Missing Persons, page 19
part #1 of Kate Conway Mystery Series
To an outsider it looked like an innocent activity—two friends and two dogs spending the afternoon enjoying summer weather. But I was after something more significant than a day at the beach. I sat in the shade and watched Vera and the dogs play and wondered if Lynette was right. Did Vera kill Frank to keep him from coming home to me? It was certainly a logical theory. If Frank was hoping to reconcile, and if he’d told her his plan, Vera might have wanted to kill him. She’d admitted to being lonely, to having little luck with men. Maybe she’d pinned her last hopes for love on Frank and couldn’t handle the rejection. Maybe. But it wasn’t just my curiosity anymore; Lynette and Alex were now counting on me to find out.
The problem was how exactly was I supposed to find out when my entire skill as an interviewer was asking people questions I already had answers to?
“How did the rest of your shoot go?” Vera asked when she and the dogs sat down for a rest.
“Good. Andres and I got what we needed.”
“They’re both such nice people,” she said. “Victor is hysterical. He actually hit on me on the drive home.”
It’s nice to be hit on by a younger man, so I could understand her giddiness at the thought. It’s just that when the younger man is Victor it kind of takes the fun out of it.
“You certainly seemed to enjoy spending the day with us.”
“I did. You’re so lucky, Kate. You get to go to work every day, and on such interesting projects.”
“I don’t get to work, Vera. I have to work.”
She nodded. “Being wealthy can be such a disadvantage. When I was just out of college some of my classmates took these awful entry-level jobs and worked twenty-hour days with mean bosses yelling at them—”
“It sounds like my life now.”
“Well, I didn’t. I didn’t have to. My father paid for the house, for travel, for clothes, for anything I wanted.”
“I’m not the best person if you’re looking for sympathy for having too much money.”
She smiled. “I know. It’s not the worst problem to have. But those awful entry-level jobs my classmates had led to real careers. My father paying my way through life led to, well, it led to nothing. I dabble in things, but I’ve never really stuck with anything to get as good at it as you are at your job. And you are good, Kate. I was watching the way you handled yourself with everyone. It was really cool.”
“Nothing stopped you from having a real career, Vera.”
“You’re probably right,” she sighed. “I did try for a while. I got in business with several friends, opening shops and things. I thought something would click for me, but I never found my own passion. And once the businesses were on their feet, every one of my friends bought me out, and that was the end of the friendship.” She turned to face me. “Other than Frank, you may be the first person to like me regardless of the money.”
“I don’t really like you, Vera.”
She playfully slapped my hand. “Then why are you here?”
That was a good question. To help a woman who had spent twenty years trying to get between me and Frank, I was spending time with another woman—who had actually succeeding in doing just that.
“I’m just trying to make sense of it, you know, everything that happened,” I said. “I have so many questions.”
“Like?”
“I don’t know.” I tried to think of a place to start. “Did he give you a ring?”
“What do you mean?”
“The night at the hospital you said you were engaged.”
“Oh. No. He said he didn’t have the money to buy one, and I didn’t care one way or the other. I’m a little old for that sort of thing, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s a nice tradition.”
“You don’t have one.” She pointed to my wedding ring.
“I did. Lynette, Frank’s mom, wanted it back once we separated. It was some kind of family heirloom. She’s very into that stuff.”
“That’s a little pushy. It was your ring.”
“It’s easier not to argue with Lynette,” I said. “Had you set a date?”
She seemed a little uncomfortable, but she smiled. “No. We were waiting until the divorce was final.”
“And Frank had told you the divorce was on track?”
She stared at me. “Why?”
“I’m just curious about Frank’s state of mind toward the end.”
“You think it was suicide?”
“I think . . . we have to consider all the possibilities.”
“He wouldn’t have, Kate. Put that idea out of your mind. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“I don’t feel guilty.”
“Of course you don’t. Why should you?”
“Why would Frank commit suicide?”
“He wouldn’t. I just said that.”
I took a breath and started again. “Vera, according to Frank’s attorney he stopped the divorce proceedings two weeks before he died. Did you know that?”
I watched for that telltale blush that appears across the faces of all liars when they’re caught. All but the best liars. It wasn’t there.
Vera turned her face from me and looked out at the water for a long time. She was breathing a little heavy.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I just don’t get it.”
“You don’t get what?”
“Three days before he died he signed a lease on a space.”
“For an art studio,” I said.
“Frank told you.” She seemed relieved. “He was nervous about that.”
“It wasn’t Frank. It was Podeski.”
“That wasn’t very nice of him. You didn’t need that shoved in your face after everything you’d been through.”
“Vera. Focus. Tell me about the lease.”
“We’d been looking around and we finally found this place. It’s actually not that far from your house. It was perfect for him to paint and to maybe have some students in and teach a few classes. That’s what he wanted to do.”
I’d heard all about Frank’s plans over the years, but we’d never had the money to bankroll them, and after the first few years and the first half dozen plans, I’d given up listening. But now it looked like, with Vera’s help, he was on the verge of making one idea actually come true.
“Do you have a lease or something?” I asked.
“Why? Don’t you believe me?”
And in a move that was uncharacteristically open and honest, I said what I was thinking. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Forty-seven
After we’d brought the dogs back to her house, Vera showed me proof. Frank’s signature was on the lease dated three days before he died. It was a year’s lease on a small space just blocks from our—now my—house. It was an inexpensive place, which was getting harder to come by as Bucktown got trendier. I was surprised with Vera’s money he hadn’t gone for something more upscale.
“And, I don’t know if you want to see this,” Vera said, “but I have a video I made the day he signed the lease.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to see it?”
“I don’t know. I just thought . . .” She took a deep breath. “I can’t stop watching it myself.”
Once it began to play, I understood what she meant. Frank was alive again. He was moving and talking and laughing. And he was happy, more than happy. He was practically giggling as he walked around the space, telling Vera where his easel would go. I wanted to reach out and touch the screen, somehow find a way to brush his hair out of his eyes and feel the warmth of his cheek, but I sat still and watched him.
“I can’t wait to start painting again. I feel like I have so many ideas in my head just bursting to get out,” he was saying.
“You’re so talented.” It was Vera’s voice, from behind the camera.
“I just feel like it’s finally my time to get everything going, you know,” he said. “I’ve wasted a lot of years, but I’m really ready now.”
“It’s all going to be wonderful from here on out,” Vera said.
“I love you,” he said to her.
There it was. The punch in the gut I’d felt over and over since the first time I’d heard Vera’s name. I turned the camera off.
If this really was one of my shows, I’d be in heaven: a video of a happy man on the verge of realizing his dream, who won’t live to see the weekend. The point of using the videos on TV is to give some insight into the person, but after watching the video, I only had more questions. If Frank was a man desperate to come home to his wife, as Neal and Alex seemed to think, why was he telling another woman he loved her?
“Do you have a key to the place?” I asked.
“No. I looked for it a few days ago. I called the landlord to tell him about Frank and he asked for the key. It might have been among the things I gave you yesterday.”
“I’ll check.”
“Why do you need it?”
“Just to make sure none of his possessions are there.”
“They aren’t. He kept everything here.”
“What about his paintings? Because there are several that are actually mine. He painted them for me as gifts for our wedding and anniversaries.”
She seemed confused. “You have his paintings. He said he left them in your garage.”
“I don’t have them, Vera.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “I told Frank he could bring them here. God knows there’s plenty of room. But he didn’t want to. He said that he had everything neatly stored away at the house, and since he was going to bring it to the art studio, he didn’t think there was any point in moving it twice.”
“But I don’t have them,” I said again.
“Well, go home and check, because you must have them.” She seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. “Those paintings were everything to Frank. And if they’re gone, if everything he created is gone . . .”
“Calm down. I’m sure they’re somewhere. I’ll look in the garage again. And I’ll call his landlord. It’s possible he had started to move some of his stuff there.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s stupid to get so upset. None of them were even mine.”
“But they were Frank’s, so they’re important to you,” I said, sounding kinder than I wanted to.
“He had planned this painting for me. He just didn’t get around to it. He made a few sketches, so I know what it would have looked like, and it would have been really beautiful. It was going to be me in the garden with the flowers behind me and the sun hitting across my shoulder. Of course, he couldn’t do it until he’d cleaned up the garden first.”
I looked out the window to the overgrown bushes in her backyard. “It doesn’t look like he got very far.”
“He was working on it little by little. I suggested we just hire a gardener. I had one for years but I thought it was better for the environment if I just let it grow wild.” She laughed. “Frank said a gardener was a waste of money. He said he would get it back under control, grow some vegetables and some fruits, and maybe someday cook me dinners from our very own garden.”
That sounded familiar. I guess there was a certain comfort in knowing he was just reusing the old material—the misunderstood artist, the passionate cook—but it did make me wonder if there was a single moment of our marriage that belonged just to me and hadn’t been warmed over for her.
I got up to leave. “You can always frame the sketches.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Why don’t you call your friend Susan? Maybe go out and have a nice dinner.”
I was getting anxious to get out of there. Vera was fine to be with, I was discovering, as long as Frank wasn’t the subject.
“Susan is a little annoyed at me,” she said. “But I will have a nice dinner. Just do me a favor and call me if you find the paintings.”
“Who else would I call?”
I meant it to be sarcastic but as I walked out of her beautiful home I wondered, who else would I call? Vera thought her family fortune had kept her from real friendships but what was my excuse? My friends were really the wives of Frank’s friends, and many of them had disappeared at the time of the separation. I had coworkers, like Andres and Victor, but I really only saw them when we were working together. And I had family, but we had nothing in common except a bloodline and a stubborn streak.
Depressing as it was, Vera might have been the closest thing to a friend I’d made in a while. And that would have been great, except for the pesky and uncomfortable reality that she was my husband’s mistress, and possibly his killer.
For my entire career, I had scrupulously avoided working in the lowest forms of reality TV—the group of strangers who are forced together under the guise of finding true love, losing weight, or winning large sums of money. The real point of these shows, of course, is to watch people having highly amusing emotional breakdowns as they form temporary connections with people they secretly plan to betray.
Now I was doing the same thing as those awful contestants. I was going back and forth, shifting allegiances between Lynette and Vera. And for what? So I could uncover more of Frank’s secrets, see him happy with someone else, and wonder what could have been?
Forty-eight
I went to bed late and didn’t sleep. At seven I got up and made myself breakfast. As I sat on the front steps, drank coffee, and watched people rush to work, I tried to put myself in a good mood. One of the advantages of being freelance is that you often have Mondays off. Not that I had nothing to do. I had to do what I’d promised—figure out what had happened to Frank, and to his paintings. And it wasn’t going to be easy.
One sweep of the garage that morning confirmed what I already knew. There were no paintings. All I discovered was that Frank had thoughtlessly rearranged some of the boxes on his last visit to the house, putting the box with fragile Christmas ornaments underneath the heavy one with mementos of happier days. I looked in the basement and attic and still found no paintings. If Frank had intended to keep them at the house, then he would have left the ones that were hanging exactly where they were. He had made a point of taking them and of telling me he was taking them. Why would he have done that if he were only going to store them in the garage?
But that wasn’t what bothered me as I started my day. It was the sight of him yesterday, so happy and so ready to start a new life. It would have been easy to say that his beaming smile on that videotape was because Vera’s money was buying him his dream, but it would have been a lie. Frank could have been painting these last few years. I hadn’t been supportive but I hadn’t stopped him. He didn’t even need Vera for a space to paint. We had a basement, a garage, and a spare bedroom. All of which sat unused. And as Victor pointed out, a man in love can’t be swayed by another woman’s money.
There was the possibility that he’d gotten caught up in her image of him. Vera clearly believed in Frank with the same wide-eyed certainty that I’d had twenty years ago. That seemed a much more likely cause of his happiness. Maybe he just wanted that again—that fleeting moment when each person is perfect to the other—before it all returns to earth. Before she stops shaving her legs every day and he stops listening when she talks. That I could understand. And even envy.
But there was something more than that. Whenever I pictured him standing in that empty space, smiling and laughing and saying, “I love you,” I was struck by the genuineness of his affection, the comfortable, easy way he had with her. There was nothing about him that seemed like a man looking for an escape. And if he was really in love with Vera, she had no motive to kill him.
Except—and it kept nagging at me—why did he stop the divorce? Why was he reading Travels with Charley? Why did he tell Neal he wanted to come back to me?
And if those things were true, why open an art studio with Vera?
I could have spent the whole day asking those questions and coming up with nothing. Lucky for me, Mike had other plans. I’d barely finished my coffee when he called.
“Talked to the network,” he said without bothering to first say hello. “We figured it out. Two-part special. In the first part is the stuff we already have. Theresa is missing. Heartbroken mother, blah, blah, blah. Then we end with finding the purse at the scene. Second part is the discovery of the body, a second round of interviews. We still end the show with ‘If you have information . . .’ but instead of finding Theresa, it’s about finding the killer. It will be the premiere episode of the series, so it makes us look like we helped crack the case. It’ll be great. Three extra days of shooting, no overtime. Start making calls. We need this shit ASAP. And listen, Kate, no more slipups.”
Then he hung up. In the entire call, the only word I’d said was “hello.”
“She’d better not come back from the dead, or Mike will have my ass,” I said, finally in the good mood I’d been searching for. Nothing like an insane boss to make me feel normal again.
“This is an ongoing police investigation, involving a number of departments,” Detective Rosenthal told me when I called her about a second interview. “She was found in an unincorporated area of Cook County, so we’re working with the sheriff ’s office. We are all focused on solving the case and bringing her killer to justice. That’s all I can tell you, except that we won’t be doing any additional interviews at this point. I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure it’s Theresa?”
“Off the record? Yes. There was jewelry found with the remains that were identified as belonging to Theresa. We’re still waiting for dental records, though. Sorry, Kate, I wish I could help you more.”
“I understand.” I’d almost told her about the dead bird and all the other odd happenings in my life, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go into the mess that was my life while she was immersed in Theresa’s death. “If there is anything else . . .”
