Chapter 3
Willow followed Ricjy back to the sand and took a seat. Though her heart raced in her chest and she was scared of what she would find out, she forced herself to be as ready as she could be. It didn’t help her anxiety that Richy made everything sound so mysterious.
“Greg Baxter is originally from Sanibel. No one knows who his parents were or where they are now, but they’re from here. He’s gone by other names before, but Greg is his birth name. Apparently, he’s some big time scammer guy who’s hacked into banks, hospitals, museums… anything you can think of. Whatever his people need, he’s able to get it for them.”
Willow was all ears. The one thing she knew to be true from the start of Richy’s testimony was that Charlie was from Sanibel. He was honest about that.
“After being gone for so long, he came back to visit Sanibel. While he was here, he met a very important woman. They had a grand time and got to know each other. When he found out she was the daughter of a wealthy investor, he decided to take advantage of that by hacking into her father’s accounts and wiping him clean. What he didn’t know was that the woman’s family has some big ties with the mob and the police.”
In shock, Willow covered her mouth to contain her reactions. She felt like she was sitting by a campfire listening to a horror story, and she hated horror stories. But the more Richy talked, the deeper she fell into his verbal documentary.
“The cops have been looking for him for five years. When the family he wiped out went public and started spreading his pictures around, he really went on the move then. Ran into a couple of close calls in different cities and states, but they just couldn’t catch him. When the story got bigger, more and more women came out of nowhere to talk about their experiences with Greg. You might be the next one.”
Willow shook her head in disbelief. For years, she thought her husband”s name was Charlie and that he was some perfect man who loved her more than life itself. In the end, she found out that he was nothing more than a lowdown scammer who preyed on vulnerable women for his next buck.
And he got a lot of bucks. Richy went on to say that Greg had stashed more than five million dollars and the police were still on the hunt for that as well. The Greg Baxter case was one of the most exciting ones for Sanibel Island. But it wasn’t exciting at all for Willow.
*
While patiently, or slightly impatiently, waiting for Brandi to arrive home, Willow was busily pacing a hole through the floor. Was what Richy said true? There’s no way that he could be so accurate about things. He seemed to know Charlie like he’d seen him before, but everyone has a doppelg?nger, right?
The pictures though… how could she explain the pictures? She knew what her husband looked like. She knew it was him. She didn’t want to believe but she believed. Deeply.
Brandi arrived home after work. She hurried in and poured herself a nice big glass of red wine and exhaled deeply. It had been a practice of hers for years.
“You okay, hun? Need a glass?” she looked over at Willow. Willow looked as if she had seen a ghost. She couldn’t wrap her head around what she just learned. What she saw. There was no way, was there?
“Yes. And I also need to know everything there is to know about what happened with that Greg guy in Sanibel a few years ago. Every single detail. Don’t leave out a thing.”
Brandi sat up straight and pursed her lips together, wondering why all of a sudden Willow wanted to know the old Sanibel mystery and who even told her about it to begin with.
“You been out and about in the city I see. Are you really interested in this? Or are you just bored and want to poke holes in the story?”
“That all just depends on what information you have… Do you know anything about it or are you just pulling my leg?”
“I see it’s definitely about to be a story time. If I were you, I’d grab a seat, a glass, and get ready to pay attention. It gets a little juicy at times.”
Willow did as she was told. She poured herself a healthy glass of wine, and propped up against the wall, intently, ready for whatever may come her way.
“So long ago, there was a man. He’d come out to the island, and we knew he wasn’t any good just by the look of him. You ever just get one of those gut feelings when you see a person? Well yeah, anyways basically this guy that’s from here… Greg or something close… he’d been dealing with some interesting folks—stealing information. They say he’s a whiz with a computer. I’m talking clean out your bank account in seconds type of whiz. And most of us poor, unsuspecting, souls were affected. He’d gotten into some deep trouble scamming his way through Sanibel. I don’t even think they ever caught him and you’d think they would because he totally scammed some rich chick out of millions. I’m talking at least 5.”
“The news was covering it at rapid speed. Come to think of it— I think he was even in the paper. There were all of these other women coming forward wanting to tell their story and well suffice to say, it wasn’t a good time at all. I mean it was pouring out of every outlet you could think of. It was actually very scary to know that one person was so capable of doing all of that from behind a computer screen. How do you even learn all that anyway?”
Brandi rambled on and on. She noticed Willow had checked out.
“Wait, why do you want to know about all of this anyway? What’s it to you? Seriously.”
“Because I think it could be Charlie...” Willow blurted out.