Page 28 of Jon's Helter Skelter Cold Case

“Eh?” Cassius paused in writing the check, looking confused. “Why?”

“Solomon.” Donovan huffed out an annoyed breath. “The detective who was in charge of your children’s case is the worst buffoon of a policeman the world has ever seen. We’ve undone many of his cases in the past. We feel like anyone victimized by him has joined the We Hate Solomon club.”

Serena’s voice screeched upward. “You mean this man’s well-known to be stupid and he was in charge of my child’s future?!”

“Believe me, no one’s happy about him still working as a detective.” As an aside, I said, “Although this case might be the one to break his career. Because it was so well televised, the fallout when he’s proven incompetent to the world will not be pretty. Let us all pray this happens.”

“Amen.” Cassius huffed, red anger pulsing through his lines. “But I’ll pay you the full amount. You’ve already done work to help my boy, after all.”

If he wanted to, I wouldn’t stop him.

I went back to the interview. “Nina, think hard. Was Tylesia at all disturbed the day before she disappeared? Anything troubling her?”

“No, nothing like that. In fact, we were planning a party at her and Dwayne’s place because she’d finally finished a course that nearly melted her brain. We were all going there so we could play video games, binge eat too much food, just have fun.”

So this came with no warning? Hmm.

Abby surprised me by asking a question. “If she was ace, she probably didn’t have an ex, right?”

“No ex,” Nina confirmed. “She never dated.”

“What about stalkers?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, she had guys who flirted with her and didn’t take it well when she wasn’t interested, but no one was pushy about it after she rejected them.”

I didn’t completely write off a stalker because people didn’t always realize they were being stalked. I could see why Solomon leapt to blame Dwayne for all this if there weren’t the obvious suspects to be had.

Which did beg the question: What happened to the daughter?

Serena grabbed my hand and stared at me earnestly. “I looked up your agency after Donovan called, and I saw you have a woman who specializes in finding people. Can you have her search for Tylesia?”

It was the obvious question and I hated to answer it. Again, such hope might bite us all in the ass later. “Carol already tried. I say ‘tried’ because there’s something unusually wonky in your daughter’s case.”

“Wonky?” Serena didn’t seem to like the sound of that.

I didn’t blame her. “It wasn’t just her. I asked a favor of Grant Walker—you know who he is, he’s the one who finds most of the missing kids in Tennessee, you see him on the news all the time—and he tried searching for Tylesia as well. He said he couldn’t trace her, but he could almost get a lock on her. Ma’am, I’ll be honest, I have no idea what that means. Neither did Grant, nor Carol. It was a first for both of them. Whatever happened to Tylesia is very, very weird.”

“Then is she…alive?”

“I don’t know.” It was the truth. “I don’t know that she’s dead, either. Right now, everything is a question mark. What I do know is that we’re all very invested in finding an answer to this.”

Serena looked hopeful again. “You can’t blame a mother for hoping her little girl is alive.”

“No, ma’am, that I can’t. I will say, don’t put all your faith in the possibility until we can prove it one way or another. Solomon did such a shitty job investigating, right now we’re having to redo all of his work.”

“I understand, and thank you for the candor.” Serena looked toward her husband and got a nod, as if they’d had a full-on conversation. “We’ll do whatever we can to help you.”

“Appreciated. Focus now on keeping Dwayne’s spirits up. You’ll be able to see him much easier than before.”

“We’ll do that.”

I wasn’t the only one at the table hoping that, against all odds, Tylesia was alive. Whether such hope became reality was yet to be seen.

10

The game wason.

I would not be taking prisoners at this time.

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