Missing Persons (32 page)

David looked at me. There was defiance and anger. “You are mistaken.”

“Is that what you’re going to tell the police?”

The defiance last only a second longer. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“S
o what does it look like?”

“Theresa and I met up at the coffee shop that morning. I used to work near there and I’d go at lunch, so I never took Julia there. It was the perfect place to meet and not run into anybody.”

Julia ignored Victor’s warnings and walked over to her husband. “For what?”

“Don’t freak out. We were planning a surprise for the wedding. That’s all. We were going to put together this video with pictures of you growing up, your favorite songs, and stuff like that. Theresa and I were just figuring out what we needed to do to pull it off. That’s all we were doing.” He looked over at me. “I swear.”

I nodded. “But you didn’t tell the police.”

“No. I knew how it would look. I knew that it would mean I was the last person to see her alive. And I was meeting her in secret. I lied to Julia. Theresa lied to her mom. I didn’t want people looking at me as having done something wrong. I didn’t want Julia thinking that.”

The suspicion drained from Julia’s face as she wrapped her arms around David. Andres kept shooting the whole time, but once the hug lasted past thirty seconds, he looked over and me and shrugged. I motioned for him to keep rolling.

“I hate to break this up,” I said, “but why did Theresa lie to her mother?”

Julia wiped away some tears. “Because she was so weird about my getting married first and I’ll bet she would have given Theresa a hard time about spending time on a video when she could have been cozying up to Mr. Smooth.” I assumed she meant Wyatt.

David nodded. “She’d gotten a lot of grief from her mom about spending money on gifts and the bridesmaid’s dress. Money she had to borrow from her mom. She just didn’t want to deal with any more crap.”

“Okay. I can see that. But you’ve been holding on to some valuable information for over a year. Did Theresa say she was meeting somebody or going somewhere after she left the coffee shop?”

He shook his head. “I know I look like an asshole, but if I knew anything I thought would help the police, I would have come forward. All she said was that she was going home. But I don’t know if that’s true. She could have been lying to me.”

“And the other man?”

Julia looked sheepish. “She’d talk about guys that she met once in a while, and after she broke up with Jason, she had a couple of one-night stands. She was just blowing off some steam, that’s all, after how claustrophobic it had been with Jason. But when she met Wyatt she seemed really into him. It’s just that . . .” She paused then decided to tell me. “There was something she was hiding. I assumed it was another man, but I don’t know.”

“David, you’re not the other man?” I asked.

“God, no. I was just trying to do something nice for Julia.”

“Can you prove that? Maybe show me a copy of the tape you made for Julia?”

David turned white. “After Theresa went missing, I just dropped it. We were all so focused on finding her. And then on just getting through the wedding.”

“I believe him,” Julia said. “Isn’t that all that matters?”

“Women in love believe a lot of things, Julia,” I said. “I don’t think that’s enough proof for the police.”

I
reminded myself of that when the guys finally dropped me off at Ellen’s house after the shoot. Women believe a lot of things when they’re in love. They believe that it will last forever, that it will fill all the gaps in their self-worth, that it will be enough to overcome any obstacle. And they believe that he is just as much in love.

Vera and I, at one point or another, had both believed all those things about Frank. But he was keeping secrets from both of us. As I had the night before, I pretended to enter my sister’s house but jumped in my car as soon as Andres’s van pulled around the corner.

I didn’t have the key to Frank’s art space, but I did have the address that had been written on the lease. I passed my house on the way, and though it looked dark and empty, it wasn’t showing any obvious spooky signs, which, considering the state of things, was an improvement. Whoever had been harassing me had either changed his mind or knew that I wasn’t there.

I parked in front of the art space and saw a big “For Rent” sign out front. The landlord had obviously lost no time in putting it back on the market, which made me wonder if Vera had gotten her deposit back.

“Not my problem,” I said to myself.

The space had floor-to-ceiling windows and from what I could see from the outside it looked as it had in the videos. It was a large empty room with two closets at the back, a cement floor, dirty white walls, and exposed pipes. I could picture Frank happy in the space. But I couldn’t see any paintings that Frank might have stored there.

There was nothing to be gained by staring in windows, but I did write down the phone number on the rental sign in hopes of getting access to check for Frank’s paintings. If they weren’t stored in some back room, then I had run out of places to look. I felt as though I’d let him down. Somehow I’d let the things that mattered most to him slip away, and I had no idea how to get them back.

As I walked back to my car, I had another idea. I didn’t know if it was worth believing, but Neal had said Frank was planning to work at the community art center, just a block away. I walked over and saw the center, the same kind of urban space as Frank’s rental but larger and full of life.

“Excuse me,” I said to a woman setting out flyers for an upcoming class. “I need to ask about someone who might have been planning to teach here. His name was Frank Conway.”

Her face lit up. “Frank. Yeah. He was supposed to start a week ago. What happened to him?”

“He died.”

After the initial shock wore off, we sat at a desk in the corner and I filled her in on some of the details of Frank’s death.

“So he was supposed to teach here?” I asked. “It’s kind of confusing because he had also planned to rent his own studio.”

“We’ve been growing faster than we anticipated. Frank was going to teach a class or two here and we’d promised him overflow students for his place. And we were helping him apply for a grant.”

“What did he need that for?”

“For rent and supplies, operating costs. I think he had a few thousand dollars for start-up expenses, but he was worried about how he would pay for things after that. It takes time to build up a reputation.”

“Wouldn’t he end up being your competition?”

She smiled. “We’re all artists. It’s more a community than a competition. And Frank was really talented. His work is amazing.”

A lump caught in my throat. “You’ve seen his work?”

“They’re here.” She pointed toward a stack of canvases in the corner. “He’s been using our space to paint, and he stored his stuff here.”

I walked over to the paintings and looked through them. They were all there. The painting he’d made me of the couple walking down Michigan Avenue, the one of me sleeping, the scenes of Chicago, the still lifes, the sketches. They were all safe.

I bent down and touched one of my favorites, a painting he’d done years ago of a tree in our backyard. It had been a beautiful afternoon, and I sat on a lounge chair and read while he painted. Every once in a while I’d look up from my book and watch him. I’d loved the way his eyes squinted as he studied the tree, and the way his fingers wrapped around his brush when he painted. When he saw me watching, he smiled.

“You’re in love with me,” he said.

“Every day,” I told him.

And now he was gone. It hit me again as it had a thousand times, but this time, before I could stop myself, tears rolled down my face. I could feel sobs moving up from my chest and I could hear the sound of my own cries. It was the first time I’d cried since Frank died, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. By finding the paintings I had found the one thing I was certain Frank loved and it was like finding Frank alive again.

The woman, in her kindness, simply waited. When I was calm again, she brought me tissues and water.

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “He must have meant a lot to you.”

“He did.”

She gave me the paintings and sketches and helped me pile them in my car. As she was about to go back into the center, I stopped her.

“Why did he keep them here? He had several places to store them.”

“He said the person who had them was really pissed at him. He was worried they would end up in the trash.”

I smiled. “He might have been right about that.” I hesitated to ask, but I asked anyway. “It’s probably a dumb question, but did he ever mention a wife or a fiancée?”

“Not specifically. Not that I remember. He did say once his personal life was pretty complicated, but he was hoping to get it straightened out soon.”

 

 

I’d promised Vera I’d call her when I found the paintings, and I almost did, but something stopped me. Frank wasn’t using her money to open the studio. He’d obviously pawned the cuff links to get himself started and had been working on a plan to find financial backing elsewhere. It had taken me all this time to realize it was only Frank’s name on the lease. Not Frank and Vera. Did that mean he was coming back to me? He was finally becoming the man I’d always wanted him to be: focused and practical, while also following his own passion. I was excited at the idea even as I reminded myself it would never happen.

But another thought pushed its way in. What if Frank was doing this for Vera? She’d said that everyone she had helped before had pushed her aside once they no longer needed her help financially. Maybe Frank was proving he didn’t love Vera for her money but for herself.

I searched through my purse for another phone number. Susan’s number. At Frank’s wake she’d said Vera doesn’t always see what’s obvious to other people. Maybe there was something obvious about Vera’s relationship to Frank that even Vera hadn’t seen. If there was, maybe Susan could tell me what neither Vera nor I seemed to know for sure.

W
e met for coffee at a chain place with little atmosphere but a good selection of beverages and music loud enough to keep our conversation from anyone who wanted to listen.

Susan was nervous. She’d ordered a complicated drink with half of this and a dusting of that, and while she waited for it she tapped her fingers on the counter. I just smiled warmly and found us a table.

“I’ll just get straight to the point,” I said but she waved me off.

“Look, I get that in your situation you might think you have the right to lecture me, but it’s totally different from you and Frank.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I played along. “Why is it different?”

“Neal couldn’t leave his wife because of the kids.”

I’m sure my eyes got wide and my face red. Neal had been having an affair. He’d been hiding an affair. He hadn’t wanted me to talk to Vera because she knew about it and might tell me. And I might tell Beth.

“Is that how you met Neal?” I asked. “Did Vera and Frank introduce you?”

“No, the other way around.”

“Frank told me he met Vera in a grocery store.”

She laughed. “I think he was just being funny. You know, she’s a grocery heiress.”

Another joke on me. “Are you and Neal still . . .”

“We broke up. Neal had some come-to-Jesus moment when his daughter got hurt riding her bike.”

“I remember that. She needed stitches. It was nothing but it scared the hell out of both Neal and Beth.”

“It obviously scared him straight.”

I took a moment to collect myself. Susan seemed like a nice person, not masochistic in any way. “Why did you come to Frank’s funeral? You had to know Neal would be there.”

“I wanted to support Vera. She was determined to go, and I knew she’d be alone in there. But I guess I also wanted Neal to see me. We were together for eighteen months. Eighteen months of him telling me how much he loved me, how he was waiting for the right time to tell his wife. And then one tiny crisis and poof! He’s father of the year.” She blushed a little. “Sorry. I know you’re not the best audience for this.”

“It’s okay.”

She took a deep breath. “When you called and said you wanted to talk, I thought this was going to be hell. Like a confrontation with Neal’s wife by proxy. But you seem really understanding. Just like you were at the wake. You were so nice to Vera. I was shocked by how cool you were about her being there.”

I laughed. “I’m not cool about it, Susan. I just find Vera hard to dislike.”

“She said the same thing about you. I thought it was a little weird how friendly you two were getting. We even got into a couple of arguments about it. But she said it made her feel closer to Frank. And it made her mad at him too.”

“Mad?”

“I think she’s been seeing him from your point of view. That maybe he wasn’t Prince Charming. That he had a nice wife and a good marriage and he screwed it up.”

“We both screwed it up, but it’s nice to know my husband’s mistress is on my side.”

I got up from the table, but Susan grabbed my hand. “Is Neal’s wife nice?”

“Yeah. She’s very nice.”

She smiled, but her eyes were filling with tears. “I guess that’s good then.”

 

 

I was barely in my car when I dialed Neal’s number. I told him to meet me in the parking lot of the church where Frank and I had married, just three years before Neal and Beth walked down that same aisle.

He pulled up twenty minutes later, stopping his car a couple of feet and almost perpendicular to mine in the empty lot.

“What’s this about?” he asked as he got out of his car. “You sounded so weird on the phone.”