Alafair Burke - Long Gone

“Well, it depends by what you mean by something wrong , I suppose. Supposedly she’s a very talented photographer, but as my granddaughter sometimes says, there’s a screw loose in there. There’s a darkness to her. Very negative energy. Why do you ask?”

“It just seems a little old to be living with her mother.” Even eight or nine years ago, when Gloria died, the daughters would have been around thirty years old.

“Oh, Mia’s a youngster. She only needed Christie to stay with her at the house for a few years, and then she moved down to the city, so Christie had the house on her own. You know, when Gloria moved in next door, she was just pregnant with little Mia. Christie was already messed up, so I thought maybe Gloria wanted a second chance. But then she goes and makes all the same mistakes with Mia, starting with that name. Mia Farrow and Louise Fletcher. I mean, naming your daughter after the crazy nurse in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest ? Talk about cuckoo. Mia Louise Andrews. The dad was never in the picture, but I assumed that Andrews was the father’s name. Then Gloria told me years later after a few margaritas on July 4 that she just made up the baby’s last name. Maybe it was for Julie Andrews? Who could really know with that woman.”

“So, I’m sorry-Mia was born when?” The story was building in Alice’s head faster than she could process it.

“Well, let’s see… Gloria wasn’t even showing yet when she moved here in, it must have been 1985. The beginning of the summer. Early June, I think. She’d been having all kinds of problems with Christie. I said before she sent her off to rehab, but it was technically boarding school. Again, who knows how Gloria paid for that either. I never saw a woman other than a prostitute who found a way to pay so many bills without doing any other work than on her back. Oh lord, did I just say that?”

Alice knew precisely how Gloria had paid her bills. She needed Mrs. Withers to get back on track.

“Christie was sent away to boarding school?” Alice remembered Ben telling her that a girl at his party had gotten so wasted that her parents had sent her away to an all-girls boarding school.

“Yep, for girls only. I thought it might do her some good to be away from her mother, but she only stayed a year. You know, I even joked with Gloria that first summer that with Christie going away to boarding school, and Gloria having a little baby at her age, people might get the wrong impression.”

Alice looked at Hank, who spoke for the first time since the cocoa had been poured. “You mean the neighbors might gossip that Gloria’s pregnancy was fake, and that the baby was actually Christie’s.”

“I know, I’m just awful. But I was only joking.”

Alice knew in her gut what the relationship was between Christie Kinley’s sister and all of the questions she had been carrying around the last week. But that didn’t stop her from asking the validating question.

“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Withers, what does Mia look like?”

“Well, she’s a lovely girl. It makes her penchant for these lowlife men all the more perplexing! She’d never bring home a nice guy like this one. But what does she look like? She’s slender, you know. Very fit. One of those girls who carries herself well. And she has the most amazing red hair. Delicate features. Sort of a honey-and-strawberries kind of complexion. You know what, dear? I know this will sound like babble from an old woman, but if I had to say, Mia looks a bit like you if it weren’t for that dark hair of yours.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

T hey were back at their motel outside White Plains, strategizing their next move.

“I know you’re the one who’s an FBI agent, but don’t we have enough evidence to go to Shannon and Danes? I ran from my apartment because I knew I was in over my head. But with what we know now? I’m willing to go back to the city. I’ll turn myself in if that’s what it takes to make them investigate Mia.”

“You can do that, but once you turn yourself in on the warrant, no one will be in a rush to exonerate you. You’ll probably get slapped with a no-bail hold on the murder charge. The police will have passed the case on to the DA’s office, so it will be clear as far as they’re concerned. And the prosecutors will keep setting over your trial date until a judge forces them to fish or cut bait. It would be better to get them to drop the charges up front.”

“You’re a federal agent. Can’t you just tell them what to do?”

He shook his head. “If only I could. Federal and state governments are separate sovereigns. Put it this way: the last time I talked to John Shannon, he basically called me a burnout and a loser. I can call them with this tip about Mia, but trust me: they’re not going to listen.”

“How can they ignore it? If we’re right, Mia Andrews is my half sister.” She cringed at the thought. “My guess is she had no idea that Christie was actually her mother, until Christie died. Maybe she found the settlement documents or something else that made her realize her sister was actually her biological mother. She has every reason to hate me and my father.”

“Mrs. Withers did say she had a weak spot for dirtbags, which pretty much sums up Travis Larson.”

“She has to be the woman kissing Larson in that picture. Plus she’s a photographer. That can’t be a coincidence. If she got part of the settlement money when her mother died, she might have been in a position to front the Highline Gallery operation. Like I said before: three birds, one stone. She makes money off the sale of the so-called artwork. She frames me. And she gets the pictures from my father’s office in front of the police without ever having to name her mother as the girl depicted in them.”

Hank had run Mia Andrews and learned that Mrs. Withers had not been exaggerating when she’d described the young woman as troubled. Two drug busts. A stop by police officers who suspected her of prostitution. The use of a false name and identification on the second drug arrest. According to Hank, she was precisely the kind of woman who might have crossed paths with Travis Larson.

“That’s one version of the facts. But John Shannon and Willie Danes have spent the last week convincing themselves that you killed Larson and were the mastermind behind those thumb drive sales from the gallery. To them? Mia’s existence will just be another motive for you to act out against your father and try to prove you could be independent. I’m sure the way they look at it, your slipping those pictures of your dad into those thumb drives was some Freudian act of revenge.”

“Even the suggestion that I would peddle obscenity involving my own father-”

“I hate to say it, Alice, but I’ve seen people do much sicker things. And so have Shannon and Danes. All I’m saying is that the NYPD isn’t necessarily going to shift their entire theory based on what we have so far. But that’s not an absolute deal breaker. We just need them to be sufficiently intrigued to follow up on it. To be open-minded. But if I’m the one to call them, it’s not going to happen.”

Alice found herself thinking about the words her father had used to persuade her to call Arthur Cronin for help. He had quoted Malcolm Gladwell-something about “practical intelligence,” “an ability to read a situation. To know what to say and how and when to say it.”

“I know we can’t call my friends, but what about my lawyer?”

“Is this your boyfriend, Jeff? I guarantee you they’re pulling his LUDs.”

She didn’t feel the need to articulate the complications that made the word boyfriend a poor descriptor. “No. I told Danes the last time he tried to interview me that Arthur Cronin was my lawyer.”