Secure Location - By Beverly Long Page 0,61

remarried a few years later but by then, I had lost touch with her. I can’t even recall her husband’s name.”

Ted Blakely. That was his name. Gloria Percy had become Gloria Blakely. But her obituary hadn’t mentioned any children.

“Whatever happened to the other child?” Cruz asked. “The brother.”

“I don’t know,” said Tattoo Lady. “I’m not sure if T.J. ended up with his mother or his father.”

T. J. Percy. “What did T.J. stand for?” Cruz asked.

The ladies looked at one another and shook their heads. “I never heard him called anything but T.J.,” said Tattoo Lady.

Cruz mentally reviewed all the information he’d seen on Blakely. Nowhere had there been any mention of a middle initial or name. But he was willing to bet that the T stood for Troy. The boy had stayed with his mother and taken his stepfather’s last name. T. J. Percy had become Troy Blakely.

And something had happened to set him off, to make him seek vengeance on Meg. It had probably been his mother’s and stepfather’s deaths. The timing was right. He’d somehow managed to track Meg down, realized she was in San Antonio, and had gotten the job at the hotel. He’d lost it just months later. Maybe that had made him even angrier. Maybe he hadn’t cared. After all, he’d already learned Meg’s routine, had copied the key to her office, figured out where she parked. Followed her home.

The vision of a man breaking all the windows in his mother’s house as she looked on made the blood in Cruz’s veins run cold. What kind of son did that to his parents? A crazy man. Maybe he’d been crazy for some time. Certainly somewhere along the way, something had gone south in the Blakely house. To the point that Gloria and Ted Blakely didn’t even claim T.J. as their son.

The women were all staring at him. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing at the head of the table, trying to figure out the whole horrid mess.

“Thank you,” he managed.

“Would you like to join us for a piece of pie, young man?” Pink Shirt asked. She pointed to the empty chair.

He shook his head. He didn’t need pie. He needed air. To clear his head so that he could figure out what to do next.

There was no need for panic, he rationalized. Nothing had happened for weeks. Meg wasn’t in any more danger today than she had been yesterday, the day before, or last week. Maybe much less. Blakely could well have tired of the game and moved on.

Of course, Cruz was going to make sure of that.

And by the time he got back to his hot car, he had a plan. Blakely’s mother and stepfather were dead. But that still left his biological father. He might know where his son was hanging out.

Cruz pushed a button on his cell phone. Sam answered on the third ring.

“I need some more help,” Cruz said.

“Name it,” Sam said.

“I need to find somebody. A man by the last name of Percy. He lived in Maiter, Texas, in 1995 or 1996. He was married to a woman named Gloria. They had a son whose name was Troy and also a deceased infant girl. Her name was Missy. They got divorced and the wife later remarried a man named Ted Blakely.”

“Okay, it’s probably enough. I’ll find him.”

It took Sam twenty minutes. Computers were wonderful things. Lawrence Percy had been twenty miles outside San Antonio for the past ten years. He was single and he had steadily been employed as a machinist in a factory.

Cruz put his now-cool car in Drive.

* * *

LAWRENCE PERCY ANSWERED his door wearing sloppy sweatpants and a stained T-shirt. His hair had specks of green paint in it. He was holding a brush. “Yeah?” he asked.

Cruz immediately decided a direct approach might work best. “I’m Detective Cruz Montoya. I’m investigating a series of events that occurred in San Antonio.”

The man blinked once. “I don’t go into the city.” He moved to shut the door.

Cruz stuck an arm out. “Margaret Gunderson,” he said.

The man’s jaw dropped. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time,” he said, his voice soft.

Cruz considered and took a chance. “She’s my ex-wife.”

The man’s eyes turned watery. “How is she?”

It wasn’t the response Cruz expected. “I wasn’t sure you’d care. I recently heard the story about your child’s death.”

The man nodded. “I was so angry with her. Hated her. She was alive, walking down our street and our sweet Missy