by Kate Gable
"So, what happened?"
"I looked through his phone one day. I don't even remember why; it was like a message came in and he told me to give it to him or something like that, and that's when I saw her name and all their conversations. He was never really active on social media. He didn't list himself as married, nothing like that. So, I had no clue."
"What happened then?"
"I left him."
"You did?" I ask, surprised.
"Yeah, I did. Then two months later, I found out that I was pregnant, and I went to tell him that I was going to keep the baby. He started telling me all this stuff about how much he loved me and missed me and that he wanted to leave his wife to be with me. I was pregnant and emotional, and they didn't have any kids, so I believed him. I was so stupid."
"So, what happened when his wife showed up? She did show up here, right?"
"Yeah," she says after a long pause. "She did. He told me that they’d separated and that she’d moved out. We were spending a lot of time together, almost every evening. Sometimes he even left work early."
"So, he wasn't working late most nights?"
"No. He'd just come here right after work."
"Oh, okay."
"Then one night, about two weeks ago, she just showed up with her friend," she says. "We were in the pool out back and she started screaming at him. It was terrible. My neighbors heard everything. It was so embarrassing. I was so angry with him, and I was so angry with myself. I just couldn't believe that he would do something like that. In retrospect, he lied to me once, why wouldn't he lie to me again?"
"So, what happened that day, or after?"
"Her friend was there and she kind of pulled her away. They left eventually, but she was really belligerent. After that I told him to leave. I told him I didn't want to hear from him again. I didn't want anything to do with him."
"What about your child?"
"I told him that I wouldn't fight for visitation or anything like that, but he'd have to put in the effort and actually make arrangements. I was done taking care of everything in that relationship. I was so exhausted and tired of just being with him."
She puts her head down and buries her face in her knees and begins to sob. Big, sad sobs. The kind that makes it almost painful for you to hear. She chokes up a few times and it takes her a few minutes to gather her composure. Wiping her eyes, she looks up and apologizes.
"The thing about Robert is that he makes you feel like everything is perfect when you're together. Like finally your life makes sense and you’ve found a perfect partner, but then he hides all this stuff from you. He has all these secrets, and I never knew that he was keeping all these things from me. I guess he figured that I would never date him if I knew he was married, and I never would have, let alone have a child with him. I didn't want to break up a marriage, I hope that you believe that," she says, looking straight into my eyes.
"That was never my intention. And as soon as I found out that they were not in fact separated, I told him that we were over. I don't want to be with a liar. I want to be with someone I can trust, love, and care for. I don't want to share him with anyone."
She looks down at her ring finger and twists the tiny opal ring around a few times until the gemstone comes right back to the top.
"Do you think that's why he killed her?" Her words feel like they have knocked the wind out of me, and for a moment, I can't breathe in or out.
I lean forward and ask, "What do you mean?"
"She's gone. No one knows where she is."
"What did Robert tell you?"
"Nothing. I don't know anything, but his wife is gone and you're here asking questions about his affair and he had all these secrets."
"So, he never discussed or said anything about his wife maybe not being here anymore?"
"No. Absolutely not. I watch Oxygen and WE TV and I know how it works out for missing wives."
"How's that?"
"Not great. Most of the time it's the husband, right?"
"Can you show me any texts that you guys shared?" I ask. "Would you be okay with that?"
"Yes, you can see anything," she says nonchalantly. "We texted, but like I said, he wasn't really much on social media, so I could never tag him in any of my pictures."
"So, he didn't even have an account?"
"No. I guess I should have found that odd, but it was actually refreshing. I remembered how much I enjoyed the fact that not everything about his life was 100% public like it is with most people our age. I didn't have to worry about showing up on his Instagram account and have my ex-boyfriends look at that. I guess it's a sign that something's off, huh?"
Her baby starts to cry in another room, and she excuses herself, handing me her laptop and her phone. Her openness with her private accounts takes me by surprise because for half of this conversation, or maybe even 75% of it, I thought that she had something to do with Karen's disappearance.
I look through Margaret's texts and scroll up as far as I can get in the conversations with Robert. There are no naked pictures and no inappropriate talk. Of course, they did spend a lot of time together in real life, since apparently he wasn't working late at all and that makes me wonder. That explains why there weren't that many sexually explicit messages. I couldn't even find one. I hear her talking to her daughter and singing to her and I realize that I have a little bit more time.
I look through her computer and check the Zoom and click on her calendar. On the night of the eighteenth, when Karen came back from her business trip, Margaret had yoga from nine until eleven at night, two separate sessions. I click over to the next day and see that she was basically booked with clients for seven hours that day, starting from eight in the morning, without even a break for lunch.
Just because these meetings were in her calendar, doesn't mean that she was there. Margaret comes back and sees the calendar open on my lap.
"I'm sorry. I hope this is okay," I say. "I just wanted to see what you had going on the night of her disappearance."
"Yeah, of course.” Margaret shrugs, without missing a beat. "I was really busy. I had all these classes and then I also do personal training. It was a little bit easier because I don't have to do all of the sets with the client. I can print you off the schedule if you want to see it and I can give you info from different people who are in all these classes or you can access the details of all the people who participated in sessions right here."
"Yes. I'd like that," I say.
Sometimes people who are overly helpful have something to hide and I wonder whether in this case, this is exactly what Margaret is showing me. She logs into the Zoom sessions and shows me the recorded videos.
"Do you usually record them?"
"Yeah. Sometimes people can't make it and if they pay to be in my unlimited class program, I give them the link and they can watch the recording at their leisure."
She opens one file after another, showing me recordings of the classes that she taught, as well as the personal training sessions and all of the names of the clients who were there during the live classes. I ask her to send me all of these details to my work email address, so that the computer tech team can go through this in more detail, and she agrees. She uploads the files, and we both watch them go one at a time.
"What is going on with you and Robert now?" I ask, still holding her phone in my hand.
"We're done. When I heard about Karen's disappearance, I was just in shock, but we were done that afternoon when she showed up. I apologized to her and her friend profusely. I actually had no idea that they weren't separated or filing for divorce. I felt so bad for her. She was so upset, distraught, and I just knew that I’d caused all of that pain.”
I scroll through her messages again and then click on the name at the top. It's labeled as Robert, but I want to see the actual number. I write it down and compare it to the one I have in my notebook. It's a match. He was texting on his phone.
"He didn't have another phone?" I ask.
/> "Yeah," she says, blushing and looks away. Her baby starts to fuss and she excuses herself and reappears a few minutes later with a little bundle in her arms.
"She's nine months old now," she says.
"How was Robert as a father?"
"Absent," she snaps. "I mean, he would come by and play, but when I asked him to move in, he said he wasn't ready. That should have been a sign to me. There have been so many signs," she says, shaking her head.
"Like what?" I challenge her.
"Like the fact that when we had a fight after Karen left and broke up for good, I asked him about the phone. I asked him what phone he used to talk to me? I wanted to know whether or not it was premeditated enough to go out there and buy one of those untraceable phones at Walmart. Like, was he that devious? Was he trying to deceive me that much?"
"What did he say?"
"He told me that he was using his regular phone. He said for a while Karen never cared, never looked, but then when she started to get a bit suspicious, he just made a different app and put our text messages in there. I don't know how that works exactly, but basically it was like a secret folder on his phone where he kept just our conversations."
I don't stay long after that. I give her my card and ask her to be in touch if she thinks of anything else. I have to. I also tell her to expect a call from me in the next few days, following up and possibly asking her to come in for an official interview. She looks at her schedule and says that she'll be able to move her classes around because she'd love to come in and talk to me more. She walks me out past her rose bushes, still holding the baby on her hip.
When I get back in my car, I look through my notes trying to make sense of Margaret Layne. When I came here, I thought I would meet a cagey woman who knew about her boyfriend being married and didn't particularly care about it, going so far as getting pregnant. After meeting her, I'm pretty certain that assessment is completely untrue. She gave me the sense of being honest and transparent, by showing me her phone, her laptop, and agreeing to come for an official interview.
It's something that has been done plenty by guilty people, but there's something else. She seemed to have real sympathy for Karen. I don't know whether she suspects Robert for sure. I got a pretty strong sense that she did, but I also feel like she was telling me the truth, that they broke up the afternoon that Karen and Elin caught them together.
Still, what if it's all an act? What if she's just a really good actress and she in fact did have something to do with Karen's disappearance? Robert could have told her what he was doing or maybe she threatened to leave him unless he divorced his wife and he wasn't ready to do that, but he was ready to kill her. These thoughts and about 100 other possibilities consume me like a flood of the unknown. Uncertain as to how to proceed just yet, I look at the time and head back out for some drinks with Mark.
24
I meet Mark at a little bistro right off of Fairfax called Glass. It has specialty cocktails along with some really nice hors d'oeuvres and no dinner. It's basically a bar, but with really good, tiny plates of food. When I get there a little bit after five, Mark is already waiting for me. He's sitting at the far end of the bar in a suit, tie, and shiny shoes glistening in the warm glow of the chandelier above him. As soon as I walk in, he waves me over and gives me a hug that's a little bit too long.
When our bodies touch, I can hear the beating of his heart through his dress shirt, a quality that he always seemed to have.
"How are you? So good to see you," he says, without taking his eyes off of me. "You look beautiful."
"Thanks.” I nod quietly and force myself to look at the menu.
His hair is a little bit long in the front, but with that, giving him that smoldering expression. Beautiful. Bringing attention to his green eyes and his strong jaw.
"You're an attorney now?" I ask. "Really?"
“Yeah. Is that hard to believe?"
"Kind of. You weren't exactly particularly law abiding when we knew each other."
"Ha, what is that supposed to mean?"
"Drove too fast. Drank underage."
“Yeah, I guess so. Hey, listen," he says, "I don't even think you're allowed to be an attorney if you don't drink, but that's just between you and me."
I nod.
"How are you? What's new, Detective Carr?"
"Nothing. Just working cases. Mad hours. Same thing."
"Yeah. I know all about that. I felt law school was hard, but junior associate hours don’t leave much time for a social life."
"What about this?" I ask when the bartender brings us two elderberry martinis with mint.
"Hey, this is happy hour/dinner. I hope they have food here." He laughs and tosses his hair confidently. "Then I'm back to the office."
"You are?"
"Yeah. Remember that client that I was meeting when we met?"
I flash back to how sweaty and ugly I felt that night and to say a silent prayer for the fact that my boobs look exquisite in this blouse and my butt looks perfect in this skirt.
"Well, I signed him and it's going to be a lot of work from now on."
"Can you tell me anything about it?" I ask.
He shakes his head no.
"Come on, please?" I plead.
"Okay. It would be a maybe if you weren't in law enforcement, but you work for the LAPD."
"Okay. How about not his name or anything specific? Just, what did he do?"
"What did he do allegedly?" he corrects me, and I roll my eyes. "Yeah. Those kinds of details never matter to cops, do they?" Mark says, taking a sip of his martini and I linger a little bit too long on his mouth touching the glass.
"You're really not going to tell me anything?" I ask.
"No. If I did, you'd probably be able to figure it out, so I'm going to keep this to myself for now until we go public."
"Okay. I give up," throwing my hands in the air demonstratively.
"Tell me about your case. What were you doing today?"
I inhale and exhale slowly, not really wanting to talk about this.
"Let's not," I say after a pause. "I've had a long day. I'm sure you did, too. Actually, I’ve had about a decade of long days and let's just be two normal people talking about something else, something fun. Okay?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Your turn," I say, finishing my drink a little too fast and asking the bartender for another.
The alcohol hits my head and I start to relax and the tension that I've been carrying around in my shoulders seems to vanish. My arms start to move freely around me rather than attach stiffly to my torso.
He stares at me, looks deep into my eyes, and suddenly my smile goes away, and the mood seems to change.
"You know, I'm surprised you wanted to meet here," I say quietly, "since you know The Grove is right over there."
"Yeah, I know, but I'm not sure if we're ready to walk down memory lane quite yet," he says, without looking away from me.
Memories start to flood in. I can't keep them out because my inhibitions have been lowered by the liquid courage coursing through my veins.
"You don't want to talk about the past?" I finally say, bringing my eyes back from the bar top to meet his one more time. "You don't want to talk about the present. What is it that you do want to talk about?"
He leans over to me and I get a whiff of his aftershave. It's exactly the same brand that he used in college.
Suddenly, I find myself back there, holding hands, spinning around in the rain after finals in the quad. He's so close to me.
I feel like he wouldn't even have to move an inch to kiss me, but instead he moves a little bit closer to my ear and whispers in it, "The future."
25
I don't know exactly what he means by that, but our gazes remain locked for some time until the bartender asks if we want to refill our drinks. Once the trance is broken, I pull away. Uncertain as to what else to talk about, I bring up my case. This has always been kind of a default thing and somethi
ng I wanted to avoid but talking about the truth with Mark seems impossible right now. I don't mention names or locations, but I do mention the missing wife, which piques his interest.
“Hope you’re not interested in representing him already," I joke.
"No, not until you arrest him."
I laugh and he laughs along with me. For a moment, it feels like all of those years that separated us have disappeared or maybe were never even there in the first place. When the conversation reaches a natural ending point and it's time to start another, I pull away.
I have more work to do, as I know, does he. He walks me out and we stand next to each other right outside the front door, not exactly certain of how to say goodbye.
"I'd like to see you again," Mark says. I don't know if he means romantically or as a friend.
"Me, too.” I nod. "This was nice, catching up, seeing what you were up to."
"Yeah, sorry that you couldn't stalk me on social media."
"Hey, listen. I'm sure that you stalked me. It's only fair, right?"
He laughs and then leans over and kisses me. When his lips collide with mine, I stand here for a moment lingering, but then pull away.
"No.” I shake my head.
"I'm sorry, I thought that ..."
"No, I can't. I'm sort of seeing someone and, well, I don't know what that is, but I'm just ... I can't deal with this."
"Listen, I know that you work a lot of hours and so do I and that this seems complicated, but it was so nice being together again. Don't you feel like everyone you date, everyone you're with, you can never get back what you had back there in college and that maybe it was a mistake?"
"What?" I ask. "Breaking up?"
I look away from him. It would be a lie to say that that wasn't at least partly true. I've thought about him often, but it has also been years and I don't know if I'm the same person anymore. I don't know if I'm capable of being that happy. I don't tell him any of this. It would be too painful, and the conversation would take too much time that I don't have.
