Chapter 12

"I think that is my cue," Garret answered. "I was a cab driver outside the airport that day. My name is David Rollins. I was reading the paper waiting for a fare to get into the cab and all of a sudden this Marine jumped in and shouted, 'follow that car!' As I started the engine I saw a woman lying on the sidewalk. I was going to stop, but the guy in back said, 'she's dead'. Then he told me that a guy grabbed the woman's kid, threw him in a car and sped off. The only thing he could say about the killer was that he had a dark suit on and a hat pulled down low on his face. The guy that he used was a 45."

Woody took up the story at that point, "It says here that we followed the car half way across town and then when it stopped I paid the driver and got out. Rollins asked what I thought I was going to do, and I told him I was a Marine and could handle myself. The driver shrugged and drove off."

"Later I heard on the car radio that the cops were searching for any witnesses to the shooting at the airport. When I got off of my shift I went in to the precinct to tell them what I knew. I hadn't seen anything happen, but I told them about the Marine and the kid being taken. They hadn't known about the kidnapping until that point. I also gave them the address of the building where I took him. That was all I could do," Garret reported.

"So what we have so far is an abused woman, moving around, trying to stay away from a guy named Ellery who we think is the father of her kid. She's shot and killed. The kid is grabbed and we have a cab driver that saw nothing, plus an unidentified Marine who thought he could save the day," Bug summarized. He then looked at Max and asked, "Did you and Steve go to the address the driver gave you?"

"We did. Look in your files," Max told Bug and Nigel.

"It was a cheap apartment building in a questionable section of town," Nigel reported. "Steve and I, being the young Max Cavanaugh, went door to door asking questions. No one knew anything, or at least weren't admitting it if they did. The manager told us that apartment 312 had been rented earlier that week, but the guy had paid in cash. No one in the building would say that had seen anything until we go to apartment 412. The elderly man that lived alone in that apartment said that he had heard an argument and what sounded like a gun shot followed by a child's voice saying something he couldn't make out. After that everything was quiet for a time, then the opening and closing of the door. That was the last he ever heard from there."

"So if I got there and found them, the gun shot could have been the guy Ellery killing me, then what happened after that?" Woody questioned, then added, "Also you have to wonder what effect two murders had on that kid?! His mother right in front of him and then if the old man in 412 is right, another one that could have been my character!"

"And what does a single guy want with a kid of that age?!" Jordan asked.

"Maybe he wanted his son all along. Remember it seems like he was always searching and finding Maggie and Clematis," LaVon spoke up.

"Good point, darling!" Max complimented her.

"So the things we are trying to figure out are what happened to this guy Ellery and the kid Clematis, plus the missing Marine," Bug seemed to be the one on point that night.

"Well, this all happened thirty six years ago, if we guess the mysterious Ellery to be in his late twenties to early thirties, that would make him sixty to seventy years old if he is still around now, and the kid, Clematis would be fortyish, certainly no longer a kid!" Garret commented.

As the evening wore on, the group ate and drank some more as they threw out different ideas and speculation on what could have happened to the three people in question. But at the end of the night, Max's unsolved case was still just that, unsolved. However, everyone there had a good time trying to figure things out and LaVon, who has just done this for the first time said she was looking forward to doing it again.

It was a week later after her next doctor's visit, that Jordan had only taken three steps out of the office on her way towards her car, when a cold chill ran down her spine. She felt like she was being watched!

To be continued…