Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

“What did you find?” Stride asked.

“There are about two dozen people with that name in Florida. I culled it to six women who seemed to be about the right age, weight, and look. I printed out copies and figured we could run them by the people on the crew. We can see if anyone recognizes her among the photos.”

She handed Stride a sheet of paper with enlarged copies of multiple Florida licenses. He took a quick look at the faces and realized that Maggie was right. Any one of these women could have been the Haley Adams they were looking for. Or none of them.

“Didn’t you say you culled it to six?” he asked. “There are seven licenses on this page.”

Maggie nodded. “Yeah. See the one on the bottom? Haley Adams from Fort Myers? She can’t be our girl, but I included her anyway.”

“Why?”

“She had something in common with our fake John Doe identity,” Maggie said. “She’s dead.”

Stride stared at the face of the pretty young girl from Fort Myers. Strawberry blond hair and green eyes. Sweet smile. A Florida beauty, 102 pounds. According to her birth date, she would have been twenty-four years old the next month if she were still alive.

“Interesting coincidence,” he said. “Maybe we have two ghosts.”

“Maybe so. There was something else that made me curious about this particular Haley Adams, too.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“She was murdered.”

Serena sat across from Cat at a wobbly wooden table in the basement bakery in Canal Park called Amazing Grace. She ate a scrambled egg skillet with Yukon potatoes while Cat picked at a sugar-sprinkled blueberry muffin with her slim fingers. The girl didn’t look at her. The two of them hadn’t said much since they’d left the cottage. For Cat, the worst punishment was not knowing what her punishment was going to be.

“Drew and Krista asked me to baby-sit today,” Cat murmured after a long stretch of silence. “Can I still do that?”

“Of course.”

“They’re counting on me,” the girl went on as if Serena hadn’t said anything. “And I haven’t seen Michael in like a week.”

“Cat, I said it’s fine,” Serena told her.

“Well, I wasn’t sure if I was grounded or something.”

“You’re not. And regardless, I would never tell you not to see your son.”

Michael was now a fifteen-month-old toddler. His adoptive parents, Drew and Krista Olson, had encouraged Cat to play a role in his life. After months of reluctance, Cat finally had stepped up. Drew and Krista were busy rebuilding their camping shop, which had been destroyed in the marathon bombing, so they called on Cat regularly for baby-sitting duties.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Cat said finally, biting her lip.

“I know you are.”

“Is Stride mad?”

“He’s mad at Jungle Jack. Not you.”

“Yeah, but I was drinking,” Cat said.

“Well, you’re right, we’re not happy about that. I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, but you have no idea what someone might put in your drink at a party like that. Plus, it’s easy to go too far before you even realize it. Look at that poor girl in Proctor this weekend.”

Cat nodded. “Rochelle Wahl.”

“Yes, her. She figured it would be fun to have a drink while her parents were out of town. And one drink led to a few more. She went outside to throw up, she fell down, she hit her head. She froze to death, Cat. Imagine her parents coming home to that.”

“I know.”

“So yes, you made a mistake,” Serena said, “but actually, last night was mostly my fault.”

“Your fault? How?”

“I brought you to the party. You weren’t ready for it. I shouldn’t have left you alone with those people. That’s on me, and I apologize.”

Cat looked up from the table and stared at her with wide eyes. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“Yes, I can.” Serena reached across the table to stroke Cat’s hair. “Sometimes I look at you and see a young woman, and I’m really proud of how far you’ve come. It’s easy for me to forget that you’re still a teenager. When I was your age, I wouldn’t have been able to handle last night, either. It was wrong of me to put you in that position.”

Cat pulled off a chunk of blueberry muffin and ate it. Her forehead crinkled. “I’m not a kid. I don’t like that you guys have to keep bailing me out when I do stupid stuff.”

“Give yourself a little credit,” Serena said. “Look at Michael. Look at all the right choices you’ve made with him. You made sure he had parents who could take good care of him. You’ve stayed in his life.”

The girl’s mouth pressed into a little frown. “Yeah, but I should be doing more to help you .”

“You do. Believe me.”

Cat went back to her breakfast, but she looked unhappy with herself. That was fine. Serena knew that Cat couldn’t recognize how much she’d grown in the last year. In the early days of living with them, Cat had acted out constantly. She’d tried to get Serena and Stride to throw her out, as if that would justify her belief that her life wasn’t worth anything. Now she was angry with herself for not living up to her own standards. That was progress.

Serena bit into another forkful of her Yukon scramble, but she almost choked as a hand slapped her sharply on the back. Her nose was filled by a sickly strong cologne, and a voice boomed in her ears. The noise was way too loud for the morning quiet of the bakery.

“Good morning, pretty ladies!”

Cat looked up, and her anxious face smoothed into a smile. “Curt!”

Curt Dickes pulled over an empty chair from a nearby table and straddled it backward as he sat down between them. His long wool coat was unbuttoned, and he wore oversized boots studded with rivets and chains. He grabbed Serena’s fork out of her hand and snagged a bite from her skillet. As he chewed the eggs, he nodded his head happily and shouted at her. “Hey, that’s good. Nice choice, Detective. I’ll have to get that next time.”

“Inside voice, Curt,” Serena said.

Curt cocked his head. “What?”

Then he realized that he was still wearing his AirPods, and he popped them out of his ears and buried them in his pockets. “Oops, sorry about that. I love me some Halsey.”

He stole more of her eggs, and Serena pushed the plate over to him. “Here, be my guest.”

“Thanks!” Curt replied, diving into her breakfast. “How’s the hubster?”

“Lieutenant Stride is fine.”

“Excellent, excellent.” Curt winked at Cat. “How about you, kitty cat? What’s with the sad kitty eyes?”

Cat shrugged. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Oh, yeah? Word is some hotshot was putting the moves on you last night. Everything okay?”

Serena leaned across the table. “How the hell did you hear about that?”

“Aw, give me some credit, Mrs. Stride. Nothing gets past me.”

That was true.

Curt Dickes had his fingers in everything in Duluth. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. He popped up at every city event, usually with something to sell. He blended in like a chameleon all along the social scale, from the rich party crowd to the homeless hanging out in Lake Place Park. He always had money, but it never lasted long. Then he was on to the next scam to earn more.

Curt had been a part of Cat’s life since her days on the street. No matter how far behind she left that world, she always seemed to drift back into Curt’s orbit. It had taken Serena a long time to realize that Cat simply had a perpetual, inexplicable crush on Curt. The girl liked him.

The crazy thing was that Serena liked him, too. She didn’t want him anywhere near Cat, but she also knew that Curt didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Or an honest one.