your first day?”
“Okay.”
“Was Mr. Mathews nice?”
“He’s okay.”
“How were the other kids? Did they talk to you?”
“Yeah. They’re okay.”
“Okay” was the word of the day. I started the car and eased my way out of the parking lot, trying to avoid the other more hurried moms and the kids jaywalking across the street.
When we got home, Danny plunked in front of the television. I headed into the office and fired up my computer, searching for Maurice Boor in the on-line white pages. The only listing I found was for an elderly man in another state. I dialed the number, hoping to find Maury’s dad.
He wasn’t a relative.
Faced with another dead end, I turned off the computer and headed into the kitchen to pull out all the remaining Thanksgiving leftovers. If I really was a super soccer mom, I’d be able to mix them all into a delicious casserole. I gave that thought all of a minute then shoved them as is into the oven to reheat.
Ray came through the door just after five, as he did most days. “Where’s Danny?”
“In the living room, watching TV.”
He motioned toward our bedroom. “Come talk to me.”
I followed him, noticing his pant cuffs were filthy. “How’d you get so dirty?”
“Crawling around the parking lot of The Cat’s Meow.” He took off his pants and threw them in the clothes basket. “I wanted to see if I could find a remote in the parking lot. The bartender said no one had turned one in.”
“Did you find one?”
“No, but the bartender and the bouncer remember Danny’s father going out of the bar and coming back in again to look for something. The bouncer figured at first it might be Danny, but his father was looking on the bar and the floor.”
“Maybe for his remote?”
“That was my thought. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.” Ray pulled on a pair of jeans. “I called Newark and checked out Jessica James.”
“And?”
“They sent officers to her house. She wasn’t there. They talked to the neighbors, who said they hadn’t seen her for at least a month. The description they gave matches Josie Montalvo’s description, right down to the rhinestone fingernails. DMV provided a picture of Jessica James. It matches the picture on Josie Montalvo’s license. We found it in the apartment where we think she was killed. The two women appear to be one and the same person. But DMV never issued a license to a Josie Montalvo, and the Social Security office says the number on her card doesn’t exist.”
“So Josie Montalvo was a fake?”
Ray nodded. “The neighbors knew her sister, Jennifer, too. And Danny and Danny’s father.” He started to flip through his shirts, considering and dismissing them in turn.
“What else did they know?”
He pulled a thick rugby shirt off a hanger. “They all lived with the aunt in that house for two years after Danny was born. Then his mother died. The neighbors weren’t sure, but they thought it was from complications related to pneumonia. They did say the family was devastated. Danny and his father lived there with the aunt for another year or so—then one day he and Danny were gone. Jessica continued to live there until about two months ago when she bought the Escalade. The neighbors said she put her bags in her old gray Cavalier a month later and disappeared. She left the Cadillac in the garage. They thought she’d taken an extended vacation or something.”
I watched Ray pull his shirt over his head. Danny had thought that his aunt, Josie Montalvo, might be his mother. At age three, maybe he had believed she was. His memories from that time of life would be cloudy at best.
“So what does it all mean?”
Ray reached out and pulled me into a hug. His shirt smelled dusty. Yet another area of housework I’d neglected.
“Danny’s father knew Josie Montalvo. He was found driving the Escalade that she, as Jessica James, reported stolen. He was at The Cat’s Meow, which suggests he knew where she worked. He may have known where she lived as well. He’s now the number one suspect in her death.”
I wiggled out of his arms and gazed up at his face. “So you think he killed her?”
Ray rolled his neck and shoulder. “No.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “You don’t?”
“No. The first thing we did was light up both the Escalade and the Camry. There’s no trace of blood in either vehicle. The guy has no real history of violence. His prison