Page 37 of Nobody's Fool

Under that, scrawled in script:I know I owe a heavy late fine, but I really enjoyed the book. My apologies for being tardy.

More silence. The room’s temperature has dropped at least ten degrees.

Someone finally mutters, “My god.”

Then Lenny says, “Man, that’s pretty psycho stuff.”

Polly continues, her voice properly somber now. “The police call in the parents. Victoria Belmond was seventeen when she left. If this is Victoria, she would be twenty-eight now. But the woman still won’t speak. She’s nearly catatonic. But when she sees her parents and brother, she starts sobbing uncontrollably. No one can console her. No one can get her to talk. When doctors run a full physical on her, they find signs of trauma and abuse, but they don’t release anything specific. She’s fifteen pounds thinner, but that’s not a huge surprise. At first, some officials are even suspicious of the woman.”

“In what way?” Lenny asks.

“Like maybe the girl is a fake, a con artist. Rich family, missing girl suddenly home. To be fair, it’s happened before.”

“I remember a case like that in Texas,” Gary says.

“Nicholas Barclay, right,” Polly answers. “And that boy was only missing three years. Victoria had been gone for eleven years, and even her own family isn’t sure it’s her at first. The father has doubts, I guess. The mother doesn’t.”

“Why didn’t they run a DNA test?”

“They did,” Polly said. “That’s why I said ‘at first.’ Back in those days DNA tests took a few days, so there are a few rocky days, but eventually the test confirms that the young woman found in the Nesbitt Station Diner is indeed Victoria Belmond.”

Silence.

Gary turns to me. “I don’t get something,” he says.

“Go ahead,” I reply.

“It’d been eleven years. Her head was shaved. She’s thinner. Her own family barely recognizes her. And yet some random waitress spots her and calls it in?”

“That’s a good point,” Polly says. “Did anyone else catch that?”

“We did,” one of the young influencers says, the first time they’ve said a word. “No waitress admitted making the call. We think it was probably the kidnapper.”

“Except the record shows it was a woman’s voice.”

“So maybe the Librarian is a woman?”

“Or maybe a woman who works with the Librarian. Or the caller could have used a voice changer. Even back then the technology was good enough to make the deepest male bass sound like a little girl.”

I try to get them back on track. “What happened next, Polly?”

“We don’t really know much. Eventually Victoria Belmond was able to talk, but it’s like the previous eleven years didn’t exist. Shehas no idea where she’d been or who took her or anything about a kidnapping.”

“Correction,” Gary says. “Sheclaimsto have no idea.”

“Maybe,” Polly says. “All we know is that Victoria started being treated by the best psychiatrists money can buy. But we really don’t know much more. The family asked for privacy, which makes sense, and they had the resources to make that happen.”

“But Victoria Belmond was found, what, fourteen years ago,” Gary says.

“Correct.”

“So where has she been in all that time?”

“That’s a mystery,” Polly says. “Victoria has never spoken publicly or given interviews. According to the public record, the case remains unsolved. No one knows who kidnapped her. No one knows where she was for those eleven years. The family is superrich and has residences in several states and at least two out of the country. She could be holed up in any of them or none of them. No one knows.”

“Almost twenty-five years since the crime initially took place,” Golfer Gary says with a shake of his head. “This case isn’t cold, Kierce. It’s frozen in ice.”

They all turn to me.