“You know, I thought I was over it,” Marigold said when she’d finished her breathing and put the truck in gear. “Easy come, easy go. There’s always another man. They’re everywhere. Some of them aren’t worth much, but plenty are good for a night or a week. I like men. They’re usually simple to understand. They respond to signals, you know? You want to get laid, you put on a tight top. You want them to leave you alone, you turn on the baseball game. They like a quest, like putting on your snow tires. They like praise. They like to be worshipped and coddled. I thought I had a handle on the whole male gender, but Adam seemed so different. He’s very caring and compassionate, he knows more about emotional trauma issues than I do.” She waved one hand, causing the truck to swerve slightly. “I guess he had me fooled. He shook my confidence and made me doubt myself. I can’t forgive him for that.”
“I understand, more than you know.” That was exactly how she felt about the events around her former partner. “But from what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like Adam committed any crime. Not showing up for the wedding isn’t against the law.”
“I know that,” Marigold said irritably. “I work for the constable. I’m not an idiot. He didn’t steal money from me, unfortunately. That would at least be an actual crime. Luke has already explained that there’s no legal recourse here.”
“Then what am I doing here? Aside from being forced to take a vacation whether I like it or not.”
“I had some time to think while I was on my honeymoon.”
“Excuse me?” Tina did a double-take.
“I wasn’t about to miss it. I’ve always wanted to see New Jersey.”
“Your honeymoon was in New Jersey?”
“It’s a beautiful state,” Marigold said severely. “Underestimated and overlooked. An underdog state, you might say. I like an underdog.”
Okay. Moving on. “So what did you think about while you were on your glamorous solo New Jersey honeymoon?”
“I realized that I’m probably not the first person Adam Johnson—or whatever his real name is—screwed over. He’s probably done it before and might be doing it again right now, except worse, because he might be stealing or defrauding. I work in law enforcement. It’s my duty to stop him from harming anyone else.”
“Very noble.” Tina Chen worked in law enforcement, but she rarely thought of it in such heroic terms. At the start of her career, she had. But then all the drudgery of routine police work had drained her idealism out of her. “I’m still not getting why you called me in. You could investigate him yourself, and I’m sure you already have.”
Marigold shook her head as she frowned at the road. “Well, I might work in law enforcement, but I’ve spent almost my entire life on an island that’s barely ten square miles. This guy is a pro. I’m not saying that because I think only a pro could fool me. I’m saying that because he’s using a false identity and he disappeared like, completely. I need an actual law enforcement professional to work this case. I’m an assistant constable. And technically, I’m just the constable’s assistant. Luke lets me call myself the assistant constable because he’s a good guy. But let’s be honest here. I don’t know shit about investigating cases. Add to that, I’m emotionally involved. I wouldn’t do a good job. I’d rather you find him and I show up at the end and laugh in his face.”
Tina deeply appreciated Marigold’s direct and honest approach to everything. The sketchy Adam hadn’t known how good he had it.
“Fair enough. I get it now. I’ll do what I can, but no promises. It’s shockingly easy to disappear, especially if you know how to assume other identities. Do you have a recent photo of Adam?”
Marigold handed over her phone and tapped on a photo album. “They’re all in here. It’s weird to me that he never minded me taking pictures of him, if he meant to disappear all along.”
In the photos, which were mostly selfies of Adam and Marigold, he had a magnetic grin, brown hair, and horn-rimmed glasses. He was always hugging her or kissing her cheek or making goofy faces.
“Is there a chance he genuinely cared for you and just got cold feet?”
“I don’t think so. He would have communicated with me by now.”
“Maybe something happened to him? An accident, car crash, meteor strike?”
Marigold snorted. “Believe me, I’ve thought of ten thousand things that could have kept him from the wedding. But all his things were cleared out of our hotel room. Not even a stray razor or balled-up sock got left behind.”
“Where was this?”
“The Lightkeeper Inn. His idea, to spend the night before our wedding living it up in the lap of luxury. We were supposed to catch a boat to the wedding venue in town the next day.”
Tina took out a notebook so she could jot down these details. “So he was gone at that point?”
“Yes. I thought maybe he’d decided to surprise me there, so I went ahead and got on the boat, made my way to the church.”
“It was a church wedding? I heard it was outdoors.”
“We set everything up in the courtyard of the Unitarian Universalist church on Elm Street because it’s super-pretty, and that way the minister could do the deed right there on the premises. I got my dress on, did my hair the way we planned, with these little daisies in it, and kept waiting, but he never arrived. I let the guests eat all the food and made them take the leftovers with them. Then I hoofed it to the airport to catch the plane to Newark.”
“Man, I’m so sorry.” Tina shook her head as her pencil flew across the page. “That really sucks.”
“No sympathy, please. I’m past that. I just want him stopped.”
“Gotcha.” If it was her, she wouldn’t want any sympathy either. In fact, she’d probably want to pretend it never happened. She gave Marigold credit for not taking that route. “I just need to check in, then I’ll get to work. What room were you in at the inn?”
