Page 36 of Nobody's Fool

“Everyone gave up hope,” Polly says. “The pain became too much. The family withdrew from public life. At first they’d had a lot of support, but as time went by, people started making awful accusations.”

“What kind of awful accusations?” Debbie asks.

“That the family was involved in what happened to Victoria.”

“What?”

“The Belmond Corporation got entangled in some ugly business scandals. There were those who wondered out loud about that, claiming that Victoria wanted to blow the whistle.”

“Blow the whistle on her family?”

“Yes,” Polly says. “Suddenly rumors started to take root and spread. Her parents’ trip to Chicago was last-minute. Maybe they took it so they’d have an alibi. Her brother, Thomas, had a bit of a checkered past—school suspension, dropped assault charges, too many DUIs. He also dropped her off in the city that night, so some wondered whether he had something to do with it. Victoria had a boyfriend whose father worked for the Belmonds. How come he didn’t notice she was missing from the party? Victoria lived in this wealthy community and knew all their rich-people secrets, so maybe someone in town had to silence her. From what we can see, the police didn’t take any of these too seriously. They were the stuff of tabloids.”

“What other theories were out there?” Gary asks.

“The usual. I think after a few weeks, the police believed Victoria was dead. That she’d been murdered right away and her body dumped in the river or buried in the woods. Or maybe she was still being held by a kidnapper somewhere belowground. Stuff like that. Others believed that Victoria was behind it all. She had this fight with her mother, so she ran away.”

I stand up. “That’s a lot of theorizing,” I say. “Does anyone remember our Sherlock quote on theorizing?”

Debbie raises her hand and without hesitation says, “‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.’”

We all look at her, stunned by her memory.

“Very good, Debbie,” I say. “So let’s not fall into that trap. Let’s get some more facts.” I look at Polly. “What happened next?”

Polly nods again toward the other Pink Panther. I wish I could remember her name. The next slide comes up. It’s a photograph of a diner straight out of a painting by Norman Rockwell by way of Edward Hopper. “This is the Nesbitt Station Diner located in Briggs, Maine. There’s nothing much in Briggs other than a maximum-securitypenitentiary. On March eighteenth, 2011, eleven years and nearly four months after Victoria Belmond vanished from McCabe’s Pub in Manhattan, someone claiming to be a waitress at the diner called the FBI and said that a woman sitting in the corner booth reminded her of the missing Victoria Belmond. The FBI didn’t take it too seriously, but they did call the local police. Two cops happened to be eating there anyway, so they checked on the woman eating alone in the corner booth. They asked her who she was and if they could see some ID. But the young woman either couldn’t or wouldn’t talk. Her head was shaved. They gently asked her to empty her pockets. She only had one thing in them…”

Polly swallows and nods. The slide changes.

“This.”

It is a yellowing three-row library checkout card, the kind of thing they used when I was a little kid, though they were dated even then. You’d bring your book to the library desk. The librarian would stamp the due date in the column on the left. She’d remind you that it would be a dime for every day you brought it back after that. Then you’d write your name in the center column. When you brought the book back, the librarian would stamp the return date in the right column.

On the top of this card, the one on the slide, where it reads Author, someone had typed:

Belmond, Victoria

Next line was the book title:

Captive

Under that, there are, as I mentioned before, three columns.

On the far left was the Date Due. Someone had stamped in:

Jan 31, 2000

Back in those days, you kept the book out for one month. This date, January 31, 2000, would be exactly one month after Victoria had vanished.

The middle area, where you put the Borrower’s Name, someone had scrawled:

THE LIBRARIAN.

And then the final column, Date Returned:

March 18th, 2011

That day’s date, more than eleven years after Victoria had vanished.