Island of Bones(40)
She had been a plain girl, her thin blond hair worn in the poker-straight style favored by girls in the sixties. Her eyes were heavily lined in black and she was wearing a black turtle-neck sweater, like she was trying to look like Cher or one of The Beatles’ girlfriends.
Louis scanned the police report. There was no follow-up report or disposition, so Louis assumed Cindy Shattuck had never been found.
He set the file aside. Looking around, he spotted a small stool and pulled it over and moved on to the next cabinet. After almost two hours, he straightened and rubbed his neck. His nose was stuffy from the mold and his head was pounding from trying to read in the flickering green fluorescent. But he had found all the girls.
Cynthia Shattuck. Born 1948, disappeared 1964. She would now be thirty-nine.
Paula Berkowitz. Born 1945, disappeared 1965. She would be forty-two.
Mary Rubio. Born 1957, disappeared 1973. She would be thirty.
Angela Lopez. Born 1967, disappeared 1984. She would now be twenty.
If any of them were still alive.
All the files had photographs of the girls stapled to the insides of the folders, the same photos that had been given to the newspapers, the same photos Frank Woods had hidden in his office. All the folders had missing persons’ reports but only two had follow-up interviews.
None had a disposition. None of these girls had been found.
Louis stared at the four files. So thin. So incomplete. Buried down here for all these years, untouched until now. Just like the skull.
He knew in his heart they were dead. But maybe he could try to bring them home. Scooping up the files, he went back through the rows of cabinets. Shutting off the light, he leaned into the door, pushed it closed and headed back upstairs.
CHAPTER 20
He started early again the next morning, the four folders on the passenger seat of his car. He had no particular reason for starting in chronological order of the girls’ disappearances, except that it seemed natural. Maybe he was looking for a pattern, a sense of what they had in common besides having vanished.
Cindy Shattuck had lived in Matlacha and had been reported missing by a girlfriend in the summer of 1964. Louis had been unable to find the girlfriend but had finally traced Cindy’s mother, Nancy Shattuck, to a home in Cape Coral. She was now Nancy Buckle, married to a land developer.
The Buckles lived in a new development, a place where any natural vegetation had been scraped away to make room for homes too big for their lots and too brazen to be called tasteful.
The Buckle home was a yellow, two-story mini-mansion. The lawn was the size of a putting green, and there was a sign in front that read ANOTHER STUART BUCKLE CUSTOM HOME.
Louis walked to the door, Cindy Shattuck’s folder in his hand. He rang the bell and heard a few bars of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” jingle inside the house.
A woman appeared behind the door, her face close to the glass. Her heavily lined eyes blinked several times when he held up his state-issued private investigator’s ID card.
He leaned close. “Can I ask you a few questions?”
The door swung open. She was a small woman, dressed in emerald-green capri pants and a blue-green sleeveless top. She had reddish brown hair that sprouted from her head like unraveled cassette tapes. She was in her fifties but clearly not happy about it.
“Mrs. Buckle?”
“May I ask who you are?”
“Louis Kincaid. Private investigator.”
“What are you investigating?”
“The disappearance of your daughter, Cindy.”
The raccoon eyes ignited with a flash of shock. “Excuse me?”
“Your daughter, Cindy?”
“She didn’t disappear.”
Louis slipped the report from the folder. “According to this, she did.”
Nancy Buckle tipped a bright pink fingernail toward the paper. “What is that?”
“A report taken by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office in Matlacha. Her friend Doris reported her missing August twenty-third, 1964.”
“Doris was a stupid girl,” Nancy said, crossing her arms. “They both were.”
Louis tucked the folder under his arm and pulled out his small notebook. “Mind if I take notes?”
“Not at all.”
“So you’re saying Cindy didn’t disappear?”
“No, I threw her out.”
“Why did you do that, Mrs. Buckle?”
“There were problems.”
“What kind of problems? Drugs? School?”
Nancy Buckle’s expression soured. “Men. The girl hung on every man I brought home. When she was little, they thought it was cute. Hell, even I thought it was cute. But when she turned sixteen, it wasn’t so cute anymore.”
“So you told her to leave?”