Her Dark Heart by Marie Wilkens

Author:Marie Wilkens [Wilkens, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

47

“All right, Ethel, calm down, honey, just try to calm down,” Jacques said in a gentle, soothing voice. “I know this is a very, very difficult time for you, but if you want me to help you as best I can, I really need to get the details straight.”

As Jacques spoke, he glanced in the small mirror on his desk. Staring back at him was a strong-jawed face with a thick dusting of white stubble, which was densest around his chin and upper lip. Unlike many other men in the sixth decade of their lives, Jacques still had a full head of hair, and although it was all snow-white, it was thick and healthy. He kept it buzzed short at the back and sides and slicked the top back. And even though his deeply tanned face was craggy and weathered, a powerful echo of the handsome young man he had once been still rung loud and clear in his features.

His gray eyes, set beneath bushy, dark eyebrows, shone with vivacity and intelligence, and these windows to his soul were clear markers of an inquisitive mind and a quick intellect. He had started his post-college life as a history teacher, but an unquenchable thirst for solving mysteries and a quarter-life crisis at age twenty-eight had led to a drastic career change, in which he had traded in his classroom for the dingy downtown office of a private investigator.

As he spoke, Jacques’s eyes moved over to the next photo on his desk, that of Dierdre, his beloved wife who had passed five years prior from cancer. Next to her smiling portrait was a photo of their son, Stuart, attired in his dress uniform. He worked in military intelligence and had done a number of tours of duty overseas. Stuart had his mother’s eyes, and whenever Jacques looked at him, he couldn’t help thinking about Dierdre and the many wonderful years they had shared together. Deirdre had also been his biggest cheerleader and supporter. She, above anyone else, had seen that his true passion was solving crimes and mysteries, not teaching rooms full of bored children about history.

Now he was talking to a nigh-on hysterical woman whose twelve-year-old son had disappeared at summer camp. The boy, Larry Binder, had last been seen kayaking on the lake. However, he hadn’t returned to camp that evening, and the next day, his capsized kayak had been found washed up on the opposite shore. The consensus was that Larry had overturned his boat and drowned, and police divers had spent the day searching the lake for his body. Although they hadn’t yet found anything, they were confident they soon would.

However, Larry’s mother, Ethel, was utterly certain he had not drowned and had, in fact, been kidnapped. While sympathetic to her grief, the camp officials and police officers were adamant the boy had drowned and it was impossible that he had been kidnapped. They had chalked up her insistence on his being kidnapped to the fact that she was a grieving mother who simply could not psychologically accept the death of her child.

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