TURTLE DOVE (Alton Rhode Mysteries Book 7) (8 page)

CHAPTER 10 - THE BROTHER

Six Weeks Later

It was one of those fall days when it feels like everything is right in the world.

I was walking back to my car after indulging myself with a Grizzly Burger in the Bear’s Den at Wagner College. The Den is the oldest and least modern of the school’s dining facilities, which are chrome, glass, plastic and salad bar palaces in comparison. The Den is in Wagner’s original administration building and the nearest salad is on the building’s ivy-covered walls, unless you count the lettuce, onions, tomatoes and pickles that sometimes, but not always, accompany the meat. Before lunch I had spent almost two hours in Wagner’s athletic facility, where I had lifetime membership thanks to some favors I’d done for the school president, and figured my constitution could stand a Grizzly Burger.

Wagner’s campus, high on Staten Island’s Grymes Hill overlooking New York Harbor, has to be one of the prettiest in the nation. Its hundreds of trees were a riot of fall colors. It was brisk without being uncomfortable, and many of the coeds were filling out sweaters. I wasn’t looking at all that many trees.

My cell phone beeped. It was Alice.

“I was just thinking about you,” I said.

“Alton, are you busy today?”

There was something in her voice.

“No.” That was truthful. It was Monday. Abby was doing some research for me but I was not actively working a case. My whole week was probably free. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Can you come into the city?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Samuel Dickson called me.” I drew a blank. Alice sensed it. “Anna’s brother. She’s the young girl who stayed with us in Bald Head. I’m meeting him this afternoon.”

“That’s nice.”

Somehow I knew it wasn’t.

“No. Anna is missing. He’s worried sick. And so am I.”

***

“Did you contact the police?”

“Of course, Mr. Rhode. The Bald Head Island cops were polite but after the season is over they only have a token force. I think the chief made an effort because they did find a couple of people, a ticket agent and a deckhand on the ferry, who thought they remembered Anna going out to the island. And there is a jitney that still runs occasionally and a driver said he also thought he saw her on it. But no one remembers where she went, and no one remembers her leaving. But the chief said that didn’t mean she didn’t leave, just that no one saw her.”

The three of us were sitting in a coffee shop on Christopher Street in the West Village. Both she and Sam Dickson were there before me and Alice had quickly brought me up to speed. Sam Dickson had not heard from his sister in a month. He’d tried to contact her repeatedly, to no avail, and finally flew home from his mission in Ecuador.

“She didn’t rent a golf cart?”

“No. I wish she had, because she would have to show identification and use a credit card as a deposit.”

“How did she get from school to Southport?”

“I spoke to her roommates, there are two of them, and they said she was planning to take a bus. I checked with the bus company but she must have used cash, because they didn’t have a record. Same with the ferry ticket agent in Southport. Anna always used cash when she could. We’re not big on using credit cards unless absolutely necessary.”

“Did you check with the bus driver?”

“I didn’t, but the police chief on Bald Head contacted the cops in Southport and they checked it out. One driver said she might have been on his bus to Southport but neither he nor any other driver remembers her leaving. They were shown photos. Again, the police said that didn’t prove much. I even went to the State Police. They put out her picture and went over the same ground the local police did. Same results. They say a lot of girls go missing every year. But without anything to go on, like in a kidnapping with a ransom demand, or …”  Sam’s eyes welled up. “… a body, there is not much they can do.”

Alice reached across the table and patted his arm.

“I know this is hard,” she said.

I finished my coffee and signaled the waitress for more. She came over and filled all our cups.

“It’s only Anna and me. Our folks were killed in a small plane crash coming back from a church conference in Idaho. My dad was a minister. I was in college and Anna was in high school. We received an insurance settlement and that kept us going in school. I paid off the mortgage on our house. I mean, we have some family, but they are spread all over the country, and I was old enough to take care of Anna and we wanted to stay together. I’ve contacted everyone I could think of, family and friends, but no one has heard anything from Anna. They’re all concerned, of course, but what can they do?”

Sam Dickson had sandy hair and a ruddy complexion that I attributed to a lot of outdoor work at his mission. I could see some of Anna in his features. Like with her, I could sense an innate decency and solidness in him. I was taken with him, much as I was taken with his sister. I knew what was coming next, so I got right to it.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You’re a private eye, right? You find people.”

“He’s one of the best at that,” Alice said.

I wish she hadn’t. I don’t like to get people’s hopes up. It was true, of course. I did seem to have the knack. I’d once located a man in witness protection. And not by accident either, like Tony Soprano when he bumped into — and bumped off — a mob snitch during a college visit with his daughter. I tracked my man down. Or, rather, I tracked his still-warm corpse down. Maks Kalugin, who was tracking me, had stopped by first. Still, it was the pinnacle of my gumshoe career and I got a lot of credit for my accomplishment, from both sides of the law, and word seeped out that I was a modern Natty Bumpo. Truth be told, I didn’t mind the seeping. It was good for business. Usually paying business, which I suspected was not the case in this instance.

“I don’t have much money,” Sam Dickson said. “The insurance is gone. I get by on my church salary, some of which I send to Anna. She works part-time as a tutor.”

I was right.

“That won’t be a problem,” Alice said.

I was really right.

“Listen, Sam, I’ll do what I can. I can go over all the ground the police did. I’ll start at her school. I’ll need the names of her roommates. The people she works for as a tutor. I’ll need Anna’s contact information and anything else you can think of. Her photo, of course. I’ll make copies, so I can show them around.”

He was shaking his head.

“Mr. Rhode. I’ll give you a photo and whatever else I have, but I don’t think you have to do all that. I’m sure Anna went to Bald Head and never left. Something happened to her there. Something to do with Ashleigh Harper.”

“Ashleigh Harper?”

“Show him the letter,” Alice said, gently.

He reached into his jacket pocket and brought it out.

CHAPTER 11 - THE LETTER

I started reading:

Dearest Sam,

I loved your last letter. Emails are fine, but they can’t replace “snail mail”! I’ve kept all of Mom and Dad’s letters, and yours, of course. Your handwriting is still atrocious, which suits me fine, since I’m sure I’m the only person on the planet who can decipher it! That makes your missives all the more precious. It’s like having a secret correspondent! You would have fit in well with the Navajo code talkers who worked with the Marines in World War II.

I smiled. Anna’s beautiful script, on the other hand, was easy to read.

Enough teasing, at least about your penmanship. You keep mentioning a girl you are working with. Marisa. Can I infer anything? Say, a blossoming romance? If so, she must be a heck of a nice girl. Can you send a photo? Or is it too soon for that sort of thing? If not, please be serious. The last time I bugged you about your love life, and asked for a picture, you sent me a picture of a warthog! Very funny.

Speaking of Mom and Dad, you must know how proud they would be of the fine work you are doing. They left us too soon, but I just know they are smiling down on you. I can’t wait until I am able to join you at the mission. I have been accepted at Alliance College, the Christian school just north of Manhattan, and will be able to do my graduate work at their campus in Greenwich Village. I start in January. I have a scholarship that will pay for tuition and books and will start looking for a place to live very soon. I know Manhattan is expensive, but the Registrar told me that she can help me find roommates. I also met a wonderful woman who teaches at Barnard and she told me to call her if I needed help getting settled in the Big Apple. Her name is Dr. Alice Watts and she and the man she is seeing took me under their wing when I went to Bald Head Island to interview Ashleigh Harper for my dissertation. I know I emailed you about that! The man is a private investigator in New York and pulled some strings to get me into the Harper luncheon. Then they insisted that I stay with them rather than going back to school at night by bus. They were lifesavers. I cooked dinner for them and made your favorite apple pie. It was a smash, if I do say so myself. I bet your mouth is watering right now!

I did meet the alleged Harper woman. I’ll explain the “alleged” in a moment. But I did not get an interview. I did get an email address from the lady who is the woman’s lawyer and handles her affairs. She told me to send any further questions I had to her. I probably wouldn’t have even gotten that far except Mr. Rhode, he’s the private eye, all but said he’d barge into their house. Got to love New York chutzpah! (I hope I spelled that right; sometimes I do miss email spellcheck.)

Anyway, I sent a bunch of questions, but all I got back was boilerplate replies. They were pretty worthless for my needs, so I took the bull by the horns and went back to Bald Head. In the off-season and pretty chilly and I was able to get an inexpensive room at a local motel right on the island and then “staked out” the house. It was easy. It’s kind of isolated but no one bothers a girl (bundled up!) lying on the beach and I waited until I was sure the old woman was alone and then walked to the back of the house and yelled up to her where she was sitting on the deck. Actually, she was not sitting. She was leaning over the rail smoking a cigarette! I thought that a bit odd, but we all have our little secret vices, don’t we?

I’m afraid I told a little white lie and said that Alexandra Nidus — that’s the lawyer — told me I could ask questions. Well, she did, in a matter of speaking, just not exactly in the way I implied. It was just a little white lie.

The old woman seemed a bit nervous, but she invited me up! I think she was lonely. I thought she might have been slightly tipsy, as well. I went in through the sliders in the back. No one else was there. The first thing I noticed in the living room was a big birdcage! With a parrot! That was when I first sensed that something was not right. I couldn’t imagine Ashleigh Harper ever countenancing locking up a bird.

I went up to the third floor. The old woman was indeed tipsy; she was drinking Scotch! Out of a paper bathroom cup. Said it was for medicinal purposes. Doctor’s orders. She offered me some. You know me. I never touch hard liquor, but I wanted to keep her talking so I accepted a cup. Just between you, me and the lamppost, it wasn’t half bad. Don’t worry. I didn’t even finish my first one.

We got to talking and then that’s when things got weird. Very weird.

Now, for all those ‘alleged’. As incredible as it sounds, I don’t think the woman I spoke to is Ashleigh Harper! I seemed to know more about Turtle Dove through my research than she did as the author. I mean, she got most of the generalities right, but when it came to specifics, like identifying who she modeled some characters after, she became very vague. I’ve read old biographies of Harper, and she readily admitted that she drew on real people for her inspiration. But there is more. For example, I asked her how long she had been interested in ornithology. She replied that she never got involved with cults. I think she got it confused with Scientology! I was going to make an issue out of it but then I thought perhaps she was having a ‘senior moment’ or something. Although it would be a heck of a senior moment. Harper mentions the study of birds many times in Turtle Dove, and even uses the scientific name several times.

Then I brought up bird watching. Harper is a famous bird watcher. She even dedicated her book to Ludlow Griscom, Roger Tory Peterson and Neltje Blanchan, pioneers of bird watching on the eastern seaboard. But when I spoke to her, she did not have a clue who they were!

I was beginning to think I was nuts, and she was so nervous she lit up another cigarette. That’s when it hit me. Not that she smoked. She grew up in an age when everyone did. But she held the cigarette in her right hand and flicked her ashes in a cup the same way. That’s hard to do if you are left-handed. And Ashleigh Harper is left-handed! That’s in the bios. She was a bit of a tomboy and was a left-handed pitcher on her high-school girls’ softball team. I went back and looked it up. Then I remembered that she signed my book with her right hand.

It was all too much. I was about to say something when I heard the front door open, and then some people talking. I’m pretty sure it was the lady lawyer and the security guard who gave me such a hard time at the luncheon. I thought the old lady was going to have a stroke, she got so scared, and I wasn’t supposed to be there, so I went out the back way and ran up the beach.

If there is a rational explanation for all this, I haven’t been able to figure it out. I hope I’m wrong, but the fact is that Harper’s latest book, The Lighthouse Chronicles, is terrible, at least when compared to Turtle Dove. I say that reluctantly, because I’ve always revered Harper. But it’s shallow, with cardboard characters and no social relevance. I think there is something funny going on. In good conscience I can’t finish my thesis on Turtle Dove and Harper without at least getting an explanation. So, I’m heading back to Bald Head Island. This time I want to speak to ‘Harper’ in the presence of her lawyer. I certainly don’t want to get myself sued by making false accusations.

I’ll let you know what they say when I get back to school.

Love,

Your wonderful, charming, gorgeous and modest sister,

Anna Banana

PS: Please take care of yourself, Sam Sam!  

When I looked up, Sam Dickson said, “Those are our pet names for each other.”

I glanced at Alice. I knew what she was thinking.

This probably was not going to end up well for the Dicksons.