“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
She stood holding the rebar, waiting for him to pass. He started to let out a demonic cackle, something that probably got a satisfying reaction from most girls on the street, but as he got closer and saw Madison’s expression, he broke it off abruptly.
“I was only kidding, shiiiiiit.”
Madison waited until he’d cleared the area before she turned her back to the street. She decided to carefully reach the rebar much farther than where the bracelet lay to make sure not to push the bracelet farther in. She knelt on the sidewalk and placed the tip of the rebar as far as it would go, then gently scraped it back toward her. The bracelet came out—along with an iPhone 7 in a Kate Spade cover.
White hibiscus flowers on a clear background studded with crystals made to look like diamonds. Kate Spade New York at the bottom, with a little spade emblem. Very girly. Madison stared at it. What were the chances this phone belonged to one of the missing girls? Zero. Madison laughed that she’d even had the thought. She was standing right next to the parking lot where Elissa had parked her car, and Samantha’s car had been only one block over, but still. Ridiculous. Madison had never been very good with odds, which was the reason she’d stuck to playing craps and blackjack when she went to Vegas—nothing that required her to understand statistics. But she figured that if she presented this to a bookie, she could bet one dollar and win $1,000 if it turned out to be a phone belonging to one of the missing girls.
Nevertheless, a girl could dream that she’d just found a missing piece of evidence in a major case. And having had the thought, she did not want to pick up the phone with her bare hands, in case it was a piece of evidence. She saw a trash can next to a bus stop that was overfilled and included a fast-food bag. She waited until a posse of ten girls—apparently part of a bachelorette party, given the drunken state of the revelers and the toilet-paper crown and veil worn by one of the girls—had passed on the sidewalk. Madison jumped across, grabbed the fast-food bag, tossed the leftover food, and took the napkins and bag over to her find.
She used the napkin to scoop up the phone and place it in the bag. She walked the block to her car. Madison had had a supervisor at one of her first investigation jobs tell her, “Being a good investigator is fifty percent technique and fifty percent luck. And Madison, you have good luck.” She had thought about that a lot. She did have good luck. Still, it seemed unlikely that this phone belonged to one of the missing girls. But she would keep it as a juju until she figured that out.
As Madison started the car in the parking lot, her phone went off with a notification from Twitter. Prior to leaving the house she had sent a direct message to Felicity Erickson, Samantha’s sister. Madison and Felicity followed each other on Twitter; Madison couldn’t remember how it started, but she seemed to recall Felicity following her after one of Madison’s tweets contained a suggestion for Lance and Tim on the podcast. In the direct message she’d let Felicity know that she was looking into the case, but she didn’t mention why; she just said she hoped they could meet. The notification was Felicity’s reply.
I would love to meet you. I will do anything to find my sister. Can you meet me tomorrow? Anywhere you say.
Madison tweeted back: Meet me at the Pannikin in La Jolla tomorrow at 11 AM. She pasted the Yelp review for the Pannikin with the directions.
Maybe this evening wasn’t a waste after all.
Chapter Seven
The Pannikin in La Jolla was probably the only restaurant that catered to every group of La Jollans: the surfers living to catch the best wave and surviving on their last dollar; entitled young urban professionals who could afford a two-million-dollar beach condo the size of a postage stamp and were rushing to their high-paying jobs in downtown; and the one-percenters who lived in the multimillion-dollar mansions that peppered the coast and the hillsides in La Jolla and who stopped off before lunch or after a charity function to visit with their wealthy friends and see and be seen. Madison didn’t fall into any of those categories, proving to herself that she shouldn’t categorize people. But she identified most with the surfer group; otherwise she just kept to herself and watched everybody else. The Pannikin had reclaimed wood tables with broken-tile inlays, a huge tree in the patio area, and delicious coffee and baked goods. Everyone in La Jolla knew the Pannikin.
As Madison walked up she unconsciously looked around for Dave. He drove a red Jeep, the old steel kind not the new ones that look like Tonka toys made of plastic, so normally she would be able to tell if he were here. However, the restaurant was within walking distance of his cottage so he could be there without his Jeep. She didn’t see him. She got a coffee in a huge white porcelain mug and grabbed a seat on the patio.
Felicity Erickson looked just like her Twitter avatar: kind and warm with a determination behind her eyes. She walked into the patio area, and Madison stood up and waved. Felicity came over and sat opposite Madison, on the bench facing the street. She was about thirty years old and wore jeans and a cardigan. She had a tattoo on her wrist in beautiful script that said Samantha.
“This is a nice place,” she said. “I’ve never been here before.”
“Sorry to make you drive all the way into La Jolla, but whenever someone asks me where to meet, this is the first place I think of,” Madison said. “Would you like coffee?”
Felicity ignored the question. “I hope you’re not going to waste my time. A lot of people have contacted me: psychics, amateur detectives, you name it. They want me to give them every last piece of information I have so that they can satisfy their curiosity, and then when they can’t solve the mystery in the first week, they walk away. Well, this is not a pastime for me or a hobby. This is my sister. Samantha. This is my life.” She held up the tattoo of her sister’s name.
Madison realized that she was going to have to tread lightly. She did need information from Felicity, but she understood Felicity’s point, and she knew exactly the type of person Felicity had been dealing with: people who looked at her tragedy and saw it as a game or as something with which to amuse themselves when they were bored. There was nothing wrong with that, to a certain degree; podcasts were made for entertainment, and even Madison listened to them for that reason. But when it came down to actually contacting the family member of a victim, you had better be doing it for the right reason.
“I completely understand,” Madison said. “I am not here to waste your time. First of all, I’m not an amateur: I’m a licensed professional. But in addition, this has become personal for me. Obviously not as personal as it is for you, but I have a stake in this. I would rather not explain why just yet, if that’s okay with you. But I am licensed to investigate this matter.” Madison took out her PI license and showed it to Felicity. “I can explain more as we go along, but I’d like to just start off with talking about what has happened so far in the investigation of this case, if that’s okay with you.”
“Okay,” Felicity said. “I’m sorry if I sounded rude. It’s just that, since our parents died, it has only been the two of us. I miss her. I want to find her. It’s been four years. And I’m tired of getting my hopes up.”
“I understand.”