contact me and tell me the truth?” Frustration made knots in his gut. “Why attack my truck and accuse me of helping to get rid of her?”

“It does feel like there’s a lot of animosity in those letters—and what was done to your truck...” Tammy rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she was cold.

It did. The idea that his sister—his twin whom he had loved without even having to think about it—wouldhatehim this way felt dark and ugly.

They resumed walking, he assumed back toward the newspaper office. This time of day, the sidewalks were full of tourists and locals, running errands or visiting the shops and restaurants. He and Tammy had to walk close together, shoulders bumping frequently, in order to have a conversation. “What was Valerie like as a girl?” Tammy asked. “I mean, her temperament and attitudes? Was she like you or the opposite? Or somewhere in-between?”

He considered the question. Valerie had been such an essential part of his life that he had taken for granted she would always be there—until she wasn’t. And at ten years old, he hadn’t spent much time thinking about how other people felt or how they were different from him. But he had had a lot of time since then to examine everything he knew about his sister. “Valerie was more outgoing than I was,” he said. “More daring. She would talk to strangers in public or wander off on her own when we were in the park or out shopping.”

“Then she wouldn’t have been afraid, necessarily, of a stranger who approached her?” Tammy asked.

“No. I mean, our parents and teachers had talked to us about stranger danger. Valerie was smart. I don’t think she would have gotten into a car with someone she didn’t know. But if a person struck up a conversation with her, she would have been friendly. And she liked attention. I guess she was kind of a show-off.”

“Did that bother you when you were a boy? That she tried to get attention?”

“No. I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in having people pay attention to me.”

“Did she have a temper? Was she quick to anger or to take offense?”

“Oh yeah.” He remembered. “She would get so mad sometimes. Her face would turn red, and she would stomp her foot.” He almost smiled, picturing her rage over not being allowed to do something she wanted to do. “It’s not fair!” she had howled, furious about not getting her way.

“But she could be sweet too,” he said. “That weekend of the camping trip, I was upset about missing a friend’s birthday party. Valerie tried to make me feel better. She even told my dad she thought I should be allowed to go to the party. And though she teased me about being afraid of things she wasn’t—spiders and steep mountain bike tracks and things like that—she was never too hard on me.”

“The two of you were close, then?”

He shrugged. “We were twins. And we didn’t have any other siblings or cousins who lived nearby. The two of us were kind of a team.”

“It must have been hard for you when she disappeared.”

“For a long time, it didn’t feel real,” he said. “I kept thinking the door would open and she would be there, laughing and telling us all it had been a joke, that she had merely been hiding.”

“Cruel joke,” Tammy said. “Would she have done something like that?”

“Maybe,” he said. “It would have been better than the truth—that we never knew what happened to her.”

But what if the person who was harassing him now did turn out to be Valerie? Would that be worse than believing she had died? He couldn’t wrap his head around the answer. “I’d like to know what happened to her,” he said. “And I want whoever is sending these letters and whoever attacked my truck to be found and stopped.”

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