“Elysia?” I knew she hadn’t had a boyfriend since she’d come off the streets and cleaned up her act. “No way. She’d never—”

“My sources said she’d had one prior arrest for prostitution in ninety-seven.”

“Yeah, but that was before she got cleaned up. Her life had changed. Totally. She had a job. She was clean.”

Elysia into bondage? Tough as she was in other ways, the girl cried if she got a paper cut.

“Mike, if what you’re saying is true, she didn’t do any of it voluntarily. I know that for sure. She was forced. Shot full of drugs like that, she probably didn’t know

what the hell was happening. But why? And how did she get back out on the street without anybody over at Harbor House noticing anything?”

“She couldn’t have. Not from how you describe their check-in procedures at Harbor House. Either you’re lying or they are. Simple as that. That’s how the cops see it. Question they’ll ask themselves is, which of you stands to gain by telling a lie? Which one of you is already under suspicion for another crime?”

XI

Everything kept coming back around to Harbor House. As I drove down Sunrise, headed for the beach, I told myself that my real reason for going over there was to find out what sort of funeral arrangements were being made for Ely. If nobody else was going to step forward, I’d figure out a way to take care of it somehow. At least that’s what I’d tell them over at Harbor House. But at the same time, I tried to remember exactly what Elysia had said about James Long. She’d said something about how Patty had fooled even James. What had she meant by that? I wanted to find out if he was the one doing the lying or if he was being lied to.

The door buzzed when I was still several steps away, and I hustled to grab it. Inside the lobby area, I was struck by the similarities to the police station: the glass booth, reception desk, locked doors leading to the inner areas. I wondered, briefly, if they were trying to keep people out or in.

Behind the reception desk, a young woman sat in the chair and an older woman was looking over her shoulder at a paper.

“Can I help you?” the older woman asked looking up at me.

“Yes, I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to come here to visit Elysia Daggett, and I spoke to you several times about her. You are Minerva, right?”

Her face took on a practiced expression of grief. “Oh, yes, I remember you. Yes. We’re just devastated here. Really, we’re so sorry, and we want you to know we share your grief. She had been doing so well. It’s doubly hard to lose them when they’ve been doing so well.”

She wore her long, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a tight bun. She looked the epitome of the spinster schoolmarm, and I wondered how she could possibly strike up a rapport with these street-hardened girls. As she spoke, I made the appropriate nods and sad smiles, but her words didn’t convey any of the true heart-rending ache that I felt. There was a void in my life where Ely had been, but it was more than just emptiness. I couldn’t stop asking myself if I had done something wrong. Could I have visited her yesterday or taken her home with me last night? Could I have changed the course of events?

“I was wondering if I could talk to the director about her. I’d like to know what arrangements are being made, and I have some questions about her actions last night.”

“Well, Mr. Long is a very busy man. He’s in a staff meeting this afternoon.”

“Minerva, this is very important to me.” I was not about to give up easily. “Ely was like a sister to me. She told me everything about her life.” I tried to look very knowing, though I hadn’t a clue what it was I was pretending to know. But someone in this place was lying and had made me look like both a fool and a liar. I was determined to find out why.

“Well.” She sighed loudly. “I’ll see what I can do.” She picked up the phone and dialed an extension. I wandered across the lobby and gazed at the photos, press clippings, and posters on the far wall. Across the lobby, Minerva turned her back to me and spoke in hushed tones. I couldn’t understand much, but I did hear Elysia’s name.

There was a framed clipping on the wall from the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel with the headline “Runaways Find a Safe Harbor.” A large color photo showed three girls clustered around a tall black man outside the building, standing next to a wood sign that read Harbor House. They were gazing up adoringly at him, and it was understandable; he had the high cheekbones, strong jaw, and cleft chin of a professional model.

He appeared again in the next photo, a color glossy taken the night of a fund-raising ball. There were three couples in the picture, and it almost looked like a put-up job to demonstrate the multiethnic South Florida population: a black couple, a white couple, and a Hispanic couple. The handsome black man stood next to a woman with a gracefully long neck and big dark exotic eyes. The white couple looked like the typical old Florida monied socialites, big hair and a bad toupee, whose pictures always grace the society pages. The Hispanic man was just plain ugly. With a big nose, small eyes, and bad skin, he was several inches shorter than the brassily beautiful Cuban on his arm. The bronze plate at the bottom of the glass read Harbor House Gala 1997.

At that moment, the door leading to the inner sanctum opened, and the tall black man I had been admiring in the photos walked through the door.

“Good afternoon,” he said, extending his hand to shake mine. He bowed his head a bit to get his eyes closer to mine. I gauged his height at somewhere near six foot four. “My name is James Long.” His hair was cut very short, accentuating the shape of his head and his long jawline. In his left ear he wore a fine gold wire hoop, and his voice carried the musical lilt of Caribbean roots. As he spoke, his eyes darted down for an instant in an assessing glance.

“Seychelle Sullivan.” He continued to hold my hand several seconds longer than was usual. Then he gave my hand an extra squeeze, and it felt almost as though electricity coursed up my arm and through my body. Whoa! Whatever it was this guy had, he had lots of it.

“Let’s go find a more private place to talk.”

He used a plastic card key to open the locked door. I followed him down a long hallway lined with closed doors. Tall and slender, he was wearing black pleated slacks and a coral-colored short-sleeved shirt that complemented his light brown skin. The legs in those soft black slacks seemed to go on forever. He was very high-waisted, and the view from behind as we walked down that corridor was memorable, to say the least.

Halfway down the corridor, one of the side doors opened and a blond teenage girl flounced out and ran into Mr. Long. She was wearing little pink running shorts and a midriff-showing, spaghetti-strapped knit camisole that did little to contain her considerable bust. A huge grin spread over her face when she recognized James, and she looked like she was about to launch herself into his arms, “Ja—,” she started, then she looked up at his face. From behind, I couldn’t see his expression, but she immediately backed down and looked at me. She crossed her arms in front of her body and her eyes went blank.

“Sunny, this is Ms. Sullivan. I’m giving her a tour of our facility.”

She nodded at me, mumbled something that sounded like “Excuse me,” and disappeared back into the room.