Scar Tissue Read online

  “I lost a child,” she said. “Jonathan would be five years old now.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was four years ago. You must have heard about it when it happened. It was all over the news. He was kidnapped.”

  “I don’t know. I probably heard about it at the time, but I guess I’ve forgotten.

  Can I ask what happened?”

  “He was playing. Driving his toy cars around the living room floor. He’d just started walking, but crawling was still a faster mode of travel. He crawled around the rug with one hand on the floor for balance and the other propelling a car while he made little humming noises like an engine. Funny how little boys are all about sound effects,” she smiled, but her eyes were far away, no doubt resting on that one-year-old boy crawling about on the living room rug.

  “I’d stepped into the kitchen to make us lunch. It took no more than ten minutes. A dish of strawberry yogurt with mashed bananas and cut up grapes on the side. I always cut the grapes in half even though he had some teeth. Grapes are so easy to choke on.”

  I nodded.

  “I’d been listening to him hum, you know, the car engine, so I knew he was fine, still playing. There were sweaters out on the back deck drying, but it had started to rain a bit so I stepped out the door to bring them in. It took no more than three or four minutes and I was back in the kitchen. I went to the counter and cut a few more grapes. It was then that I noticed the quiet. The humming had stopped. I set down my paring knife and went to the living room to check on him. He wasn’t there. I figured he’d crawled down the hallway. I went everywhere throughout the house walking and calling, then running and screaming. He was nowhere. I even went upstairs though he’d never attempted to climb the stairs, but you know a one-year-old. They’ll try anything if they want it badly enough.”

  Tears brimmed her eyes.

  I reached out and laid my hands over hers to quiet her clenching and unclenching fists.

  “And they never found him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Mike’s well known and well liked. The force did everything possible, called in the FBI. No one left a stone unturned, but Jonathan was never found.”

  “You must still hope?”

  She nodded and smiled, her eyes full. “I only want to know that he’s well and that he’s loved.”

  “You don’t think anything bad happened? You believe he’s alive?”

  “I’m sure of it.” She smiled and patted my hand before pulling hers away.

  “And you’d stopped to watch the kids yesterday because…”

  “Because they make me think of him,” she interrupted. “And watching the games they play lets me know what he’s doing now too.”

  A little sick, I thought, but who wouldn’t be a little sick after losing a child and never knowing if he was dead or alive?

  “It must make you sad to watch them.”

  “It’s bittersweet,” she said. “In a way, it makes me feel closer to him. But each time I watch them my heart breaks a little more.”

  Okay, so I’m an unfeeling troll. I came over here hoping to uncover some long-buried twist regarding Jonathan’s disappearance. The sight of her watching those kids had unleashed the skeptic in me. But by jumping to the conclusion there was more to it, I’d gnawed at a wound that will never fully close. My impulsiveness made a fool of me, a heartless one at that.

  “I’m sorry, Rhea. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him so you don’t have to apologize. He’s always just beneath my surface, his name on the tip of my tongue.”

  I glanced at the kitchen clock. It was almost eleven. “I’d better get to the office or Griff will have me putting in overtime.”

  “Of course.” She smiled, but her eyes were weary. “How is it, working together?”

  “It’s great. We have a rapport.” I slipped off the stool.

  “I can’t imagine it. I relish the moment Mike leaves for work and I have the house to myself.”

  “Maybe marriage changes things.”

  “It changes a lot,” she said crushing a napkin in the palm of her hand.

  Griff was staring at his lap top when I stepped into his office. Opened books and scattered papers lay strewn over his desk. “Find anything?” I asked.

  “I’m taking a crash course in doping. There’s a cornucopia of options. Including our prime suspects, EPO and amphetamines. Get this, if an athlete gets a transfusion prior to a race, it increases the number of red blood cells in their system. And, since red blood cells carry oxygen it increases the amount of oxygen in the body thereby increasing the runner’s stamina and wind.”

  “That’s what Gina said. You think Ashley was shooting up someone’s blood?”

  “It was the thing to do before EPO came into fashion. But the better way to go would have been a transfusion of her own blood. It would virtually go undetected. Nothing would look any different on autopsy or for that matter on any drug test.”

  “She draws her own blood then injects it back into herself?”

  “She, or whoever was helping her, would draw two pints of her blood. That’s the usual amount from what I’ve read. Then it’s frozen. This could be done a couple of months prior to a race. In the meantime, her body would naturally replenish the blood loss. Just before the race the blood is injected back into her system thereby giving her an extra two pints of blood, boosting her red blood cell count and her oxygen level.”

  “And her hematocrit.”

  Griff nodded.

  “That sounds a little over the top for a college athlete, a professional maybe.

  “Just a thought. Blood-Doping was banned by the International Olympic Commission in 1985 and outlawed altogether in ’86, but according to this,” he pointed to a document on his desk. “It’s coming under fire again. Although EPO seems to have pretty much taken the place of transfusions.”

  I slid the papers he was reading from his hand and sat down across from him, scanning the article. “Pretty interesting, but Gina didn’t find any needle marks.”

  “Even on an intact body they can be hard to find. On Ashley, it would have been impossible.”

  “That’s gross.”

  “That’s fact. But drugs or needles weren’t on anyone’s mind when the autopsy was done, anyway. And if she was doping, I think she’d have chosen an area less likely to be noticed.”

  “Like between her toes? That’s how they do it on Law and Order.”

  “I’m not up to par on injection sites, but I’m sure there are some options we’d never think of.”

  I tossed the papers back on his desk. “I went over to see Rhea this morning, to see how her ankle was.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “You’re talking to me. And I know digging when I see it.”

  “Okay, I may have steered the conversation toward her lost child just a bit.”

  “Right. I know what your “bit” means,” he said. “What did she say?”

  “She told me about the day Jonathan disappeared. It sounded unbearable. She said she thinks about him every day.”

  “Hence why she was watching the kids at the playground.”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head. “What’d I tell you?”

  “Okay, okay. I won’t do it again. I just thought…”

  “Sometimes things are exactly what they look like. A dog is a dog.”

  “And sometimes what looks like a dog is really a wolf.”

  Eighteen

  After wrestling with Rhea’s story of Jonathan’s disappearance and Griff’s explanation of why she’d been standing in the shadows at the day care, I’d snagged a mere three hours of sleep. I begged off an early rising for a couple more hours of shuteye and Griff accommodated, begrudgingly. I don’t think he cared that I wasn’t coming with him to the office. I think he cared about the subject matter that was keeping me awake.

  I heard the front door close and threw back the co
vers. Okay, so I lied. I wasn’t staying home to sleep. I was staying home to think. In the kitchen, he’d left me a fresh pot of coffee. (There’s no fooling Griff.) I poured a cup and slid onto a high back stool, resting my elbows on the counter top.

  If the birth of my child was rapidly approaching (big if), I’d have a nursery ready, I’d be preparing make-ahead dinners for the freezer, I’d be in a dual state of high anxiety and intermingling excitement. Rhea was none of these things. In fact, the child didn’t even have a room of its own. It would be sequestered in the guest room. The implications of which, were almost too frightening to consider. And she was spending time in the shadows, staring into a playground of four and five-year-olds.

  Unless…I took a sip of coffee and dropped two slices of wheat bread into the toaster. Unless…I looked at the clock. Eight forty-five. The idea forming in my head was taking priority over my gurgling stomach. Irritated that I had to wait for toast when I had better things to do, I ran upstairs to the bathroom, swung the shower nozzle to hot and stepped in.

  Back in the kitchen, ready to go, the toast was hard and dry. Nothing a slather of butter won’t fix. With a napkin full of crumbs and a half full mug of lukewarm coffee I slipped into my SUV and turned the key.

  At the intersection of Route 7 and Turner Avenue, The Blue Kangaroo Day Care came into view. I eased onto the shoulder of the road and turned off the engine. A couple of women were just coming out of the building after having left their kids. They chatted for a minute and then each went to her car. I crunched on my toast, washed it down with cold coffee and spotted a Daisy Donut up the road. After replenishing my caffeine fix, I returned to my vantage point across the street from the day care.

  At eleven o’clock the door opened and a stream of little ones stampeded onto the playground. VI watched them for a while, one in particular, a little boy with unruly auburn hair, and with the help of my binoculars, a big smile. I wasn’t ready to congratulate myself yet. Not until I noticed Rhea coming down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. “Shit,” I whispered to no one, not sure that I wanted my hunch to pay off. She slipped under the same Maple tree and watched the children play. A half an hour later, the kids went back inside and Rhea left, walking slowly back to her car a few hundred feet away, under the weight of her sagging belly.

  I stayed a bit longer trying to figure out what to do next. At 12:00 a school bus stopped out front and ten kids marched out of the day care and onto the bus. Kindergarten? What did I know, but it was a good guess. When the bus pulled away, I crossed the street and went inside.

  “Can I help you?” A grandmother type looked up from a desk. Behind her the wall was decorated with an array of crayoned drawings.

  “Hi, I’m new to the area. Just moved here, actually. I’m looking for a day care and my neighbor suggested I talk to you.”

  “Oh lovely, we’re glad you stopped in.”

  She pulled a brochure from her drawer and began pointing out package options along with varying costs.

  “Could I have a look around first?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” she said shoving the colored brochure back inside her desk understanding her mistake of putting money before the tour.

  There were two large rooms. On the right, five toddlers were lying quietly on cushioned mats, some sleeping, some sucking their thumbs, wide-eyed.

  “It’s naptime,” she explained. The older kids just left for kindergarten. They’ll be back at three-o’clock.”

  To the left was the classroom with different stations spread around the room. There was a water table and a clay table, a Lego station, painting easels with smocks hanging off the wooden sides.

  “Wow,” I said to the slender woman behind the desk. “Pretty much anything a kid could want.”

  She laughed and brushed crumbs from her hands. I’d interrupted her lunch.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to catch you at a bad time.”

  “No problem,” she said coming toward me and shaking my hand. “I’m Devon Seyer.”

  “You’re in charge of all this?”

  “I have help. And you are?”

  “Claire,” I said. “Eastwood.” (I have a thing for Clint Eastwood. It’s the closest I’ll ever get.) “I have a five-year-old and I need a day care that can get her to kindergarten.”

  “You’ve come to the right place. Have a seat.”

  After going over a typical day in the life of a day-care kindergartener, we discussed the number of kids in class, how they get along, the bus ride etc. All things I pretended I knew something about. Then I got to the real reason for my visit.

  “My daughter was adopted,” I said. “And she’s very vocal about it. We’ve never shielded her from it in fact we encourage her to have a relationship with her birth mother. Sometimes, her birth mother accompanies us to special occasions, like school functions or in this case day care functions. I assume you have holiday parties?”

  Devon nodded.

  “Do you think that will be a problem for any of the other children? I mean, we’ve been to numerous groups for adoptive parents and I know some people have a problem when a child talks about adoption. They don’t want their kids to be frightened by it.”

  “I don’t think it will be a problem,” Devon said. “Maybe you can explain to…what’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Blake.”

  “…to Blake, that she not talk about it when she’s here. But I don’t see it as an issue. In fact, well…without divulging any details, we do have another child in the group that is adopted. But he doesn’t talk about it.”

  Bingo.

  There was a loud noise out in the hallway and I could hear someone calming a crying child.

  “Excuse me,” Devon said and walked out into the hall.

  I glanced at her desk. There were a number of files and drawings, an appointment calendar and paper that said Weekly Roster. Beneath the heading was each day of the weak with a list of ten to fifteen names under each day. I could hear Devon talking softly in the hall. I slipped the paper off her desk and into my pocket in one sweep. My heart skipped a beat.

  “I think I’m all set,” I said coming into the hall behind Devon. “May I take a brochure from the front desk?”

  “Of course,” Devon said and nodded to the woman who I’d met initially.

  “I hope we’ll hear from you and Blake,” she called after me.

  I followed the other woman to the desk, took the brochure and got out of the day care as fast as I could without making my hurry obvious. I wondered how long it would take Devon to notice the missing roster and if she’d suspect anything or figure she misplaced it. I put my money on the latter.

  I had just opened my car door when Rhea stepped up beside me.

  “Checking up on me?”

  “I, ah, I…no.”

  “You’re a PI.”

  I nodded.

  “You were checking up on me.”

  I nodded again.

  “Why? What’s going on in your head that would cause you to do this?”

  “Get in. Let’s talk.”

  Rhea looked at me, her lower lip clenched between her teeth. Sighing, she shook her head and walked slowly around the front of the RAV keeping her palm on the black metal for stability and making me wish I’d washed the car. She opened the passenger door, hefted her body onto the seat and sighed again.

  I wracked my brain for some kind way of saying that I was following up on her story of Jonathan’s disappearance without actually saying that I was following up on her story of Jonathan’s disappearance.

  “You don’t believe what I told you about the day Jonathan disappeared?”

  “I believe what you told me. I’m looking for answers.”

  “What makes you think you can find what the police and FBI were unable to?”

  I shrugged. “Lunacy?”

  She smiled and her body relaxed a little. “What did you go inside for?”

  I slipped the roster from my bag and show
ed it to her.

  “Jesus, Britt. That’s confidential.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you really think one of those kids is Jonathan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do. He isn’t there.”

  “But that one with…”

  “The auburn hair like mine?” Rhea finished my question. “I wonder if that’s what he looks like now. But it’s not him. He’s not there.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I am.” She turned her head and looked out the window.

  I touched her arm. “Rhea, I know this is a horrible thing to say, but do you ever think that he might…”

  “Be dead?” She asked, turning to look at me. “No.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I just know. You don’t need to look for him, Britt.”

  She opened the door, but hesitated. “Look, I appreciate the fact that you care, that you care enough to break some rules.” She nodded to the roster on the seat. “But I don’t need your help.”

  “But, don’t you…”

  “No, Britt. I don’t.” She closed the door and walked away.

  I beat Griff home and started the grill. In the kitchen, I marinated two chicken breasts and tossed salad fixings in a large wooden bowl. I’d just poured a glass of Pinot when he came through the back door.

  “Where’ve you been all day? Katie said you were in and out of the office before I got back from my meeting.”

  “How’d the meeting go?” I asked changing the subject and buying time. I still hadn’t decided if I was going to tell him what I’d done today. It had gnawed at me all afternoon that Rhea hadn’t been thrilled by my interest in searching for Jonathan.

  “…so I told him I’d discuss it with you and get back to him.”

  “Discuss what?”

  “Taking the case.”

  “What case?”

  “The one I just told you about.”

  “Sorry, my head was somewhere else. Can you tell me again?”

  “The guy thinks his business partner’s using the company as a cover to import stolen art.”

  “What kind of business is it?”

  “International antique trade.”