“Sweet as sugar, that girl,” Nate said, rolling his eyes. Apparently Jennifer’s bitchiness was known by all.
Before leaving Nate urged me to stop back into the café soon. “It starts to get rather lonely around here this time of year, and I know Helena would love the company.”
So I promised to visit during the week but, again, wondered why Nate and Helena—both so outgoing and friendly—chose to live on this island. I deduced that Adam must have been paying them a bundle. But did the island really need a “manager” and someone to run such a low-volume café? Perhaps Adam wanted them here to ease his own loneliness? Or were Nate and Helena out here because they were hiding something? Maybe something related to the mystery? This last thought reminded me that I had yet to call my dad to ask him about the call records from the pay phone that had once stood at the Harbour Falls bank.
I grabbed my phone and, catching my dad at his office at City Hall, summarized for him what I’d found in the case files. “Do you think they’re still floating around somewhere?” I asked when I’d finished.
“I can look into it, but it’s been a long time. Those records—if they ever existed—were probably lost or destroyed.”
Thinking out loud, I blurted, “Funny the police never followed up.”
My dad was silent, and I suspected he was bristling. “Our police department never had the kind of manpower needed to head up that kind of an investigation, Maddy. You know that.”
“I know,” I conceded. It was true; the Hannigan disappearance had strained all of the resources in our small community.
“Anyway,” I continued, “we know what time she made the call. If we could just get a list of numbers that were dialed out that night, we could find out who Chelsea was talking to.”
“I’ll see what I can do, honey,” my dad promised, and then we quickly wrapped things up, since he was running late to a community meeting of some sort.
Fueled by the progress I was already making on this cold case, I fired up my laptop and began to scour my files for a good, clear photo of J.T. O’Brien, one I could take to Billy’s.
Browsing through the old photos brought back waves of memories. I randomly clicked a thumbnail to expand a picture from back when I was fifteen. It was a close-up of Ami and me, smiling and sunburned at the local pool. The caption read: Red as Lobsters—But Happy as Clams. I recalled that day perfectly; we’d forgotten to bring sunscreen, and consequently had been burned to a crisp. But damn, we’d had fun.
Still smiling, I clicked another image—this one was of J.T. and Ami standing in a line at a local amusement park. I’d caught them off-guard as the three of us, so close back then, had waited to ride what had been deemed, at the time, to be the latest and greatest roller coaster in the area. I stared at the photo and shook my head. Where had the time gone? How had my friends changed so much?
With a sigh, I closed the image and opened a folder labeled “Summer after Graduation.” And it was there I stumbled upon the mother lode of J.T. photos. Most had been taken down on Cove Beach, a few days following commencement. I remembered that day like it was yesterday. One of my graduation gifts from my father had been a digital camera, and J.T. and I had gone down to the beach to try it out.
There were several photos of J.T. goofing around near the water, but I ultimately chose a clear headshot, a sliver of blue sky the only background. I sent the photo to the printer and wondered what had happened to the friendly, shy boy I’d once called a friend. Was he the mystery man who’d been with Chelsea at Billy’s? Doing drugs together? If so, what kind of relationship had they had? Had their commonality of substance abuse brought them together? Had it torn them apart? After my strange interaction with J.T. on the ferry, it wasn’t hard to imagine something minor setting him off. There was something different about him now, something broken. Like a part of who he’d once been was lost. So maybe it wasn’t so farfetched to imagine he had played a role in Chelsea’s disappearance?
In any case, the suspect list was growing. Because if it turned out J.T. was once involved with Chelsea, then Jennifer was a suspect too. She loved J.T. and would have been insanely jealous had she known. Had she retaliated? Revenge was the oldest motive known to mankind.
I couldn’t rule out Adam’s sister, Trina, either. According to the case files, she hated Chelsea and hadn’t wanted her brother to marry her. Why? Was it reason enough to have given her a motive? I’d have to find out.
And then there was Adam. If Chelsea had been blackmailing him, as rumored, then he may have had the strongest motive of them all. And that’s what scared me.
The ride to Cove Beach on Monday morning was piloted not by Jennifer or J.T. but by Brody Weston, Jennifer’s cousin. As he helped me on board, I tried to remember Brody’s story. He’d been orphaned as a toddler and had come to live with Jennifer’s family. In a way he was more like a brother to Jennifer. But, to my delight, Brody was nothing like his cousin. Nor was he like J.T.
Courteous from the moment I stepped on the ferry, he asked a few perfunctory questions and then left me alone. This was just as well since I was stressing out.
After all, I was heading to Billy’s—not the nicest place around—to more or less conduct an interrogation. And I had no experience in questioning people. Sure, I’d written enough about it, but I had no idea how to effectively do it in real life, especially without
