Luke and David were back in the conference room talking to Ava when Sophia and Max walked in.
“Hello everyone!” said Sophia excitedly, obviously glad to see them.
“Hi Soph,” said Luke as he went over and patted her on the back. Ava saw this and just giggled at them. “Hi Sophia, how are you?” Ava asked.
“Good, I’ve got a lot of stuff to share with the team,” she replied.
“So do we,” said David enthusiastically.
“Hold on, first let’s all go over to the buffet and grab a plate and bring it back here to eat. Then we can get started going over everything. They all agreed.
When they walked over to the dining room it was pretty cleared out since actual lunch hours were coming to a close. Hemi was back out by the buffet checking on low items and cleaning up a little.
“Good! You guys made it. I was wondering if you’d show up,” Hemi said smiling at them. “There’s still some good stuff left so help yourselves.”
“Thanks Hemi,” Luke said. “We are going to fix a plate and take it into the conference room to eat if that’s ok.”
“Sure” Hemi replied. “Just grab the main stuff and I’ll bring in a tray of deserts for later.”
“Thanks!” they all said.
Hemi really outdid himself on lunch today. It looked delicious. He made lemon peppered tuna with cannelloni and stone crab. There was coconut mango chicken and seared grouper and a huge assortment of vegetables and fruit. Not to mention the tempting sweets and treats.
We thanked Hemi generously, made our plates, and went back to the conference room where Max was setting out soft drinks for everyone. He was going to sit in to see what we had discovered today and help if necessary.
After we got settled and started eating Luke reported on their visit to the beach between taking bites. He was about finished with his lunch and got up to make a few notes on the board. He then told us about the granola bar wrappers and put them on the table. Then he pulled out the bracelet with the L.M. on it and we were all in disbelief. He told us about going through the caves and the little room deep inside. He wrote on the board under Lea Monroe about the bracelet that could possibly be hers.
“That’s odd about those wrappers,” said Max.
“Why is that,” said David.
“We only sell those in one place at the resort and that is a vending machine outside of the maintenance building,” he answered. “We get them for the crew to take while they’re doing landscaping and different projects.”
“OK, we’ll have to check that out,” said Luke as he wrote that information on the board. “It might be a good place to show the photos around.”
Just then Hemi wheeled in a cart with more deserts on it then we could eat in a week. It looked fabulous. “We had plenty left over, so I wanted to give you a variety,” he said. We thanked him again and he left the room as we all got up to get desert.
“Ava?” called out Luke. “Did you find anything?”
“Well I didn’t at first,” Ava said. Then she started telling them about the time stamp issue she found during the two weeks prior to each disappearance; and the decision to go back a month. The she played them the two videos she found of Christine and Susanna and showed them the photos.
“Are you suggesting that someone deleted partial images of the footage?” questioned Max looking at the photos in surprise.
“I’m not suggesting that. There may be another explanation,” said Ava.” I just know that the time stamp skipped multiple times before each disappearance by as much as 5 minutes of missing video. We will have to agree on what we think that means.”
“Do you know either of these men, Uncle Max?” asked Luke.
“No I don’t. It might be someone local, but if it’s an employee, depending on how long they have worked here, I may not have met them yet,” answered Max. “I just can’t even imagine all of this.”
“I still have some more video to look at, so I will let you know if I find anything else,” Ava commented.
“OK keep digging. Great job Ava that was good work,” replied Luke as he hung up the photos under Christine and Susanna on the board.
“Sophia, what have you found?” Luke asked her with a smile.
“Well I might have found some evidence to support Ava’s findings on the video plus some other interesting clues,” Sophia answered
Sophia first told them all about her meeting with Irene and the missing keys; and about Max having a master key, but no one knowing it.
“That’s more than a coincidence,” said Luke. “Uncle Max, how many people would know Irene has spare keys to all the rooms?”
“The number would be unlimited,” Max replied. “All the residents in that building knew, plus whoever they told, plus security personnel.”
Luke made some notes on the board as Sophia told them that Irene stated none of the women had boyfriends to her knowledge; and that there was a fraternization policy with the staff. She also told the team about all of the referrals. Sophia then put all the bags she had collected on the table and described each item and where it came from including the notes.
“Wow, this is huge!” exclaimed Luke. “So, the note in Christine’s room could be from the young brown haired man with her in the elevator photo, and Susanna’s note could be from her tall blonde in the car photo. The fact that the one note said ‘we don’t want to get in trouble’ might mean it’s from another employee. Good work Sophia! We just need to find out who they are.”
Then Sophia got out her phone and had Ava print off the pictures she took of the rooms, the family photo in Bella’s room and the information in the bible. After the pictures were printed and lying on the table Sophia asked Max to relay what he heard from the staff at the living quarter building about Bella sneaking out a tall blonde.
“That’s the same guy!” yelled Ava as she jumped up and grabbed the photo of the blond man from Bella’s bible and rushed to the board.
“The same guy she was sneaking out?” asked David.
“No, the same guy in the car with Susanna!” she exclaimed as they all look at each picture and decided Ava was correct. Bella had a photo of the same man that was seen on the video with Susanna.
Sophia asked Ava if she could possibly get into Lea’s phone and see if there were any photos or texts that would help. Ava picked up the phone and for some miracle there was no password required. She opened the texting app and scrolled through Lea’s recent activity. There was a contact that was just set up as “M” that had multiple entries. The last one being the day Lea went missing. It said “I can explain everything if you meet me at Honeymoon Cove at 5. I’ll see you there. Thanks.” Ava read back several messages and it looked like they were having a conversation and Lea asked him if he knew where Christine was. This wasn’t good.
“Look through the pictures” said Sophia hurriedly.
There were a few saved pictures on the phone and Ava shockingly brought up one of a man that was about twenty years old with brown hair.
“It’s him!” Ava shouted. They compared it to the photo of Christine by the elevator and Ava was right again. The same man that was on Lea’s phone was also in the video with Christine.
“What the hell is going on here?” bellowed Max. “And who are those boys?”
“We’re going to find that out Uncle Max!” Luke promised…