nice. She’d gone the extra mile tonight, letting her brown hair down from its usual ponytail and pairing her leather jacket with black dress slacks and heels instead of jeans and sneakers.
“I’m sorry,” Maria said. “Something’s come up and I need to work.”
“This close to Christmas? You said you were taking some time off, like you always do over the holidays.”
Maria glanced at the computer again. It seemed to be beckoning to her. Once she finished her searches, regardless of what she found, she intended to make an airline reservation to Florida.
“Things have changed,” she said. “I have to go out of town for a few days.”
“What? We have tickets tomorrow night to The Nutcracker,” Annalise protested. “And you said you’d help me out the rest of the week at the Christmas tree sale.”
The yearly sale benefited her youngest son’s baseball league. Annalise was one of the organizers.
“You’ll have to find someone else to take my place,” Maria told her. “This is important.”
“Where are you going?” Annalise demanded. It would have been difficult to tell that Maria was the only one in the room with training in interrogation. Then again, the two sisters were close. They never kept secrets from each other.
“Key West,” Maria said.
“Florida? I don’t ever remember you going that far for a case before,” Annalise said. “You’ll be back in time for Christmas, right?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Her sister narrowed her eyes, propped her hands on her hips and demanded, “What’s going on?”
Maria’s instincts told her to remain mum. However, that wasn’t realistic. If Annalise was reacting this badly to her possible absence at Christmas, other family members would, too. Maria needed somebody to smooth the waters and support her alibi.
“You’d better sit down,” she said.
“I don’t want to sit down.”
“Then promise you won’t freak out.”
“You’re freaking me out by acting like this,” Annalise declared. “Just spit it out.”
Maria forced the words through her lips. “I think Mike might still be alive.”
Her sister shook her head. “No, he’s not. Why would you even say something like that?”
As succinctly as she could, Maria relayed the details of the visit from Caroline Webb. Annalise listened in silence, her expression giving nothing away even though she’d always been the most demonstrative of the four siblings.
“Say something,” Maria said when she’d finished.
“I’m thinking about how to phrase it.” Annalise scratched her head. “On second thought, to hell with tact. I’ll tell you how I really feel. I can’t believe you even let Caroline in the front door. Don’t you remember how she treated Mike?”
“Caroline’s not a high school kid anymore, Annalise,” Maria said. “She’s almost thirty years old.”
“Once a mean girl, always a mean girl,” her sister said heatedly. “Mike never would have dropped out of school if she hadn’t broken up with him in front of all their friends.”
One of the cafeteria workers had later provided their family with the details. Caroline had been cruel, saying she was sick of Mike and adding that he was worthless and stupid. She claimed she already had someone waiting in the wings to take her to the approaching homecoming dance.
Her words had hit the mark. Mike had rushed out of the school building and sped home, sideswiping a parked car on the way. Then he’d had another argument. With Maria.
Afterward, he’d packed a bag and split. Nobody had known where he was until Logan Collier called a few days later from New York City to say Mike was staying at his apartment.
“We don’t know that Mike wouldn’t have dropped out of school, Annalise,” Maria said. “His grades were so bad he barely made it through junior year. Remember how much trouble Mom and Dad had with him?”
“Most of that was because of Caroline,” Annalise said. “If I remember correctly, you thought so, too.”
Maria couldn’t dispute that. Over the years, however, she’d come to realize there were many factors in Mike’s disconnect from the family. That included Maria making it crystal clear she’d disapproved of his girlfriend.
“That’s water under the bridge,” she said. “The important thing now is to find out if Mike’s the one who’s been in contact with Caroline.”
“You said you were doing some online searches when I got here. You ran Mike’s social security number, right? Did anything come up?”
“Well, no,” Maria said. “But nothing would show up if he’s using an alias.”
“An alias?” her sister exclaimed. She shook her head and came forward, laying a hand on Maria’s arm. “Listen to me carefully, Maria. Mike’s dead. You know as well as I do that nobody in the restaurant survived that day.”
The hijacked plane had hit the North Tower a few stories below the Windows on the World complex. The official report was that all the restaurant customers and employees survived the initial attack, only to find the pathways that led below blocked by the impact zone. Everybody died, either of smoke inhalation or in the collapse of the building.
“Mike didn’t call any of us after the plane hit,” Maria said. “What if that was because he wasn’t there?”
“Oh, sweetie. Lots of other reasons make more sense. His phone might have been dead. Or maybe he was looking for a way out and couldn’t take the time to call.”
“His remains were never identified,” Maria reminded her.
“Neither were the remains of more than a thousand other people. That’s about forty percent of the victims,” Annalise said. “The authorities did the best they could, but it was an impossible task.”
“So we can’t completely rule out that Mike wasn’t at the restaurant that day,” Maria said.
“Yes, we can,” she insisted. “If he were alive, wouldn’t he have contacted us in the last eleven years to let us know?”
“I admit that part doesn’t make sense, but Mike was angry at the world when he left for New York. He wasn’t getting along with any of us.” Maria could tell that her arguments weren’t swaying her sister. She tried another tactic. “Don’t you want to know what I found out about the phone number?”
“Sure.” Annalise didn’t sound optimistic.
“The calls came from a prepaid phone, as if whoever made them doesn’t want to be found,” Maria said. “He must be in Key West, though. That’s where the envelope was postmarked.”
“I’ll
