Missing Persons, page 23
part #1 of Kate Conway Mystery Series
“No. Not that it means anything. I don’t memorize the customers.”
I was about to close my laptop when I got an idea. Rosenthal had said the police had shown Theresa’s photos after her disappearance, but she never mentioned whether anyone had passed around pictures of Julia. I grabbed the DVD that had the B-roll we’d taken of Julia and popped it in. On it, she and David were laughing and giggling as they ate cupcakes at the bakery near their apartment.
“Do you recognize her?” I pointed toward Julia. “She might have been the one to suggest this place to meet Theresa.”
“She’s a pretty woman,” he said as he leaned down, resting his hand next to my computer. I could smell the grease from his clothes. “But I don’t know her either. I know him, though.”
“David?”
“I don’t know his name.” He leaned closer and studied the images. “Yeah. I know him. He used to come in here pretty frequently. Always ordered the same thing.” He straightened up and turned toward the kitchen. “Stacy!”
A waitress turned from a table. “What?”
He pointed to the computer. “You know this guy?”
She took one look. “BLT no mayo, slice of chocolate cream pie.”
“When’s the last time he was here?” I asked her.
“Is he in trouble?”
“It’s about that missing girl,” the manager told her.
“Dead girl,” I corrected him. “They found her body Saturday.”
“Oh, my God,” Stacy said. “He looks so nice. He always tipped well too.”
“When was the last time he was here?” I asked again.
“You know, it’s weird because he stopped coming around about the time that girl disappeared last summer.”
I looked back at the smiling image of David as he looked lovingly at his wife. Maybe he knew more about what happened to Theresa than he’d let on. Maybe he knew more about me too.
Fifty-seven
“We call Rosenthal and turn the creep in,” Andres said as we drove away from the coffee shop with both the footage and the information we needed.
“For what?”
Victor leaned forward and practically shouted in my ear. “For killing Theresa. For messing with you. And for being an ass wipe.”
“All we know,” I said, “was that he used to go to that restaurant. That’s hardly an arrestable offense. What it could mean is that he told Julia about it. She doesn’t have an alibi for the day Theresa disappeared. She said she was shopping alone all day.”
Andres pulled the van over. “You think Julia is strong enough to drag Theresa’s body to those woods and dig a hole?”
“Properly motivated I think people can do pretty much anything. Besides, she didn’t have to park where we did. She could have driven her car into the clearing just outside the wooded area. The body wasn’t really that far from there.”
“So that’s what we tell Rosenthal,” Andres said. “This isn’t something for us to get in the middle of.”
“Somebody is putting me in the middle of it, Andres. I’m not going to just sit on the sidelines.”
“But you said that Podeski believes you now. Just tell him, if you don’t want to go to Rosenthal.”
“He says he believes me. Rosenthal says she believes me. But really what does that mean?” I asked. “I say that all the time. I tell people I’m their friend, that I understand what they’re going through, that I care. I’ve sat across from people in prison for first-degree murder and pretended to like them. Two experienced detectives could be pretending to be on my side because they hope it will lead to evidence that I killed Frank.” I was practically shouting.
Andres stared out the car’s window. “I think you’re getting paranoid.”
From the backseat, Victor cleared his throat. “I think she’s right.”
When the tenseness of the moment had passed, I told them about the pawn ticket I’d found in Frank’s jeans and they insisted on coming with me to find out what it meant.
Having never been in one, I’d pictured pawnshops as seedy places operated by guys in wife-beater T-shirts. The pawnshop where Frank had left his cuff links was more like a Walmart for used merchandise with bright lighting, clean floors, and neat displays of jewelry, electronics, and decorative items.
A man in a golf shirt and khaki pants came toward us. “Can I help you?”
I handed him the receipt. “My husband brought these in. Are they still here?”
“They should be,” he said after studying the receipt for a moment. “This item was used as collateral for a loan.” After a quick search on the computer he confirmed it. “I have them in back. Would you like to claim them?”
“How much?”
“We gave your husband three thousand dollars, so we would need that plus the interest. If you give me a moment I can get you the figure.”
“Did he bring any other items in?” I asked. “A wedding ring?”
He glanced down at the computer. “No. Sorry.”
I tried again. “What about paintings?”
“From an estate?”
“No. He would have painted them.”
He smiled. “I support the arts by going to the ballet, not by buying the work of aspiring artists.”
“Of course.” I took back the receipt. “I can’t get these now but someone will claim them in the next few days.”
“That’s fine. Just be aware the interest will keep accumulating until the loan is paid. And if the loan is not paid in ninety days, the item is put up for sale.”
With that, the man turned toward another customer, an older woman with a plastic bag full of jewelry. Judging by the smile on the man’s face as he walked to her, she was a regular customer.
Andres and Victor, who had been lurking in the background, came toward me.
“Aren’t you going to get his cuff links?” Victor asked.
“Not me. I’ll call his father. Three thousand dollars will mean nothing to him as long as it gets his wife off his back.”
Andres held the door open for me as we walked out. “Where now?”
I thought about it for a moment. There were so many places we could go, but I needed time to organize my thoughts. There was no point in running around if I didn’t know what exactly I was looking for.
“Can you bring me by the house so I can get clothes for tomorrow? I can’t wear jeans to an interview.”
Victor and Andres exchanged a look. “Twenty minutes, Kate. And we go in first,” Andres said.
When we got to the house, the guys did a sweep before Victor came out to the car to get me.
“It’s freaky in there,” Victor said.
And he was right. The photos were still on display, or at least half of them were. Andres was piling them in one corner of the living room.
“Get clothes,” he barked at me. “And let’s get out of here.”
I packed a small suitcase with enough clothes to last several days and then rejoined the guys in the living room, which Andres had returned to normal. Victor brought me a pot of hot water with a selection of herbal teas and the cookies Linda had given me at the funeral. He made such a lovely display of the tea bags and cookies that I almost made a joke about what a great wife he’d make someone, but I knew he’d be hurt. So I chose one of the tea bags and dunked it in the hot water while the guys sat, fidgeting.
“What are those?” Victor pointed to the tin of butterscotch candies I’d left on the coffee table.
“They’re Scottish,” I said. “Vera gave them to me.”
“Are they good?”
“I don’t know.” I grabbed one and popped it in my mouth. They were good. When it was finished I reflexively grabbed another. The three of us sat and chatted as if everything was fine. But none of us took our eyes off the neat pile of photos Andres had made.
“It’s so weird,” Victor said eventually.
“Told ya.” I looked toward Andres, who seemed to be getting comfortable on the leather chair. “I thought you were in a hurry to get out of here.”
“It’s okay as long as we’re with you,” Victor said.
“And we were thinking,” Andres added, “you need to talk this out. Like, what was Frank up to? He stops the divorce, tells his best friend he’s going back to you—”
“Not that you would have taken him back,” Victor jumped in. “You could do much better.”
Every once in a while, Victor could surprise you.
Andres nodded. “He rents a space with Vera, but he also puts his cuff links up as collateral on a loan. Why? I thought Vera was his sugar mama.”
“Maybe he was doing something he didn’t want Vera to know about,” Victor offered.
That made sense. “Like what?”
Victor pursed his lips. “The guy did seem to play things close to the vest. I get that. I’m a little like that myself. Mysterious, you know. The ladies like that.” Andres and I both tried not to smile, as Victor continued talking. “But even a guy like that tells his secrets to someone. So if it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t Vera, I’d start looking for door number three.”
Fifty-eight
Assuming there wasn’t another woman, there could be only one other person Frank would have trusted with his secrets. I had the guys drop me off at my sister’s and promised to spend the evening resting and watching TV. But I didn’t even go inside. Instead I got in my car and drove straight to Neal’s house.
As usual, the door to his garage was open, with kids’ toys and bicycles littering the driveway. There was one car in the driveway but it didn’t look like Neal or Beth was inside the house. Just in case, I parked my car down the street. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I had a hunch about something and I wanted to check it out.
I walked into the garage, past the reclining chairs and the minifridge and toward the boxes and other junk covered with a tarp. We all have a lot of extra stuff lying around. The storage industry is built on it. But it seemed like too much stuff and too unattractively hidden for a garage with so much on decoration.
And there was something else nagging at me. I hadn’t stayed long enough inside my house to really look at what photos were displayed. Some of them were certainly mine, and Neal would have known they were in the garage. But if Neal were looking to make a really big point, and do it quickly, he could have added to the scene with his own photos of Frank and me. He had nearly as many as I did and about half as many as Frank’s mother.
I glanced out on to the street to see if any of the neighbors were watching, but it was still early. The kids were at day care or summer camp and the parents at work. I grabbed the edge of the tarp and pulled.
It was a crib. It had been disassembled and placed against the wall. An infant car seat, bassinet, and stroller were pushed up against it.
“We’re not planning on having any more kids.”
I turned around and saw Neal. The sun was behind him, putting his body in near darkness.
“I thought you had Frank’s paintings.”
“You have my phone number. If you wanted to find out you could have called.” He stepped inside the garage and pressed a button on the side. The door started to lower.
“What’s going on, Neal?”
“What’s going on is that you are getting out of control. This whole situation is getting out of control. It has to stop, Kate.”
He took a few steps toward me. I saw that the side door, the one that led to his kitchen, was within a few feet of me. I saw him walking toward me. More out of instinct than logic, I picked up the car seat and threw it at him.
“What the hell?”
As he was yelling I ran for the door, turned the knob, and found myself in his kitchen, just a few feet from his wife, Beth.
“Kate? What are you doing here? Is something wrong?” she asked.
I turned and saw their three children in the family room just as Neal walked into the house.
“She came to ask me something about Frank,” Neal said. “About his paintings.”
I tried to sound relaxed, as if everything were normal. “They’re missing.”
Beth walked over to me and hugged me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that. But I guess I haven’t been a very good friend to you. Everything has just been so crazy.”
She grabbed my arm and moved me to the kitchen counter. As I sat down, Beth put a plate of fruit in front of me. “Neal, get her some lemonade. And a glass for me. We’ll sit here and catch up. I feel so bad that I haven’t called you.”
Neal put our drinks in front of us and stood behind his wife. He glared at me. I ignored him and drank my lemonade. The incident in the garage had left my throat dry and I finished it in two gulps.
“That’s okay, Beth. I’ve been working anyway,” I said. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t you both be at work?”
“Family vacation.” Neal glared at me. “We went to Traverse City. We took the kids to the cherry festival.”
Beth smiled. “It was so fun when the four of us went years ago. You remember, Kate.” I nodded. “But three kids in a car for six hours each way. Two days in one room of a motel. I don’t know what I was thinking. Plus, we missed my nephew’s birthday party, so my sister is ready to kill me.”
Neal put his arm around his wife, and as he did, he moved her slightly away from me. “Sometimes you have to think about yourself, and the people you love most,” he said. “And everyone else can go to hell.”
I looked up at the best friend Frank had in the world. “Problem is, it can be tricky to figure out who fits into the category of people you love most and who you’d toss into hell.”
I stayed only another five minutes, making some excuse about having to work early. If nothing else, I felt I’d stood my ground with Neal. But it was little comfort. I didn’t get any information and by the time I got back to the car, I felt sick. He’d always been my favorite of Frank’s friends, right from the beginning. Though he was every bit as popular as Frank in high school, and was known for dating the school A-list, Neal had encouraged our romance. He’d called me Frank’s other half because, he said, Frank was the dreamer and I the realist. Together we’d be able to go further than either of us could alone. Except, of course, it turned out that we just got in each other’s way. But even when it went bad, Neal was one of the few people to call and offer me support. His hostility now didn’t make sense.
By the time I got into the bed in my sister’s guest room, my head was spinning. At first, I didn’t know if it was stress or something else, but as I was about to turn off the lights I realized that either my sister had repainted the blue room a sickly shade of green, or I was seeing the world with a yellow tinge.
Fifty-nine
The next morning I felt fine. I told myself it was just my imagination, that fear and confusion and the grief that surrounded me, for both Frank and Theresa, were making me sick. Or that the lights were playing tricks on me. I’d been tired and stressed, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed. If it was anything else, I didn’t have time to think about it anyway. I had three interviews to conduct and they would, thankfully, take me away from my own problems for the day.
I didn’t bother to say anything to the guys. I didn’t need another round of warnings. I’d booked a conference room in a Loop hotel, and I arrived determined to focus on the shoot. While Andres and Victor set up, I ordered fruit and bagels along with strong, hot coffee. I hoped the food and caffeine would cure the last of my stomach pains. While we ate, we waited for Gray, who was late once again.
I used the time to prep for the interviews. Rosenthal had e-mailed me a set of questions to ask everyone I interviewed, though I assumed she was interested in the answers of only a few people. I just didn’t know which ones. The questions were mostly about the bracelet, though there were some pointed questions about everyone’s whereabouts on the day of Theresa’s disappearance. And of course I had a few questions of my own I was dying to get answered.
“Sorry. Really sorry.” Gray entered the room as if he owned it, shaking hands with Andres and Victor before coming over to me. “Another bad habit, Kate. Habitual lateness.”
“You’re a busy man,” I said and motioned for him to sit in one of the seats we had set out for the interview. “Unless you want coffee first?”
He shook his head. “Wired enough as it is. Thanks. How are things?”
“Fine.”
“No more strange happenings at your house?”
Both Andres and Victor stopped what they were doing and turned to Gray.
“Podeski told him,” I said. “About the bird and the first break-in.”
“The first break-in?” Gray looked at me. “There’s been another one?”
“No big deal. The police are getting to the bottom of it.” I turned to Victor. “Can you mic him, please?”
“You got it, Kate.” Victor made a point of flexing what little muscle he had as he put the mic on Gray’s shirt. “We really like working with Kate, you know.”
“She seems great,” Gray said.
“We’re very protective of her.”
“It’s good she has people looking out for her.”
I just shook my head and smiled. “If you’re ready, Victor.”
“I’m right where you need me.” He looked toward Gray. “Inches away.”
Gray nodded solemnly, but I could see he was more amused than threatened.
Unfortunately, it was probably the best part of the interview. Gray didn’t offer much more about Theresa’s disappearance than he had before. He gave me good, if somewhat canned, sound bites about the tragedy of such a young death, but he didn’t offer much in the way of insight. It was only when I got to Rosenthal’s questions that things got interesting.
“Do you remember where you were the day she disappeared?”
“No. It was over a year ago. Do you remember where you were a year ago?”
I didn’t, actually, but that wasn’t the point. “Did the police ever ask you about it?”
“No. There was no reason to.”
“Do you know anything about a charm bracelet she was wearing?”
