Look Again - Lisa Scottoline [64]
She left the highway, got off at the exit, and in time found herself cruising along a smooth concrete causeway over a choppy turquoise bay lined with mansions, many with glistening white boats parked along private slips. She reached the other side, where the traffic was lighter than it had been and the cars costlier. She took a right and a left, then saw the street sign outlined in bright green. Surfside Lane. She took a right onto the Bravermans’ street.
Did Will start his life here? Was this his street?
She passed a modern gray house, its front a huge expanse of glass, then a Spanish stucco mansion with a red-tiled roof, and finally an ornate French chateau. Each house was different from the next, but she noticed right away that they all had one thing in common. Every home had a yellow ribbon tied out front, whether it was to a palm tree, a front fence, or a gate.
She slowed the car to a stop, puzzled. The ribbons were pale and tattered, like the one her neighbors, the Shermans, had back home, for their daughter serving in Iraq. But all these people couldn’t have family serving in the war. She sensed the explanation before she saw it, cruising ahead to 826, then closing in on 830, which confirmed her theory.
HELP US FIND OUR SON, read a large white sign, festooned with yellow ribbons, and it stood planted in an otherwise picture-perfect front lawn. The sign showed the age-progressed photo of Timothy Braverman from the white card, and tiger lilies and sunny marigolds grew around its base, a living memorial to a son the Bravermans prayed wasn’t gone forever.
Ellen’s throat caught. She felt a pang of sympathy, and conscience. She had known from the Braverman website that they were missing Timothy, but seeing the sign with her own eyes made it real. The boy on the sign, Will or Timothy, looked back at her with a gaze at once familiar and unknown.
Please, no.
She set her emotions aside and looked past the sign. The Bravermans’ house was like something out of Architectural Digest, a large contemporary with a crushed-shell driveway that held a glistening white Jaguar. Suddenly two women in tank tops and running shorts walked past the car, pumping red-handled weights, and Ellen hit the gas, not to arouse suspicion.
She circled the block, composing herself and cooling down as she eyed the homes, one more lovely than the next. She had expected that the neighborhood would be wealthy; any family who could afford that reward would live in a nice place, and her online research had told her that she was driving through a neighborhood of three-million-dollar houses. In fact, according to zoom.com, the Bravermans’ house cost $3.87 million, which she tried not to compare with her three-bedroom, one-bath back home.
It’s warm and friendly.
Ellen pushed that thought away. She took a left and another left, going down the next block, getting the lay of the land. No one was out except a gardener using a noisy leaf blower and a laborer edging a lawn. The sun beat down on the shiny foreign cars, dappling the lawns through the palm fronds, and she turned around and headed back to the main drag, Coral Ridge Way, the two-lane road that led back to the causeway. It was busy, and when the light changed, she parked across the street from the entrance to Surfside Lane. She didn’t park on the Bravermans’ block for fear of being noticed.
She cracked open a bottle of warm water and checked the clock—1:45. She turned away when an older man strolled past with a chubby Chihuahua, and she watched the traffic to the causeway. By 1:47, her sunglasses were sliding down her nose, and the car had grown impossibly hot, proving that she was a stakeout rookie. She turned on the ignition and slid down the window.
She had barely taken a second sip of water when she saw the chrome grille of a white Jaguar nose out of Surfside Lane, pause at the stop sign, and pull a left. It had to be the Bravermans’ car because theirs was the only Jaguar on the block. In the driver’s seat was the outline of