Missing Persons (29 page)

Ellen leaned back, obviously sure she had gotten the full story. “You can have the guest room for as long as you want, but I’m surprised at you, letting some jerk scare you out of your own house.”

“I’m a little surprised too,” I admitted.

 

 

Andres and Victor picked me up at my sister’s house at eleven thirty the next morning and we drove south. On the way I told them about my latest adventure and was chewed out for not being more careful.

“I think you should call Mike and tell him that we’re canceling the rest of the shoot,” Andres said.

“This might not have anything to do with the shoot. It might be about Frank.”

“If we cancel the shoot, you’ll know for sure.”

“That still doesn’t tell me who it is or guarantee it will stop,” I said. “We’ll miss two days’ pay for nothing. I can’t afford that, can you?”

Andres shook his head. “There has to be a better way to make a living than this.”

We stopped first at the clinic that Theresa had saved from closing down. I didn’t see it making the finished piece; we had photos of Theresa with the mayor that would cover the voice-over about her award, but it was something to shoot. I left the guys to get the exterior while I went looking for permission to film interiors.

I didn’t get it.

“We have patient privacy to consider,” the administrator told me. She was a formidable-looking woman, a Sherman tank in pumps, but when I told her why I was getting footage, she melted. “Theresa was a lovely girl, so giving.”

“Do you know how she got the money for the clinic? I heard it was a hundred thousand dollars.”

“It was. Kept us going until the grant came through. She made some calls. She knew people.”

“How? She was a nursing student from a working-class family.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. When someone works miracles, you don’t ask for details.”

“Did you contact the mayor’s office? Is that how she got the award?”

“Oh, no. Gray Meyer did that. Have you met him?”

“I have.”

“That is a beautiful man,” she said, flashing a smile. “He called the mayor, I think. Pretty much set the whole thing up. She was Volunteer of the Year before we’d even received all the money she’d raised.”

“How did he do that?”

She laughed. “When Gray Meyer wants something, he gets it. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

 

 

I came back out to the van, annoyed. If Gray Meyer had suggested Theresa for the award, why not just say it? It was my job to manipulate people, but ever since I’d started on this story I’d felt like the puppet instead of the puppeteer.

“What’s next?” Andres asked as we drove away from the clinic.

I thought about it for a moment. “Let’s go back to the coffee shop where Theresa was last seen.”

“We already have that,” Victor said.

“Not inside.”

“Do we need it?” Andres asked.

“Someone is trying to scare the hell out of me,” I said. “If it has to do with Frank then it can only be Vera, but if it’s got something to do with Theresa’s death, then I’m going to find out everything I can about her. And while I’m doing that, you can grab some B-roll. It’s perfect.” Before he could respond, I got out of the van and walked across the street to Hank’s.

Hank’s Restaurant was every bit as depressing on the inside as it looked on the outside. The booths were old and worn, as were the waitresses. The menus were laminated but still managed to have stains all over them, and there was a cigarette burn in the No Smoking sign.

“Can I speak to the manager?” I asked a man behind the cash register.

“Why?”

I pointed toward Andres, holding his camera, and Victor, standing behind him, yawning. “We’re a camera crew hoping to shoot some footage inside the restaurant.”

“I’m the manager. What’s it for?”

“A show on Crime TV called
Missing Persons
. It’s about Theresa Moretti.”

“I remember her.”

That surprised me. “You do?”

“Not her,” he corrected himself. “I remember the police bringing around her picture.”

“Had you ever seen her in here?”

“What did I tell the police?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. “Let me show you a picture and see if it jogs your memory.” I pulled out my laptop and set it up at one of the tables. “Is it okay if they get some shots of the place while we chat?”

The manager looked at Andres. “No customers without their permission,” he said.

Andres nodded and he and Victor walked toward the booths.

I pulled up one of the photos of Theresa I’d gotten on disc from Linda. “Does she look familiar?”

“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.

“W
e 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.”

A
ssuming 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.