Missing Persons (33 page)

I rushed him. I pounded his chest and slapped him across the face in a mad fury. At first he tried to protect himself, but after a minute he just stood there and let me hit him. Finally I wore myself out.

“You are a good-for-nothing son of a bitch,” I screamed.

“I know.” His voice was quiet, sad. “Vera finally told you.”

“Susan told me.”

He turned white. “Are you going to tell Beth?”

“I don’t know.” I spat out the words. “What is wrong with you? Why would you screw up your marriage like this?”

It was a question I’d asked Frank once, and he hadn’t answered. Now I saw Neal avoid it too. He just sighed. “It was a mistake.”

“Was Frank going to tell Beth?” I asked. “Was that what the fight was about?”

Neal shook his head. “He would never tell Beth. He was better at keeping secrets than anybody.”

“I’m finding that out.”

“Yeah, I guess you are. The fight was what I said it was about. I told Frank that he should go home to you. And he told me that I wasn’t in a position to lecture. We went a few rounds, but it didn’t mean anything. We were both just a little ashamed of ourselves, that’s all.”

“I’m glad at least you both had the decency for that.”

“Kate, I know this is a crappy question, but if Frank had broken up with Vera before you knew anything about it, would you have wanted to know?”

My head was spinning. For nearly three weeks I’d been discovering all the hidden half-truths of Frank’s life and it exhausted me. I felt like I’d never known him. If I could go back six months, to my unhappy marriage and blissful ignorance, would I?

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me down, sitting next to me on a parking lot bumper. “It happened. It was a mistake. And it’s over. I don’t want to hurt Beth and I don’t want to end my marriage. I’m asking you, if you can, to please forget you have this information.”

I couldn’t make that promise, but I also wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t. Maybe it was better for Beth and their children if she didn’t know. It wasn’t a decision I would make tonight. I changed the subject.

“Do you remember the day Frank and I got married?”

He smiled. “It was supposed to be this perfect September day and instead it was a huge downpour.”

“Yeah, I remember. But I wasn’t talking about that. When I was walking down the aisle, Frank leaned over and whispered something to you. I’ve always wondered what he said, but I never asked him. I was worried he was getting cold feet.”

“He wasn’t.” Neal took my hand. “He said, ‘I’m not good enough for her.’ And I said, ‘As long as she never finds that out, you’re fine.’ ”

He laughed at the memory. But I cried. After weeks of not being able to push the tears out from behind my eyes, I was now unable to stop. Neal and I sat in the parking lot for more than an hour with my head on his shoulder, both of us crying for what had been irrecoverably lost.

“Y
ou said you played basketball with him on the day he died.”

Neal and I had finally composed ourselves enough to move from the parking lot to his car, where we listened to a CD and talked about better days. Evening was turning into night, but I didn’t want to leave until I knew everything he could tell me.

“We played basketball. Over there.” He pointed to a corner of the parking lot that served as a basketball court when the spaces weren’t needed for the cars of churchgoers.

“What was his mood?”

He shrugged. “He was Frank. He was upbeat and happy.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Basketball.”

“Other than basketball.”

“Nothing. It wasn’t a therapy session, Kate. It was just two middleaged guys reliving their glory days and getting ready for a reunion of the team.”

“It sounds fun.”

“It was fun.” He laughed. “But man, were we out of shape. I thought I was going to have a heart attack and Frank drank a two-liter pitcher of iced tea and he was still dehydrated.”

“Do you know where he went after the game?”

“He went to his mom’s house. She’d called him about some problem he needed to rush over and fix. Knowing Lynette, she probably broke a nail.”

We laughed and started on a roll of Lynette stories, each crazier than the last. It felt good to laugh and not worry, at least for a while, about any of the darker aspects of the whole experience. Sitting with him now, I realized it was crazy to think he had ever hurt Frank. He had loved him nearly as much as I did.

After a while, I got out of Neal’s passenger seat. Rather than just saying good-bye and driving off, he walked me the three feet to my car. We hugged, and for a long time we wouldn’t let each other go. But I had one more question.

“I want the truth, Neal. Was Frank really coming home?”

He paused. “I don’t know,” he said, almost in a whisper. “He talked about it. He didn’t know if you would take him back. He talked about that a lot. But he also talked about Vera. I think he loved you both.”

“So when you said he thought his engagement to Vera was a mistake . . .”

“He said it was. He said they were moving too fast.”

“Had he told her that?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you don’t know if he was ending it or just slowing things down?”

“To tell you the truth, Kate, I’d say on the day he died, it could have gone either way.”

I kissed Neal on the cheek and got into my car. I was supposed to go back to Ellen’s but I just wanted to go home. If there was some crazed killer waiting for me, so be it. I wanted to sleep in my own bed.

U
nfortunately the person waiting for me at my house wasn’t a crazed killer. I wasn’t that lucky.

“Hi, Lynette,” I said as I got out of my car.

She and Alex were standing on my front step.

“We called you and you didn’t answer, so we came over,” Lynette said. Then she looked me over. “Is everything all right? You look like you’ve been dragged through an alley.”

Instinctively, I wiped my face. The streaks from crying were, I was sure, still visible but there was nothing that could be done about that at the moment.

“Come inside,” I said. Then I held my breath, prayed that there were no surprises waiting for me, and opened the door.

“Look at all the photos,” Lynette said.

“Where?”

Then I realized she was walking over to the pile of photos that Andres had made.

“I’ve been organizing them,” I said. “I’ll get you something to drink. Sit down.”

I walked through the rest of the rooms to make sure they were empty, which they were, then I went into the bathroom and washed my face. I put on a little concealer and some lipstick to make myself look less horrible but gave up when it only seemed to make me even more hollow and pale.

I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow. I took a breath and turned.

“Alex! You really shouldn’t sneak up behind me.”

“Sorry, kiddo. I just wanted to let you know that the insurance check is being released. You should have it in a week or so.”

“I thought it was being held up pending cause of death. Did the coroner change it from undetermined to something else?” That something else could, I knew, only be accident, suicide, or homicide. Since there was a large amount of digitalis found in Frank’s system he could not have died of natural causes.

“I don’t think so. I was told that your Detective Podeski notified the company that you were not a suspect in your husband’s death, so they released the check.”

“I feel a little weird about taking it, though.”

He walked toward me and put his hands on my shoulders. “You are my daughter, Kate. I’m going to take care of you. It’s what Frank would have wanted. It’s what I want.”

And, for the third time that day, I burst into tears.

“What’s going on in here? What have you done to that girl?” Lynette had entered the kitchen.

“Nothing, Lynette,” I said. “I’m just doing this a lot.”

“Of course you are, dear. And I haven’t helped.” She glanced toward her husband. “Alex and I came here to sit down with you and find out why you think that woman isn’t responsible for Frank’s death. And then we’ll figure out where we go from there.” She pushed me toward the living room. “Now go sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea. Just tell me where you keep it.”

I walked over to the cabinet and opened it, showing her the dozen or so varieties I had.

“Honestly, Kate, why do you need all these teas? All you need is one good brand of coffee and one good brand of tea. Why do you overcomplicate things?”

“Most of them are Frank’s.”

She blushed. For the first time I had actually won an argument. An argument so small that no one but me would have noticed. But I did notice and it was all that mattered.

“Here,” I said, pulling down a bright blue tin. “I had this yesterday. It was good.”

“I don’t want that. It’s one of those teas that’s full of a lot of silly flowers,” Lynette said.

“It’s not.” I turned the tin around until I saw the list of ingredients. It was a blend of different herbs and leaves—among them comfrey. The tin showed that it had been produced and packaged by a small specialty tea shop just blocks from the house. I searched the cabinet next to the sink. I’d known it was missing since the day Podeski and I had gone through the house. The two-liter pitcher. On that last day when he’d stopped by, Frank must have used it to make himself iced tea.

 

 

I reached the store just as it was closing.

“Did you sell this?” I said to the woman who was trying to close up.

She took one look and turned white. It was all the proof I needed.

“We used to. We don’t anymore. Did you drink that? Please tell me you didn’t.”

“It’s not comfrey in there, is it?”

She buried her face in her hands. “No. It’s a very dangerous plant. A foxglove. But you must know that if you’re asking. It can cause illness and some heart issues if taken internally.”

“I know.”

“There was an inexperienced person that worked with me. It was a really popular tea in our shop for a while. And then about six months ago, we were running out of comfrey and she picked some leaves from a plant that grew in her mother’s backyard. She thought it was the same. She even showed me the leaves. Without the flowers to compare, they look really similar.”

“So without knowing what it was, you put it in a tin and sold it as comfrey just to make a few bucks? You couldn’t have just been sold out and waited for a source you could trust?”

She looked defeated and even trembled a little. “We sold maybe five tins of that batch before we realized the problem. We got all but one back. We sent out e-mails to everyone on our mailing list. I guess that’s the one we missed.”

“I guess.”

“It’s only really dangerous, I mean really dangerous, if you drink a ton of it. We say on the tin that you should only have one or two cups a day. Some of the herbs have great healing properties if used in moderation but they can cause some issues if you use a lot at one time.” Now she was talking fast and getting defensive. “We’re very clear about that on the label.”

I opened the tin and revealed the three tea bags that were left of the original thirty. “Do you know what happens if a thirty-seven-year-old man drinks a two-liter pitcher of iced tea made with this? I’ll tell you what happens. He dies.”

“Oh, my God” was all she got out.

I walked a few steps away from her to a bench by a waterfall that took up one wall of the small store. I grabbed my cell phone, dialed, and waited for the answer.

“Detective Podeski, I know how Frank died.”

 

 

When he arrived he was alone. He walked into the store and took one look at the terror-stricken shop owner who was watching me from behind the counter.

“We’re closed,” she said.

“That’s an understatement.” He walked over to me and sat beside me on the bench. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”

I leaned into his brown polyester suit jacket, and he put his arm around me.

“I thought it was his fault, somehow,” I said. “If Vera had killed him, if he had died of a heart attack because he wasn’t taking care of himself. Or he’d taken some drug or some pill he shouldn’t have. I thought he had done it to himself.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Podeski said quietly. “Neither of you did.”

I’d called Alex and Lynette after I’d phoned Podeski. I’d scared the hell out of both of them by running out of the house with the tea, so I explained what I’d found out. They walked into the shop as I sat and stared into space.

Alex talked of lawsuits and Lynette screamed. Podeski called to get warrants and told the woman a criminal investigation would now take place. I just left. I had asked myself once if knowing how Frank had died would really make a difference. And now I knew. It did. Whatever adrenaline had kept me going for the last three weeks was gone. I was too exhausted even to cry.

T
he next morning came too soon. I dragged myself from bed, made a pathetic attempt to ready myself for the day, and met Andres and Victor outside my house. It was a dreary, gray day and we were promised thunderstorms. At least Mother Nature knew how I was feeling.

And I knew Andres did too. I’d called him the night before to explain what I’d found out and to tell him to pick me up at my house rather than my sister’s. I’d also told him I wouldn’t be able to get through the last day of shooting if we talked about it. Andres said there wouldn’t be a word about it, and I knew that if he said it, it would be true. There were, as Gray had said, some people in the world who are who they say they are, and Andres was one of them.