of hand. No one could understand how the Pryors felt the way that Shelby did. She had suffered the same loss, and been told the same lie. Yes, Shelby thought. The same lie. Now that she thought back on those terrible days in St Thomas, it did seem as if their first concern was to make this problem of Chloe’s disappearance go away. How better to make that happen than to blame it on the victim? To say that she tripped and fell in a drunken stupor. It was possible that Chloe had met with foul play. A cruise line that had hired one sexual predator might have hired others.
Shelby felt adrenalin coursing through her veins. Stunned by the revelation of Chloe’s drinking, she had accepted what the officials told her. Now, she felt ashamed for having agreed, on so little information, to blame her own daughter for her own demise. No, she thought. I need to find out if there was something else going on. But how, she wondered? There was no use in trying to explain this all to the Philadelphia police. The police in St Thomas and the FBI were satisfied with the existing explanation. She couldn’t investigate it herself – she wouldn’t know where to begin. She needed someone else – someone who would know how to proceed.
The thought of trying to hire a private detective filled her with a sense of futility. All she knew about private eyes was what she had seen on television, or read about in mystery novels. In fiction they were always rumpled guys who smoked and had problems with women and were barely able to stay sober long enough to solve the crime. It was almost laughable to imagine paying someone like that to help. In real life she imagined they were much less colorful. But she had no personal experience to go on. What was she supposed to do, pick a name out of the phone book?
And then, feeling a little thrill of hope, another thought occurred to her. She did know a detective. She knew one very well. Perry Wilcox, the head of security for the Markson stores, was a soft-spoken man who had been, for fifteen years, a homicide detective for the city of Philadelphia. But his daughter became ill with severe diabetes and Perry was often needed at home. He was no longer able to put in late and irregular hours on the job. He signed up for a course on computer crimes and surveillance techniques and found that he was interested in these burgeoning areas of security. He decided to opt out of police work and take a job in the private sector. He was hired by Albert Markson and had worked in the Markson stores for eight years, making sure that the security system was state of the art.
Perry can tell me what to do, Shelby thought. If he can’t do it for me, he can tell me about someone who could. Someone I could trust. She quickly scanned her own list of contacts and found Perry’s email address. It took her a while to compose what she wanted to say in her message. No more than a few moments after she pressed ‘Send’, she had a reply and an appointment to meet Perry at his office on Monday morning. ‘I’m not sure if I can help you,’ he wrote, and Shelby could picture his grave, dignified expression, ‘but I will certainly try.’ It was enough for now, she thought, as she returned to the Overboard website, and began to surf its grim, hopeless pages. It was a start.
The next morning, Shelby was having coffee and reading the Philadelphia Inquirer at the dining room table when Rob and Jeremy returned home from church. Jeremy ran to her and buried his face against her side.
Shelby looked up at Rob, alarmed.
‘Lot of questions about his mom. People don’t mean to be rude,’ he said.
Shelby rubbed Jeremy’s back and murmured soothingly. ‘How was the movie last night?’ she asked, hoping to distract him.
Jeremy mumbled something unintelligible, his face buried in Shelby’s sweatshirt.
Rob poured himself a cup of coffee. ‘The kids enjoyed it. Molly was wishing she could come back home with us and stay over but I dropped them off at Sara’s house after the movie.’
Shelby heard the implication in his words; with her continued presence here she was getting in the way. Jeremy had pushed off from her and now interrupted her thoughts in loud voice.