Chapter 46
IT WAS ALWAYS A POSSIBILITY that Nicolette’s father and Samuel Figg would cross paths in prison.
Both men were convicted of violent crimes around the same time, and both men received long sentences—in Figg’s case, he’ll be locked up for life.
But it never occurred to Barb that Richard Montes would actually end up cellmates for a time with the infamous Carnival Killer.
What had Figg told him? Nicolette hadn’t seem concerned, but Barb was worried.
Back then, Figg’s confession to five murders instead of four had ultimately saved them.
But there’s still one other person who knows the truth of what really happened to Lorelei that night, and he’s the only one unaccounted for.
Sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor of her attic, Barb slices open another unlabeled cardboard box, hoping to find what she’s looking for.
After her mother died, she’d packed up nearly everything in anticipation of selling the house.
But so far, all she’s found are her mother’s things: old VHS tapes of The Thorn Birds and Shōgun, folders full of recipes clipped from women’s magazines with her mother’s notes in the margins, fancy-ish dinnerware that was only for when they had company. They rarely had company.
And, of course, her mother’s old record collection, which included an assortment of twelve-inch vinyls from the Beatles, ABBA, and the Rolling Stones.
Barb’s personal favorite was the American Graffiti soundtrack, which came with two records and folded open to reveal a pinup girl on roller skates serving a tray of food.
Becky Bonifacio’s favorite and most-played album, however, was The Best of Blondie.
Barb picks it up, noting the edges of the sky blue cover, worn from being handled so much, Debbie Harry gorgeous in a white dress against a backdrop of her bandmates.
The old record player was unpacked a few boxes ago, and Barb plugs it into an outlet.
Slipping the Blondie record out of its sleeve, she carefully places it onto the turntable and gently drops the needle.
The signature electronic percussion at the start of the first song, “Heart of Glass,” instantly floods Barb with memories.
She’s eight, watching her mother dance in the kitchen while making dinner.
She’s thirteen, getting ready for her eighth grade graduation, her mother curling her hair.
She’s eighteen, packing for college while her mother drones on about the dangers of date rape drugs and walking alone at night on campus.
Once I had a love and it was a gas . . .
Barb’s mother had loved Blondie. And Barb’s mother had loved her.
She gasps in the quiet attic, the grief hitting her out of nowhere like a rogue wave.
She no longer feels the loss of her mother every hour of every day, but when it hits her unexpectedly, the pain can knock her sideways, making it hard to breathe.
She pulls one of her mother’s shirts out of a box filled with clothes she should have donated years ago, and puts it to her nose.
There’s no trace of her mother’s scent on the fabric now, but she can almost pretend there is.
Her phone rings, and she composes herself. Private caller.
“Hi, Barb, this is Vanessa Castro,” the woman on the other end of the line says. “I work with Jerry Isaac, but he’s unavailable today. Your editor Greg said you needed information on a Martin Kieswetter?”
“Yes,” Barb says, sitting up straight. “Have you found him?”
“Not yet,” the private investigator says. “And as far as I can tell, he’s not dead. There’s no death certificate on record.”
“Do you have an address?”
“I have two. One is for an apartment in Ballard here in Seattle. It’s not far from our office, so I went over and talked to the landlord.
Apparently he hasn’t lived there in six years, and there’s no record of where he’s been residing since then.
His driver’s license still shows that address, though.
But here’s what’s really weird,” Castro says.
“While it doesn’t appear that Martin worked at any one job for longer than a year or two, he did have a car, a 2012 Ford Edge.
He also had a cell phone, and he used a credit card regularly. But in the past six years, nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“The last transaction on his Visa was for a hotel stay in downtown Seattle six years ago,” Castro says.
“Which is unusual, considering he’s local.
But since then, he has no credit card charges at all, and his Visa was eventually sent to collections since he never paid it.
His driver’s license and car insurance are expired.
And I can’t seem to locate the car. I think something must have happened to him six years ago for him to go off-grid. ”
Barb feels that niggle. “What hotel did he stay at that night in Seattle?”
“The Hotel Andre, right downtown.” Castro confirms the exact date.
Putting her on speaker, Barb looks up the hotel on her phone. The Hotel Andre is right across the street from the Emerald Hotel, which is where Kylie Kahl was staying when she disappeared. The dates match. Her breath catches in her throat.
“Any chance you can get camera footage from the Hotel Andre of him checking in and out?” she asks the private investigator.
“I thought you might ask that,” Castro says. “There isn’t any. The hotel told me they only keep their security footage for a year.”
Shit. “Did you say you had two addresses for him?”
“The second one is a cabin on Bear Lake Road in Seaside, where he’s listed as the owner alongside a Burton Kieswetter, which is his father.
Burton was living at a memory care facility up until he passed three years ago, and I gave them a quick call.
According to their records, his son, Martin, had not visited him at all the last three years before his death.
” A pause. “Sad, dying alone like that.”
Barb’s mind flies back. She remembers how thrilled Lorelei would be whenever Burt and Marty left town to go fishing up at their cabin, which they did often. They’d seemed quite close. So why would Marty not be at his father’s bedside when he passed away?
“I lived in Seaside for a time, but I’m not familiar with Bear Lake,” Castro says. “Looking at it on Google Maps, there’s nothing much out there. Can I ask why you’re looking for him?”
“You can ask, but I’m almost embarrassed to tell you because it’s such a long shot,” Barb says. “I went to high school with Marty, and I’m wondering if he might know something about the disappearance of a reality star—”
“Which one?” Castro asks, catching Barb off guard. “Ingrid Larsen, the body that was found at Legacy Sands? Or Sydney Carlisle, reported missing last week? Or Kylie Kahl, from six years ago?”
It dawns on Barb who she’s speaking to. “That’s who you are,” she says. “I knew you were familiar. You were deputy chief at PD during the Wonderland scandal—”
A sharp laugh from Castro. “Love how you guys call it that.”
“Any thoughts on any of this?” Barb can’t resist picking the brain of a seasoned former police detective, especially one who’s seen Seaside at its worst. “Three reality stars, one dead, two missing?”
“Only one,” Castro says, then sighs. “Seaside’s gonna Seaside.”
* * *
The next box Barb opens is closer to what she’s been hoping to find, mainly because it’s her own stuff.
Journals full of poetry and doodles, a red Etch A Sketch, a beloved Furby she’d once been obsessed with but now looks creepy as hell, old pairs of eyeglasses, near empty bottles of Liz Claiborne perfumes, a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD.
And then, at the very bottom of the box, a bunch of scattered photos.
There are several of Barb, Nicolette, and Lorelei at all different ages.
Five years old, in kindergarten. Eight years old, one summer at the community swimming pool.
Twelve years old, a sleepover at Barb’s, doing clay masks and baking brownies.
There’s one of Jonathan Burrows and Hassan Nassif clowning in the hallway during freshman year.
Lots of high school photos, in fact, all taken with those disposable cameras you could buy at the drugstore, including one of Jonathan with his arm draped around Nicolette. He looked happy; she looked bored.
And then she finds one of the Polaroids that Marty took at Wonderland that day.
The last day Lorelei was alive.
In the first picture, the three of them are standing in a row, Wonder Wheel in the background, looking at Marty with expressions that indicate they didn’t know their picture was about to be taken. God, Nicolette looked gorgeous. And so did Lorelei. And so did . . . Barb.
She examines the Polaroid more closely, confused.
How she appears in this photo now, through an adult lens twenty-five years after it was taken, doesn’t jibe with the way she felt about herself back then.
In this photo, she was pretty. Maybe she wasn’t quite as thin as her two best friends, but she certainly wasn’t fat. Her hair was glossy in the sun.
How had she come to believe she wasn’t attractive?
There’s one last photo at the bottom of the box, a Polaroid of her standing beside Marty at Wonderland, which Nicolette took when she was messing around with Marty’s camera.
Barb’s height hasn’t changed much since she was fifteen, and she’s estimating she was around five-four that summer.
Marty, at eighteen, was a foot taller than her, at least. Six-four, maybe six-five in this photo.
Boys continue to grow into their early twenties. He might be even taller now.
Huh. Ingrid Larsen’s father had described “Nathan Shelley,” the man who found his daughter’s dog, as tall. And in her voicemail to her friend Jasmine, Sydney Carlisle had mentioned a “tall dude” who’d recognized her from her reality show.
Heart thumping in her chest, she brings the picture downstairs to the main level where all her notes are. Finding Axel Larsen’s cell number, she calls him.
Ingrid’s father picks up the phone on the first ring. “Barb, what can I do for you?” A muffled voice in the background has him covering the phone and hollering, “It’s Barb from the Seaside Chronicle!”
“Hi, Mr. Larsen, I just have a quick question and I’ll let you go.” Barb speaks in her best no-nonsense voice, trying to pretend she’s not internally reeling. “The guy who found your daughter’s dog—do you remember anything about what he looked like, other than that he was tall?”
“Well, I mean his height was probably his most noticeable trait.”
“What about hair color?” She holds her breath, looking at the photo in her hand. Even in the muted colors of the Polaroid, Marty’s shock of bright ginger hair stands out. “Was it red?”
“I never saw him without a ball cap,” Mr. Larsen says, sounding upset. “I didn’t think to look at the back of his head to see if there was any hair showing.” A muffled sound. “Okay, Patty says she never saw his hair color, either.”
Fuck.
“But . . . hold on . . .” More muffled conversation between Axel Larsen and his wife. “Okay, there is something I forgot. The next day, when he came back with his ‘partner’ to help, he had a camera around his neck. It was hanging from one of those lanyards.”
Marty never not had his Polaroid camera around his neck. “Did you happen to see what kind of camera it was?”
“I don’t know much about camera makes and models,” Mr. Larsen says. “But it was definitely a Polaroid.”
Barb thanks him and hangs up the phone in a daze.
All those years ago, Lorelei called it.
He doesn’t feel things the way other people feel things. When his dog died, he just buried it up at the cabin and got on with his weekend.