Page 107 of Sunset Beach
Her hostess sat in a worn brown vinyl recliner set between two banks of four-drawer metal filing cabinets. “My research,” she said, patting the top of one of the cabinets as though it were a beloved dog.
“All of that?” Drue asked. “All about Colleen Hicks?”
“Most of it. Of course, all my data is also stored in my iCloud, but I guess I’m old-fashioned, because I like to keep hard copies of everything as backup.”
“That’s very impressive,” Drue said. “I had no idea there was that much information available about the Colleen Hicks case.”
“Some of my materials are actually about other, possibly related cold cases,” Vera said. “You know how it is these days. You do one computer search and pretty soon you fall down that internet rabbit hole and the next thing you know, six or eight hours have flown by. Other bloggers, people in the true-crime community, they share information with me. You’d be surprised how many unsolved cases there are involving missing or murdered women, just in the Southeast.”
“It looks like you’ve become somewhat of an authority on the topic,” Drue said. “And your blog is fascinating. I just discovered it last night. I only stopped reading it because I had to get up and go to work this morning.”
Vera leaned forward. “Your email said you discovered some old newspaper clippings in your mother’s things. But you didn’t mention your mother’s name. Did she have a connection to Colleen? What did you say her name was?”
Drue hesitated. She really didn’t want to divulge anything personal to this stranger. But on the other hand, she couldn’t expect to get if she didn’t give. Just a little.
“I don’t think my mother had a connection to Colleen,” she said. “Her maiden name was Sherri Sanchez. She grew up in Tampa, and moved to St. Pete after she married my father. Her parents owned a little house on Sunset Beach, and my parents lived there in the mid-seventies. I recently inherited the cottage, and that’s how I came across the folder full of newspaper clippings about the case. It was up in the attic.”
“Interesting,” Colleen said, tilting her head. Her skin was surprisingly smooth and unlined, and her eyes, behind pale blond lashes, were like a pair of large, blue marbles. “Any idea why your mom would have saved those articles?”
“No. But I do know my father went to high school with Colleen Hicks.”
“He went to Boca Ciega? What year? Was he in Colleen’s class?”
“Um, well, I think maybe he was a year older,” Drue said.
Vera propelled herself out of the recliner with a soft grunt. She went to a bookshelf beside the window, pulled out a large leatherette-covered volume and sat back down. “This is theTreasure Chestfrom 1968.”
“Excuse me?” Drue asked.
“Her yearbook. This is Colleen’s. From her junior year.”
“Really? How do you happen to have that?” Drue asked.
“A fan sold it to me,” Vera said, her eyes glittering with excitement. “He bought it from a local antique dealer, who bought it along with a box of books at a yard sale after Colleen’s parents died, back in early 1980.”
She opened the yearbook and began flipping through pages of black-and-white photographs. “What’s your father’s name, Drue? Is he still living?”
“He’s very much alive. His name is Brice Campbell.”
Vera looked up sharply. “The lawyer? The man on all the billboards and bus benches?”
Drue winced. “Yes.”
Vera began leafing through the yearbook pages, stopping when she reached the page she was searching for. “Campbell,” she said, dragging a finger down the rows of photographs. “Campbell.”
She stabbed a photo with her finger. “Here he is,” she said triumphantly, holding up the yearbook. “Brice Campbell.”
Drue knelt on the floor beside the recliner and stared down at her father’s senior class picture.William “Brice” Campbell. JV baseball, V baseball, wrestling, Key Club,said the caption under the photo.
The boys of the class of 1968 were mostly a clean-cut group, and Brice was no different. His short blond hair was neatly combed and side-parted, and he was clean-shaven. Like the other boys, he wore a dress shirt, narrow striped tie and a familiar smirk that suggested he knew more than he should.
The surprise was that her father had signed his class photo, scrawling his name andPIRATES 4EVERacross his own face.
“Looks like your father knew Colleen,” Vera said. She flipped back toward the front of the yearbook, to signature pages filled with inscriptions of dozens and dozens of Colleen Hicks’s classmates.
“He didn’t sign anyplace else in the yearbook,” Vera commented. “I’ve cross-referenced all the names of all her friends who wrote inscriptions, and I certainly would have remembered if I’d seen Brice Campbell’s name on my list.”
“You made a list of everybody who signed her yearbook?” Drue asked, at once fascinated and repelled by the older woman’s obsessive knowledge.
