Page 10 of 3rd Tango
She looks over her collection with nostalgia. “Sometimes he comes with me.”
So far, we’ve seen New York and Michigan so I peruse the others, noting landmarks I recognize. I’m hardly well-traveled but it’s hard to miss St. Louis’s Gateway Arch and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Has Gayle been to these places with her, I wonder?
Charlie breaks away and inspects a folding table with neatly stacked brochures. She holds one up. “Can I take this?”
“Of course. My website is listed on there.”
Excellent. I join Charlie and peer at the tri-fold brochure. “Is your entire inventory listed on it?”
Marie nods. “Yes. I’ve included a brief description of each location as well.”
Oh, thank you.I love when people make things easy. Now we’ll be able to note the places Marie—and possibly Gayle—have visited. More than likely we won’t have timeframes, but we’re only at the first step. We’ll make a list and see where it leads.
We offer our goodbyes and dive into the crowd again, remaining silent until out of earshot of our target.
We reach the end of the block and take up residence beside a fire hydrant while we text Jerome, JJ, and Mom with our location.
I tuck my phone in my pocket and get back to business. “What do you think?”
Charlie’s eyes gleam with that predatory hunger that overtakes her when working a case. “I think we’re going to research any unsolved murders in those places. If we get any matches, I’m calling in every favor I’m owed and maybe we’ll get some intel.”
5
Charlie
At three, I’m at the coffee shop a few blocks from the office, waiting for Alfonzo Baez.
The air-conditioning is better than ours, so I’m glad I offered to meet him here. Bonus, I can grab something to eat.
I have a tall iced coffee and a chicken avocado sandwich in front of me. Mom wanted to discuss the art festival, and I mostly wanted a shower and a few minutes of quiet time to think about Gayle and the bodies found in Virginia. Meg, thank goodness, talked Mom into going out for lunch, and I begged off, claiming a headache. This case is a giant one.
Marie appears like a normal artsy person, similar to Meg. There was nothing suspicious about her lighthouses, or behavior. Fortunately or not, Gayle was nowhere to be seen.
I’m still pissed he threatened Mom, but I almost can’t blame him. It’s bad enough your neighbor spies on you constantly, but then to return from vacation and find she was only down the lane from you?
Meg plans to look up Marie’s website and dig into her background. After my meeting, I’ll cross-check to see if it’s possible Marie and Gayle’s visits coincide with any cold cases or unsolved murders in those areas. It’s a long shot, but if I find nothing, I can put this to rest. It probably won’t be that easy because Mom will try to keep things stirred up, but if there’s no link, she’ll have to let it go.
Alfonzo Baez is medium-sized, with dark hair sprinkled with silvery strands and a mustache. He’s wearing a black motorcycle jacket over a T-shirt, jeans, and boots. There’s a bandana around his forehead, and his sunglasses are wired and reflective.
Not at all what I expected, but I can recognize the former agent in him from the swagger. He scans the handful of patrons, his attention swinging to me, as if I too have a sign over my head flashing “FBI.”
He pulls out the empty chair at the two-person table, offering his hand. “You must be Helen Schock’s daughter. I see the resemblance.”
Interesting. Most think Meg favors her, but there’s a touch around my eyes and chin that comes from her DNA. I shake his proffered hand. “Thank you for meeting me here. I’m sorry if I interrupted your plans.” I point at his attire.
He sits and waves it off. “Heading out for a day trip. No problem at all.”
I intend to keep this as brief as possible, so I get right to the point. “Mom claims you and your private cold case group are helping her look into our neighbor and some of his activities.” I emphasize the last word, reluctant to call him a killer. “This has been an obsession of hers since Meg and I were children, and while all she has is a whole lot of circumstantial evidence, she’s officially hired my sister and I to look into the man’s comings and goings. I’m hoping to close this by giving her definitive proof he’s innocent. Yesterday, she mentioned you’d connected a trip she took with my father, where Mr. Morton was also vacationing. Three bodies turned up in the nearby woods some years later. I was hoping you could give me more details.”
“Your mother is a relentless investigator,” Baez says. He tosses his sunglasses on the table, and wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead. “She’s keeping me on my toes. I’ve been slowly working my way through our combined case notes, and there are several weekends when the neighbor was traveling that correspond to unsolved murders in that area. And yes, he was at Whitetop Mountain where three female bodies were discovered in 2004.”
He doesn’t realize this is my nightmare, the thing that took up my mother’s time more than I did growing up. “We need something a lot stronger than that to consider it even circumstantial.”
As a former profiler, I can read little ticks in people’s expressions. He smiles, granting this is true. “Agreed,” he says. “But it’s a curious coincidence that in the summer of 1995, he was gone from Friday to Sunday multiple weekends, and at least one was the same timeframe your parents stayed in a similar fishing cabin up the road. The place was a rental for twenty years and changed hands several times. I’m still tracking down the owner from back then to see if he can confirm Mr. Morton rented it on either of the other weekends your mom noted he was gone.”
This makes my ears perk up, and other parts of me sink. “How long were you with the Bureau? I don’t believe we ever met, did we?”
“Before your time. I was a field agent for seven years before moving up. Twenty total, and I don’t miss a day of it.”
