by Curry, Edna
“I already told the deputy. Didn’t he pass it on to you?”
“Tom made a report, yes, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
She frowned, then shrugged. “Well, there’s not a lot more I can say. I got up and took a shower and dressed, then came out here. My bedroom and bath are down there,” she said pointing toward the hall leading off the living room.
Chance nodded. “Go on.”
“I walked through here, heading for the kitchen to make coffee like I do every morning. Then I noticed the throw pillows on the sofa here were crooked. And I smelled a strong odor of musk, aftershave, I think. I got suspicious, but went on to the kitchen. That’s when I saw my coffeepot and toaster oven were unplugged and not in their usual place. Like someone had moved them to get into my cupboards.”
Chance frowned. “Did the cupboards look disturbed?”
“I…I’m not sure. I don’t always put things in any certain order.”
“Did you check for anything missing? Do you keep valuables here that are missing?”
“No, nothing seems to be missing. Well, except, I’m not sure if all of John’s clothes are still here.”
“Could some of them have been taken that night?”
“I…I just don’t know.” June put her head in her hands and sobbed for a few minutes.
Chance squirmed, looking down at his notes to give her privacy.
She grabbed tissues from a box on a side table and blew her nose. “I’m sorry. I seem to be weepy since John went missing. I can’t imagine why I haven’t heard from him.”
“Do you think he left on purpose?”
“I…I don’t know,” she repeated. “It’s all so confusing. I mean, if something had happened to him, why wouldn’t someone have found him? Or his car? He couldn’t just disappear into thin air!”
Chance sighed. Lots of people did disappear, if they wanted to. Had John? “May I see his room?”
“Sure. It’s this way.” She moved down the hall and opened the door onto a large carpeted bedroom. It held a king-sized bed, a large leather Lazy Boy chair and a dressing table and mirror. “This is our bedroom. There’s a walk-in closet we shared. I used the en suite bathroom through that door and John used the one across the hall. He didn’t like to share and I wasn’t crazy about the mess he made with his razor.” She bit her lip.
“Are toiletries missing? Razor, shaving lotion?”
She lifted a shoulder. “John had several electric razors. And he usually bought his own supplies, so I didn’t keep track of how many bars of soap or bottles of stuff he had.”
“So you can’t tell if any are missing?”
“No, I guess not.” She chewed her lip again.
“Where are his clothes?”
“In our walk-in closet.” She turned to go back into the master bedroom and opened the door on a large walk-in closet.
“I…I can’t be sure if he took some clothes or not,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with the tissues again.
Chance could see why. The overstuffed closet would make it impossible to tell. It held racks of clothes and shelves full of shoes and see-through boxes of hats, sweaters, pajamas and underclothes. One side held a long row of suits and shirts.
“The guest bedroom is next door. He slept there for the last month he was here.”
They stepped inside it. Chance could see nothing unusual. A double bed, neatly made, a matching dresser with a mirror, a chest of drawers and an upholstered chair with a reading lamp. Matching navy blue curtains and bedspread.
“Did he have an office or workshop at home?” he asked, trying not to reveal that Cassie had told him John did have one.
“Yes, it’s downstairs. We have to go outside to get to it,” she said, going to the kitchen, where she grabbed a keyring from a drawer. They went out the back door and down the stairs to John’s workshop.
She unlocked the door and snapped on a light. “He liked woodworking,” she said, pointing to the birdhouses and worktable with various power saws and a rack of tools on a pegboard on the wall above it.
“He has guns here?” Chance pointed at the cabinets along the wall.
“Yes. They’re mostly antiques. He didn’t like hunting, just collecting.”
“Do you have the keys so we can make sure none are missing?”
She nodded and pulled out her key ring, tried a couple keys. The third one opened the cabinet. All the slots held a gun. She opened the other cabinets. Again they couldn’t see any empty spaces. “It looks like they’re all here,” she said. “But I’m not really sure how many he had.”
“So he could have had others?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Would your cleaning lady know?”
“No. John never let her clean this area. He said he’d take care of his own man cave. That’s what he liked to call it, his man cave.”
“I see.”
“His desk and office are back here.” She showed Chance the desk with computer, printer and fax machine. A couple of pages lay in the fax output tray.
“Looks like he got a fax or two,” Chance said.
“Yeah,” she said, but didn’t bother to look at the pages.
He picked them up. One was a memo from the new bank, detailing their privacy policy for accounts. Another was a list of specials at a local restaurant. He turned on the computer and checked the email. Nothing had been written since John disappeared. But his email had been downloaded two nights before.
“That’s weird,” June said. “Who could have downloaded his email? Oh, my God. Do you suppose the burglar was in this room, too?”
Chance nodded. “Could be. You said John hasn’t used any of your joint bank accounts since he disappeared?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been keeping an eye on them online with my laptop. And I’ve called the bank to be sure. Only the checks I’ve written have come through. Same with our credit cards. There have been only the charges I’ve made.”
Chance shut down the computer. “And you said he didn’t make any big withdrawals in the month before?”
“No. No unusual expenses or withdrawals. No airline tickets or anything like that.” She glared at him. “I know you think he might have just run off on purpose. But I know my husband. John loved me. He wouldn’t do that to me. We always talked out our problems. We didn’t run away from them.”
“I see,” Chance murmured. He hadn’t meant to be that obvious. “We do have to consider all possibilities. It seems rather odd that this happened right after he lost his job.”
“I know. John was very upset about that. He didn’t feel he was treated fairly at all.”
“Oh?”
“No,” she said defiantly. “He was supposed to be a full partner with the others. Then this other bank takes over and the others still have a job, but he doesn’t.”
“Wasn’t he compensated by the new owners?”
“Supposedly they didn’t have enough equity for that,” she said bitterly. “He’d always thought they were doing fine, then all of a sudden, they are so much in debt they have to sell. Something about bad loans and not listing them all correctly in the bookwork. The state inspectors forced them to sell.”
“Did John and the other partners own the building jointly?”
“No. John and I owned the building and the bank leased it from us. So, now our building sits empty and I don’t have that income, either. I can’t even sell it without John’s signature.”
“I see. I don’t understand all the banking rules,” Chance murmured.
“Neither do I. I tried to stay out of his business. But with John missing, I can’t help but wonder…” she said as she locked the basement workroom door. He followed her up the outside steps into the kitchen.
He frowned. “Wonder what?”
“Whether the bank business had something to do with his disappearing.”
“Oh. Did John like his job?”
“I guess so. Though he said it was upsetting to
have to foreclose on people. He said he hated doing that.”
“How about the other employees? Did John get along with them?”
She shrugged. “Mostly. We used to pal around with Roy and Irene Lonn before they started having problems. Then they stopped inviting people over and split up. I especially liked Irene, still see her now and then.”
“And the other employees?”
June shrugged. “I didn’t know some of them very well. And some of them are sort of weird, so we avoided those.”
Chance lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean, weird?”
She blushed. “Well, some were into sex parties, you know, odd stuff. Where they drank a lot and switched partners and stuff. We went once and I hated it, so we left after dinner when the hard drinking and getting naked stuff started. I saw one woman being a sex sandwich between two men! Right in front of everyone.” She shuddered and screwed her face into a disgusted grimace.
“Oh? Where was this party?”
“At Lou and Melanie Bale’s house, out in the country. It’s a really fancy place; supposedly Melanie inherited a bundle from her grandparents or somebody a few years ago. They like to think they’re really cool, but I was raised in a church-going family. I don’t go for the free sex stuff.”
“Did John go to these parties?”
June flushed even redder, if that was possible, and looked away. “I…I’m not sure. I think he’s gone to them a few times. He’s less conservative than I am.”
“You’re not sure if he’s gone to them?”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “No. I told him he could do as he pleased, but to leave me out of that kind of stuff. And not to come to my bed if he’d been with other women. So, he’d been sleeping in the spare room for the month or so before he left. That was his choice.”
“I see. So, you took his sleeping separately as his admission he’d been with other women?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe. Anyone else John was close to? Who he might have told where he was going?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“No special buddies that he went to a ball game or bar with?”
“No.”
“How about his family?”
“His folks retired to Florida quite a while ago. I’ve called them. They haven’t heard from him either, and promised to call me if they did.”
“Can you give me their names and number?”
“Sure.” She pulled open a drawer and rummaged in it for a small address book, then gave him the information.
Chance copied it in his notebook, thanked her and said goodbye, promising to keep her apprised of anything new.
As he drove on, he thought about what he’d learned. She said John hated foreclosing on people. The grapevine gossip said he was a mean lender and would foreclose on his own mother. Obviously, June didn’t see him that way. What was the truth?
And then there was the sex orgy stuff. Did that have anything to do with John’s disappearance? Had he decided June was too prim for him and left for greener pastures?
Chapter 4
He put through a call to John’s folks, but learned nothing more than June had already told him. They took his phone number and promised to call if they heard from John.
Next, he went to the new bank to see Lou Bales.
Lou had a nice corner office enclosed in glass windows. He invited Chance to sit and closed the door, then eased his bulky body into his own cushy office chair. The wooden chair groaned as he settled into it and gazed at Chance. Bales’ red nose covered with numerous purple spidery veins told of an alcohol problem. Chance wondered how he managed to avoid getting in trouble with the other partners about that. Or maybe they all shared that problem?
“So, Detective, what can I do for you today?”
“I’m still investigating John Wattmore’s disappearance.” He eyed the other man. “Have you heard anything from him?”
Lou ran a pudgy hand over his almost bald head, smoothing the short ring of dark hair encircling his shiny scalp. A large diamond ring sparkled on his pinky finger under the overhead lights. “No, I haven’t heard a thing and don’t expect to. He wasn’t a bit happy with the way things turned out here. Can’t say I blame him, but I couldn’t do a thing about it.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged. “It was all out of my hands. The state regulators pretty much called the shots, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. Have you checked his accounts here? Has John withdrawn any money since he left?”
Lou frowned. “Why do you ask?”
Chance sighed. “We’re trying to figure out where he is.”
“How would his bank information help?”
“If he’s using his accounts, we could see where he’d spent or withdrawn money.”
“I see. Well, no, he hasn’t withdrawn any money. I told you back when he first disappeared that I’d let you know if he did.”
“I remember. Just thought I’d check for an update. How can you be sure without looking?”
“Because I just looked this morning for June. She calls every couple of days.”
“So, what’s your opinion of where John is?”
Lou shrugged and gave him a sly look. “I think he skipped town with a chunk of cash to start over somewhere without his prim and proper wife holding him back. If you know what I mean.”
“Chunk of cash?”
“Yeah. The reason the regulators suddenly decided we were so broke we had to sell out.”
“Did they trace any missing money?”
“No. But John was a pretty smart guy. I think he found some way of covering it up. Maybe with one of those bad loans, or something. Hell, I don’t know.”
“I see.” That scenario was indeed entirely possible. John wouldn’t be the first man to skip out on his marriage with hidden cash and leave his wife holding a bag full of debts. And if that was the case, Chance knew he was wasting his time investigating. When a smart person wanted to go missing, there were plenty of big cities to get lost in. Or mountain cabins or wide open spaces, for that matter, using just cash, or a false name to stay hidden. But for now, he had no choice to keep looking.
***
Chance drove out to the Bales’ country place to see what Lou’s wife had to say. The local grapevine said they were well-to-do and threw lots of fancy catered dinner parties where only certain people were invited. The kind of people who were hush-hush about what went on there. Maybe June’s assessment of free sex was true.
Melanie Bales answered the door in a very skimpy pair of shorts and a revealing halter top. She was tall and very thin. Her bleached blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders. “Yes?”
“Detective Chance Martin, from the county sheriff’s office, Ma’am. May I ask you a few questions?”
“I suppose.” She shrugged and led the way through the house and out to the patio in back. “I was sunbathing. Want a drink?”
“No, thanks.” He took the opposite lawn chair she indicated and placed his notebook on the glass topped table in front of him.
She settled across from him and asked, “What’s this about?”
“John Wattmore’s disappearance.”
“Oh, him.” She laughed and sipped her drink. “Hasn’t June given up on him yet?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, really, officer. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? She’s such a prude. She came to one of our dinner parties and got all uptight when the fun started. She made John leave with her, though anyone could see he didn’t want to. Now he lost his job and has nothing to hold him here. He probably took off to go somewhere he could have a little fun, you know?”
“Why wouldn’t he tell June he was leaving, then? Ask for a divorce? Lots of people get divorces nowadays. It’s no big deal.”
“Cause she’d probably take what he had in a divorce settlement, of course.”
“But if he just took off, didn’t he leave it all behind anyway?”
“I see. Who comes to these parties?”
“If you come to our next one, you’ll find out,” she said coyly.
“Maybe you’d rather come downtown to answer these questions?”
“Huh,” she said, sitting back and making a face. “Why do you want to know? What does it have to do with John’s disappearance?”
“Just wondering who he might have gotten to know really well here. Did the other bank partners come?”
She lifted a shoulder and sipped her drink. “Some did, some didn’t. It wasn’t just business, you know. It was more a private thing, for relaxation, getting to know people better.”
“Who else came? Your relatives?”
She made a face. “Most of them are too old-fashioned. They’d be shocked. Well, my sister came once, but then she lectured me about religion afterward, so I never invited her again. Just some people around the area we’ve met. Lou’s ex even comes sometimes. John really seemed to like her. She’s pretty stacked, if you know what I mean.”
He could guess what she meant. “What’s her name? And where does she live?”
“Sylvia Bales. As far as I know, she lives in Minneapolis.” She wrinkled her nose. “She insists on still using Lou’s last name.”
“And the names of the others?”
“I don’t want to tell you that. They wouldn’t like it and they didn’t even know John before meeting him a time or two at our house, so they couldn’t know anything about his disappearance.”
“All right.” He glanced around the neatly groomed lawn and flowerbeds. “Nice house you have here. Do you take care of all these flowers?”
Her laughter tinkled. She swirled the ice around in her glass, then took another swallow. “We have an expert gardener, Carl Tarren, who does all that. He lives in that little house over there. I don’t have a green thumb. Besides, all that dirt would ruin my manicure.” She held up her hand to show off her long red fingernails.
“Ah. You like to cook though? For those dinner parties you mentioned?”
