Page 34 of Nantucket Reflections
GREGOR: I have something incredible to tell you! But I want to do it in person. Can we meet tonight?
Julia said of course. They had plans at a fancy hotel bar later that evening. She asked if he wanted to join, and he said he’d love to. They made plans for eight, after which they’d grab a bite to eat at one of the many restaurants, restaurants that, assuredly, Sophia and Marius would say were “subpar.” Julia’s palate wasn’t as refined as theirs.
That evening, well-rested and tanned after the day at the beach, Julia and Charlie dressed and left for the hotel bar and walked the ten minutes through the warm evening. When they reached the hotel bar, another of the servers led them to a table in the corner, where Julia craned her head to find the other server, the one who’d mentioned knowing Lucia as a teen. When she spotted him, deep in the back, sorting through boxes, she couldn’t fight her instinct. She was already on her feet, speeding back there, her dress whipping around her thighs. The server heard the sound of her flapping feet and turned his head.
His eyes echoed curiosity. “Hello,” he said. “You’re back!”
“I am.” Julia brightened her phone screen. “You remember I had all those questions about Lucia?”
“Of course,” he said. “It isn’t every day I get to talk about the old days, growing up as a wild teen in Positano.”
Julia let out an ironic laugh. “Were you just as wild as Lucia?”
“In other ways,” he said, his eyes sparkling. He’d abandoned his task and had his hands on his hips. “Do you want me to speculate about who else CAT might be? You remember that multiple-people-as-CAT theory?”
“I do remember,” she said. “And maybe I’ll need that later on. But I’m curious if you recognize someone.” She turned the phone around and showed him the image Henry had sent her, the photograph of the man currently in custody on Nantucket Island.
Immediately, the server’s color dimmed to that of a pale fish. He cupped the phone in his hands and sat down, mumbling to himself in Italian. His eyes flickered back up to Julia. Julia’s stomach curdled with dread.
“You know him?” she asked.
“I suppose you could say so,” the server said. “He hung around Positano for a while. He and some of his friends. They were all from the same place. I believe it was Bulgaria? It doesn’t matter.”
“They were friends with Lucia?” she asked, sitting in an empty chair across from him.
“They heard about her reputation, so to speak,” the server went on, his eyes back to the screen. “I think they were impressed with her. I think they wanted in on what she was doing, maybe. Although I don’t know.”
“When was this?” she demanded.
“Four years ago? Three? I do not know,” he said. “The summers, they always blend now.”
Julia’s tongue felt dry. “Do you know how I can contact them? Or how I can contact people in touch with them? It’s just that, I mean, the last Lucia was seen, they were throwing her into their van.”
The server put the phone on the table between them and gaped at her. After a long time, he said, “I think she might have been in love, or at least involved with one of them. One of the Bulgarians. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe they still are?”
Julia’s voice was a harsh whisper. “Do you think it’s possible that he put Lucia up to this? Or, maybe, it was their plan all along?”
“You think the Bulgarians forced Lucia to pretend to be CAT?” The server stitched his eyebrows together. “I do not know. For all I know, Lucia is CAT. And as I already told you, it does not matter to me who CAT is.”
“Right. Yes. I know.” Julia remembered what he’d said about CAT bringing in tourists who take photographs of her murals and buy cocktails at the hotel bar and spend, spend, spend until they leave. He was too nihilistic to be of true help, maybe.
One thing that sort of relieved her was the fact that Lucia was, or at least had been, romantically involved with one of the Bulgarians. Maybe that meant she wasn’t in any real danger, wherever she was.
Of course, ex-boyfriends could do heinous things to the women who abandoned them.
Her heart throbbed with fear.
The server continued to stare down at the photograph of the Bulgarian man, his eyes spitting with vitriol. Finally, Julia got the hint.
“He did something to you, didn’t he?” she asked.
The server shoved the phone back, as though she’d caught him in the act of caring too much. Finally, he took a breath. “He stole from my grandmother. We could never prove it, but all of her silver was gone. Silver that had belonged to her great-great-grandmother. It must have been a few months before they all disappeared. The Bulgarians and Lucia. But I never put it together that she might have gone with them. I assumed Lucia went off to do something else.”
“She did,” Julia said softly. “But I don’t think she did anything good.”
When Julia left the interior and returned to the shimmering orange light of the evening, she found that Gregor was already at the table with Charlie, sipping what looked to be a margarita and talking excitedly with his hands. She walked over to them with a sense of dread. Pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. But there was so much she couldn’t know from a photograph. Maybe back in Nantucket, the cops would find answers. Perhaps they’d get an interpreter and learn where Lucia was. Or maybe they’d all hit a dead end and give up.
When Gregor saw Julia, he got up so fast that his chair fell to the ground. “Julia! I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this.”
