Romeo's Tell (A disappearance mystery turned international thriller) Page 3

  She heard the boys screaming, but they were too far away and were shouting at the same time. She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but she could tell they were very excited.

  Then she saw the writing on the yellow ball. In black sharpie was written, “You are cordially invited to a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York the Saturday after next.” Now she understood what the boys were so excited about.

  She looked up from the unconventional, round, yellow invitation. The boys were still jumping all around. Chad was not moving, simply looking at her. It felt to her almost like she could see into his eyes from way out in center field. She wondered if he felt the same way. She hoped he did.

  That beautiful smile came to her lips without her even thinking about it. She answered the invitation, nodding vigorously, her radiant smile and sparkling eyes stirring Chad from almost 300 feet away.

  The boys went wild all over again.

  Chapter 7

  Now

  It was a Friday morning, 10:00 AM. Detective Tom Drake of the Syracuse PD Cold Case Unit was looking forward to his long overdue, two-week vacation, scheduled to start on Monday. Sitting across the desk from him was an attractive woman in her late thirties, who was visibly tense, and who had insisted on seeing him today.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee before we get started?” Drake asked Jane Mannix.

  “No. I’m fine. Thank You.”

  “Well, I’m going to grab one for myself if you don’t mind,” Drake said, getting up from his chair.

  He heard Jane softly say, “Of course,” as he walked over to a small credenza in the far corner of his even smaller office and poured himself a cup. Drake was a six-footer, in his early forties and had been in unusually good shape about fifteen years and thirty pounds ago. He grabbed a packet of Sweet and Low and returned to his desk.

  Retaking his seat while initiating the obligatory sweetener-pack shaking ritual, Drake employed a classic opening. “Okay then, Ms. Mannix, what’s this all about?”

  Jane sat up straighter in her chair and looked directly into Drake’s eyes. “Are you familiar with the Jill Paulson case?”

  Drake took a few seconds to check his memory banks as he tore open the sweetener packet and poured it into his coffee. “Well, I know it’s one of our oldest missing person cold cases. Fortunately, we don’t have all that many unsolved cases like it here in our city. Young lady in her early twenties disappeared—uh, sometime in the mid ‘80s I believe. I’d have to review the case file for the details,” he admitted.

  Jane nodded “Well, Jill Paulson is—or was—my older sister. It was actually in 1987 that she disappeared—July 25, 1987. The lead investigator at the time was Lieutenant John Decker.” She paused and Drake took the opportunity to provide some feedback.

  “Yeah, I know Decker. He retired a couple of months after I started here. Good man, and a good cop.”

  Jane nodded. “Yes, he did the best he could.” She took on a vacant expression as she steeled herself against the painful memory wave she felt swelling. The months and years of not knowing. The horrible hole left in her life and the lives of her parents, filled only by anxiety and deepening sorrow.

  She dragged herself back from the void and continued. “The police never had anything solid to go on. No real clues at all. But yesterday . . . ,” she began to say as she removed from her purse a plastic zip-lock bag containing an unfolded, brown piece of paper with torn edges, “my son found this note.”

  Jane briefly explained how Davy Mannix had discovered the note, then placed the bagged parchment on Drake’s desktop. She slid it over to Drake with the reverence of an archeologist handling a priceless papyrus document from millennia past.

  Drake began to study the note, first noticing the coarse brown paper and torn edges and then picking up on the fact that the note was dated 7/25/87. He pointed to the date and looked up at Jane. “Isn’t that the same date—”

  Jane cut him off. “Yes. That is a note written by my sister, Jill, on the day she disappeared, twenty-four years ago.”

  Chapter 8

  Tom Drake’s veteran detective eyes studied the age-tinged note.

  7/25/87

  Dear Chad,

  I’m truly sorry, but I will have to break our dinner date for tonight. Maybe I’ll call home and explain later.

  All My Love,

  Jill

  “Of course, we’ll have the lab do a full workup on this,” he said. “Who else has touched it?”

  “Only my son. Before I even looked at it, he suggested I not touch it. We used a pair of tweezers to put it inside the zip-lock bag.”

  “Smart boy.”

  She smiled briefly. “Yes, he is.”

  Drake rubbed his chin as he sorted through his thoughts regarding the old, ragged-edged piece of brown paper. “As far as the actual content of the note, one obvious question is where your sister was going that night and why she had to change her plans. Do you know?”

  “No idea. As far as I knew, she was just going to be at home.” Jane’s face tensed and she seemed very uneasy answering this question. For the moment, Drake simply took note and pressed on.

  “I’m sure this is in the files, but who was the last one to see her?”

  “My mother. Jill was over to her house for dinner the night before.”

  “I’d like to talk with your mother, of course.”

  “I wish you could, but I’m afraid she passed away about a year ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jane nodded. “Thank you.”

  “What about work? Would she have gone to work that day?”

  “It was a Saturday, so no.”

  Drake nodded and took a sip of his coffee. “I’m assuming that Decker completely checked out this Chad who is addressed in the note. Was that her boyfriend at the time?”

  Even without his years of experience, Drake would have easily sensed the tension Jane Mannix was fighting in responding to this last question.

  Jane intentionally kept her response brief. “Her fiancé actually, Chad Swan.”

  The tension gripping Jane was palpable now and Drake was virtually certain she was holding something back. “Ms. Mannix, any thoughts you may have on this could help. What is it you’re concerned about?”

  “It may be nothing and I don’t want to cause trouble for anyone who is innocent and who was devastated just as much as my family and I were by Jill’s disappearance.”

  Drake looked directly at Jane with sincere eyes. “Ms. Mannix, please!”

  Jane glanced down at Drake’s desk and started thinking about inconsequential things like how old his pencil sharpener looked. She realized the stress she was feeling was making her mind wander in flight from what she didn’t want to think about. Drake gave her a minute to sort out her thoughts.

  Eventually she pulled herself together. “I was only eleven when my sister disappeared, but I remember all of what was said and all we went through trying to find her like it was yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry. I know that must be difficult.”

  “It is, but the pain is not what I’m concerned about right now.”

  Drake waited with questioning eyes.

  “It’s about Chad,” she finally let out.

  “Okay,” Drake said, gently. “What about him?”

  “We all loved him like he was part of the family. I know he would never have hurt Jill.”

  “Okay, but . . . what are you not telling me?”

  “It’s just that I know he never said anything about having dinner plans for that night. He had been out of town and got back around seven o’clock. He said that he and Jill had just been planning a quiet evening at home. Why would he ever have lied about something like that?”

  Drake was quiet now, but the wheels of his detective brain were turning. A number of possibilities flashed through his mind. The most straightforward explanation was that Jane Mannix was simply mistaken. It could be as simple as a long-term m
isunderstanding of something she heard as an eleven-year-old girl. Then again, maybe there was more to it. Perhaps a love triangle? Chad gets wind that Jill is seeing someone else, loses his temper, and does something in the heat of passion that he normally wouldn’t do. Unfortunate, but Drake had seen it before. In that case, this guy Chad would have to have been very good at covering his tracks.

  Drake knew it would not be at all appropriate to share any of these musings with Jane Mannix. “I’ll have to review the case file in detail to determine what this might mean. We’ll need to talk with this Chad Swan again. Are you still in contact with him?”

  “No. He took it very hard when Jill disappeared. We all did. We all worked so hard to find her. But eventually, there was no where left to look. We spoke with Chad less and less and then he seemed to go into some kind of depression. After a while, he just sort of faded away. I know he did eventually marry and he has a daughter.”

  “Are you in contact with her?”

  “No, I only know that her first name is Morgan and that she’s in her early twenties now. That’s it.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll find him. In the meantime, if you think of anything else, please give me a call.” He gave her a couple of his cards.

  “I will. Thank you,” Jane said, as she stood to make her exit.

  There were actually many concerns rolling around in Jane’s head that she did not share with Drake. Most disturbing among these was what it would mean if Chad had actually done something to hurt Jill.

  But the strongest of Jane’s feelings had to do with not wanting to cause problems for Chad. She thought of Chad—still—as one of the finest people she had ever known. She felt like she had just ratted on him without giving him a chance to explain or defend himself. But she was sure she was correctly remembering what Chad had said.

  After Jane Mannix left, Drake prepared himself to make a difficult phone call: one to his wife to tell her their vacation would need to be postponed—for the third time in as many months.

  Chapter 9

  Then

  Jill’s margarita was frozen, Chad’s on the rocks, both rimmed with salt. They raised their glasses in toast to a fun afternoon, having gotten John and John Quincy back home in plenty of time after taking them for a quick stop at McDonald’s.

  They sat at a table on the patio of Cola del Lago—“Tail of the Lake”—a rundown establishment that appeared to be crumbling around its patrons but had the three most important things going for it: good food, cold drinks, and killer location. In this case, that meant being situated on Lookout Point at the apex of what was known as the Northside Triangle of Inlet Island. The view from the patio looked out over Cayuga Inlet and the southern tip of Cayuga lake, the longest of New York’s Finger Lakes and one of the many features that made Ithaca such a beautiful place.

  Jill took the first sip of her frozen concoction and smiled at Chad as she asked about the boys. “So how did you meet John and John Quincy?”

  A waiter scurried over with a bowl of salsa and Chad took a second to sink a tortilla chip into it before responding. “Well, second semester sophomore year, Morgan got the bright idea that he and I should coach a little league team. We were lucky enough to have John and John Quincy on that team.”

  “What about their dad? I haven’t heard anything about him.”

  “Me neither. He’s not in the picture as far as I know. All I can say is, unless he’s dead or in prison, he’s a fool for missing those boys growing up. They are great kids.”

  “Seems like they think you’re pretty great too.”

  “Ah, shucks,” Chad said, lightheartedly feigning embarrassment. “I guess they see me kind of like a big brother. It’s a role I’m happy to fill.”

  Chad took a long swallow of his agave-based refreshment. “So what about you? Where’d you learn to play ball like that? I bet you have like five older brothers, right?”

  “So, you’d be scared away if I had five brothers?”

  “Not a chance,” Chad fired back with a grin.

  “Well, you can rest easy. No brothers, just a kid sister. My father has always been a baseball nut. I think he had me playing catch before I could walk. Then, when I was old enough for little league, there were no girls’ teams, so I just played on boys’ teams.”

  “Hey, I played on boys’ teams too, but I don’t play like you. It’s gotta be an innate skill thing—combined with what your dad taught you.”

  “Maybe so. And a few very lucky catches, this afternoon.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Chad said. “Nothing wrong with a little luck.”

  Jill smiled. “Well, I’ve always been kind of lucky I guess.”

  Chapter 10

  It was an unseasonably cold and dreary Thursday morning. Almost two weeks had passed since Chad and Jill’s baseball outing to Cass Park. They had seen each other a few times since, but both of them were looking forward to spending more time together during their trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame with the Adams boys.

  Jill checked her mailbox on the way out of her dorm that morning and found the paper she had typed up for Chad waiting for her. The first thing she noticed was that he’d gotten a B-minus. Not bad, but not really too good either.

  Then she read the yellow sticky note on the top sheet. “Jill, thought you might want to hold onto this in case you ever need to prove to me that you were right about something. Check out the comment on page 8.”

  Flipping to page 8, Jill saw a comment sprawled in red ink, apparently written by Chad’s professor. An arrow pointed from the comment to some circled text, the same text about null ciphers that Jill had suggested Chad change. The professor’s comment read, “Seems a bit arrogant and presumptuous, not to mention speculative. You should stick to the facts regarding the way things were actually done.”

  She smiled and slipped the paper back into her mailbox for safekeeping until she returned from class.

  Chapter 11

  Hall of Fame weekend had finally arrived.

  Chad figured the drive to Cooperstown would take a little less than three hours. The plan was for them to leave on Friday after John and John Quincy got out of school and then stay overnight somewhere in the Cooperstown area so they could get an early start at the Hall of Fame on Saturday morning. That would also allow them to make the drive back before it got to be too late on Saturday.

  Chad had made sure the Blue Wonder was up for the trip, changing the oil, checking tire pressure, and even cleaning the old VW inside and out. He had explained the plan to Connie Adams and ensured her that they would be back sometime between six and seven PM on Saturday. Connie greatly appreciated the big brother role Chad played in the boys’ lives—a role he would play for many years to come.

  It was a beautiful sunny afternoon for a drive through the country roads and rolling hills of upstate New York’s south-central tier. Along the way the four travelers played word games to pass the time. Jill impressed them with her ability to spell any word in alphabetical order.

  At first the boys didn’t quite get it. “Just pick a word and I’ll show you,” Jill suggested.

  John Quincy came up with the first word, an easy choice. “Baseball.”

  Without hesitation, Jill repeated the word then spat the letters back in alphabetical order. “Baseball, AABBELLS.”

  Chad cracked a smile as he guided the Blue Wonder over a small rise in the roadway. The boys looked at each other with wide eyes, eager to pick another word. Then John blurted one out. “Stadium.”

  “Stadium, ADIMSTU.” No hesitation.

  “Aristocracy,” John Quincy shouted.

  Jill raised her eyebrows, glared at the two boys with indignantly surprised eyes, and immediately responded. “Aristocracy, AACCIORRSTY.”

  “Yeah, but can she spell it the right way?” Chad said.

  Jill shot him a look as the boys laughed.

  John suddenly remembered the word his English teacher had said was the longest real word in the English language. �
�Antidisestablishmentarianism!”

  Jill brought her hands to her head, feigning strain and confusion. A second later her rapid-fire response came, “Antidisestablishmentarianism, AAAABDEEHIIIIILMMNNNRSSSSTTT.”

  Chad issued an immediate challenge. “Ha! You missed one of the I’s.”

  She shot him another look. “I spoke all five of those I’s, Bucko!”

  “All right, all right already!”

  In the end, the boys all conceded that the girl had won the “alphabetical order spelling game.”

  She also kicked their butts at the “I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing . . .” game, but the boys took “I Spy.” Chad won at the word game Shiritori, but none of the others really saw that as fair, since it was played in Japanese.

  The travelers pulled into Cooperstown a little before 6:00 PM. Their first stop was the town diner near the base of Otsego Lake, where they feasted on burgers and fries, reportedly the best in town.

  Next they checked into their room at the Holiday Inn. It was a good-sized room with two double beds and plenty of floor space for Chad’s sleeping bag. They spent a half-hour or so splashing around in the indoor pool before heading out to town.

  The boys were thrilled to find that Back to the Future, which had hit the theatres in July, was still playing at the local movie house. They capped the night off with some ice cream treats at Stewart’s. On the way back, Jill and the boys got a kick out of Chad’s attempts to moonwalk, certain that Michael Jackson was in no jeopardy.

  It was a little after ten when they got back to the Holiday Inn. Chad was quite tired and within ten minutes, he had slipped into his sleeping bag and was out cold. The boys took one of the beds and Jill took the other, after a trip to the bathroom to change into a classy, conservative nightgown.