Breaker's Reef

  They got out of the car, and Blair looked at Sadie as they went inside. “You ask the clerks, and I’ll talk to the customers.”

  Sadie headed to the cash register. The clerk was talking on the phone and ringing up the customer in front of her, taking her time as if a girl’s life didn’t depend on her speed. She thought of moving up to the counter, and explaining her dilemma: “Excuse me, but my sister could be dying while you take your time ringing up a Mountain Dew and Snickers bar.” Instead, she stood there, waiting her turn. Sweat broke out on her lip and trickled down her temples as the minutes passed.

  Blair worked the busy store, showing pictures of the girls to the customers, asking if anyone had seen them. Sadie strained to hear what they were saying, but finally, the clerk finished with the customer. Sadie handed her a poster. “I’m Sadie Caruso with the Cape Refuge Journal. We’re looking for two girls who might have come in here in the last few days. One of them is the girl who was found murdered yesterday.”

  Fascinated, the woman took the picture and stared down at it. “Which one was killed?”

  Sadie pointed to Jamie. “This one. Did you see either one of them in here?”

  “I ain’t seen ‘em. Pretty girls too. I think I’d remember.”

  “Could you show it to the employees on other shifts? Maybe they saw her.”

  “Sure.” The woman took the picture and studied it. “Do they know who killed her?”

  “No. That’s what they’re trying to find out.”

  “And this other little gal? Where is she?”

  “We’re trying to find that out too.”

  “Sadie, over here!”

  Sadie turned. Blair had found another clerk in the back of the store. Sadie hurried over.

  “This gentleman says he was in here the other night when they came in. They were asking him if he knew a woman.”

  “Sheila Caruso?” Sadie blurted.

  “Yeah, that’s prob’ly who it was, but I can’t say for sure. Told ’em I’d never heard of her, and they left. You say one of ’em was that murdered girl?”

  “That’s right.” Blair handed him her card. “Please, will you call me if you think of anything else? Maybe someone else saw them talking to someone. Keep the picture and ask around.”

  “Will do.”

  Blair took the man’s name down so she could give it to Cade for follow-up.

  Sadie was encouraged as she put two posters up on the store’s windows. “Let’s go next door to the Burger King. At least we’re on the right track.”

  Blair pulled her car around to the Burger King parking lot, and Sadie got out before the car even stopped. She went in and saw some of her schoolmates decked out in BK uniforms, stressed from flipping burgers and thrusting fries out the drive-in window. At least these weren’t the snub-nosed group, who thought they were better than Sadie. These were common kids from common families, trying to scrape up money to buy rusty sedans and keep gas in the tank.

  Steven Pratt—a tall, skinny kid who was two years her junior—stood straighter as she came in. Apparently self-conscious about his baseball cap, he turned it around to the back of his head and shoved his thick glasses higher on his nose. “Hey, Sadie. What can I get you today?”

  “Nothing, Steven. I’m here as a reporter.” She looked around for Blair and saw that she was outside talking to a kid who was taking a break to smoke.

  “Yeah? Look, I don’t know anything about how that bug got in that woman’s food, but she’s got a lot of nerve calling the newspaper about it.”

  Sadie smiled. “Uh … no, I don’t know anything about that.” She handed him a poster. “I need to know if you or anyone here has seen these two girls in the last few days.”

  He took the picture, and shoved his glasses up again. “Oh, yeah, I saw them. Musta been Friday. I remember because I thought one of them was you until she got up close. Real cute.” His cheeks flushed, as if he hadn’t meant to say that.

  Sadie didn’t tell him that they were sisters. “Did you talk to them?”

  “No, I was just getting off work. I think they talked to Sam, though.” He turned around and yelled back to the kitchen. “Hey, Sam. Come up here.”

  Another kid from school came dragging up. His hair was long and greasy, with a piece of a goatee that looked like a smudge beneath his lip. “Yeah?”

  “You remember these two coming in here?” He handed him the picture.

  The kid looked up at Sadie. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Did they talk to you?”

  “Yeah, they were asking me if I knew where some woman lived.”

  “Sheila Caruso?”

  He shrugged. “Man, I don’t remember. I’d never heard of her, so I couldn’t help.”

  “Is Sheila a relative of yours, Sadie?” Steven asked.

  “She’s my mother.”

  “Man, wish they’d asked me. I could have told them where you live.”

  Sadie wished it too. “Keep the poster, okay? And is it all right if I put some on the door?”

  “Sure, no problem. Who are they, Sadie?”

  “This one was the girl found dead in the cave yesterday. The other one is missing.”

  “No way.” Both guys stared at the picture with new interest. “You mean they might have left here and got killed?”

  “We don’t know. But if you learn anything, please call me. It’s very important.” She took the picture and wrote her cell phone number on the back. “Okay? You promise?”

  “Sure. We’ll ask around. Do you think one of them might have killed the other one?”

  That thought had never even crossed Sadie’s mind. “No. That’s impossible.”

  “Why? Do you know them?”

  “Well, no. But I don’t think—” The very idea started an aching in her temple, and she felt a little sick. If he’d thought of that, surely the police had. Did Cade think her sister was a killer? “I have to go.”

  She hurried out and joined Blair. “Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Sadie gave her the names of the guys inside who’d seen them, to add to Cade’s list, then put the posters up on the doors. “The next stop is Clara’s Trash and Treasures. If they went in there, I know they found out something. She even knew about Mom’s job.”

  “We should have started there,” Blair said. They drove a block down the road and pulled into the shop’s parking lot. The shop was closed today, but they found Clara in her house behind it, getting ready to leave for church.

  “Did you come here to buy that crib for your sister, Blair? It would make a darling baby gift. A family heirloom too.”

  Blair frowned. What was the woman talking about? “No, I’m not here to buy anything, Clara. I’m here about the girl that Cade and I found murdered yesterday.”

  Clara’s face changed, and she suddenly looked interested. “Oh, yes. What a horrible thing to have happen on such an important day.”

  Blair frowned. Why did Clara always seem to talk in riddles? She started to ask Clara why she thought it was an important day, then stopped. No point getting bogged down in conversation. “We think this girl and her friend might have come in here.”

  Sadie handed her a poster. “They might have been looking for my mother. Did you see them?”

  Clara took the picture and stared down at it. “Well, yes, I did. They came in here Friday afternoon, I think. And now that you mention it, they were asking for your mama. Are you telling me one of these is the dead girl?”

  “That’s right,” Blair said. “Clara, we need to know everything they said.”

  Clara looked distraught. “They didn’t say much. Just came in, acted like they were looking around, then when I came to help them, they asked me if I knew a woman named Sheila Caruso. I told them I did. One of them—this one—” she pointed to Amelia—“told me that Sheila was an old friend of her mother’s, and she wanted to look her up. So I told them she lived at Hanover House. Gave them directions and a phone number. Then they asked me wh
ere she worked, and I remembered that she was working for Marcus Gibson.”

  Sadie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She looked at Blair.

  “Clara, did you tell them where he lived?” Blair asked.

  “Well, yes. I knew he’d bought Gabe Stone’s beach cottage, so I gave them directions there too.” She stopped and swallowed. “Oh, my! You don’t think they went there. Do you think he hurt that girl?”

  Sadie couldn’t answer. She groped for a chair and sat slowly down.

  “Clara, is there anything you can tell us about them?” Blair asked. “What they were wearing? Anything?”

  “Well, let’s see. They were real cute girls, both wearing jeans. Vague about where they came from. I walked them out to their car and noticed a Glynn County tag. It was a blue Focus. The dead girl was the one driving. Oh, and when they started the car, they were listening to a Christian music station. That ‘Who Am I’ song. I remember ’cause it’s my favorite. And I think the one girl had on a red shirt. One of them stretchy ones with part of the belly showing. Sadie, why were they looking for your mama? Do you think she had something to do with this?”

  Sadie fought valiantly not to cry. “No. They never found her. She didn’t see them at all.”

  “But she could be lying. I’m sorry, honey, but you know your mama does have a criminal history. I mean, when something like this happens, you can’t hardly help but look at the ones with records.”

  The urge to cry fled, and anger set Sadie’s cheeks burning. “You know my mother has changed. You go to church with us.”

  “Well, it does seem that way, but we have to be realistic, don’t we?”

  “Let’s go, Sadie.” Blair nudged her toward the door before Sadie could respond. “Clara, call me if you think of anything else, will you?”

  “I’ll be racking my brain, hon.”

  Sadie marched out to the car, and Blair got in next to her. “Sorry about that, honey. Clara says whatever comes to her mind.”

  “Is that what everyone’s going to think?”

  Blair sat there for a moment, looking down at her steering wheel. “I don’t know. They might.”

  “You don’t like my mom. Do you think that too?”

  Blair looked at her then. “No. Your mother and I haven’t always gotten along, but I know she’s not a killer. And despite her background, I do believe she’s changed.”

  Sadie’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah.” Blair started the car, and dug her cell phone out of her purse. “I’m going to the station to see Cade. He needs to know what we’ve found out.”

  As she rode, Sadie tried to picture the two girls heading to Hanover House. Had they come and found no one home? Or had they gone straight to Marcus Gibson’s? Had they checked into a motel?

  “Blair, what if they went to a motel for the night, planning to get an early start the next day? Something lower priced. We need to check out the motels. Maybe we’ll find her holed up in a room, scared to death. Or the car … it’s got to be somewhere.”

  “All right. We’ll work the motels next, as soon as I brief Cade. He won’t be too happy about us questioning witnesses without him, so I’d better tell him what we found out. And we have to tell him about the car, in case he doesn’t already know it.” She glanced over at Sadie. “Honey, maybe it’s all right. Maybe Amelia’s safe and sound somewhere. Maybe she’ll see these posters and call her folks. Plus Cade told me they had released her picture to the television networks, and they’ll be putting it on the news tonight, asking if anyone has seen Amelia. They’ll get calls. Lots of leads. And maybe Marcus Gibson will tell them something.”

  A sob rose up in Sadie’s throat. “He won’t tell anything. The stupid judge should have kept him locked up. Why did Mom have to take a job with him?”

  “How could she have known? And think about it. If it weren’t for her, they might not have made the connection so soon.”

  Urgency pulsed through Sadie. She couldn’t just sit still while Blair talked to Cade. “Stop the car. I want to get out and walk along the Boulevard putting up posters. You can come and get me when you’re finished at Cade’s.”

  Blair agreed and let her out. Sadie stood on the side of the road with an armload of posters as she drove off. She looked back up at the long string of hotels and motels along the beach. Amelia and Jamie must have checked into a motel when they’d arrived. According to Amelia’s parents, they had about a hundred dollars between them, so it was doubtful that they’d had to sleep on the beach like she had that first night here. But where would they stay?

  Not anywhere along the beach. Those were too pricey. She put herself in Amelia’s place again. As they came off of the bridge, which motels would they have seen? If they’d asked for the lower-priced ones, they would have been directed to some of the places on Mimosa Street. Sadie crossed Ocean Boulevard and made her way to the first hotel they might have come to. The Flagstaff.

  If the girls asked anyone decent, they would have told them to avoid that place. It was one of the worst places in town, a magnet for crime and drug deals. Every week in the police column of the Journal, seventy-five percent of the arrests made were at this hotbed of drugs and prostitution. Sadie once heard Cade say that if he could do one thing to lower crime on the island, it would be to shut down that motel and run its residents out of town.

  But if Jamie and Amelia checked in during the daytime, they might not have realized what the place was like. All the worst activity there happened at night.

  Dread weighed down on her as she approached the parking lot and saw that already some of the drug dealers congregated there, loitering and waiting to make their next deal.

  She spotted the office and went in. The clerk, who looked like he’d spent the last three days lying unconscious in a gutter somewhere, was waiting on a man.

  “I lost my key,” the biker-type was saying. “Musta fell outta my pocket.”

  The manager got another keycard and programmed the code. “No problem. This oughta do it.”

  Sadie bit her lip. Instead of doing the reporter’s spiel, what if she pretended to be Amelia? Everyone said they looked alike. Maybe she could pull it off.

  She stepped up to the desk. “I lost my key too. Amelia Roarke.”

  “What room?”

  She leaned over the counter, as if too weary to stand upright. Rubbing her eyes, she said, “I don’t remember. I’ve been in so many motel rooms in the last few weeks … and I had a rough night. Could you look it up for me?”

  He looked through his registration book. “Could it be under another name?”

  She cleared her throat and tried again. “Oh, I forgot. We put it under Jamie Maddox.”

  He looked and she waited, holding her breath.

  “Here we go.” He turned around and got her a key, programmed it, and slid it across the counter. “Room 218.”

  “Thanks.” She took the key and stepped back outside, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might come through her chest.

  With every fiber of her being, she knew she should call the police. But she had the key, and she could go in the room. If Amelia was there, she would find her. If she wasn’t, she could look around before the police cordoned the place off.

  She went up the steps and found room 218. Her hand was trembling so badly that she dropped the key. She picked it up and started to jab it into the slot. But what if Amelia was in there, oblivious to the search? She hesitated, then knocked.

  No answer. Inside, she could hear a television. Did that mean someone was there?

  She knocked again, harder this time. “Amelia? Please open the door.”

  No response. The window was open slightly, but there was no sign that anyone was there. Finally, she stuck the keycard into the slot, and eased the door open.

  One lamp shone in the corner of the room, and a golf tournament played quietly on the television. The bed was unmade, and two suitcases lay on the floor, clothes spilling ou
t of them. Outfits considered and discarded lay scattered across the room, wadded on the bed, tossed over a chair, dropped on the floor. Makeup cluttered the sink area.

  They clearly intended to come back.

  She looked around for any clue, any item that might give her some idea what could have happened. And then she saw a purse with a cell phone sitting on top of it.

  A cell phone, connected to its charger plugged into the wall, lying at the center of a rumpled bed. Sadie picked it up and checked the call history. Pulling out her notepad, she jotted down each number from which a call had come over the last three days, and each call that had gone out.

  At the sight of one number, she felt her throat constrict. They’d called Hanover House. The call was short—only a few seconds. Either they’d asked for Sheila and been told she wasn’t there, or they’d hung up before asking.

  The last call went out two days ago. Friday, the last day they were seen.

  She finished writing down the numbers and quickly scrolled through the list of favorite numbers, jotting down each one, in case she needed it later.

  Then she set the phone down and went into the bathroom. The tub was dry, as were the towels on the floor. No one had been there this morning.

  She went back out to the dresser and saw some change lying there, along with the keycard envelope, and some papers. She looked through them and saw the birth certificate with her mother’s name, copies of Sheila’s prison release papers, and a Xerox of her mother’s mug shot.

  Had Amelia figured out she had siblings?

  Sadie went back to the door. It was time to call the police. They’d be able to read a million more messages into the mundane things lying around her. She looked down at the styles of clothes and the colors and the shoes abandoned next to the bed … some of these were her sister’s things. She and Sadie were alike. She could tell by the things Amelia wore, the size of her feet, the colors of her makeup.

  Oh, please, Lord. Give me a chance to know her.

  Finally, she went back out, sat on the concrete walkway outside of the room, and pulled her own cell phone out. She dialed the number of the police station and asked for Cade.