Girl Taken: A Detective Kaitlyn Carr Mystery Page 4

  "Yes, I did. That's what made me wonder why or how they had enough money to invest in your business.”

  "It was $75,000. I mean, it's a lot, but it was a loan. I haven't spent most of it. It was just to bankroll setting up the app, hiring a few engineers to do certain things."

  "And what kind of app is this?" I ask, pressing my pen to the notepad and noticing just how much ink pools around as I wait for him to speak.

  "It's a banking app, probably one of the hardest ones to put together without connections. But it's basically a competitor to Venmo and PayPal, but small, more social media based, using coins instead money. It's a little bit difficult to explain. I don't have everything worked out yet."

  I nod, not very convinced of how effective or how prudent this investment was going to be. I feel bad. Generally, if the CEO of the company can't explain what it is, it's going to be somewhat of a hard sell. But then again, I'm not an expert, just a consumer of way too many digital products.

  We make our way down the marina, the largest man-made small-craft harbor in North America. Tall sailboats and power yachts fill the slips, which go for two to five grand a month.

  Someone walks up to us and introduces himself as the yachtmaster. After I show him my badge and Terry introduces himself, he shows us to the slip.

  “This all used to be marshland you know,” Terry says. “Until the 1950s when Eisenhower dredged it up and had the government build this.”

  “Hmm, didn’t know that. What kind of boat do your parents have?”

  We walk up to a magnificent towering power boat, sparkling clean.

  “It’s a 52-foot Marquis,” Terry says. The name on the side written in cursive says The Good Life.

  “How much did this cost?” I ask.

  “$600k.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot,” I say raising my eyebrows.

  "Once they sold their house and Dad sold the gym to my brother, they put it all into this. Isn’t she a beauty?”

  I examine the sleek curves, modern stylish design, it’s luxurious in every sense of the word.

  The yachtmaster doesn't let us inside because we don't have a warrant, but Terry pulls out his phone and shows me the interior.

  “It has three staterooms, two heads on the lower deck, a salon, forward dinette, and a galley to starboard on the main deck,” he rattles off the details. “There’s a separate stairway from the salon to both the cockpit and the flying bridge, which has an L shaped settee, wet bar, and of course, a helm station with two helm seats.”

  “Helm station?” I ask.

  “A wheel, tiller, and the whole apparatus that’s used to steer the boat,” Terry says.

  The other terms like settee, starboard, and flying bridge also go over my head, but I don’t ask for clarification.

  “There is also a washer and dryer, and cameras, hydraulic swim platform with the dinghy,” Terry continues. “It is beautiful.”

  “$600k? Are you sure about the price?”

  "No, not exactly. They were a little bit cagey about it. It might've been more."

  Looking at the sly expression on Terry's face, I decide to call in a personal favor with James Ware of the LA Sheriff's Department, who technically has jurisdiction over the marina. He probably thinks I'm calling for personal reasons since we went on a few dates a long time ago and he answers the phone in an upbeat friendly way. But I get straight to the point and the tone of his voice shifts.

  “You think you can come by?” I ask.

  He hesitates for a few moments but then agrees.

  "Is there any way that your folks just took off for any reason whatsoever?” I ask Terry while we wait for James.

  “They were planning on selling this boat," Terry says. "They had buyers coming in and out."

  "Are there are a lot of people who can afford to buy something like this?"

  "In LA, yes. And they were trying to save money and not go with a broker, so they were doing all the showings themselves."

  "Is there any chance that they're on the boat right now, just having a good time? Maybe they had a few too many bottles of wine and are sleeping it off."

  "That's what I thought at first. I mean, they enjoy their time off, and they know how to relax. But you have to believe me. It's been four days, and they wouldn't let me worry this much. I left messages, texts. I reached out on social media. I really think something is wrong."

  Terry paces back and forth, cracking his knuckles. I look him up and down. He looks genuinely concerned, upset. He doesn’t appear to be someone who is making any of this up. But I’ve been in this line of work long enough to know that I should expect the unexpected.

  James arrives dressed in a casual pair of slacks and a matching suit coat that he swings over his shoulders as he approaches. He gives me a quick smile and then drops it once he shakes hands with Terry. I fill him in on some of the details and know that this will have to be a cooperative effort between the LAPD and the sheriff’s department if something indeed happened to the Islington couple.

  “So, will you authorize a welfare check," James asks Terry, "since this is their boat and a place of residence up until a certain point?"

  "Yeah, for sure. Is that going to give you permission to get on?"

  "I think that will be enough for the harbormaster,” James says.

  This time, we have permission to get on the boat. The sheriff’s department has jurisdiction, and we're all eager to see whether they're on the boat or not.

  The harbormaster opens the gate, and we walk down the dock, James hops on board with one quick motion like someone who's used to yachting. I, on the other hand, take my time since I have never stepped foot on a vessel this big, just small little boats around the lake.

  James extends his hand to me, and once Terry is on board as well we carefully make our way around the top, looking for evidence of any misconduct. We look for anything broken, turned over, any signs of blood. But everything seems…normal.

  "It's too neat," Terry says. "They were living on this boat. It’s so clean."

  "But they were selling it, right?" I ask.

  He nods.

  "Don't you have to make it all spic-and-span like you do with condos and houses?” James asks.

  "Yeah, I guess.” He shrugs.

  "You don't think they cleaned it up for that?" James presses.

  Terry bites his lower lip.

  I walk back around and peer through the glass leading to the cabin on the other side.

  8

  The harbormaster, a large rotund man, fumbles with the keys and even drops them once prior to opening the cabin. He tells us that the Islingtons gave him the spare key because they were planning on selling the boat and asked him to show it to a few people if they weren't available.

  We walk through the main door into a spacious living room. The cabinets are all dark cherry wood and as clean as a showroom. Not one thing is out of place and this hardly looks like a live aboard vessel.

  Terry shakes his head in disbelief.

  "What's going on? What do you see?" I ask, reminding myself to handle him with kid gloves to avoid the risk of him completely breaking on me.

  "This isn't right. Something is wrong,” he mumbles, blood draining away from his face.

  “Like what?" James asks, taking a step closer to him.

  James is on the shorter side, with broad shoulders and thick jowls. He carries a lot of his weight in his stomach, in his neck, and he prefers to cut his auburn hair into a crew cut like the kind favored by the army. Thick red freckles cover the bridge of his nose and the entirety of his arms. Though he's not drop-dead gorgeous with a chiseled jaw, there’s a kindness to him that I don't see often in men in this field of work.

  He doesn't curse, and he has great manners. Please. Thank you. Go right ahead, are words he says often. Sometimes, I wonder if he’s from another era.

  One time, when we went out for drinks and I’d had one too many, I asked him why he was so nice, so polite.

 
“I mean, why even bother?” I asked.

  "Being kind is the easiest thing to be, so why not start there?” James said. Looking at him now, I wonder how much sadness I would've saved myself if I had given him a chance. But I only had eyes for Thomas, and it was that that led me to the darkness that I’d experienced for so long.

  "Something is wrong here," Terry says, shaking his head. "I mean, Ruth liked to keep things clean, but this is sterile. It smells like bleach."

  My sense of smell isn't that great, but even I can smell it.

  We make our way around the boat. There are three large rooms, appointed in mahogany all around, two bathrooms on either side, and a modern upgraded kitchen with all of the luxuries of a nice condo including a microwave oven and a dishwasher. I carefully look for any drops of blood, anything even a little bit out of place, but find nothing. The clothes are still in the closets, for the most part. There are pans and cutlery in the kitchen drawers, and from the looks of it, nothing is out of place.

  Terry taps his hand nervously on the side of his pants, shaking his head.

  “Maybe they cleaned the bathroom and spilled some bleach?” James offers. Terry glares at him but says nothing.

  When Terry looks away, James gives me a shrug. He's not wrong.

  I don't know how people usually keep their boats when they live on them, but it does seem particularly well-kept.

  However, this boat is up for sale.

  "Could you get one of those crime scene investigators to come out with a luminal?” Terry asks.

  “There isn't any sign of breaking and entering, Terry,” I say, slowly parsing my words. "There isn't any blood anywhere. There's no damage. I don't have any good reason to bring them out."

  He nods like he understands, but I can tell that he's disappointed.

  "Do you seriously think something happened here?" I ask.

  "No. I mean, obviously it doesn't look like it. It's just, where could they be?"

  He looks out at the ocean, looking into the blue and then quickly turning away to face me again.

  "They're probably not out there,” I say, taking a step closer to him and wanting to put my arm around him. "Let's just hope that they went on a trip somewhere. Or perhaps they just decided to, I don't know, take a break."

  "Do people usually do that?" Terry asks, turning to James. "Do people really take breaks from life? I mean, you see it all the time on all these cop shows as possible explanations, but why would they need to leave? They have a loving family, we're all close, there's absolutely no reason."

  He rushes away from me and goes out to the main deck. James follows.

  "You know what? It happens a lot more than you think,” James says quietly. "That's why cops talk about it."

  "People get tired of life?"

  "People get tired of paying their bills, of being the same people, they take off. They want something new."

  "I know that we don't want to think of it that way. Nobody wants a mother to leave her six-year-old and just move to Salt Lake City under an assumed name and start a new life, but it happens a lot more than we give it credit for. Dads leave as well. On occasion, they leave together. You don't know everything about your parents' life. They could have money issues, they could have other problems. That's where we come in. We're going to talk to people, we're going to look through their computer, through their digital fingerprints; we're going to try to get to the bottom of this. But if they left on their own, there's nothing really that we can do. They're adults and they don't have to be in contact if they don't want to be.”

  "You know, you may be right. Some people do leave,” Terry says, shooting his eyes straight up at James and letting his folded arms fall to his sides. "But not my parents. My parents loved me, and they loved my brother, and my wife, and the grandchild that they're about to have, they would never take off and make us worry. Something terrible has happened to them, and I expect you, both of you, to find out what that is."

  He walks away and gets off the boat, disappearing down the dark street. James and I exchange looks and take another look around the boat.

  We wear gloves and touch very few things.

  "What do you think?" I ask.

  “I have no idea."

  “Terry seems to be on it though,” I say. "I mean, he's certain that his parents wouldn’t leave."

  "Yeah, but that's the thing, he doesn't know all the pressures they are under."

  "What are you talking about?" I ask.

  "It's like I told him. We have to dig deeper. Who are the Islingtons?

  “Do they like to gamble? Do they like to drink? What are their vices? The people that they present to their children, that may not be who they really are. What were they doing in Mexico really? Were they just celebrating their retirement, or was it more than that? And if it was just a retirement, why did they suddenly come back?"

  He's talking out loud to me or rather at me and I let my mind wonder about everything that we can't possibly know about the people that we call our family.

  My own family is no different. I thought that my mother and my sister and I were close, especially after the death of my father, but we all kept secrets. We were always on our best behavior around each other and there's so much about my mother that I never understood, and I’m not sure if I ever will.

  My throat closes up. The more days that pass, the more it feels like I'm never going to see my sister again. The worst part is that she never even got to live, not really.

  Who would I be if I had stopped my life at thirteen? I would have never become a detective. I'd never have become this adult woman that I am now. I want that for my sister. I want her to live a full life, full of joy, and sorrow, and fun. She deserves that and I know that I have to find her no matter what.

  "Did you happen to find any laptops in their apartment?" James asks, breaking my concentration.

  "They didn't have much furniture. Apparently they just moved in, but a laptop was there."

  “Good. Take it to your lab and have them run some tests, maybe we can get some clues about where they went in their email."

  9

  When I don't know where to go, when I feel lost, I take myself on a walk. It's something that I got used to over the years. Running, especially when you haven't done it for a while, can feel strange and laborious, difficult. But a walk? You just step out your door, take a few steps, and then take a few more.

  It's a warm, muggy evening, and as I walk past my neighbors' tall hedges, I see the little bugs clinging onto the leaves taking in the precipitation from the sprinklers. I live in a one-bedroom apartment on Willoughby Avenue in West Hollywood, and it's a mixed-income neighborhood. There are pockets of poverty, and there are vast areas of extreme wealth where a thousand square foot house costs $2 million and has a pool.

  I walk down to Melrose Avenue past the tattoo shops and the hipster clothing stores. There are vintage stores all around, full of clothing bought out in East LA, repurposed somewhat, and then resold for nearly triple the price. As I window shop, a big garbage truck barrels down the road. The cacophony of the metal-on-metal sound sucks up all of the noise and energy on the street. Suddenly, I remember growing up in the small town of Big Bear Lake and imagining my life in LA. Let me tell you, the noise was not something that I ever took into consideration.

  One of the main reasons I live so close to Melrose Avenue is because of the show Melrose Place. I spent summers watching reruns, getting pulled in by the friendships and the drama along with millions of other viewers.

  As an impressionable teenager, I watched something like that and I thought, “I wonder if my life could be that way. I wonder what my life will be like when I finally get to make decisions about where I can live and who I can be." All of those teen shows were what the YouTube generation would call aspirational content. You consume it because you like to imagine yourself living that life. That's the reason that I moved to New York, and that's the reason that I later moved back to LA.

 
New York didn't exactly live up to the expectations that were portrayed on sound stages in Los Angeles. Besides, I realized that I was over winters and I wasn’t nearly as social as I really thought I would be. Having grown up in a small lake town but more importantly in a small house, I wanted more space, and even now my apartment seems a little bit cramped.

  Sometimes I think about wide-open spaces and what would it be like to live somewhere out there, perhaps the desert by Joshua Tree about an hour on the other side of the mountains from my hometown. I've gone hiking there, climbed the gigantic boulders, and the thing that I loved the most was how big the sky was, just spread open in all directions. It makes you feel insignificant, but in a good way.

  I get about two miles away from home before I turn around. My legs feel good, and I suddenly have newfound pride in myself. That's the thing about taking a walk. It's just a little bit of energy and just enough to remind you of just how life could be.

  My friend, Sydney, the person that I'm probably closest to on the force, has always said that I'm too introverted and introspective for my own good for this job. I think too much, and I always think back to how the cases I solve or don't solve relate to me.

  "If you keep it up," she likes to joke, "you'll end up a drunk, the stereotype of the lost detective seeking answers to questions that cannot be answered." She might be right, but I can't very well control my nature or my need to seek answers. So, what I do instead is try to avoid alcohol.

  I get back home and Luke is gone, and my thoughts return to my sweet, innocent, missing sister, and all of the unanswered questions about her missing friend as well.

  Who took her? Who took them? Why?

  Are they still alive? Will I ever see her again?

  I shouldn't have bought the rosé at Trader Joe’s when I did this week's grocery shopping. The rose gold bottle with cursive text on the front calls to me and I can’t make myself look away. I can’t not pour myself a glass.