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CHAPTER TEN

After the students are given their work assignments and empty into the night, I stay behind and call Marty. He picks up and says, “Busy day here. I still only have an LLC for that Connecticut residence. Whoever owns that place is working hard to keep it quiet.”

“I think it’s the Belmond family,” I say.

“As in—?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” he says. “That would explain it.”

“I also think Victoria Belmond lives there.”

I can tell by his hesitancy that Marty isn’t sure what to say to that one. “I see. Why do you believe that?”

I answer with a question. “Do you still have friends in the FBI?”

“I never had friends in the FBI,” Marty says.

“But contacts?”

“I know a guy who may know a guy,” Marty says.

“Can he get you the FBI file on Victoria Belmond?”

“As in the young woman who was kidnapped, what, thirty years ago?”

“Twenty-five,” I correct. Then I add, “Yes.”

I hear footsteps echoing outside of the classroom. Someone is coming up the steps.

“May I ask why you want the file?”

“Sure,” I say. “There’s a chance I could break the case.”

“The kidnapping of Victoria Belmond?”

“Yes.”

“You might be able to break it?”

“You sound skeptical,” I say.

Sounds more like two, maybe three sets of footsteps.

“Maybe a tad,” Marty says, “Do you care to elaborate on why you think you can solve one of the great mysteries of our time?”

The footsteps are closer, louder.

“I thought you said it was a busy day.”

“Kierce.”

“I’m not saying it’s likely,” I say, “and it’s a really long story and I’ll tell you about it later, but in the meantime can you look into the file?”

“No promises.”

“I didn’t ask for promises, did I?”

“No. No, you didn’t.”

The footsteps stop at my door. Leisure Suit Lenny leans in as I click off. Golfer Gary is with him.

“Got a second?” Lenny asks.

“Sure.”

Lenny hitches up his pants. He does that a lot, I notice. I can’t tell if the waist is too big or the bulge in his belly pushes the pants too low or why I’m wondering weird stuff like this. But it’s distracting. He hitches them up and steps into the room. Gary follows him.

Gary starts it off. “We are here on behalf of the class.”

Oh, this is going to be interesting. I lean back in my chair and throw up my feet. “Okay.”

“We’d like to know,” Gary continues, “why you are so interested in the Victoria Belmond case.”

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not.”

“It’ll be a fun class exercise,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “Research. Investigation. Surveillance.”

Gary folds his arms across the golf shirt with a logo that looks like a red basket on top of a stick. Golfers are weird. “But,” he says, “there’s more to it, right?”

I don’t reply.

Now it’s Lenny’s turn. “The woman who crashed our class last night. The one you followed. I don’t mean to pry, but that tracker goes to my phone too. You just asked us to run surveillance near Greenwich, Connecticut, in the exact same spot where the batteries on my GPS tracker died.”

Man, I am getting sloppy.

“In conclusion,” Gary says, sounding like a TV detective who has finally gathered all of the suspects in the drawing room for our denouement, “you saw a woman enter our class.”

“A woman,” Lenny adds, “who would be the approximate age of Victoria Belmond.”

Back to Gary: “That woman ran off.”

Lenny: “You followed her using a GPS tracker.”

“Right to the spot where you now want us to surveil for a possible Victoria Belmond sighting.”

They both stop and look at me. I nod in appreciation.

“I’m some teacher, right? I’m going to have to up the class fee.”

Lenny hitches up his pants again. “So the woman who was here last night, the one who came to our class. You think there’s a chance that—”

“—that she’s Victoria Belmond?” I finish for them.

It is an interesting question. You’d think I would know for sure, right? There are photographs, of course, of Victoria Belmond online. Not as many as you would think. But enough. In most she is a teenager, which would be when I knew Anna. There are far fewer—almost none—since her return. The parents asked the press to leave their traumatized daughter alone and had the resources to make that a reality. But when I look at the photos of seventeen-year-old Victoria, I can’t tell you for certain it’s the Anna I met in Spain—but I think it is. If it’s not, the resemblance is uncanny. The reason I can’t say for absolute sure it’s Anna is an odd one. I try to think back to what Anna looked like and when I do, I can describe her to you, I guess—but I can’t actually see her anymore. Quick: Think about an old love, one from all those years ago, one you knew only a week. Really really picture them. Do you have the specifics? Like a photograph? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Memory doesn’t work that way. Memory doesn’t take photographs. Memory is about trying to fill in the blanks, and while I see similarities, my memory won’t let me make a definitive match.

So the mystery deepens.

I was also not the most perceptive of boys back then. Don’t hate on me for this, but I don’t remember Anna’s eye color, for example. Anna’s hair was different, a different color and longer than Victoria’s, but that doesn’t mean much. Plus Victoria wears glasses. Anna did not.

And yet, when I saw Anna/Victoria in the flesh in my classroom, I was sure it was Anna in a split second.

Crazy.

“So what we are saying,” Gary continues, “is that Victoria Belmond showed up to your class last night.”

“Could be.”

“And when she saw you, she ran away.”

I smile. I know where they are going with this, but I play along. “I startle people.”

“True,” Lenny says, “and we might buy that if it ended there.”

“But?” I say.

“But, see, you chose to run after her,” Lenny says.

“Chased her,” Lenny clarifies.

“You didn’t hesitate a second. A crazy look crossed your face and bam, it’s like you were a world-class sprinter all of a sudden.”

“And let’s face it, Kierce. You don’t like to run.”

“Physical activity isn’t my bag,” I admit.

“Conclusion,” Gary says with a flair for the dramatic. “This isn’t just a class assignment. You, Professor Kierce, know—or knew—Victoria Belmond.”

“Or at the very least,” Lenny adds, “you have some personal connection to her or this case.”

I look at Gary. Then at Lenny. I nod to show that I’m impressed.

“I will neither confirm nor deny your allegation,” I say, mostly because I don’t really know for sure what to tell them or even if the allegation is true. “But let’s suppose I do. Then what?”

Gary takes a step forward. He grabs a chair, pulls it up near me, swivels it around and sits reverse pony. “This is a class of curious detective wannabees.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we all googled you before we joined the class. We know your background. We know you were a decorated NYPD homicide detective, of course. And we know why you lost your job. We also know that another case where you had a personal connection has suffered a severe setback.”

I try not to bristle at that. “I found her killer,” I say a little too defensively.

“And now he’s free,” Lenny says.

So there we have it. The two men look at me and wait for my reply. I turn my hands palms up in a quasi shrug. “If you don’t want to do this—”

“We didn’t say that,” Gary says quickly.

“But we think you should come clean.”

“Because it may help us solve the case.”

Gary rises, making a big production of putting the chair back where it was. “Either way we are still going to help you.”

“Because we like you,” Lenny adds. “And we think you’re a good man.”

“But we wanted you to know that we aren’t patsies,” Gary says. “We are going into this with eyes open.”

They wait for me to say something. I settle for “Thank you.”

That seems to be all they need.

Molly and I sit at our kitchen table finishing up breakfast.

Maybe it’s thinking about the Belmond money or whatever, but this kitchen suddenly feels too small and dated. I want better for Molly and Henry. I want to have a job again with a steady paycheck. I don’t want to see her worry, especially about money. Not ever. Old-fashioned thinking, and Molly would probably hit me for even considering it, but it should be my job to make sure she never has to worry about how we will pay our bills. I don’t say this in a bitter way or any of that. A wise (rich) man once told me that the best part about having a lot of money is that you didn’t worry about money. I feel that right now. I want that for us. For Molly.

“My coming home late last night has nothing to do with you and me,” I say.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, silly. You love me. It’s written all over that goofy face of yours.”

I can’t help but smile. “It is, isn’t it?”

Forget what I said before. What man is wealthier than I?

“So what’s wrong?” she asks.

I decide to just say it. “Do you remember the case of Victoria Belmond?”

Her face indicates that wasn’t what she expected to hear. “The rich girl who was kidnapped?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t kidnap her, did you?”

Gallows humor. I love this woman.

“Uh, no,” I say. “But I may have dated her.”

“Wow.” Molly tilts her head. “When?”

“About two years after she was kidnapped.”

She waits for the punch line. None comes. “You’re serious?”

“Twenty-two years ago, I went to Europe with a bunch of guys from college after we graduated.”

“You told me that earlier—”

“Right, I know.”

“—but not before today. Not a word about a college trip with the boys. Which I thought was strange.”

“Because I didn’t stay with them very long,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Early on, I met a girl named Anna. We hooked up in the Costa del Sol of Spain. I liked her, so I told the guys to go on without me and I stayed with her.”

I stop.

“Sami?”

“And now, for the first time in all these years, I saw her again.”

“Anna?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night. She showed up to my class. But then she ran. I followed her, but…”

I shake my head. I can’t speak.

Molly puts her hand on my arm. “This Anna,” she says. “You think, what, that she might have been Victoria Belmond?”

When I finally manage to nod, Molly sits back, stunned. My nod turns into a headshake. Finally, I spout out, “Yes, no, maybe. I don’t know. I’m still trying to put this together. It’s a… it’s a mess.”

“It’s okay. Shh, don’t worry.”

I shake my head again.

“You were young,” Molly says. “Even if it was her, you’d have no way of knowing. How could you have possibly known?”

I don’t know what to say.

Molly tries again. “In Spain, did this girl—this Anna—did she try to give you a signal?”

That confuses me. “A signal?”

“That she was kidnapped. That something was wrong or that she was there under duress.”

I get it. Molly thinks I feel guilty because I hooked up with a kidnapped girl and didn’t realize that she was in danger. I hadn’t thought of that until right now, oddly enough, but maybe Molly has a point.

Was Anna in trouble that whole time? Did I miss the signs?

My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Pink Panther Polly.

Car just left estate. We think it’s her. Gary and I following.

My heart leaps and so do I. Molly watches me rise.

“Sami?”

“She’s on the move.”

“What? Who?” Then: “Victoria Belmond?”

I nod. “Or whoever she is.”

“How do you know?”

“My students.”

“What?”

I quickly explain that the Pink Panthers set up a schedule for my students to run surveillance near the estate in shifts. Ethically questionable, I guess, but certainly economical. I’m not a cop anymore, but we learn to make do.

“Can we finish this up later?” I ask. “In a few hours I may know if this is nothing but my imagination.”

“Go,” Molly says. “But one thing.”

I look back at her.

“It’s something I said before, Sami.”

“I’m listening.”

“This Anna or Victoria or whatever shows up in your life at the same time Tad Grayson is released from prison.”

I shake my head. “I can’t see a connection, Molly.”

“Then you better look harder.”