Joel Winslow didn’t think that rules and laws applied to him. Only the regular people needed to abide by them. In other words, the “poor” people.
“But she never got the chance to do anything,” Zack said. “Shit, I hate this. I hate not trusting my own father.”
“Or uncle, or aunt. Or anyone else on Dad’s payroll,” Cooper said. “I have no idea how to find a forensic accountant, but I think we need one. I agree that Mom didn’t store these papers here for no reason.”
“I still have contacts in the financial world,” Zack replied. “I can make a few calls.”
They set the boxes aside and continued their mission. The next few were filled with photos and memorabilia. Tate’s chest tightened as he sifted through old pictures of his young, radiant, and happy mother.
“I’ve never seen these photos of her,” Cooper remarked, looking over Tate’s shoulder. “Piper and Mom could be twins.”
“Frankie looks like her, too. But she has Dad’s chin.”
“Frankie looks like Aunt Kim,” Cooper replied with a shake of his head. “Not that I’d ever say that out loud to her. But she does. You look like Uncle Rick.”
“And you look like Uncle Henry, but we don’t say that out loud either,” Zack laughed.
Uncle Henry wasn’t a blood relative of their father, Joel. Just a good friend. They had joked in their youth about who most resembled Uncle Henry. Later, they all decided that their mom had better taste than to ever get involved with Henry, for whom they had little patience. He was Joel Winslow’s yes-man and had been for over forty years.
“Who is this guy?”
Tate held out the photo to his brothers. He’d never seen this picture of his mother before. It looked like it was taken in some tropical location with palm trees in the background. His mother and the man were smiling, holding up their pina coladas as if toasting. They looked tanned and happy, as if the world were their oyster.
Cooper and Zack studied the photo but were as mystified as Tate.
“By the hair, clothes, and makeup, I’d place this as taken sometime in the eighties,” Cooper said. “Mom looks really young here. Early twenties at most, maybe about nineteen. But I’ve never seen this guy before. Maybe he was just some random she met at a tiki bar on vacation and had a drink with him.”
Tate dug deeper into the photos, quickly scanning them.
“There are more,” he said, sifting them into a separate pile for their perusal. “He must have been a friend. There are dozens of these, and not just in a beach bar.”
There were mostly group photos of people Tate didn’t recognize, but they all appeared to be happy and having a good time.
“Maybe this is someone Mom dated before she married Dad,” Zack suggested. “Or maybe they were just friends.”
“Friends she never saw or talked about,” Tate said. “That seems strange.”
“People get older, move on,” Cooper replied. “They don’t always stay in touch. For all we know, Mom and her friends had a group on Facebook or something where they talked. We could check the wedding album. Maybe her friends were there, too. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid.”
“I’d like to talk to some of her friends if we can find them,” Zack said. “Do they even know that Mom disappeared? They might know why she kept these mementos in a storage locker instead of at home.”
“I can look through the yearbooks,” Cooper offered. “Try to match these faces to anything I might find in them.”
“I’m going to try and see if I can contact Uncle Mark,” Tate said. “He might know about these people.”
“Uncle Mark?” Zack echoed, a dubious expression on his face. “When was the last time anyone heard from him? We’d have better luck finding Bigfoot.”
Mark was their mother’s younger brother. He hadn’t been around much when they were growing up. Tate had the impression that his dad didn’t like Mark since he wasn’t in the business of chasing after every dollar he could get his hands on. Mark was a musician, and last they’d heard, he was doing studio work in Los Angeles. After his sister’s disappearance, Mark had kept to himself. If he’d ever reached out, Tate hadn’t heard about it.
“All the more reason to try and find him,” Tate replied. “He’s made himself scarce these last ten years. I think I’d like to ask him why.”
“I’m not sure you’re going to like the answer,” Cooper replied grimly. “But I understand why you’d want to. I’d like to have a conversation with Uncle Mark, as well.”
“Everyone has their assignments then,” Zack said. “I’m going to look for a forensic accountant. Tate is going to try and findUncle Mark, and Cooper is going to look through the yearbooks for faces in the pictures.”
That sounded great, but he’d left one thing out…
“Let’s not forget that we need to tell the others about this storage unit,” Tate reminded his older brother. “The longer we put off telling them, the more pissed off they’re going to be.”
