“When I asked Tricia about what was really going on, she shook her head and said she couldn’t talk about it. I left the house an hour or so later and cried all the way back home because I was afraid that was the last time I’d see her, and I was right. There were no more phone calls after that, but at least I got to hug her and say goodbye. That’s more than my father got.”

  “Did you tell him about that final visit?”

  “My mother had died a few months earlier, and knowing the reality of Tricia’s situation would have crushed him. Still, I believed that she and Sal had done exactly what she had said they were going to do—that they’d disappeared to somewhere far away and were living happily ever after. For a long time, I hoped that sooner or later, they’d all turn up. Five years ago that all changed, and I stopped hoping.”

  “How come?”

  “In 2015 someone doing construction on an abandoned farm a few miles outside of Plainfield stumbled across human remains. They were eventually identified as those of Salvatore del Veccio, Tricia’s husband. I thought they’d find Tricia’s and Serena’s bodies somewhere nearby, but they didn’t.

  “That’s when I started looking into what had happened to Sal’s father, Bernardo del Veccio. I found out that, as the prime suspect in a mob-related homicide, he had taken a plea and testified against his coconspirators. They were all given life without parole. Bernardo’s sentence was twenty-five to life. After the trials ended, he was transported to the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton where, within weeks of his arrival, he was murdered, stabbed to death in the showers.”

  “So his reduced sentence turned into a life sentence after all,” I observed, “and a very short one at that. Were the same people who killed the father responsible for Sal’s death, too? And if so, why?”

  “I don’t know,” Marisa responded. “Maybe he was involved with the Mafia, too, or maybe Sal knew too much. I’ve never been able to sort that out, but once Sal’s body turned up and Tricia’s and Serena’s didn’t, I began hoping that maybe somehow, somewhere, the two of them had survived. That’s when I really started looking for them. I couldn’t very well file a missing persons report on Tricia because, as far as anyone knew, she’d already been reported missing years earlier. Once someone told me about NamUs and the DNA Doe Project, I went ahead and posted them as missing on both those sites. I also submitted my DNA to GEDmatch in hopes of finding a match.”

  “What about your father?” I asked. “Is he still around?”

  “Sadly no,” Marisa replied. “He never recovered from losing my mom and from everything we all went through before she died. I believe he suffered from PTSD and started self-medicating with alcohol. He died in a one-car rollover accident two years after Mom’s passing. The M.E. ruled his death as accidental, which was good for me financially due to the double indemnity clauses on both his life insurance policies. I was his only surviving beneficiary. After he died, people told me over and over that his death was accidental. I never bought that story. I believe he did it on purpose. With Mom and Tricia gone, he was done. He didn’t want to go on living, so he quit.”

  After hearing that, it all made sense. Todd Hatcher is a smart guy, and everything he had surmised about Phyllis Baylor and her daughter being taken into WITSEC had been absolutely on the money.

  “I think I can tell you exactly what happened to your sister and her daughter,” I told Marisa Young. “Considering everything you’ve just told me about Bernardo and Sal del Veccio, I’m pretty sure your sister and her daughter disappeared into the US Marshals Witness Protection Program.”

  Chapter 26

  Seattle, Washington

  Wednesday, March 4, 2020

  It wasn’t an easy conversation. I told Marisa all of it without pulling any punches, including letting her know about the string of aliases her niece had used and about how her trying to put the make on one of Kyle’s fifteen-year-old buddies had been the catalyst that had prompted my grandson’s decision to run away.

  As I did so, however, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat sorry for two young women previously known as Tricia and Serena del Veccio. Both had been plucked out of what sounded like an upper-middle-class existence, banished to the far side of the continent, and dumped into Seattle’s seamy underbelly. With no education to speak of and no training, in order to support her daughter, Tricia had been forced to make do with what she’d had available—her good looks, for as long as those lasted. Had she known about her father-in-law’s connections to the mob, his subsequent murder, or her husband’s murder? And what about her husband? I had a sneaking suspicion that Sal had been connected to his father’s underworld dealings, but had Tricia been aware of any of that?

  Rather than spending years in prison serving judge- and jury-imposed sentences, both men had been murdered, most likely by Bernardo’s unsavory former associates. Meanwhile, Sal’s widow and daughter had been handed lifetime sentences of their own. The US Marshals’ misguided attempt to protect them had, instead, hurled mother and daughter into a marginal existence from which Caroline Richards seemed to be making an equally misguided effort to escape. Unfortunately for all concerned, Jeremy Cartwright had been her ticket out. There were a lot of things not to like about the young woman, but I had to give her credit for being a survivor.

  “So what do we do now?” Marisa asked when I finished.

  “What about the cops back in Princeton?” I asked. “After Tricia ran away that second time, did they do any active investigating?”

  “I doubt it. I got the feeling that since she’d done it before, they didn’t pay much attention when it happened again. If my parents had been on their backs about it, they might have done more, but once my mom got sick, everything else went by the wayside.”

  “The authorities never collected DNA from either you or your parents?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “So you’ll be the only one notified about the NamUs DNA match?”

  “As far as I know,” Marisa said before adding, “So what should I do about Serena, call her or what?”

  That’s when I wished Mel were involved in the conversation. In situations like this she would have instinctively known exactly how to proceed. I was at a loss. A glance at my watch told me it was 3:15 in the afternoon. Marisa and I had been on the phone for the better part of an hour and a half, and the charge on my phone was in the red zone.

  “My phone’s almost out of power,” I told her. “Let me run out to the car and get a charger. Then I’ll get back to you.”

  On my way out to the parking lot, I thought about Jeremy and wondered how much of this he knew. Probably zero. If Marisa called and dumped all this on Caroline when he was home, it wouldn’t go over well for anyone. With the last of my phone power, I dialed Kyle.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Costco,” he answered. “The place is a zoo. What’s up?”

  “What time does your dad usually get home from school?”

  “Around four or so, but it could be later,” he answered. “Right now teachers are working almost around the clock trying to get ready for the big switcheroo over to online learning. Why, do you need to talk to him?”

  “No,” I replied. “I need to talk to Caroline in private.”

  “Caroline! How come? Have you found out something?”

  “I’ve found out a lot,” I told him, “but I can’t tell you about it right now. I want to try to reach her before your father gets home. Do you happen to have her cell phone number?”

  “Sure.”

  He gave it to me.

  “Thanks, Kyle,” I told him. “Happy shopping. Buy lots of good stuff, and I’ll bring you up-to-date as soon as I can.”

  With the charger in hand, I returned to the evidence room and plugged in my phone before dialing the next number.

  Caroline must have seen the Bellingham location and assumed the call to be from Kyle. “Hello, Kyle,” she said when she answered. “What’s going on?”

  “This isn’t Kyle,” I replied. “It’s J. P. Beaumont, Kyle’s grandfather. Kyle gave me your number.”

  “Why are you calling me?” she demanded. “You shouldn’t be. I’ve got nothing to say to you. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Please,” I said. “Before you do, let me ask you this: Once a long time ago, did somebody give you a pink teddy bear?”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath. “Mindy?” she asked. “How the hell do you know about her?”

  “I know the person who gave you that teddy bear back when you and your mother were still living in Plainfield, New Jersey. Her name is Marisa Young. She’s your mother’s younger sister—your aunt. She gave you the teddy bear in honor of your fourth birthday, and she’s been searching for you and your mother for years. She’d love to speak to you.”

  The stark silence on the other end of the line made me think Caroline had hung up on me after all, but that wasn’t the case. Finally she spoke again. “Is this for real or is this a bunch of bullshit?”

  “It’s for real, all right,” I said. “I know all about how you and your mother ended up in Seattle. I’m happy to tell you everything I know, but it’s a long story.”

  “Jeremy’s due home any minute. I can’t talk about this in front of him. Can I call you back in a little while? I’ll tell him I need to go to the store or something. I can call once I’m out of the house.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  I sent Marisa a text letting her know I was waiting for a call back from her niece. Then I turned my attention back to Loren Gregson. I decided to examine the mini-mart footage next. On a hunch, I started that study several hours earlier than the one in the bar. This time I wasn’t just looking for Loren’s image. I wanted to see if there was any sign of a homeless woman with a loaded grocery cart. She was a lot more likely to be hanging around a mini-mart than a restaurant.

  When my phone rang a few minutes later, I thought the caller would be Caroline. It wasn’t.

  “Hey,” Mel said. “Just checking in. How’s it going?”

  For starters, I told her about watching Loren Gregson eat his final meal before leaving the bar and walking to his death with no idea that a killer was lurking behind him in the darkness.

  “That had to be tough to see,” Mel said.

  “It was,” I agreed. “Knowing what was about to happen and being totally helpless to prevent it was awful. But just seeing that his killer was there doesn’t come close to having enough to reopen the case. The only way that’s going to happen is if I can actually ID her.”

  “You’ll get there,” Mel assured me. “Look at how much you’ve managed to pull together in just a matter of days.”

  “And that’s not all,” I added. “I’m also making progress on Caroline Richards.”

  After that I gave Mel a brief recap of my conversations with first Marisa and finally with Caroline.

  “Wow,” Mel said. “It sounds like the only reason she didn’t hang up on you was due to that powerful teddy bear connection. Who knew you’d end up working two separate cases with teddy bears front and center in both of them?”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but of course Mel was right. Benjamin Weston’s teddy bear had set me on the path to solving Darius Jackson’s overdose death, and Caroline’s teddy bear, Mindy, was likely to be the key to Marisa’s yearslong search for her missing niece.

  “Not just teddy bears,” I said with a laugh. “Old teddy bears.”

  “And in trying to sort out Caroline Richards’s backstory, you’ve been able to locate Marisa Young’s relatives who’ve been missing for years. You’re bringing them back into her life.”

  “I won’t know that for sure until if and when Caroline returns my call,” I said. “At this point I don’t know if she’ll be willing to reconnect with Marisa or even speak to her. I also don’t know if Caroline is aware that her mother is deceased.”

  “That’s going to be a fun conversation,” Mel said, “and not one I’d be keen on making.”

  “Me, either,” I agreed, “but while I’m waiting, I’ve queued up the footage from the mini-mart starting late in the afternoon of January 10, 2015. Going through that in real time and looking for a homeless woman with a loaded grocery cart will take hours.”

  “Actually,” Mel said, “that’s exactly why I called. There’s no sense in your driving all the way home tonight only to turn around and drive right back to Seattle in the morning. Why don’t I call the Westin and book you a room for the night?”

  I would have come to the same conclusion eventually, but it would have taken me a lot longer. And I wouldn’t have picked a hotel nearly as posh as the Westin.

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “I’ll text you the reservation info,” Mel said. “Gotta run.”

  I turned back to my keyboard and monitor, located the time stamp for four p.m., and started from there.

  We usually have a big snowstorm in the Seattle area about the time kids are supposed to go back to school after Christmas vacation, and 2015 was no exception. There had still been snow next to the gutters and lining nearby sidewalks when I’d been studying the footage from the Fremont Inn. The mini-mart had gas pumps as well as a large parking lot. Snow cleared from those areas was piled four feet deep next to the trash bins located at the back of the building. The weather looked cold and miserable, and not many people were visible, coming or going. And since days are short in wintertime Seattle, by the time the footage time stamp registered 4:15 p.m., it was almost dark.

  Just as I was about to give up on getting a call back from Caroline, my phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “What am I supposed to call you?” Caroline Richards wanted to know.

  Since I was possibly her boyfriend’s soon-to-be-former father-in-law, I could see how sorting that out might be tricky.

  “Beau or J.P.,” I answered. “Either one works.”

  “I told Jeremy I’m going out to get a massage,” she said. “And I am, because once the shutdown hits, no telling when I’ll be able to have another. But I can talk on my way there, so what do you have to say?”

  It wasn’t exactly a cordial way to launch a conversation, but it was better than not talking at all.

  “What do you know about your father?” I asked.

  “Not much. My mother told me that when she got knocked up, her parents kicked her out and her boyfriend took off and left her. Even so, she wanted to keep me, and she did, although she wasn’t ever what you might call mother-of-the-year material.”

  “Your parents’ story is actually a bit more complicated than that,” I told her, “and I believe that your mother most likely did the best she could under very difficult circumstances. But first, tell me about that teddy bear. I suspect that’s the only reason you agreed to talk to me.”

  “It is,” Caroline conceded. “Believe it or not, I still have it. Jeremy’s never seen it because I keep it in my bottom dresser drawer. It’s the only thing I have left from my childhood. My mother didn’t keep report cards or school photos or anything like that, but I managed to hang on to Mindy.”

  “If you ever do get around to speaking to your aunt Marisa, she’ll be thrilled to know that. It was something her parents—your grandparents—gave her when she was a little girl. By the way, the only time she ever saw you in person was the day she gave you that teddy bear.”

  “My mother never mentioned having a sister,” Caroline objected. “She told me she was an only child.”

  “Then she lied about that,” I said. “Your DNA says otherwise, and DNA doesn’t lie.”

  “So what happened? If this Marisa person loved me enough to give me the teddy bear, where’s she been all my life? Why don’t I know anything about her?”

  “The truth is,” I said quietly, “nothing your mom told you about your history was true. She wasn’t kicked out of the house because she got pregnant. She ran away when she was only fifteen and earned a living as a stripper. She met a guy named Salvatore del Veccio at the club where she was working. I believe they married, although I have yet to verify that.

  “I’ve also learned that your father’s family, and especially his father, Bernardo, had serious ties to the mob. When he was arrested and charged with a mob-related homicide, he warned his son, your father, that he was taking a plea deal and was going to testify against some of his former associates. Bernardo advised his son to take his family and disappear. I believe that’s when the US Marshals Service swooped in and took you and your mother into Witness Protection.”

  “Me and my mother but not my father?”

  “Apparently the Marshals got to you and your mom in time to get you out of town. Your father didn’t make it. His remains were found years later, and his death was ruled as a homicide. I don’t know if the case was ever solved. As for Bernardo? He was murdered shortly after going to prison. Once your father’s remains were located and identified around five years ago, Marisa fully expected that you and your mother would be found dead in the same location. When you weren’t, she began looking for you, and she’s been searching ever since.”

  “But how did she find me?”

  “I’m afraid that’s my fault,” I admitted. “I’m a private investigator now, but I used to be a cop. I’m also a grandfather. When Kyle showed up at our house, let’s say he was more than slightly upset. He told Mel and me about you, and not in the most flattering of terms. That’s why I ran a background check on you—to find out who you were. The background check turned up a string of aliases for both you and your mother. The Caroline Richards identity is relatively recent, but the first time Phyllis and Lindsey Baylor surfaced was when you were in kindergarten. That’s when I started wondering about Witness Protection.”

  “I remember that night,” Caroline said suddenly. “I woke up because someone was pounding on the front door. Then I heard people yelling. When I came out of my bedroom, there was this bunch of strange men with guns standing around in the living room, and one of them was yelling at my mom. ‘You have to go, and you have to go now,’ he said. ‘You can bring along two suitcases, and that’s it!’