Текст книги "Thread of Hope"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

FORTY-FOUR

“Here’s what’s wrong with Derek’s story,” I said to Gina, handing her a piece of paper as we stood in the parking lot.

She studied it. “Meredith’s transcript.”’

The transcript was what I’d asked Lana McCauley to print out right before we left.

“Yeah. Tell me what you see.”

She leaned back against her BMW and read through it. “She’s smart. We already knew this, though.”

“Look at it,” I said, pointing at the paper.

She read through it again and frowned. “She gets good grades. That’s not a surprise. I don’t get it.”

“She doesn’t get good grades,” I said. “She gets perfect grades.”

“She always has.” She glanced at the paper. “GPA of four-point-four. How the hell do you get a four-point-four?”

“It’s a weighted scale,” I said. “She’s taking AP classes and killing them. Four-point-four means she has gotten an A in every class she’s taken in high school.”

“Again. Not a surprise. She studies hard. Jon stays on her about her grades, even though he knows he doesn’t need to.”

I nodded. “Right. So what Derek said doesn’t make sense to me.”

She stared through me for a moment, then refocused. “He said Jon got on her about a test grade.”

“Exactly.”

She glanced at the transcript, then back to me. “Maybe she got a B plus or something. Jon can be anal like that.”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t get B’s. That transcript shows it. Not even on tests. A perfect GPA means she’s perfect in the classroom. One B would bring it down.” I shook my head again. “There are no poor test grades to get on her about.”

“So it was something else. Or Derek got his story wrong.” Gina cocked an eyebrow. “Not like he’s in the same class of genius as Meredith.”

“I agree. But whatever happened in that pool house, it wasn’t over a grade. I don’t buy that for a second. Meredith may have told Derek that, but if she did, she wasn’t telling him the truth.”

She handed me the transcript back. “So how do we find out?”

“I’m having dinner with your boss tonight,” I said, folding the transcript up and putting it in my pocket. “I’ll ask him.”

FORTY-FIVE

I drove back to my hotel and showered, pulled on a pair of shorts and sat down at the desk near the far window. I wanted to make some notes about what I knew so far about Meredith Jordan.

It took me an hour and a half to record the details of every conversation I’d had involving Meredith. I created a timeline, both for my conversations and for what it looked like had taken place in Meredith’s life. I marked things I thought were important, underlined things I had questions about. I read through them again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

And after all that, I still wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

I called down to the concierge and asked if they had a business office where I might be able to use a computer. Five minutes later, a laptop was brought to my room with a portable printer and a ream of paper. I took another hour typing up the notes I’d made and printing them out. I spread them out on the bed and looked through them again.

Reading through my notes just confirmed something I’d already figured out. Nobody knew Meredith Jordan as well as they thought they did, which wasn’t that unusual with teenagers. They put out one image for their friends and family to see, while keeping other things to themselves. It was the unusually confident kid who could be his or herself to all people all the time. The people in her life wanted me to believe that Meredith was one of those unusual kids, but my notes were portraying a normal teenager who hadn’t been honest with everyone.

As I dressed for my dinner with Jon Jordan, my thoughts drifted to my own daughter, as they often did when I was in the midst of the menial tasks of every day life.

I wondered what Elizabeth would’ve been like at Meredith’s age. It was a fruitless exercise, trying to turn a child into an eighteen-year-old, but one I played often. She was a confident little girl, always nodding her head with authority when asked if she was okay or if she was hungry. She was happy to explain when she was upset, often placing her small hand on her hip and wagging her index finger. Even though the gesture was impolite, it was one that always made her mother and me stifle a laugh.

She was terrible at soccer, loved to dance to Springsteen, giggled when people smiled at her, cried when we got upset with her and I wasn’t sure how all that would’ve translated into her teenage years. I wanted to believe that all those idiosyncratic personality traits would’ve merged to form one of the greatest human beings ever created, but reality told me that she would’ve been as frustrating to us as every teenage daughter was to her parents. There was some kernel, though, some fraction of intuition that resided inside of me that insisted that Elizabeth would’ve been special, that I would’ve been proud of her, that she would’ve been different.

What that intuition couldn’t tell me, however, was what had happened to my daughter.

FORTY-SIX

Jon Jordan’s fork froze in mid-air. “Excuse me?”

“You heard my question.”

He set the fork down, anger slowly flooding his features. “Yes, I did and I think it’s fucking inappropriate.”

We were in the back corner of a steakhouse several blocks from my hotel. I’d been ushered in ahead of the forty-plus people lined up inside a velvet rope along the exterior of the restaurant. The nearest tables to the one we were sitting at were empty, giving us a buffer of privacy. The table was covered in stark white linens, with simple black plates and stainless steel flatware.

I’d ordered the smallest filet on the menu and Jordan, though he’d never ordered, was brought a large porterhouse. A bottle of red wine was already on the table, but I’d stuck with ice water. We discussed what I’d learned as we ate and we were nearly finished when I asked him if he believed that Meredith was sexually active.

“It’s completely appropriate based on what I’m hearing from her friends,the I said.

He stared at me across the table, his skin flushed, his eyes intense. “Explain.”

“Answer the question first.”

“Explain,” he repeated through locked teeth.

I leaned into the table. “You aren’t paying me to be appropriate. And every time you ask why I’m asking a question, you are wasting your daughter’s time. How many times do I have to say that?”

Jordan didn’t flinch. His face stayed stone-like. I leaned back in my chair and let a long breath out between my teeth. I could outlast him if I needed to.

“Yes, she is sexually active,” he finally said, unlocking his eyes from mine.

“How do you know?”

His nose twitched and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “She spoke to Olivia about birth control a year ago.”

“Spoke to?”

“Asked for,” he said, glancing across the table at me. “She went to Olivia and asked for it.” He started to frown but caught himself. “I didn’t agree with it, but Olivia said it was the right thing to do.”

“Did you talk to her about it?”

He fumbled with the napkin for a moment. “No. It wasn’t something I was comfortable discussing with her. Like I said, I was against it. And I didn't want to make things worse.”

I could understand that. There was no easy way for a father to discuss sex with his daughter. No matter how open a parent wanted to be, it was going to be an emotional conversation. More so when the conversation was between father and daughter.

“What do you mean make it worse?” I asked.

He set the cloth napkin next to his plate. “I’m not crazy about her boyfriend and it’s been a…challenge.”

“Weathers?”

Jordan nodded. “You’ve met him?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“And I think he’s the kind of kid I wouldn’t want around my daughter.”

A cold smile froze on his mouth. “Derek is a prick. First class. Give me ten guys in her class and he’d be the eleventh I’d choose for her to date.”

“Would you ever approve of anyone she dates?”

He thought for a moment. “No, but there will be some I can tolerate. But Weathers?” He shook his head. “He’s an asshole.”

The waiter came, removed our plates and asked if I wanted coffee. I did and he returned momentarily with large cups for both of us.

“So, what?” I asked. “You were fighting about him?”

Jordan blew on the surface of the coffee. “Yeah. Constantly. I didn’t want them together. Period. Meredith, of course, didn’t like it.”

“You do anything about it?”

“I tried,” he said. “At first, I just let her know that I didn’t like him and that I didn’t like the idea of them dating. She didn’t listen. So then I got involved a little.”

“What’s that mean?”

He sipped at the coffee. “Took her cell phone away so she couldn’t talk to his dumb ass. Made her go to a couple of functions with Olivia and me so she couldn’t go out with him. And I had him pulled out of her classes at Coronado.”

“School let you do that?”

He raised an eyebrow, as if it wasn’t even an issue. “I paid for a lot of the buildings on that campus. I didn’t ask for anything in return. I stay out of the way. But this was something I wanted done.”

The coffee was scalding and I burnt the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t sure about the heavy-handed approach, but it made sense. For him. He was used to getting what he wanted.

“But none of it worked,” Jordan said. “We were just screaming at each other all the time and she was still finding ways to be with him.” He rubbed at his chin, the defeat not sitting well with him. “Olivia convinced me to back off. So I did.”

We stayed quiet for a moment, drinking the coffee and not looking at one another.

“As far as you know,” I finally asked. “Has she had sex with anyone else?”

His shoulders stiffened. “I don’t believe so, no.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how to bring up the prostitution rumor with him. I had no doubt he’d deny it immediately, then follow it up with some sort of angry eruption. And I wouldn’t blame him for that. Hearing that your daughter may have been trading sex for money would’ve been devastating to any parent.

There was something in his demeanor, though, that told me if Meredith was involved in prostitution, her father didn’t know. The uneasiness with which he spoke about getting her on birth control told me a lot. It wasn’t a subject he talked a lot about and probably tried never to think about. There were no signs that sex for his daughter was anything other than a normal parental concern.

So I brought up something else that I knew was going to piss him off.

FORTY-SEVEN

“Have you ever hit Meredith?” I asked.

The coffee mug was at his lips when I asked. He watched me over the porcelain edge, his eyes trained on me as he drank. He swallowed, set the cup down carefully, adjusting it to the position he wanted it in. The waiter returned to the table and asked if there was anything else we needed. Neither of us said a word and he quickly stepped away.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Fuck you for asking,” he said, laying his hands flat on the table, the tips of his fingers beginning to dig into the linen tablecloth. “I’ve never touched her.”

“Sure about that?”

“Fuck you, Tyler. Where is this coming from?”

“Something I heard.”

“From where?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

His hands flinched on the table, like they wanted to grab more than just the tablecloth. “The fuck it doesn’t. You accuse me of hitting my own daughter, it matters. Because whoever told you that is a lying piece of shit.”

He was defensive, as anyone would be. But I didn’t see anything that indicated he was lying. He wasn’t avoiding my eyes, he wasn’t squirming in his chair. His eyes were locked with mine and he was rock solid across the table, waiting for an answer.

Which confused me.

“You remember an argument you had with her?” I asked. “Couple months back?”

“I can remember a lot of them,” he said through his teeth.

“On a Sunday? Out in your pool house?”

His eyes flickered.

“She was going camping?” I said.

“I remember,” he said, quietly.

I didn’t respond.

With a concerted effort, he brought his hands together, forcing them into a tight knot on the table. “She wanted to quit basketball.”

That was completely opposite from what Derek told us and, even thought it shouldn’t have, it took me by surprise.

“Came out of nowhere,” Jordan continued. “I still don’t know where it came from. But she told me that she was thinking about quitting, that she just didn’t want to play anymore.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “She never really gave me a reason. She just said she was tired of it and was going to quit on Monday.”

Maybe she’d had a bad week of practice. Maybe she was exhausted from the demands of playing. But I had seen nothing that indicated she was finished with basketball the day I saw her in practice. She was energized, enthusiastic and playing like someone who was going to play forever.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I blew up at her,” he said. “Lost it completely. I told her I wouldn’t allow it, that she’d put too much time and effort into the sport, not too mention that it would be letting down her teammates and coaches.” He shook his head slowly. “I was not going to let her quit this year.”

“This year?”

Jordan ran a hand through his hair, thinking before he spoke. “I told her she had to finish out this year. She started it and she had to finish it.” He tilted his head to the side. “But I told her that if she was truly serious about quitting, she could quit after the season. She doesn’t have to play in college if she doesn’t want to.”

I watched his face. “But you still want her to, don’t you?”

He thought about it, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I enjoy watching her play. She’s good. Better than good. She’s busted her ass for years to be this good. So I’d hate to see her trash it all. But it’s her choice. I’m not one of those maniacal parents trying to relive my own shortcomings through her.” He smirked. “I hated sports as a kid and I don’t have a real love for them now. But I love seeing my daughter do something she’s good at and something that she’s said she’s always loved. That’s why I don’t want her to give it up, particularly when she couldn’t give me a reason.”

I believed him. He didn’t have that insane look about him that made sports parents so easy to identify. He just seemed like a father concerned about his daughter.

Except for one thing.

“So when you blew up at her?” I asked. “Is that when you hit her?”

Everything about him went rigid. “I told you. I didn’t hit her.” He leaned across the table. “I’ve never hit Meredith. I was furious with her, but I did not touch her. Ever.”

He was either a terrific actor or telling the truth.

I believed the latter, which confused me.

We sat there uneasily for a few moments, Jordan’s words hanging between us. He finally relaxed and sat back in his chair.

“Your turn,” he said. “Why are you asking me this?”

I was running the scenario through my head, trying to figure out which pieces to the puzzle didn’t fit. “When you saw her that day, in the pool house. Was she okay?”

“Physically?”

I nodded.

“Yes, fine,” he said, frowning at me.

“No bruises or marks on her face, anything like that?”

His frown intensified. “You don’t think I would’ve noticed that?”

I did think he would’ve noticed that. And that was the problem I was trying to rectify.

FORTY-EIGHT

Jordan pressed me for what I’d learned. I gave him a rough replay of my interview with Derek, leaving out the part where Derek said Jordan hit her. Jordan wasn’t stupid. If I gave him an exact recount of our conversation with Derek, he would’ve put two and two together. Fact was, I still thought Jordan would even without that info. Jordan getting in the way, though, would be counterproductive because I didn’t trust him to get to the heart of things. Without doing that, I wasn’t sure we could find Meredith.

I fended him off for the rest of dinner. I knew he thought I was holding information back from him and I had no doubt he’d go immediately to Gina to find out what I’d left out.

I was fine with that because it gave me time to find Derek on my own.

The address on the sheet that I’d gotten at the high school listed the Weathers' address on the north side of the island, near the Navy base. It took me twenty minutes with traffic and the GPS in the rental to find the split-level stucco home, tucked onto one of the streets that looked back across the bay. The lawn was well-manicured, the hedges trimmed and the sidewalks clean. A stark white GMC Yukon was parked next to a red M-class Mercedes in the driveway.

I drove past the house, circled back and parked on the opposite side of the street, a block away with a good view of the home that Derek Weathers lived in.

My initial inclination was to knock down the door, kick the shit out of anyone who got in my way, then drag Derek out of the house by his balls before I kicked the shit out of him. There was a nagging feeling in my mind that he had been lying when Gina and I spoke to him earlier in the day. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but after talking to Jon Jordan, I thought I’d figured it out.

I resisted that initial urge to man-handle Derek because I wasn’t sure that would get me all the info I needed. Besides, I really wasn’t sure whether or not he knew where Meredith was. But I thought he was a good place to start.

I’d been in the car about half an hour, hearing the radio, but not really listening to it when he finally came out of the house, dressed in baggy jeans, an untucked button-down shirt and a baseball hat turned backward on his head.

He wasn’t alone.

The distance prevented me from getting a good look at her face, but she didn’t appear familiar. She looked a little older than he was, long blonde hair, brushed out and glossy. She wore a denim jacket with a tight tank top beneath it. A short skirt revealed long, athletic legs in spiked heels.

Derek put his arm around her as he walked her to the passenger door of the Yukon, whispering something in her ear that made her giggle. He opened the door and helped her up into the SUV, his eyes settling on her ass when she wasn’t looking. He shut the door and hustled around to the other side.

My fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel. The kid’s girlfriend was missing and he was already moving on without missing a beat. I had about sixteen reasons now to knock the crap out of Derek Weathers.

He backed the SUV out of the drive and headed out the way I’d come in. I let him put a decent amount of distance between us before I started the car and followed.

We wound our way off the island, over the bridge and headed north on the five. He quickly exited into downtown and I followed him west right to one of the massive hotels near the convention center, maybe a mile away from where I was staying. Derek turned the Yukon into the parking garage. Two cars followed in quick succession before I pulled in after him. He parked on the ascending ramp of the third floor of the garage and I quickly steered past and parked at the end of the row of spots. The spaces in between us filled in and as I got out of the rental, Derek and his new girlfriend were almost to the entrance of the hotel, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

I followed at a safe distance.

Derek and his friend navigated the merchant area on the ground floor toward the opposite side of the hotel and a bank of elevators. When they reached the elevators, though, they didn’t get in one. Instead, Derek unwrapped his arm from the girl’s waist, produced a cell phone and made a call.

I watched from behind a window in a gift shop.

Derek snapped the phone closed, said something to the girl and she nodded. They stood there for a moment, whispering to one another.

The girl’s posture and demeanor had changed. If I hadn’t been watching her since she stepped out of the house, I wouldn’t have noticed. When she’d gone to the car with Derek, she was relaxed, languid, moving easily. Now as she stood there whispering to him, there was a subtle amount of tension in her shoulders and in her stance. She wasn’t angry with him and it didn’t look necessarily like anxiety.

But something had changed in her body language and I didn’t think it was for the better.

Derek watched people as they exited the elevators. After several minutes, he perked up at the sight of a single man stepping off the furthest elevator. The guy was tall, a bit too skinny, dressed in an open neck collared shirt and jeans that seemed smaller than necessary. His dark hair was swept straight back, held there by gel or mousse or some other concoction. He smiled at both Derek and the girl.

He and Derek shook hands and Derek’s hand went immediately into his pocket when they let go. They exchanged a few words, the guy held his right arm out at an angle and after an awkward pause, the girl looped her arm in his and they stepped into an open elevator. Derek offered a little wave as the doors shut.