Max had some work he had to take care of so he left the team to discuss the investigation while he went up to the front desk. They were instructed to call him up there if they needed anything. Everyone had gotten a full belly from the delightful breakfast, and with a refill of their coffee, they were ready to continue.
“Let’s make a list of the similarities,” Luke declared as he pulled out a marker to make some notes on the board. “Anyone?”
“The thing that jumps out at me first,” said Sophia. “Is that there are no dead bodies.
“Good point!” exclaimed Luke as he wrote it on the board. “No bodies and no evidence of death. That’s a good thing.”
“The obvious similarity is that all of the women worked at The Palace,” Ava pointed out. “All under a year and with no family in the area.”
“Yes,” said Luke while writing.
“They were all young and pretty,” David added. “And they all went missing in the late afternoon or evening.”
“That’s right, anything else?” Luke asked.
“One thing that really bothers me is that the first disappearance was about four months ago and there has been one every month since then,” stated Sophia. “That makes me really scared that there could be another one shortly since the last one was just under a month ago.”
“You are exactly right, Sophia, we need to crack this as soon as possible,” Luke said imploringly as he finished writing all of that on the board.
“Let’s move on to some assignments,” Luke said. “The first thing we need is for someone to interview Irene about the women and look at their rooms. We need to find out about their families, where they’re from, work they did here, boyfriends, etc., anything that will help.”
“I’ll do that,” stated Sophia.
“OK,” replied Luke. “I’ve already set up an appointment with Irene for nine o’clock this morning, so maybe check out the rooms first. Next we need someone to start looking at the video surveillance footage. Max had Luther send me the digital links to the system already, so we can get right in.”
“I can do that,” said Ava. She was a wiz at anything electronic.
“OK,” replied Luke. “Make sure to look at two weeks before each disappearance. Look for people they were with, any altercations, anything out of the ordinary involving any of the ladies, OK?”
“You got it boss,” Ava chuckled as Luke smiled at her. “I’m on it.”
“David, if it’s ok with you I would like us to go check out the beaches and caves to see if we can find anything,” Luke said next.
“OK, yah, sure thing, we can do that,” David replied. “I’ll stop by my room and grab some boots and flashlights.
“OK, team! Let’s get on it and find some clues today,” Luke called out.
Everyone agreed and they got down to business. They made a plan to meet back here when the tasks were completed.
Ava settled in at one of the desks and logged into the security system with the passwords supplied by Luther. She took out her note pad that had all the dates from the time line on it and started watching the videos from two weeks prior to Christine’s disappearance.
Luke and David took off in the red SUV. They made it to the Honeymoon Cove in just a few minutes, parked the car, and walked out onto the beach. It was relatively deserted and the beach was surrounded by trees and rock outcroppings and very secluded. There were many possible spots for someone to hide if foul play was involved. It was small compared to the Paradise Beach at the resort, but still stretched out quite a ways. The tide was out right now so the connecting Sunset Beach was accessible. They looked all around over there too. They walked along the water and looked out at the cruise ships anchored offshore. Luke remembered these from when he visited as a kid. Some ships would stay anchored out there for months at a time, his uncle would tell him.
David and Luke didn’t find anything along the water out of the ordinary, so they walked around the back edge of the beaches where there were trails heading off into the woods. An eerie feeling came over Luke knowing this might be a spot that one of the women disappeared. The walked up and down a few trails, but found nothing to help their investigation. They did however find multiple spots where lovers could tuck in for a brief interlude in private. By the looks of the foliage and trampled grass the area got a lot of use.
After looking around that area for nearly an hour they decided to look in the caves. They climbed up the slight elevation to reach the opening of one cave. Turning on their flashlights they proceeded to navigate through multiple off shoots of the same cave. Some wound around back to the same spot and others went into the cliff for quite a ways before stopping. They were about to call it quits when they entered a section that opened up into a little room about one hundred yards from the main opening.
“Well this is interesting,” muttered Luke.
“Yes, very,” replied David.
The room was about 20 feet across and had rocks situated around a fire pit for seating. Other than that the room was bare. They were shining the flashlights around each rock when David said “Hey, come here and look at this Luke. There are multiple wrappers on the floor behind this rock, but look. They have the logo from The Palace on them.”
“They look like granola bars,” exclaimed Luke.
They were careful not to disturb the evidence by touching it very much, so Luke tucked them into his jacket pocket and zipped it up.
“Could be from some tourists messing around in here or just some kids,” stated Luke. “But we’ll check it out.”
They decided to spend some extra time checking out this room just in case any of the girls happened to be in here at any time. They hadn’t found anything for a while and David had an idea to move the bigger rocks around. It took both of them to move just one of them over, but they didn’t see anything of interest. Then they started moving around the smaller rocks circling the fire pit when something sparkled when the flashlight hit it. Luke reached down and brought up a gold chain that was stuck between the rocks at the edge of the pit.
“Wow, look at this,” Luke said while shining the light on it to get a better look. “It’s a woman’s bracelet and it has the initials of L.M. on it…”