Captivated: A Colter Shaw Short Story

Shaw asked, “Did she—Evelyn’s friend—tell you anything about where she went?”

“No. She said Evie’d called, and that was it. She didn’t pick up again when I called back, once or twice.”

Or dozens of times. Matthews would have called until the friend blocked his number.

“Tell me how she disappeared,” Shaw said. “Details.”

“Evie went to an artists’ retreat outside of Chicago—Schaumburg—last month. Weekend thing. She went to some retreat almost every month, all around the country.” His lips tightened. “Sunday night, she didn’t come home. She was supposed to but she didn’t.”

“She drove?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve been married a year?”

“Thirteen months. Was our anniversary July tenth.”

“Phone?” Shaw asked.

“Not in service.”

Shaw asked, “Private eye?”

“Cost me more than I could afford, got me zip.”

With a few exceptions, PIs were great for background security checks and poring over computer records to see if your fiancée had ever poisoned a prior husband or misbehaved more than one usually misbehaves in Cabo. The “investigation” part of the job title—as in, pounding pavement—usually wasn’t a stellar performance.

That explained why, two weeks ago, Matthews had posted a reward—$10,000—in an Indianapolis newspaper and online for information about Evelyn Fontaine’s whereabouts. Shaw’s business associates in Florida had spotted the announcement and relayed the info to Shaw, who happened to be in Chicago finishing another job.

The $10K wasn’t much for a missing spouse believed to have been kidnapped. But for Shaw, the reward was never about the money; it was a flag flying over a problem that, so far, no one else had been able to solve. The sort he lived for.

Colter Shaw was restless in mind as well as restless in body.

He now asked the standard question: Had anyone else been in touch about the reward? Yes, Matthews said. Some people had contacted him but it was clear they had no helpful information and were simply hoping for a windfall. There’d been no calls in the past week.

This was a pattern Shaw had seen again and again.

Matthews now opened his wallet and slipped out a picture. Shaw had already seen some shots online but this was a far better image: a well-done formal portrait that depicted a woman in her late twenties with a long, sweeping neck and an angular face. Fragile in some ways, confident in others. She was more striking than beautiful. Her dark blond hair was piled high atop her head in carefully plotted disarray. Her eyes were blue but toward the violet end of the spectrum, and her smile was mysterious. Given her profession, Shaw wondered if the crafted crescent lips were an unconscious homage to the Mona Lisa—or, perhaps, a very conscious one.

Shaw nodded to the expensive Mercedes-AMG that Matthews had arrived in. “I looked you up. You own an industrial equipment dealership. How wealthy are you?”

Matthews blinked.

“I need to know if you’re a ransom target.”

Usually such demands come early in a disappearance. But not always.

“Maybe a year or so ago I was. But it’s been tough lately. With all the tariffs and trade wars, our revenues have dropped like a rock. The car’s leased and I’m looking at another operating loan. I could probably scrape together a million. You think that’s it? Somebody after money?”

Shaw kept his eyes on Matthews. “I don’t. And you don’t either.”

He’d finally formed an opinion about Ronald Matthews and Evelyn Fontaine. Matthews’s story didn’t quite add up; his eyes were evasive and he was emotional when he shouldn’t’ve been.

The businessman looked down. His chopsticks were no longer utensils but instead had become fidget sticks. He twirled one between the blunt thumb and the equally blunt index finger of his right hand.

“It’s not quite what I was telling you. Which I guess you picked up on. I just wanted somebody to get fired up enough to find her. I thought if you believed she’d been kidnapped, you’d really get on board.” A wan smile. “I’m a salesman by trade. We spin stories to close the deal.”

“What do you really think happened?”

“I haven’t been the best husband. Oh, not like that. I’m not abusive or anything. I’ve got a temper—my employees’ll tell you that. But I never shouted. Never hurt her. Wouldn’t even think of it. Ever. What I did was, I wasn’t honest with Evie.”

“Go on.”

“We met at a gala for the art museum in town. I was a benefactor, she was a volunteer. She came up to me and was all What’s a handsome guy like you doing in an old folks’ home like this? Because, yeah, everybody else was about eighty. We hooked up and started dating. It was so good. Great, at first. She was smart. Funny. And so beautiful. And the … between us … You know …” His voice faded.

Shaw knew he was seeking a euphemism for their fine times in bed. He knew too Matthews would never finish the sentence.

“She was so captivating …” A sigh. “I was, like, hypnotized. Naturally, I’d go to gallery openings and museums with her. I’d send her off to Paris or Florence so she could paint where all the famous painters from the past had. I’d go meet her and she was all Monet painted here, Gauguin painted there. But the fact is, I don’t get art, frankly.” Then in a whisper, as if she might actually hear: “I don’t even like it. I was involved in the museum for the tax write-offs. I could fake it for only so long and then started coming up with excuses for not going with her. It got worse when I had to work nights and weekends to keep the company afloat.

“I’m going crazy, Colter, I miss her so much. I’ve lost twenty pounds this last month.” He tapped his ring. “I had to move it to this finger. It kept falling off.”

He stared at the gaudy piece of jewelry—a class ring, it seemed.

“Salesman, I was saying? Well, you can’t seal the deal if you don’t give your buyer what you told him you would. I didn’t give Evie what I promised.” His voice cracked. A deep breath wheezed between his narrow lips. He masked blotting away a tear by scratching his nose. “I want a chance to pitch my case again. I can sell myself, I can sell our marriage. I know I can.”

Colter Shaw had seen many an offeror break down in front of him. Rewards are offered when a portion of the heart has vanished and there’s absolutely no balm for the pain except replacing the missing piece.

“I should’ve told you all that up front.”

In his decade of making his living seeking rewards Shaw had learned that how offerors described a situation was sometimes very different from what that situation actually was. He’d become a savvy interpreter and didn’t take such fabrication—sometimes intended, sometimes not—personally.

“I’ll help you,” Shaw said.

Matthews smiled once more, deeper this time, with appreciation. “Thank you. Now, what’s the arrangement?”

“I’ll ask you some questions and then try to find Evelyn. That’s it.”

He seemed confused, then asked, “Expenses?”

“No expenses. That comes out of my pocket. If I find her you pay me the ten K. If I don’t I swallow the costs. If a neighbor calls you and tells you where she is, even if I’m on my way to her hotel room, it’s his money.”

The nature of seeking rewards. Financial risks … as well as, often, physical risks.

“Well, okay. Now, questions?”

From his computer bag, sitting next to him, Shaw removed a five-by-seven bound notebook of thirty-two blank, unlined pages. From his inside sports coat pocket he retrieved a Delta Titanio Galassia fountain pen, black with three orange rings around the barrel, and uncapped it.

He opened to the first page and for the next fifteen minutes Shaw asked, and Matthews answered, dozens of questions, the responses recorded in elegant script as small as the tracks of a sparrow, the words perfectly horizontal despite the absence of lines on the paper. Matthews stared at the man’s handwriting. Many people commented on it. He didn’t.