to the bottom of this. She tried to shut off her emotions and think like the private investigator she was. “Do you have the envelope the photos came in?”
“I do.” Again Caroline dug into the side pocket of her handbag. “Here it is. And here’s a printout of my phone record I got off the internet. I circled the two anonymous calls in red pen.”
The envelope was plain and white, with what appeared to be a computer-generated typed address. Handwriting comparison, then, wasn’t a possibility. There was no return address. The postmark was from last Wednesday in Key West, Florida.
Think, Maria, she commanded herself before looking back up at her visitor. “Does anyone you and Mike went to high school with live in Key West?”
“I don’t think so,” Caroline said.
Something to check out, Maria thought.
“How about Mike?” she asked. “Did he ever talk about going there?”
“I don’t remember,” Caroline said. “But I do remember the warmer the weather, the better he liked it.”
That was true. Even during light snowfalls, about the only kind they got in Lexington, Mike had complained as though they were enduring blizzard conditions. The climate in Key West would appeal to him.
If he were alive. Oh, God, could her brother be alive?
Maria was holding Caroline’s phone records. That was the place to start. She’d just finished a background check she was running for a client, leaving her free to unravel the mystery. She got up from the chair, went to her desk and picked up a pad and pen.
“After I look into where the phone calls came from, I’ll be in touch,” she said. “What’s a number where I can reach you?”
Caroline crossed one long leg over the other. “I’d rather you didn’t call me.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll contact you.” She tapped a manicured finger against her lips. “Here’s the thing. I don’t want my fiancé to know about this. I don’t want anything to interfere with the wedding.”
“Why would it?”
“Austin’s last name is Tolliver,” she said. “His father, Samuel, is the former governor.”
Caroline could have added that the family was rolling in cash. Maria seemed to remember the Tollivers had amassed their fortune from tobacco and horse racing. She recalled that Samuel Tolliver had provided the bulk of the financing for his campaign for governor.
“Austin’s following in his father’s footsteps. He’s a state senator. This fall he’s running for Congress. I can’t take the risk the press will pick up on this story.” For the third time, Caroline rummaged in her handbag. This time she pulled out a checkbook. “I can pay you.”
To find her own brother? Maria’s stomach turned over at the thought. “I don’t want your money, Caroline.” She was surprised her voice was even. “The question is, what do you want?”
“If Mike is alive,” she said, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, “I just want him to leave me alone.”
When Caroline was gone, Maria tried to call up the routine steps she took on missing person cases. She heard blood rushing in her ears. Her heart beat so fast she couldn’t concentrate. After all this time, could Mike really be alive?
She got up from her chair and stepped outside, hoping the cool, fresh air would enable her to think more clearly. A chill ran through her and she hugged herself. At five-thirty, and almost the shortest day of year, it was already dark. A thin streak of light slashed through the sky.
A shooting star!
Shooting stars were magical, her mother had claimed when Maria was growing up. If you saw one before Christmas and wished upon it hard enough, she used to say, your wish would come true.
The only other time Maria had spotted a shooting star before the holidays, she’d wished for Rollerblades, and they’d appeared under the tree on Christmas morning.
What could it hurt?
She focused on the streaking light and wished with all her might.
* * *
LOGAN COLLIER LAID THE tall, bulky box containing the artificial Christmas tree against the stairs and positioned himself behind it.
“Need any help down there?” his mother called from the top of the steps.
“I’ve got it,” he answered. “I just need you to move out of the way.”
He shoved, inching the box a few steps at a time up the stairs until reaching the tile floor of the kitchen. Like the rest of the modest, two-bedroom house where his parents had lived for more than thirty years, the kitchen was big enough but just barely. It would be a tight squeeze to get the box past the table.
“Can you get it to the living room for me?” His mother was a warm, cheerful blonde who got way too into the spirit of the season. On her green sweatshirt, Santa jumped his reindeer-driven sleigh over a snowy rooftop.
Logan pushed, propelling the box across the tile floor, onto the carpeting in the living room and toward the spot where his mother always set up the tree. He’d been surprised not to see it decorated already when he’d come home last night from Manhattan, where he’d lived for the past twelve years since he’d graduated from college.
“Tell me again why we’re putting up a tree two days before your trip.” Logan wasn’t out of breath, but neither was he breathing easy. He needed to take the time from his busy schedule to hit the gym more than just two or three times a week.
“We’ve got to make the most of what little time we have together, honey.” She always called him that. In his early teens, it used to bug Logan until he’d found out she’d had two miscarriages before he was born and one afterward.
He ripped open the duct tape somebody—probably Dad—had used last year to bind the box, then pulled up the cardboard flaps to reveal the tree branches.
“You’re trying to make me feel guilty about not spending Christmas with you and Dad, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Maybe a little,” his mother admitted.
“Not gonna work,” Logan said. “Not when you’ll both be cruising the Caribbean.”
His parents would leave for the trip this Wednesday, six days before Christmas. Logan had made the travel arrangements to coincide with his own return to New York City.
“If you didn’t feel guilty, honey, you wouldn’t have bought us the tickets.” Mom stood back while he set up the base of the tree and got the lower portion in place. “You don’t have to keep treating us to trips, you know.”
Actually, he did. Because his mother had battled diabetes and other health problems for years, his parents had made do on his father’s salary while Logan was growing up. Dad earned enough as a forklift operator in a warehouse to cover necessities but not extras. In recent years Mom had been healthy enough to
