Anonymous Page 13

  “Can’t the police see anything from her phone? Like the last phone calls and texts and also like where it pinged and stuff?” Ana asked.

  “Yes, in general, they can,” Madison said. “But it’s limited. I found her phone in the Gaslamp, so it’s doubtful it will have pinged anywhere else. I don’t know if she dropped it or threw it or what, but it looks like it stayed in the Gaslamp, even if she didn’t. They can figure out when the last phone call was, but even if it was Frank, it doesn’t prove anything other than they had some type of conversation. The texts the police could’ve gotten with just her phone number, they didn’t need the phone, like two years ago when she first went missing. That just requires a subpoena to the cell provider she uses. So apparently the texts didn’t reveal anything useful, at least that we know of.”

  “Oh, so the fact that you found the phone, that doesn’t help us?” Ana asked.

  Madison didn’t like her luck being characterized so blandly. “Well, I mean, it helps us to not worry about why her phone only pinged in the Gaslamp and nowhere else. According to what I’ve read, Samantha’s phone only pinged in the Gaslamp too. Unfortunately, we don’t know if Samantha’s phone was going straight to voicemail that night or what, because no one knew she was missing until the next day. Once someone tried to call her, it went straight to voicemail, but that could’ve been from the battery dying.”

  “So like I said, it doesn’t help that you found the phone,” Ana said.

  Andrea was definitely Madison’s favorite, not Ana. “I think any evidence we find helps. It adds clues and rules things out.” It also helps us to have stuff to use to bluff the idiot boyfriend. The idiot boyfriend who you apparently have a thing for.

  “Well, I’m glad you found it,” Andrea said.

  “Thanks,” Madison said. “So is there anything else that I should know? Anything that the police didn’t ask you that you feel they should have?”

  The girls all looked at each other and shook their heads no. Picked-over ground, Madison thought. And it had been two years. A bunch of girls out drinking and one of them didn’t come home. Sometimes there was no more to be learned about a situation than that.

  “I’m getting a hangover,” Amanda said. “Can we go to the beach and go swimming?”

  The girls all agreed that this was a good idea. It was getting close to the time that Madison wanted to start surveillance on Frank; being early would be okay too. She got up.

  “I’m just going to use the restroom before I leave. It was really nice meeting you,” Madison said.

  Everyone smiled and said nice meeting you too. They were getting up, gathering their things, and paying the bill. Madison started for the restroom in the back. As she walked through the restaurant, which had huge arches that were open to the outside patio and Garnet Street in front, she saw a blue Chevy Blazer with tinted windows parked across the street. What caught her attention first was the tinting: in California, tinting on the front driver’s and passenger’s windows was illegal; the police wanted to be able to see into the car. Madison had it on her car because she needed it for surveillance. She avoided tickets in a variety of ways, including taking the tinting off, paying the fine, and putting the tinting back on. So she noticed things like that. The other thing was that she thought she saw movement in the driver’s seat. It was one of the things that made Madison great at surveillance: she could hold perfectly still in a Zen-like state for hours, but especially if there were people walking by the car. Madison knew that humans were predators and noticed movement. And unless you had limo tint, which for sure would get you pulled over too frequently for it to be worth it, movement could still be seen behind tinted windows.

  She walked into the bathroom, deciding to file that information for later. Just to be sure, she wrote blue Blazer, tinted windows, PB and the date and time in the notepad on her phone. When she came out of the bathroom if it was still there she would write down the license plate number.

  When she emerged from the restroom, the Chevy Blazer was gone and so were the girls. It was probably nothing. She stepped outside the restaurant and her phone pinged; it was a text from Ken. Call me?

  She called him as she walked to her car.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she asked when he picked up the phone.

  “Oh, thanks for getting back to me. Two calls in one day; you’re probably thinking ‘What have I done to deserve this,’ right?”

  Madison hadn’t been thinking that, but no need to be rude. “Something like that.”

  “Well, I have good news. When Sylvia got to the shelter today, she told me that the job had been able to do her interview today while the kids were at school. And she got the job!”

  “That’s great. That warms my heart. I needed that today. Glad to hear it.”

  “Well, I had told her how you’d been so quick to agree, and that warmed her heart. So you restored some faith in humanity for her.”

  Madison got to her car and opened the door. “Happy to help.”

  “Well, if you ever need my help with anything, you have my number.”

  Madison got in the driver’s seat. She needed to get off the phone so she could get to Frank’s for surveillance. As soon as she started the car, the Bluetooth would take over and interrupt their call for a minute, which was always annoying. “I sure will.”

  “Like if you need help with the job you’re on now. How is that going?”

  “Oh, you know, ups and downs.” Her car was boiling, and she wanted to start it for the air conditioning.

  “Well, good. The other thing is, let me know if you need help wrangling Tom. He can be a handful, but he’s a good guy.”

  “Sure thing. Thanks so much. Talk to you soon.” They disconnected, and Madison started the car. Time to go see what Frank Bronson was up to.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was 7:05 PM when Madison turned the corner onto 23rd and Frank Bronson’s house came into view. There was no red Mitsubishi in the driveway. Madison cursed.

  If he had already left for his adventure and Madison had missed him, she was going to be furious. However, he might not have an adventure to go on and Madison could be on a wild-goose chase anyway; or he just ran to the store and would be back. Madison found a place to park at the end of his block and across the street, where she could see the front of his house and the driveway. She waited.

  She didn’t want to read her book in case he came back. It wasn’t that she couldn’t see his bright-red car drive into the driveway; she was just antsy. Plus, she felt like she didn’t deserve to read her book because she’d missed him. She sat very still in the driver’s seat. When she first started her career, she’d always jumped into the back seat after arriving at surveillance, behind the extra-dark tinted windows in the back, so that she wouldn’t be seen by passersby. Sitting in the back, she was virtually invisible; no prying eyes of neighbors to get spooked and call the police, thereby causing Madison to get pulled out of her car and become a spectacle in the neighborhood. But this meant that when the subject left and she needed to tail them, she had to jump into the front seat, start the car, and follow them. All nearly six feet of her. On more than one occasion she’d ended up with her butt in the driver’s seat and her legs stuck on the ceiling, facing backward, wedged under the steering wheel with the subject driving away. It was not ideal.

  She’d since taken to staying in the front seat whenever possible. She put the sun-screen window shades up to block the view of her from the front, leaving a small spot for her to peek through, and then she just held really still when people were around. People walking by didn’t notice her, although children and animals always did. She’d had adults stand right next to her car having a conversation, while a two-year-old in a stroller stared right into her eyes. Cats would jump on the roof of the car and then put their heads down along the window and stare at her. Birds, too. There was something magical about children and animals.

  The red Mitsubishi came into view from the front; it turned off
Broadway and came down 23rd toward where Madison was sitting in her car. It made the right into the driveway of Frank’s house. Madison saw Frank’s unkempt form exit the vehicle and walk into the house with a grocery bag. The store. She’d been right. Time to relax. It could be a long night of waiting for Frank to go do something interesting. Let’s hope my luck holds, she thought.

  Luck was a funny thing. She put her head back on the seat and thought about how she’d always considered herself lucky, when someone else looking at her life might not think so. A person might not think getting breast cancer was lucky, but Madison felt like hers was. Her mother hadn’t caught her cancer in time to save her life; she’d died at fifty-three. But Madison’s was caught early, despite being hereditary. The mastectomy had meant Madison didn’t have to get chemotherapy, and she didn’t have to worry about the cancer coming back. Lucky. Losing her breasts was a small price to pay for being able to leave the cancer center and never come back.

  She remembered walking into the cancer center that last day and remarking that the place always felt like it was too much, like an expensive perfume bottle that had shattered on the floor. Large original artwork whose colors flashed from the light splashing through the glass walls of the atrium. Marble floors. Comfortable chairs: some in lines, some clustered for talking. Real plants. An outdoor area sprinkled with overstuffed cushions on patio love seats. Despite its beauty, it was not a place she wanted to visit. Even more, she didn’t want to belong there. You don’t belong here! screamed from the floors and the art and the greenery in the atrium; the screams echoed, and she repeated them: “I don’t belong here.” After that day, she wouldn’t.

  Sitting down, she had noticed a gaunt woman in the waiting room with her head on her husband’s chest. The woman looked exhausted and defeated, the colorful bandanna covering her bald head all the cheer she could muster. Her husband was hugging her; the muscles in his arms provided the strength his words could no longer offer.

  Sitting and waiting, just like she did on surveillance. Watching and observing. A woman in her eighties had been wheeled out of the office by a woman in her sixties; judging by their conversation, it had appeared they were mother and daughter. The woman in the wheelchair had an oxygen tank and a cannula under her nose. How long was it worth fighting for life? Poking, prodding, living in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank as your best friend. Then again, doctors never said, “You have cancer and you’re going to die.” They said, “We found something that needs to be checked out.”

  Then: “The something we checked out looked suspicious.”

  Then: “There are some malignant cells, but we have a treatment plan: we just need to cut out X and Y, then give you treatment A and B,” etc., until you were over eighty sitting in a wheelchair and you didn’t quite know how you’d gotten there.

  A man in his fifties had walked into the waiting room. He’d stood at the check-in desk supporting an older man who was weak and having trouble standing.

  I know these men, she’d realized.

  They had been her neighbors four years before. The younger man used to make chili, macaroni salad, and corn bread for the neighborhood while the older man got in his car every day and went to work. Except the older man really wasn’t “older”; he just looked that way now. What was the proper etiquette for meeting an old acquaintance at a cancer center? Madison hadn’t wanted to intrude on what appeared to be a difficult time, but she also didn’t want to ignore a kind man. She pretended not to see them.

  Then they’d been taken swiftly out of the waiting room into the recesses of the building.

  A man in his late forties came in with a man in his twenties; from the similarity of their noses, they appeared to be father and son. They carried identical backpacks—some brand for the serious outdoorsman, like REI or Patagonia. The son’s last name was stitched into his. The son said something to the father under his breath, and they both chuckled quietly. They had an easy rapport. They were both handsome. The father looked rugged: wiry and toned, wearing a knit cap; however, he had a slightly gray cast to his skin, a just-under-healthy weight, and no hair under his cap. He looked around for a chair and spotted Madison looking at him. He quickly looked down, suddenly self-conscious.

  The private investigator–as–patient presented a challenge: always an observer, Madison found it hard not to stare. Worse, she wasn’t the kind of investigator who blended into her surroundings. She preferred to be behind the tinted glass of her car, where she could watch people without being noticed.

  And then it was her turn. The nurse came for her and took her to the back.

  “Well, your scans are all clear,” the doctor said. “In fact, we caught everything so early that you don’t have to come back and see me anymore!”

  That made sense, because she didn’t belong there.

  He was trying to be nice. What do you say to a thirty-two-year-old who you’ve gutted like a fish?

  “Ha-ha,” Madison managed to chuckle. “Well, that’s good.” The doctor looked down at her chart, and they were both silent. She grabbed the paper robe tighter around her foobs. They were Fake Boobs, so there was no point in being modest. But the awkwardness in the room made her feel suddenly vulnerable.

  “I’m not afraid anymore,” she blurted out inexplicably.

  The doctor looked up from the chart. He nodded and walked to the door. He stood for a moment with his hand on the knob and then turned back to her. “That’s about all we can ask for, isn’t it?” he said, and walked out the door.

  She went to the front desk and said, “I don’t have to come back again.”

  As she waited for the clerk to make a note in her chart, a man in his forties came out of the treatment rooms and walked toward the exit carrying a folded pink blanket, a laptop in a quilt-like cover, and a reusable lunch bag with flowers on it. He stared straight ahead and didn’t pause in his path to figure out directions or turns. He looked weary but walked steadily on. He exited the building into the bright sunshine outside the glass doors, turning right toward the parking lot.

  He didn’t belong there either.

  Madison brought her mind back to the present, to her tinted-glass SUV and Frank’s house in the distance. Her cancer story would always be part of her history, but she tried so hard not to make it part of her life anymore. She had made it while her mother hadn’t. So she tried to make her life worthwhile, to make those extra years that her mother didn’t get worth something.

  She took a deep breath and slowed her heart rate and her breathing. She hoped she wouldn’t have to sit here all night. She could be very Zen when she needed to be, waiting, watching. But she wanted him to go somewhere. She needed him to. She decided to read her book. The phone rang before she could get the book out of her bag.

  “Madison Kelly.”

  “Hi, Madison. This is Josie. The waitress at Hank’s Dive? Felicity told you I’d be calling?”

  “Oh, yes, great. Glad you called.” Madison grabbed a pen and a notepad from the console under her elbow.

  “So Felicity said that you’re a private investigator?”

  “Yes, I am.” Madison kept her eyes on the red Mitsubishi as she talked. There was no one on the sidewalk near her car, so she didn’t need to worry about being quiet or remaining still.

  “I saw you at the bar. You don’t look like a PI.” Josie’s voice was accusatory, as if Madison were lying.

  Madison had long ago lost patience for that remark. “That’s the point.”

  “What do you mean, that’s the point?”

  Madison was already sick of this girl, and they’d been on the phone for less than a minute. “Did you have something you wanted to tell me? Isn’t that why you’re calling?”

  “I’m calling because Felicity asked me to call you. I didn’t want to call you,” Josie said.

  A limo pulled up in front of the house a few houses away from where Madison was parked. The neighborhood didn’t really warrant that type of ride, so Madison was intrigued. The
driver got out and opened the back door, and a teenage boy in a tuxedo got out and walked up the path to the house. He was carrying a plastic container with both hands as if it were made of glass. Madison couldn’t see what was in the container.

  The occupants of the house he was visiting had done a lot with what they had to work with: probably a two-bedroom, one-bath home with barely a front yard. They’d put a fresh wooden fence up and landscaped with drought-tolerant plants. The house had been painted a muted gray color with green trim. The whole effect was charming.

  “Okay, well then if you’d like to share some information with me, I’m happy to hear it,” Madison said into the phone.

  “I want to make sure you’re legitimate before I just start handing you information.”

  Before the young man could get to the front door, a teenage girl and her parents came out of the home. The girl was wearing what could only be described as a prom dress: purple and shiny and sparkly. The boy bowed, which caused the girl’s mother to put her hand to her mouth and nudge the girl’s father. The boy opened the plastic container and extracted a corsage made of purple orchids; the mom helped put it on her daughter’s wrist. The boy had braces and a purple bow tie to match the girl’s dress. The dad beamed.

  “Did Felicity tell you my last name?” Madison asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ve had plenty of time to make sure I am ‘legitimate.’ PI licenses are public record and can be accessed online, which any Google search would have told you. Which leads me to the conclusion that you just wanted to take control of this conversation and try to put me at a disadvantage. I’m not sure why, since I’m just here to help and I’ve done nothing to warrant this treatment. So either tell me what you called to tell me or get off my phone line.”