Missing Persons, page 8
part #1 of Kate Conway Mystery Series
Victor grunted a few times in a show of exaggerated offense.
“Who said Theresa was meeting her friend here?” Andres asked me.
“Her mom, I guess. It was in the police report.”
He slowly panned the camera from left to right, getting a full view of the shop. “She must have gotten the wrong place.”
We were only a half mile from Linda’s bakery and had more than two hours before the crew went into overtime, so I decided to swing by and see if we could get some shots of her at work. Theresa had spent a lot of her free time at her mother’s bakery, and even worked there while in high school, so it made sense for the backstory. Plus I knew they would have lots of wedding cakes in the window, and if luck was with me Linda would be working on one. What better shot could there be than a mother decorating someone else’s wedding cake, knowing she might never have the chance to do the same for her missing daughter?
We hadn’t discussed my stopping in, but I knew Linda would go along with anything that she thought would help, so I didn’t even bother to call. Though maybe I should have. As we parked across the street, I could see two people—Linda and a young man—screaming at each other in front of the bakery.
“Who the hell is that with Linda?” Andres asked.
“Her son. I recognize him from the photos at the house.”
“So much for a close-knit family.”
We watched Linda throw up her hands and walk into the bakery, still crying and yelling while her son stood on the sidewalk staring at the ground. Eventually, he too went back into the bakery. I noticed that no one in the dry cleaner’s next door bothered to come outside and see if there was trouble. Obviously it wasn’t the first family argument to spill out onto the street.
“What do we do?” Andres asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I guess we wait.”
We sat in the car for about five minutes, waiting for things to cool down, before I left the guys and went in to talk to Linda.
“Hi,” I said, sounding a little too fake and cheery.
“Oh, my heavens, Kate!” Linda’s excitement was even more phony than mine.
“We were just driving down the block and I saw your bakery. I thought maybe we could get some footage of you working?”
She froze. “We’re just closing up. We’re putting everything away.”
It was only four in the afternoon and the sign on their door said they were open until five, but I nodded. “I figured,” I said. “Is it too late to grab something for the boys?”
“Not at all. I’ll make you a box. And some coffee. You must want coffee.”
Before I had a chance to answer she had disappeared into the back room. I was left standing alone in the bakery, which had a homey, old-fashioned feel to it. There was a long counter with cookies, small cakes, and fruit tarts sitting on doilies. Two Styrofoam wedding cakes decorated as samples sat in the window.
On the far wall, there was a bulletin board with a poster of Theresa and dozens of photos of her. They were all pretty similar to the ones I’d seen at the house, happy family shots reminding everyone of better days. But there was also a photo of Theresa with a young, dark-haired woman. It was unremarkable, except that a pushpin had been used to gouge out the woman’s eyes. Another photo, with the same woman, had an ink mustache drawn onto it.
As I stared at the images, Linda reemerged holding a large pink pastry box neatly tied with ribbon.
“I didn’t mean to put you to any trouble,” I said. “I’m sure it’s been a busy day.” Why I would be sure of that, I have no idea.
“Not at all. Slow day. My son, Tom, and I were just sitting here doing nothing.”
She smiled. It was wide and sincere. Exactly the kind of smile I give to interview subjects when I’m lying to them.
“What do I owe you?”
“Absolutely nothing. My way of saying thank-you.”
“It’s not necessary. I don’t even pay for it,” I explained. “The production company reimburses me for the crew’s lunch or any expenses I have.” I took money out of my purse.
She pushed the money away. “I don’t want it. I’m just so happy this is finally getting some attention.” She grabbed a full coffeepot, poured three cups of coffee into large paper cups, and placed them in a takeaway tray. “Can you handle this by yourself?”
“I think so. I’m just disappointed I didn’t get to shoot you at work. Any chance for later in the week?”
“Of course. Anytime.”
“Who is the girl in the photo?” I pointed to the damaged images on the wall.
Without looking, Linda answered, “Julia.”
“Theresa’s friend? Someone must not be very fond of her.”
“Julia did that herself. She thinks she looks bad in photos.” She moved toward the exit. “I’m so grateful you’re doing this story. My whole family is. Whatever we can do to help, I hope you know that.”
Just as she almost had me out the door, Tom emerged from the back room. With his head down, he walked quickly past his mother and me.
“You must be the son,” I said.
“I must be,” he answered without looking up. He walked out of the bakery without another word to us.
“He’s in a hurry. He’s got tickets to a Sox game,” Linda said.
“Lucky him.”
I didn’t bother to mention that as we stood there, the White Sox were playing the Yankees in New York.
Nineteen
“She’s a pretty good liar,” I told Andres and Victor once I was back in the car.
I explained what had happened in the bakery, but the guys were mainly interested in the coffee and desserts.
“What was she supposed to say?” Andres pointed out. “My family is fighting. Get your camera out and film this.”
“I’m just saying she didn’t seem flustered, which means she has some practice with telling lies. And it’s just weird about the photos.”
Victor inched up from the backseat and popped his head between Andres and myself. “I’m with Kate on this one. I can see drawing a mustache on a photo of yourself, but gouging your own eyes out? That’s screwed up.”
Andres gulped the last of his coffee, crushed the cup, and threw it in the backseat, missing Victor by an inch. “What do we do now, boss?” he asked me.
“We have more than an hour in the day.”
“So, a bar?” Victor suggested. “A drink to wind down the day.”
“Nice try,” I told him. “Head toward my house and I’ll figure something out.”
As we drove from the South Side to the North Side, crossing an invisible border that separates what has been traditionally blue-collar Chicago from the more hip, more moneyed side, I knew where I wanted to go next.
I keep a bright orange binder next to my laptop in a tote bag I carry with me on all shoots. In the binder I have everything I need, from interview questions to a list of needed B-roll images. I may not always enjoy my profession, but the necessity of being organized at least plays to my strengths. I went through my production binder and found Julia’s number. When I called, I explained to her that Friday, when we were scheduled to interview her, would be a very packed day, and I was hoping to get some B-roll footage of her now. I made up a bunch of stuff about getting tapes to New York, as if there was some kind of rush to get footage of her. Julia acted as if she understood what I was talking about and agreed to meet us at Angel Food Bakery, a coffee shop near her Ravenswood apartment. I guess the reason I knew Linda was such an experienced liar was because I recognized a fellow practitioner when I saw one.
“Why can’t this wait until Friday?” Victor asked as we pulled up in front.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But Friday is the last day of the shoot, and I just think there might be something she tells me that I need to know before I talk to the ex-boyfriend, and before I see Linda again.”
It was a gut feeling, based on a disfigured photograph and Linda’s insistence that Julia had been wrong about meeting Theresa. I knew there wasn’t time for the interview; that would have to wait until Friday, but there was a chance I could get something to help me better understand what was really going on. Or maybe I just didn’t want to go home.
Angel Food Bakery was miles away, literally and figuratively, from Linda’s bakery in Bridgeport. A bright place, with a cheery retro feel and offerings like homemade Twinkies that reimagined childhood comforts, it fit its trendy neighborhood in the same way that Linda’s bakery fit its more traditional Bridgeport patrons.
“Julia?” I asked the pretty, dark-haired woman munching on a cupcake at one of the tables.
“Kate?” She hugged me. Why do people insist on hugging strangers? She was with a man about her age with a slight build and eyeglasses. “This is my husband, David.”
“I hope you don’t mind my tagging along. I’ve never been around a camera crew before,” he said.
“Actually this works out great. We can shoot the two of you here, eating, and maybe outside walking down the street,” I told him.
After checking with the artsy owner of the place, I had the permission I needed, and Andres began taping the couple sitting at one of the tables, talking and enjoying their cupcakes. It was exactly what they’d been doing before we arrived, but now that it was being taped, they were self-conscious. Julia giggled and David kept glancing toward the camera. In frustration Andres looked toward me, eyebrows raised. I nodded. After working together for so long, even a small facial gesture is code for something. He put the camera on its tripod, aimed it at them, and walked a few steps away.
“Andres and I need to figure something out,” I told the couple. “You guys just hang out and we’ll start taping again in a minute.”
Andres and I stood in the corner, pretending to chat. The camera was, of course, still running, but since they didn’t know it, Julia and David relaxed, and we were able to get the footage I needed.
They were obviously very much in love. It wasn’t just in the way he ran his fingers across her wedding ring, or in the way she smiled at him. It was something else—the way they were both excited just to be with the other person. For so many years Frank and I held hands across the dinner table and curled into each other when we sat on a couch. We had looked like that. Did that mean someday they would look like we ended up?
“Okay,” I said after a few minutes, “I think we’re going to go outside and get some stuff of you walking down the street.”
Julia and David jumped up. “This is fun,” Julia said. “I feel like a movie star.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” I said. “It can be difficult to participate in a story like this, to relive all those old memories.”
Her smile faded. “I miss her. It’s been this total nightmare.”
“Is that why you moved from Bridgeport all the way up here?”
“Sort of. I guess. We got married. We wanted a fresh start.”
“And better bars,” David said.
“Can’t argue with that.” I turned back to Julia. “Do you talk to her family much?”
David slid his arm around Julia, an unmistakable sign of support. Which meant she needed support.
“Not often,” she admitted. “I think they kind of blame me.”
“Because you were supposed to meet Theresa.”
“I wasn’t. We didn’t make plans.” Her frustration was obvious. She had clearly made the same statement many, many times.
“Theresa had a lot of stuff going on in her life that her mother didn’t know about, didn’t want to know about,” David offered. “I think Theresa said she was meeting Julia so she wouldn’t have to get into it.”
“Her mother does seem overprotective.”
David glanced at Julia, seemed to get approval to speak, and turned to me. “She was crazy. She wanted Theresa to be nine years old forever. No wonder she did the things she did.”
“David,” Julia interrupted. “Theresa was a great person. She wanted her mother to be happy but she also wanted to be her own person.”
“And that led her to do what?” I asked.
Julia shrugged. “She maybe got around. It was a long time ago. I don’t know that it really matters.”
“She was dating someone else other than Wyatt?”
“I think so,” Julia said. “She never said she was but something was going on.”
“Maybe she was getting back with Jason?”
“Not a chance.”
Still by Julia’s side, David seemed to tense up at the mention of Jason’s name.
“You didn’t like him,” I said.
“No. And I don’t think Theresa was that stupid.”
Julia wavered. “I don’t know. There was something going on,” she said. “Maybe someone new.”
I wasn’t sure if any of this would get into the show. If we were painting Theresa as ripe for sainthood, we wouldn’t want to offer anything that would deter from that. On the other hand, if the network wanted to hint that Theresa somehow brought this on herself with late-night hookups and dark, dirty secrets, I could be on to something.
But for the moment, I was thinking about the photo. “I saw a couple of pictures of you in Moretti’s Bakery,” I started, looking for any indication Julia knew what the photos looked like. There wasn’t any. “They’d been defaced.”
“Asshole,” Dave whispered.
“Who?” I asked.
Julia looked at David, shaking her head, but he didn’t seem to care. “Tom. Theresa’s brother. The guy has issues.”
I was dying to ask the next logical question—could he have hurt Theresa?—but now I was sure I wanted this on camera. I’d have to wait until Friday for my answer if I wanted it to feel fresh and unrehearsed.
“We’re going to go into overtime if we hang around too much longer,” I said as my excuse to end the conversation. “Let’s just get a couple of quick shots of you walking down the street. And listen, don’t smile, don’t look too happy. We have stuff of you happy, which I will need when I talk about how you were getting married when Theresa disappeared, but I also need sad stuff. I don’t want it looking like you’ve completely forgotten Theresa.”
This time they played along, walking down the street looking as though their world had collapsed. It was exactly what I needed, but there was something artificial about it. And not just because it was fake. There was nothing in Julia that actually seemed sad about the disappearance of her friend. It had been a year—but is that enough time to get over the sudden and inexplicable loss of your best friend since childhood? Maybe Theresa’s brother had a good reason for mutilating Julia’s photos.
Twenty
It’s not just thumbs that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, it’s the ability to compartmentalize. All day I had thought mostly of the shoot, of Theresa Moretti and the people who knew her.
Once I was home it rushed back over me and I couldn’t push it away. Frank was dead. And I still hadn’t figured out what I felt about him. My feelings, my lack of feelings, my confused and contradictory feelings—it was the sort of thing I would have indulged in when I was in my twenties. I would have called girlfriends and talked for hours. But excessively analyzing romantic relationships is like wearing a crop top. At some point, you realize you don’t have the stomach for it anymore.
Not that it mattered. When I walked into the kitchen, I knew my feelings weren’t my biggest priority. Something in the room seemed out of place. The photo albums of Frank and me that I’d left on the floor were stacked more neatly than I’d left them, and the pictures of Theresa on the table looked to be in a different order. It was just weird enough that I walked around each room holding a frying pan, a useless weapon if there really was someone in the house. Of course there wasn’t. People don’t break into other people’s houses to see what kind of photos they have.
“This is stupid,” I said. “I must have done this myself.” I was half convinced I had done it and forgotten, but just in case, I left the frying pan on the kitchen table, next to my laptop.
In a nod to Frank, and because I was out of my own stuff, I made a cup of one of the green teas he had left at the house. It was good. Maybe I’d mocked him for nothing. I sat at the table and began hunting for the answers in my own personal true-crime show.
Dr. Milton had said Frank’s death had been listed as undetermined. I looked online for what that meant and got nothing helpful. I did know a few people in the coroner’s office from past episodes of Caught! but none of them well enough to get a peek into Frank’s file. There was only one person who could give me more information than I already had.
Now that Detective Podeski had supplied her last name, it was surprisingly easy to find Vera’s phone number and address. She lived in the Gold Coast neighborhood, the wealthiest in the city. It seemed an odd address for someone who had dressed as simply as Vera had the night we met. I guess she could be one of those people who lived in an expensive shoe box so she could impress others with her address. Though when I thought about it, Frank would never have gone for someone like that. His mother was someone like that, and Frank despised his mother’s shallowness.
Voice mail picked up with a cheery greeting from Vera to leave a message, which I did. Nothing special. I just told her it was Frank’s wife, Kate, and I wanted to ask her some questions. What questions they would be I hadn’t yet figured out.
An hour later, the doorbell rang. I answered, assuming it was someone wanting to pray for me, sell me something, or mug me. Instead it was Vera.
“What are you doing here?”
She was holding a large box and seemed about to drop it. Out of instinct, I reached out for it, and we carried it into the living room.
“You called me,” she said.
“I didn’t ask you to stop by. How do you know where I live any way? ”
“I came here with Frank once.”
“You did?”
“I stayed in the car while he picked up some clothes.” She smiled a friendly, neighborly smile. “You have a great place. You have really nice taste. I love your couch.”
