Grave Truth

1 “I didn’t realize you were a woman,” said the man in his late forties sitting on the other side of my heavy, wooden desk. I knew what he meant—in my occupation and with a name like Sydney, it was a common mistake—but I waited to see if he’d dig himself a deeper hole. He’d come in asking if my boss was around, so it could only get better. Deaf to his own verbal missteps, he continued, “I don’t think my wife knows you’re a woman, either.” He abused the hat in his hand, twisting it and tapping it against his leg. (Since when did men start wearing hats again? Men other than hipsters, that is, who aren’t exactly thick on the ground in Tallahassee.) I wondered if there was a pile of gray lint beneath the chair, cast off when his hat struck the leg of his matching pants and gathering like dryer filter fuzz. I tucked my red curls behind one ear and asked, “Is it a problem? That I’m a woman?” The man blushed, looked at my face just long enough to confirm that yes, I was watching him blush, then looked back down at his hat. “No, I don’t guess so. I mean… no.” I considered offering him a drink, but feared it would confuse him even more about my gender and vocational identity. “Why don’t you tell me what brings you here. Mister…?” He glanced up again, momentarily relieved to have a question he could answer. “Clint. Clint Spencer. I, uh, I actually live over by Ocala, but I had to come to Tallahassee on business. My wife figured while I was here, I might as well drop in…” His voice trailed off. There’s not much to look at in the front room of my office—some filing cabinets, bankers boxes crammed with additional files tucked under tables, my computer and printer, a couple of framed prints—but he was doing his best to find something. Here on business, huh? His short, dark hair was simply cut, buzzed up the back and sides in what might be the #3 in a 1950s barbershop poster. The outdated style combined with his graying temples to make him look older; I revised his age down to mid-forties. He didn’t have the confident demeanor or the wardrobe to be a lobbyist (his suit was well cared for, but definitely off the rack). This was personal. “Mr. Spencer, what do you need from me?” I asked, sharply enough for him to focus on me instead of the cobwebs in my windows. (Note to self: clean the windows.) “I’m sorry, Mrs.—Miss—Brennan. It’s my niece. We need you to help us find her.” “How old is she?” I asked. “Sixteen.” “Have you contacted the police?” I asked. “No,” Mr. Spencer said, and his hat fidgeting escalated to mangling. “It’s complicated.” “How so?” “We’re not her guardians. And the people who are—the person who is—her foster parent… Well, let’s just say she’s not exactly doing a helluva job.” There was a slight creaking sound as he dealt his hat a twisting, potential death blow, but I don’t think he noticed. “Mr. Spencer, why don’t you start at the beginning.” He told me his sister-in-law had long been estranged from her family. “She died several years ago, and by the time Debbie—that’s my wife—found out, our niece had already been taken into foster care. We had our hands full with our own kids, and they’d placed Addy with a real nice older woman, so we figured maybe it was for the best.” “Addy’s your niece?” I asked. He nodded. “But we contacted Addy’s foster mother and started visiting. You know, just trying to get to know her because she’d never even met us before. This probably went on for a year, and things were going well. But Debbie has some health issues, and they flared up bad for a while. It took us close to six months to get her straightened out.” Mr. Spencer sighed, and for a moment I fancied his breath had made the Spanish moss sway in the live oak outside. Instead, a breeze had picked up. Whether it was the last gasp of winter or first of spring, I couldn’t tell. “Once Debbie got back on her feet, we realized we hadn’t heard from Addy’s foster mother in a long while. She didn’t answer her phone, the house was empty, and there was a different caseworker that wouldn’t talk to us—it was a mess. We finally found out the poor woman had fallen and broken her hip, and Addy had been placed somewhere else, with us none the wiser.” Mr. Spencer rubbed his nose in that I’m-a-man-with-allergies-not-feelings way. I pretended to make a note on the yellow legal pad next to me to give him a chance to recover himself. He pulled a handkerchief from somewhere and honked into it once, loudly, before continuing. “It’s all such a bles-sed mess,” he said, pronouncing the word with two syllables like a proper Southerner. “We got a lawyer that didn’t do us any good. Addy’s been through three families and just as many caseworkers in the past two years. The woman who has her now won’t let us see Addy, and she’s got so many kids in her house she must have to do a head count every night. Except she doesn’t, apparently, because Addy’s gone.” “How do you know she’s gone?” I asked. He bowed his head, as if he’d done something nefarious. “One of my wife’s friends is a substitute teacher, sometimes at Addy’s school. She lets us know if Addy misses, and she gave me a call last week. I went by the house, and the foster woman told me Addy had chickenpox. But she was lying. I know because we almost didn’t visit Addy when our youngest was spots all over, but Addy said it was okay, that she’d already had them.” Now it was my turn to sigh. I felt for the man, but… “And she hasn’t been reported missing? What about truant by the school?” “They’re off this week, so it’s only been whatever days she missed last week.” There went that potential out. “Mr. Spencer, don’t you think it would be better to hire someone who lives closer to Ocala? I could recommend someone—” “My wife wanted you,” he said. I couldn’t imagine why, since I’d never met the woman. “And we’re pretty sure Addy came to Tallahassee,” he continued. “So far as we know, she’s still here.” The Spencers had done some legwork on their own. A neighbor of the current foster mother didn’t much care for the woman. Between talking with the neighbor, the substitute teacher, and a couple of Addy’s friends (thanks again to the teacher), Mr. Spencer and his wife pieced together that Addy had been seeing someone. Someone older. “Addy said she was moving to Tallahassee with this guy. One of her friends took a picture of them together. I don’t know anything about that stuff, but she said she could email it or whatever,” he said. “Do you have a name?” I asked. “Troy Cantrell. That’s got everything we know about him,” he said, sliding a few sheets of paper across my desk. The top page looked printed from a home computer. “And I put Addy’s friend’s phone number down at the bottom. The rest is anything else I thought you might need—birth certificate, foster mother’s address…” I skimmed quickly, trying to find anything that would justify me not taking the case. There was no father listed on the birth certificate. “What about her biological father?” “He’s dead. I think somehow he caused the split in the family, but I don’t know any of the details. My wife’s family never talks about it.” So no immaculate conception, which meant I couldn’t object on religious grounds. Were I religious. That still left me one solid area. “Mr. Spencer, since she is a minor, and you aren’t her guardian, and her disappearance hasn’t been reported to the authorities, I’m concerned about some of the legal issues. I’ll need to speak with my attorney before I can agree to look for your niece.” He nodded. “I understand, Miss Brennan. And I know Addy probably just sounds like one more runaway, one more kid who finally found the trouble she’s been looking for. I’m not going to lie; she can be disrespectful—never to us, but so I’ve been told. I don’t think she’s into drugs, but there’s a good chance that loser she took off with is. But her life doesn’t have to be like that. My wife and I would like to give Addy a home, a real honest-to-God family that’ll stick with her until the day she dies.” He leaned across my desk with his secret weapon, a four-by-six photo of a lanky girl in denim shorts, squatting in the grass. She looked familiar, the way all kids look familiar until their faces set into adulthood. Long, brown hair hid half her face as she leaned forward, hand hovering over a cat with its paw extended in play. The camera had caught the moment she realized she was being watched, and the transition from an expression of innocence to wariness was unsettling. I tried to hand the photo back to Mr. Spencer, but he backed away. “That was taken three years ago. We don’t have anything more recent, and I didn’t have time to make a copy. I’m in town for another day, so if you could let me know by tomorrow afternoon, I'd appreciate it. I’d rather not leave her photo behind if you won’t be needing it. Thank you, Miss Brennan,” he said. Then he rose and exited my office with his mangled hat in hand. I stood to watch him walk down the front steps, then pause and look both ways for his vehicle on the street. He never put his hat back on his head, just threw it on the passenger’s seat when he reached his car, a light-blue sedan. I sighed, fanning the picture back and forth in my hands as if it were just another piece of paper, a flyer from the mailbox. But those eyes… those haunted brown eyes. “Well, s**t,” I said to no one in particular, picked up the phone, and dialed a familiar cell phone number. The voice of my attorney and friend Roger Weber greeted me brusquely with, “Sydney, I hope you’re not in jail, because I’m really not in the mood.” He was in a mood all right, one consonant with the gray skies and the increasing wind outside. “Not this time. Do you have a few minutes to touch base today, say around six or six-thirty?” He was silent for a moment, presumably consulting his calendar. “I’ll be at the office at six-thirty, but I can’t stay long.” “That’s fine,” I said. “It won’t take long. I just need a little advice about how to take a case without losing my PI license.” His sigh resonated over the phone. “Of course you do.”