Page 13 of Detective for the Debutante (SAFE Haven Security #3)
LEIGH
F riday night and I’m just now pulling out the thick manila envelope I’ve been adding to all week.
Not only do I have the case file from when I pulled it for Lindsay, but different news articles, pictures, anything else I could find about Selene Gordon’s disappearance, her death, and even her relationship with Charlie before her disappearance.
The TV is on a low volume—background noise—as I lean back into the couch cushions and scan through the first page.
Selene Gordon hadn’t been from Charlie Vanderweel’s world.
Charlie—and his dad—were from old money in Nashville.
The Vanderweels were Nashville. Selene, on the other hand, had grown up in a middle-class family.
With her blonde hair and blue eyes, her resemblance to Hannah Grace and me in the picture is striking enough I take several moments to study it.
The article it accompanied is one that detailed her disappearance.
There are so many pictures of her and Charlie posing together at charity and other social events.
The two of them might as well have been models.
Or Nashville royalty living a fairytale after he met her while she was working for his father’s investment firm.
When he proposed, the entire city was anticipating their wedding.
But their story didn’t have a happy ending.
Reaching over, I grab my wine glass, taking a drink as I start the account of her disappearance.
A week before the wedding, Selene had disappeared. No note. Phone and purse left in her apartment. Charlie had reported her missing when he showed up at her apartment for a date and found her door unlocked, her phone on the kitchen counter.
No one had heard from her.
A missing person’s report was filed.
The wedding day came and went.
Poor Charlie .
With a sigh, I lean my head back against the couch. I couldn’t imagine living through something like that.
“Courtney, will you accept this compass as we continue to search for love?” The question pulls my gaze to the TV, and I watch the contestant on Searching for Love hug the recipient of one of his compasses.
With a sigh, I refocus on the papers in my lap.
A tip line had been set up, and while there were hundreds of thousands of tips, with extra officers assigned to the case, plus a quarter of a million dollars offered by the Vanderweel family for any information leading to her being found, there was nothing.
It wasn’t until almost a month later that an early morning paddleboarder called 911 to report a body washed up on shore near the East Bank Landing. And Selene’s case had been moved from missing persons to murder once the coroner confirmed her identity with the remains.
Tears burn my nose and I blink the building moisture away. Selene was my age when she was found dead. Goose bumps ripple down my arms and legs as I compare her situation with mine. The biggest difference is Hannah Grace had rescued me. And no one had rescued Selene.
Her official cause of death was first ruled an accidental drowning, but why would Selene have been out without her cell phone and purse? Why would she have been near the Cumberland River wearing a pink dress better suited for a high-end restaurant and her date with Charlie?
The case was destined to remain a mystery. Until a neighbor returned after three months abroad. He reported hearing Selene and Charlie arguing in her apartment the day before she went missing.
I fidget against the cushions, trying to reconcile the cool, charismatic man in the designer suit I met earlier this week with the one the neighbor described.
With the neighbor’s information, Charlie’s alibi about being home alone was called into question.
And his answers to questions about his relationship with Selene—that he had talked to her an hour before he showed up at her apartment, and he had found her door unlocked—changed.
His new answers said that he had talked to her on the way over to her apartment and the door to her apartment had been open.
The difference in stories led to more digging.
GPS and phone records were pulled. Charlie hadn’t called Selene the day she had disappeared. And his car had been near the East Bank Landing six hours before it showed up at Selene’s apartment complex. Which was enough for a warrant to search the car.
I suck in a breath, holding it as I read through what was found in the trunk.
Selene’s hair, a pink thread from the dress she had been found in, and a single high-heeled shoe Charlie tried to explain as her having left behind after a trip they had taken the previous weekend.
Charlie Vanderweel was arrested for second-degree murder, and it took the jury less than two hours to find him guilty. Closing my eyes, I can picture the courtroom. Charlie standing there next to the attorney I had met, hearing the verdict being read.
When I open my eyes, I’m surprised to find the show replaced with an early morning infomercial.
The contents of the folder are scattered along the floor, the manila folder itself tucked under me where I’m curled up on the couch.
I sit up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and trying to remember how I ended up on the couch.
The last thing I remembered was reading about Charlie’s conviction while Searching for Love played in the background. My body aches, my muscles tight as I try to figure out what woke me up besides the darkness that had followed me into dreams.
I was running from something. Terrified.
“It was just a dream,” I mumble to myself, grabbing the remote and turning off the TV.
More like a nightmare.
But one fuzzy enough I don’t fully understand it.
The same sort of fuzziness from the night when I woke up on a dirty mattress to my sister’s panicked face.
Stumbling to the shower, I try to clear away the cobwebs of sleeping on the couch and the remnants of the dream, before dressing in a tank top and shorts.
Before I leave, I grab my camera bag out of the hall closet and the small can of pepper spray, pocketing it before grabbing my keys.
The small metal canister has been a staple in my stocking for the last few years, not that I minded.
In fact, just having it gave me a little more confidence in facing a world where the likes of men like Zach Nolan still existed.
Yellow rays wash into the hazy mix of pink, purple, and blue as the sun crests the horizon. This morning’s early morning wake-up wasn’t planned, but I’m not going to let it go to waste either. Today is Saturday, and I am going to explore through the view finder of my camera. It’s creative therapy.
Is it coincidence I pull into Centennial Park?
The park Murphy kept texting you about .
I shake my head, dispelling the reminder, and pull into the parking lot. He may have told me about the park in several of his texts, but that wasn’t why I had chosen it. One of the online photography boards about Nashville had recommended it.
My photography class had come after Zach, after his trial, and I had found something I hadn’t realized I’d been missing—creative therapy.
Peace in the quiet moments to myself. It was a welcome reprieve from the near-constant anxiety after Zach kidnapped me.
Not that I remembered much thanks to the Ambien and alcohol.
But taking pictures soothed the anxiety in a way nothing else could.
While some photographers preferred sunset, I had found sunrise suited me better.
The sights and sounds as the rest of the world woke up, waiting for my camera lens to find it.
There are other cars in the parking lot this early, and some of the tension between my shoulder blades eases. While the pepper spray and camera both help, I also like to know I am not alone.
I start off down a shadow-dappled path closest to my car, the cool air a tease when the temperatures are going to skyrocket later today.
The shadows change shape as I get farther down the trail, the light filtering through less and less until the way the light envelops the green of the foliage catches my attention—and that of my camera lens.
I stop several times while two women run past me with a nod, exercising in the still cool air.
A little farther along the trail, I indulge in the affection of an overweight goldendoodle and his patient owner before I’m alone again to wander the winding path.
The silence reminds me of the stillness in the mountains surrounding Mistletoe Creek. For the first time since coming to Nashville, it feels like home. Taking a deep breath, I sigh it out and round the sharp bend in the path.
The view in front of me freezes me in my tracks where two trails converge to one on a sharp bend.
“Oh.”
The word is a whisper, not enough to do justice to the vista of the sunrise reflecting off the small body of water, the Parthenon in the park rising like a sentry from the sea of manicured green bounding the water in front of it.
I kneel down as I lift my camera, changing several settings until the image becomes clearer through the view finder.
Until it’s exactly what I want. Holding my breath, I depress the button in an attempt to capture the magic enveloping me in this exact moment.
I’m five or six shots in and nowhere close to being done when I’m tackled sideways into the still damp grass, my breath whooshing from my lungs and making it impossible to say anything, let alone scream.
I’m a tangle of limbs with someone else, my heart pounding against my breastbone as the fight-or-flight reaction holds firmly in the fight reaction.
My elbow raps sharply against the ground, pins and needles traveling my entire arm as I struggle to get free.