The Almost Truth (7 page)

“Maybe you should get glasses,” I suggested.

“You calling me old?” Thomas raised one bushy eyebrow.

“Never.” I raised a hand as if swearing a vow. “Clearly these receipts are written by miniature evil elves using tiny little ballpoint pens.”

Thomas laughed and waved for me to sit down. “Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone knows elves use fountain pens. Now, what brings you over here on a day off? Other than making fun of me.” Over a hundred people on staff, and Thomas still managed to know everyone’s work schedule. If he hadn’t worked at the hotel, he could have run a small country.

“I wanted to ask you about something that happened at the hotel a long time ago.”

“That’s me, official hotel historian.” Thomas waved at one of the waiters and held up two fingers. The waiter scurried off and brought back two frosted glasses of iced tea with a mint sprig floating on top. “It’s raspberry flavored. My treat. They use fresh crushed berries picked over at Harbor Farm.” He took a deep drink and leaned back. “Now, what can I tell you?”

“Do you remember when Ava McKenna went missing?”

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You know how to pick out a happy memory. That sure was a lousy time. I was the front desk manager back then. At first we just assumed the kid
wandered off. You know how kids are at that age. If you don’t have them duct taped down, they’re off and running, sticking forks in light sockets, or chewing on something they shouldn’t. Anyway, I had some of the waiters from the restaurant do a sweep of the hotel for her. A few months before she went missing, we had a little kid who had curled up underneath one of those heavy velvet curtains in the lobby and gone to sleep. We didn’t find him until almost an hour later when he woke up. Little bugger peed his pants too while he slept, so we had to have the rugs steam cleaned.”

Before he could get off track with other missing kid stories, I asked another question. “When did you realize that something was really wrong in Ava’s situation?”

“After the first half hour or so I suspected we were in trouble. There wasn’t a sign anywhere of where she had gone and the nanny was practically hysterical. We called the police and sent one of the managers down to the docks to wait for the parents to come back in. They were out sailing if I remember right. Not many people had cell phones back then, so there was no way to reach them out on the boat. Not that anyone was looking forward to having that conversation anyway. How do you tell someone their kid is just gone? To be honest, I didn’t think someone had taken her. At that point I figured something bad had happened to her, that we were going to find her at the bottom of the pool, or having fallen off a balcony somewhere.” Thomas shrugged as if he didn’t know what else to add. “But when she
never showed up, not even a body, I figured someone took her. This island isn’t that big, and she was a small kid.”

“So you think someone took her. How come there was never a demand for ransom?” I sipped the tea and fought the urge to press the frosty glass to the side of my face.

“Someone grabbed that kid, you can count on that.” Thomas pointed at me with his glass for emphasis, as if I had expressed doubt. “If she had just wandered off, we would have found her. She was only three years old, for crying out loud; how far could she have gotten on her own?”

“Then what happened to her? Why hasn’t there ever been any hint about where she went? If someone took her, they must have had a reason.”

Thomas shrugged. “I always figured there was more to the story. Family with that much money, you would expect someone to hit them up for a big payout. Since they didn’t, it could mean it was just some sicko who had a thing for kids, or it could have been someone who wanted revenge on the family.”

That was a whole new angle I hadn’t even thought of. “Who would want revenge on the McKenna family?”

My question amused him. “Well, who died and made you Sherlock Holmes all of a sudden?” Thomas laughed. The waiter slipped a plate with miniature lemon curd tarts onto our table and motioned I should take one. Thomas popped a whole tart into his mouth. “Or since you’re a girl, are you going for an Agatha Christie sort of angle?”

“I saw something recently about it being the fifteenth anniversary of her going missing, and I realized I didn’t know much about the situation. Maybe it was the idea of her and me being the same age got me interested.” I wondered if Thomas had ever seen the age-enhanced photo. It was clear if he had, he hadn’t seen any resemblance, but then again he wouldn’t have been looking for one.

“Well, you’re not the only one interested in all this past history. You should talk to that fellow from the foundation if you want details. He’d likely know more than I would. He’s here at the hotel somewhere doing some of the groundwork for the big charity ball.”

“What fellow?”

Thomas scrunched up his face while he pulled the detail from his mind. “His name is Chase Parker. He works with that McKenna children’s charity. They’re doing a big event on the island to mark the anniversary. We’ve got something like twenty-five media people checking into the hotel, not to mention over a hundred bigwigs from the city. They’re hosting a charity fund-raising dinner that night with some sort of formal announcement about a bunch of hefty donations.”

I made a mental note to find Chase Parker. If he was working with the McKenna Foundation, it was possible that he would know the family, too. A little inside information never hurt. “Maybe I’ll splurge for a ticket to the event,” I said. “Do my part to help missing children.”

“Only if you’ve been saving up your tip money. Tickets are something like five hundred bucks a pop.” Thomas swallowed another small tart. “Course, the other person you should talk to is your mom.”

I sat up straighter. “My mom?”

“Sure. She was the one who cleaned the McKennas’ rooms when they were here. The police asked her a whole bunch of stuff about the family, and if she’d seen anything. The woman who worked in human resources back then made the police transcribe the whole thing for your mom’s employment record. I think she was afraid the police were going to accuse your mom of doing something. She wanted to make sure the hotel didn’t get dragged into the whole mess. Near as I can tell, they should just call HR ‘AC,’ for ass coverage.”

My mind was spinning. “My mom was a suspect?”

Thomas looked at me, his face flushed with embarrassment. “Oh lord, no. I didn’t mean to imply there was anything your mom did wrong.” I guess he was afraid I might be offended if he smeared my only law-abiding relative. “No, your mom wasn’t a suspect; they just wanted some information on the McKenna family. Course, it isn’t popular to say, especially when the family is well connected like that, but in most of these cases, the family is involved. Usually it turns out that maybe the dad had a thing for little girls, or the mom drank in the afternoons and couldn’t cope with the kid’s crying, that kind of thing.” Thomas sounded very knowledgeable about criminal motivation, as
only someone who watches
Law & Order
every night could be.

“Was there ever any indication the family was involved?” If Ava’s parents did have something to do with her going missing, it certainly was going to change the whole dynamic of any con I was planning.

Thomas waved away my concern. “Nah. I don’t think so. The mum and dad were gutted when it happened. I can still remember the mum screaming Ava’s name. I don’t think you can fake emotion like that. I think there was some question about some cousin on his side who was kinda shifty. He had a whole pile of gambling debts to all the wrong people.”

“But if he took Ava for money, then he would have had to make a ransom demand.”

“Unless he took her to punish his family for not helping him out, or if the mob guys he owed money to took her as a lesson. He didn’t have any kids of his own.” Thomas leaned back and tossed up his hands in defeat. “The whole situation was weird. It was like the kid just disappeared into thin air. No ransom note, no body, no nothing. Everyone kept thinking they would find something, but everything came up empty. There were a whole bunch of theories, and even some wacky psychic who kept claiming she was getting messages from the beyond from Ava, but nothing came of any of it.”

“What about the nanny? Wasn’t she the one with Ava when it happened?”

Thomas rubbed his chin. “The police checked her out, but
she had a stellar employment record with the McKennas, and there didn’t seem to be any motivation. She ended up losing her job when Ava went missing.”

I glanced at Thomas. His mouth was scrunched up, which only happened when something was bothering him. “Anything else about her?”

“Nah. Nothing really. Can’t say just because you don’t like someone that they’ve done anything wrong.”

“Why didn’t you like her?” I asked.

“No reason really. Maybe I was mad she didn’t like me.” He smiled. “She was a looker. I invited her to a staff party that was going on while she was here. I figured she might like a night out. It’s got to be lonely being a nanny in a situation like that. You’re not a part of the family, you’re clearly the hired help, but you spend all your time with them.”

“I take it she didn’t take you up on your offer?”

“She looked at me like she had just stepped in something nasty. She made it very clear that she wasn’t interested.” Thomas shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just that she turned me down for a date; it was like she wasn’t interested in anything to do with any of the staff here. A few of the girls that worked the desk invited her to something and she shot them down too.”

“Maybe she was just a loner.”

“Could be. At any rate, the police didn’t look at her too hard.” I started a mental to-do list based on what I’d learned from Thomas. Investigating the psychic would be an interesting angle.
If she’d staked her psychic reputation on getting messages from a dead Ava, she wouldn’t want a live one to show up. I also needed to check up on Mr. McKenna’s shifty cousin. If he owed money to loan sharks in the Seattle area, then my dad might know them. There are times when hanging around with the wrong crowd comes in handy.

I also needed to figure out how to pump my mom for information without her knowing why I wanted it. Lastly, I needed to hunt down Chase from the missing kid foundation and see if he had any other information on the family or the abduction that might help. With every heartbeat, I could feel the clock ticking down to the August first date, when my school money was due. So far, all I had was a plan to make a plan. If Brendan and I couldn’t come up with an angle to the con soon, then all this information on the mysterious missing Ava wasn’t going to do me any good.

Thomas snapped his fingers and I jumped. “Earth to Sadie,” he said with a chuckle. I must have missed what he was saying.

“Oh, sorry, I was just thinking.” I drank down the rest of the tea. “I should get going so you can finish up these receipts. Otherwise people will see you hunched over all this paperwork for the rest of the night and think you have no life.”

Thomas pushed the pile of receipts on the table into a tidy stack. “Life isn’t what other people think of you; it’s what you get accomplished. Keeping this place running isn’t too shabby of a legacy.”

“The Keppler would fall down if it weren’t for you,” I agreed, getting up from the table.

Thomas waved me off. “Nah. It would keep standing. Now mind you, it wouldn’t run nearly as well.”

“Or be as fashionable,” I added.

Thomas threw his napkin at me. “Go on, get out of here. Go pick on someone else.”

I blew him a kiss and waved to the waitstaff as I left. Thomas might tell me to get out of here, but he had no idea how far I was willing to go to get off this island. I could only hope the information he gave me was going to help.

I
f the McKenna Foundation was going to do a big media event, then I was willing to bet they were planning to use the Arbutus Ballroom. It was the largest of the four, they could easily get three hundred people in there, and the floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over a cliff, so the views were amazing.

I peeked into the Arbutus room. The curtains were drawn and the lights were off. I could see there were stacks of chairs in the corner waiting to be set up, a few tables with tablecloths sprinkled around, and a pile of audio equipment at the front.

There was a sound behind me and I heard people coming up the stairs. “If you head this way, Mr. Parker, you can see the room.”

Shit!
It was Mr. Stanbury, the general manager. If he saw me here, he was going to yell at me for being on the property.
Not to mention, I didn’t want to meet Mr. Parker wearing a T-shirt and flip-flops. That probably wouldn’t make him want to spill his guts to me. I yanked up the tablecloth and dove under the closest table just before they came around the corner.

“We’ll set up the tables for the guests over here,” Stanbury said. I heard the screech of the curtains being pulled back. “Depending on the weather, we can open up all of these French doors and people can mingle on the patio as well. We typically suggest setting up at least two buffet and bar stations with a crowd this size.”

“The McKennas would prefer to use waitstaff versus having a buffet. They don’t want guests waiting in a line.”

“Not a problem. We’ll arrange staff to circulate with hors d’oeuvres and to bring cocktails.” Stanbury snapped his fingers, and I suspected his secretary was trailing after him taking notes. Being Stanbury’s secretary would be its own special level of hell. I would rather clean toilets with my tongue than have to spend my days saying, “Yes, sir, right away, sir,” to feed his ego.

“Is it possible to set up a screen? I’d like to have a slide show running during part of the event, some photos of Ava, but also of the children the foundation has been able to reunite with their families.”

“Brilliant idea,” Stanbury said. The only thing that he liked more than people kissing his ass was a chance for him to kiss the asses of the rich and powerful. “I’d be happy to assist you with
organizing the media if you like.” Stanbury gave a chuckle. “In my position, I’ve had a lot of experience.”