Gabrielle looked upset. I could tell she had loved her friend and cared for her. She was choking up, but held back the tears.

  “I tried…” she continued. “I really did. But she wouldn’t listen to me. I told her that guy was all wrong for her. He was trouble from the beginning.”

  I reached behind me and grabbed a box of tissues that I handed to her. She grabbed it and wiped her eyes, careful not to smear her make-up. I wrote on my notepad and tried to get all the details down.

  “So, you say she inherited a lot of money? From her dad, right?” I asked.

  “She inherited ten million dollars from him, and she never even knew him.”

  I looked up. “Excuse me?”

  “She was born outside of marriage. Her mother was an affair that John Platt had once when he was on a book tour. They met in Tampa, where she lived at the time. Nine months later, Laura was born. John Platt refused to have anything to do with the child. He paid a good amount of money to the mother to keep her mouth shut and never tell the child who her real father was. Laura’s mother later remarried when Laura was still a baby, and they decided to have the new husband be the father as well. To prevent any awkward questions. And to have Laura grow up with a real family. Her new father loved her, and she still looks at him like her real father. Both of her parents died two years ago in a car accident outside of Orlando.”

  “Sounds like Laura has suffered a lot of loss the last couple of years,” I said.

  Gabrielle sniffled and wiped her nose in a ladylike manner.

  “So, her husband Brandon, tell me more about him?”

  “He is the scum of the earth,” Gabrielle hissed. “But, somehow, she loved him.”

  “How did they meet?”

  “At a sports game. Can you believe it? A baseball game. UCF Knights were playing South Florida. Laura went to UCF; Brandon had just come to watch the game with some friends. He was an auto mechanic and smelled like oil and trouble, if you ask me. Smoked and drank too much. Liked to party. I was with her on the night they met outside the stadium. He just walked right up to her and told her she was gorgeous and that he would like to invite her out sometime. I was surprised to hear her accept. I couldn’t believe her. But I guess she somehow wanted to rebel against her parents or something. They never liked him either, but she married him anyway. After four months of them dating, he proposed. Four months! I knew she was going to get herself in trouble with this guy. I just knew it.”

  “So, tell me some more about the inheritance. When did she realize she was going to get all this money?”

  “It was right before the pig proposed. Go figure, right? He heard about the money, then wanted to marry her. I couldn’t believe she didn’t see it, but she told me she loved him, and I really think she did. I think all he loved was her money. Anyway, that’s just my opinion.”

  “How did she learn about the money? From a lawyer?” I asked, thinking it must have been quite a shock…suddenly being a millionaire and suddenly realizing your entire childhood was based on a lie.

  Gabrielle shook her head and wiped her nose again. She drank from the glass of water I had placed in front of her. It was hot outside. In the low eighties. She was wearing shorts and flip-flops. The state costume of Florida. Even in January.

  “No, it was the strangest thing. He called her.”

  “Who?”

  “John Platt. He called her right before he died. How he got her number, I don’t know, but I guess when you’re that big you have people working for you. He was sick, he said. Cancer was eating him and he wanted her to come. He didn’t tell her why, only that he had something for her. At first, Laura thought it was a joke, but he gave her an address and she looked it up and it turned out to be right. She called me afterwards and told me everything. She was freaking out. Said she had decided she didn’t want to go, because it was too weird. But I convinced her to do it. I went with her, so she wouldn’t be alone. Together, we were invited into his huge mansion on the beach in Cocoa Beach. He told her he was happy to see her. There were others there. I later learned they were her siblings. Two sisters and a brother. They had all grown up in the house, but were now living on their own, except for the youngest, who hadn’t left the house yet, even though he was in his mid-twenties. They weren’t very happy to see her, I can tell you that much. They weren’t prepared to share their inheritance with some stranger, but they soon learned they had to.”

  “So, what happened?” I asked “What did John Platt tell her?”

  “It was such an awkward scene. He was lying in bed, surrounded by nurses and family. He teared up when he saw Laura. It made her really uncomfortable. He wanted to hold her hand and started to cry. Then, he handed her a piece of paper. Take this, he said. You deserve this more than any of the others.”

  “So, what was written on the paper?”

  “It was a will. He had changed his will a few hours before we arrived. His lawyer had signed it and everything. It stated that she was going to inherit everything. All he had. The house, his money, everything.”

  I leaned back in my chair while the story came together for me. “So, the siblings didn’t get anything?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Not a dime. They had grown up in luxury, so their father figured it was time for them to learn how to earn a decent living on their own. That’s what he wrote in the letter. Laura had never known who her father was, never had any of his money, now he was giving her everything. I guess he tried to make amends for not letting her know he was her dad all those years. Laura was baffled, to put it mildly. She read the letter, but didn’t understand. How could he be her father? She already had a father. She ran out of the house crying, and I ran after her. John Platt died shortly after, we later learned. Good thing for him, I think. Otherwise, the siblings would probably have started a riot. They tried to fight Laura with all their big lawyers afterwards, trying to declare that their dad was dying, and therefore not in his right mind when he made the will. After several months of going back and forth, the judge decided they didn’t have a case and closed it. Laura was rich and, in time, came to accept the fact that she had been the result of an affair. Her mother confirmed it was true, and they didn’t speak for a long time, but she forgave her eventually. Laura and Brandon bought the house in Snug Harbor and moved here shortly after they were married. She sold John Platt’s old house, but wanted to stay in the town. She liked it here, she told me. I didn’t see her much after she moved, since I live north of Orlando now, and I work full time, but every now and then, we would meet and catch up. But she was never really happy. She had Ben, and he was the joy of her life, but she kept talking about how Brandon was drinking and gambling her money away on the casino boats, acting like this big shot with her money. She wanted to leave him, but then she was pregnant again and decided to stay for the children. I met with her the week before the baby died. She said she was going to leave him, this time for real. That she was going back to the Tampa area and start over with the kids. Brandon’s drinking had gotten worse, and he was still gambling a lot. In a few years, he had spent more than a third of her money. She was still certain he loved her, and maybe he does. I don’t know him well enough to say he doesn’t. But he also loved the money, and that’s what went so wrong. After the baby died, I went to the funeral and Laura had a black eye. She told me in confidence that Brandon had slapped her, that he blamed her for the child’s death. They fought about that a lot, she told me. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t checked on the baby during the night. It was her fault, he told her. And she believed him. She felt so guilty, she told me. So much it hurt. I said she should leave him, that now was the time to go, and she agreed, but she never did. Instead, she lowered herself to his level and took up drinking. The last time I spoke to her was three months ago, and she was so drunk on the phone I could hardly understand what she was saying. Now…I can’t believe she’s gone. What’s to become of Ben?”

  I shook my head with a deep exhale. I was starting to wonder that myself.

  12

  JANUARY 2015

  SHANNON HEARD HER daughter’s voice calling in the distance. Then the door slammed and the voice came closer, even though it was all still drowned in a heavy daze.

  “Moom? Moom?” the voice became shrill and clearer.

  Shannon tried to blink her eyes to be able to see, but it hurt too much.

  She felt a hand in hers, then someone pulling her arm.

  “Mom? Please, wake up, Mom, please?”

  Shannon growled something, trying to speak, but her lip hurt. She blinked again, and soon an image emerged of her daughter looking at her with terrified eyes.

  “Mom, are you all right? Speak to me, Mommy!”

  You gotta say something. The girl is scared. Seeing you like this. Say something to calm her down.

  Shannon opened her eyes wide and looked at her daughter. Her beautiful Angela. The love of her life. The only beautiful thing in her life. The one thing she had done right.

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Mommy. What happened? Are you hurt?”

  With much effort, Shannon sat up on the kitchen floor. She leaned her head on the cupboards behind her. So much pain.

  “Mommy must have fallen,” she said, and felt blood on her fingers when she touched her face.

  “Again?” Angela said.

  “Yeah. Again.”

  “You’re so clumsy, Mommy,” Angela said. She grabbed a towel and wet it. Then she put ice cubes inside of it and handed it to Shannon. She did it with such expertise and experience that it terrified Shannon.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” she said.

  “Where is Daddy?” Angela asked. “Do you want me to call him?”

  “No. No. Don’t disturb him. I’m fine. Really. I just need to…to rest my head a little bit.”

  Angela sat down next to her. “I’ve been thinking,” she said with that grown-up voice of hers.

  Too grown-up for a six-year-old.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be left at home alone anymore. You get hurt all the time. I think it would be best if there was someone with you. Last week it was the stairs, remember?”

  Shannon drew in a deep breath. She remembered too well. And so did Angela, apparently. She was getting too old. It wouldn’t be long before she figured out what was really going on.

  Did you really think you could hide it from her forever?

  She didn’t. But she had hoped it would get better with time. She had hoped Joe would get better, that it would all blow over and he would stop being so angry with her. For a long time, she had tried to change it by changing herself, by being nicer and staying away from things that made him angry, but now she knew it didn’t matter how she behaved. It wasn’t going to change.

  “You know what? Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe you and I should take a trip somewhere soon. What do you say?”

  Angela’s face lit up. “That sounds awesome, Mom.”

  Shannon sighed and grabbed the edge of the kitchen counter. She pulled herself up, while her daughter tried to help her. She had been thinking about doing this for many months. Now was the time.

  “I better go do my homework,” Angela said, and jumped for the stairs.

  Shannon stopped her halfway up. “Hey, sweetie.”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “Not a word to Dad, all right? Not a word about the trip, okay?”

  She nodded while biting her lip.

  She knows. Oh, God, she knows, doesn’t she?

  “All right, Mom.”

  13

  JANUARY 2015

  IT WAS DARK before I made it back to the motel to pick up the kids. I had missed dinnertime, but my mom had made a plate for me that she heated in the microwave of the small restaurant that was attached to the motel.

  The place was called Motel Albert. They had named it after my dad, Albert Ryder, since it was his big dream that had come true. It was located right between A1A and the beach. The rooms were small, but not too shabby. The restaurant at the end of the building had a deck on the beach side where people could sit, have a hotdog or a fish burger, and watch the waves and the dolphins if they were lucky. I loved the place and so did my kids. They could play on the beach for hours and hours nonstop. They were like fish in the water, and I had slowly started to teach them how to surf as well. Abigail was by far the better of them, since she was the daredevil and never afraid of anything, whereas Austin was a lot more careful type. Emily refused to even try, but I kept asking her anyway. At sixteen years of age, everything is lame, apparently. I wasn’t giving up on her, though. I had surfed all of my life, and I wanted all of them to have the gift of surfing in their lives as well. I never missed a good swell. The waves in Ft. Lauderdale, where I grew up, weren’t as good as they were here in Cocoa Beach. This was heaven for me, and I hoped it would be for my kids as well.

  “Tough day, huh?” my mom, Sherri Ryder, asked when I reached for a second portion of fish tacos. She had made them herself, and there was no better on the beach. She knew I couldn’t stop eating when I had a lot on my mind. I used to be a lot bigger when I worked back in Miami. Since I moved to Cocoa Beach I had lost around twenty pounds, just because I surfed more and ate healthier. Plus, I rarely stressed, so I didn’t overeat. I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, but it was getting a lot better. I looked good, I believed. Still had all of my hair, even though my mom thought it was too long and curly for a man in the force.

  “Yes,” I said. “I mean, I know this stuff happens everywhere; it’s just so shocking to see it here in Cocoa Beach.”

  I sipped my beer, made by the local brewery that my mother had a deal with. I enjoyed the local beers. I had one more. The twins came rushing towards me, closely followed by their granddad, who was skipping to keep up with them. He became such a child around them. It amused me. At the age of seventy-five, he was still very agile. He had always taken very good care of his body. He’d been running for most of his life. I hadn’t been good to myself over the years. I hoped to have half of his health in ten years.

  “Daaad!” they yelled.

  I looked at my dad, who was smiling from ear to ear. There was nothing in this world he enjoyed more than spending time with the twins. “They’re too fast,” he said panting. “We were playing tag in the back, and I can’t catch them.”

  I laughed and made room for him to sit next to me on the wooden bench. We were sitting outside on the porch, overlooking the dark ocean. The sun had set an hour ago, but I could hear the waves. They were picking up. We were supposed to get a really big swell later in the week. I, for one, hoped I could get time to catch some.

  “Where’s Emily?” I asked.

  “She’s in the TV room watching some show I don’t understand half of,” my mom said. “Why are vampires such a big deal now?”

  I chuckled and shook my head. “I don’t know, Mom.”

  “Anyway, she says you let her watch it, but I really don’t think young girls should watch things like that.”

  “It’s her thing, Mom. Let her,” I said.

  My mother didn’t look like she wanted to. “I’m just saying it,” she said shaking her head. “She needs to know how to be careful what she fills herself with.”

  “So, you had a tough day, I hear?” My dad interrupted. “We saw it on the news.”

  I nodded while removing some lettuce from between my teeth. “Yeah, I noticed the choppers earlier. I bet they’re all over it.”

  “What about that poor kid?” my mom asked. “How is ever going to get through life?”

  It was typical of my mother to think about the kid. Kids had been her whole life. She was a kindergarten teacher for twenty-something years and adored all children. A lot more than she adored adults.

  I wondered how much they had said about the case on the news. Had they told people that the body was partly dismembered? Weasel had been in charge of making the statements and had called for a press conference the next day. At City Hall, they were terrified that this was going to affect tourism. I couldn’t blame them. The tourists meant everything around here. Especially at this time of year. The snowbird season. It meant jobs. It meant security for people. Ever since they stopped the Space Shuttle program, thousands of people had lost their jobs and the real estate market had plummeted. People lost a lot of money on their houses. They recently started a new project out at the Space Center, and they were still launching rockets every now and then, but the area had been bleeding for years. It wasn’t only people who had worked on the shuttle that were hurt. Everyone else was too. Hundreds of thousands tourists would usually come to watch a launch, and that meant a lot of money for the hotels, the restaurants, and shops. It helped a little that the cruise ships were booming, but the prices on houses were low, and lots of people were still out of work. My parents had felt it too. They used to have the motel packed several times a year when a shuttle was launched, and now they barely made ends meet.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” I said and finished my beer. “We can only hope for the best.”

  “You’ll catch him,” my mom said. “You’ll get the guy, and then everything will go back to normal again.”

  I chuckled. My mother had such great confidence in me; it was sweet. She never did like the fact that I was a detective or on the police force. Especially not when I worked in Miami. She feared for my life every day. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t want any of my kids in the force either. But I happened to like my job. Not today, but most days.

  14

  JANUARY 2015

  “I THINK WE’LL head home now,” I said, and kissed my mom on the cheek. “Thanks for dinner; it was great, as always.”

 

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