Call Me! by Dani Ripper

leave her alone. The police feared for her safety, so they put her and her mother in witness protection and relocated her somewhere.”
     
    “Cincinnati’s somewhere.”
     
    “Oh. Well, you’ve got me there, Roy,” I say with great sarcasm. “Yes, you’re absolutely correct. Cincinnati is somewhere.”
     
    “You get all your information from TV?” he says.
     
    “Pretty much. But just for the sake of argument, what led you to draw this absurd conclusion?”
     
    “Your husband, Benny.”
     
    “What about him?”
     
    “He was fascinated with her. No, fascinated isn’t the right word. He was obsessed .”
     
    “What are you talking about?”
     
    He sweeps his hand indicating a wide area and says, “It was all over the news. For weeks. Biggest search party ever.”
     
    “So?”
     
    “Around the time all that was going on I called Benny, to tell him what I was up to. You know, all my business and personal conquests.” He winks. Then says, “During that call he said he was going to meet that little girl and marry her someday. I called him a pedophile, and he hung up on me.”
     
    I try to keep my expression neutral, but it’s hard to do with ice crystals forming in my veins. Also, my stomach is acting funny.
     
    I swallow.
     
    When I’m able to speak with a steady voice, I say, “Pedophilia refers to adults attracted to prepubescent children, not fifteen-year-olds. In any case, Ben didn’t marry Mindy Renee, he married me.”
     
    He stares at my face as if trying to memorize it for a quiz.
     
    “Maybe,” he says. “But he did manage to meet her when she was seventeen. He even got a job tutoring her.”
     
    “He told you that?”
     
    “You’re pretending you don’t know any of this?”
     
    “I’m not pretending,” I say. “The whole idea’s insane.”
     
    It is insane. My mom called Ben from an ad he put up at the grocery store. At least that’s the story I heard. But did I hear that from Mom? Or Ben?
     
    Roy says, “The next time I called Ben, he said Mindy Renee was nuts, and he quit tutoring her to take a teaching job at Clifton State. A few months later, he turns up married to you. I didn’t think much about it till I saw you last week. When I saw how young you were and thought about Ben tapping that fine ass of yours, I remembered how Ben was obsessed with that little girl. She was also blonde.”
     
    “He was probably concerned for her welfare.”
     
    Roy laughs, but it comes out ugly. “Is it true what they said about how you escaped?”
     
    “It wasn’t me. I have no idea if her story is true. I sincerely doubt it.”
     
    He looks at me like he’s sizing me up. Then says, “Your sweet Ben was creaming his jeans to get the tutoring job. When he got it he couldn’t stop bragging. A few months later little Mindy Renee disappears and changes her name and Ben marries a blonde happens to be the same age.”
     
    “You’re repeating yourself.”
     
    “Doesn’t make me wrong.”
     
    “Actually, you are wrong. Mindy Renee changed her name shortly after escaping. She and her mother went into witness protection to escape being harassed by the media. She was fifteen. Witness protection has a one hundred percent success rate. It’s never been breached. So I doubt Ben tracked her down at age seventeen. And I doubt Mindy and her mom ever relocated to Cincinnati.”
     
    He flashed a smug smile. “You sure seem to know a lot about it.”
     
    “I’m a private investigator. I know how witness protection works.”
     
    “Ben never said her new name. Just that it was the same girl. And he never said he tracked her down.”
     
    “Then what did he say, Roy?”
     
    “He said Mindy and her mom moved to Cincinnati, and in an incredible stroke of freak luck, Mindy’s mom— your mom—contacted him . About a tutoring job. And even though he signed some sort of secrecy agreement, he couldn’t keep from bragging to his old pal, Roy.”
     
    “Let’s see if I’ve