by Lisa Preston
Daphne wiped her eyes. Railing about leads not discovered hadn’t gotten her dad anywhere.
“I wish my father had come to see you years ago.”
He twisted his mouth. “I talked to your father a lot. I remember your folks, remember dealing with them. See, when a case starts to go cold, we’ll search the victim’s bedroom. That’s intrusive to the family. Lots of people get offended. They’ll say we should be out catching the killer instead of sifting through the victim’s personal things. They ask what we’re looking for, but we can’t say because we don’t know. We’re looking for anything. We want a name, a number, an address, anything, any clue when a case starts running dry. Anyway, I remember when we did that search.” He smiled and nodded. “Spent a couple hours poking around and drinking your mother’s coffee. She baked us cookies.”
“You searched …” Daphne felt her face contort as she pictured her mother handling the situation twenty years ago. The best of intentions, complete misunderstanding. Precleaning? “You searched my bedroom.”
One hand covered her mouth and Daphne turned away and refused, refused to cry as she pictured her mother stacking all of Suzanne’s papers and notebooks, all the scraps with phone numbers or addresses. The fliers for raves. Everything paper in Suzanne’s world. The poems and essays. I’ve tidied your room, even the closet, her mom had said when Daphne came home from school one day. And their closet, the closet she shared with a just-murdered sister, soon had a sealed cardboard box.
Oh, Mom. What did you do?
CHAPTER 15
Daphne felt herself wither under Arnold Seton’s careful surveillance of her reaction.
He nodded. “That’s right. Shared bedroom. But you weren’t there that day. And your father was at work, but he knew we were going to be there. That search is pretty standard when a case isn’t developing, see. Your folks got it, is what I’m saying. They didn’t make the investigation—the search—harder, like some victims’ families do. They let us search the girls’—your and your sister’s—bedroom, flip the mattresses, everything.”
She’d been eleven and not known. Her mother had been a housewife and not understood. Daphne pictured her mother in an apron, sanitizing the girls’ room in advance of the police search of her daughters’ bedroom, her good little girl and her murdered wild child. Frances Mayfield had boxed up Suzanne’s naughty poetry and other papers.
“My mom didn’t get it, I mean, Suzanne, see …” Daphne faltered as she concentrated on winning her battle to not cry in front of the detective.
Arnold Seton smiled. “Your folks, they’re good people. I talked to your father more than your mother. He was the one wanting constant updates, asking about leads. He was real involved, kept checking in with me. He’d call me every six months or so, right up until I retired back in, let’s see, I just started my eleventh year. Suspended cases go to the cold case guys when you retire.”
“He … um, my father …”
The detective nodded. “Real involved.”
“You retired ten years ago.” Storm clouds threatened to rupture in her mind.
“I can’t believe I’ve been retired that long. But yeah, ten years and a week now.” He grinned and pushed his thick gray hair back, assuming a more somber expression. “I can’t help you more. The cold case investigators are who you and your folks should talk to about your sister’s case.”
Tears formed as Daphne studied the soil. She stymied a wail. So. So, he didn’t know about her father’s suicide, didn’t know how much hope her dad had lost when Detective Seton told him he was retiring and the suspended case would go join other dead cases. She opened her mouth, closed it. Did the man need to know another sad thing, another piece of loss stemming from his first unsolved homicide?
“What?” he asked.
No. Here was a gift she could give him. Daphne shook her head. “Thanks for talking to me.”
He nodded. But after she sat in her truck’s driver’s seat and he backed up a few steps, he called out, “Your sister had a friend. I don’t remember her name right off the top of my head, but she’s the one who first noticed your sister was missing. Your sister wasn’t reported missing for not showing up in class—”
“It was Christmas vacation,” Daphne said. “The semester had just ended. Suzanne wasn’t at the college, she was home.”
“But not home that night, right?” he said, squinting as he recalled the details. “This friend had called your folks, wanting to talk to Suzanne, was the one who first reported your sister missing. We always go back to the beginning, to the person who reports.”
“Lindsay!” The name was out of Daphne’s mouth before the thought coalesced. Lindsay … Lindsay Something. Daphne hadn’t thought of Suzanne’s best friend by name in years and years.
“Did you or your parents lose contact or did you stay in touch with her?”
“No. No, we …” Daphne’s voice trailed. “We lost contact.”
An hour crept by in traffic as Daphne drove back from Arnold Seton’s house. Almost two hours ached away while she stood in line at the Department of Licensing to get her driver’s license replaced. Time slipped through her fingers like sand.
Downtown, she searched for a parking space near a building of smoked glass planked in brown stucco. She pushed through glass doors emblazoned with The Seattle Times. A woman at the front counter looked up and Daphne asked for Thea.
When the staffer said she’d check to see if Ms. Roosevelt was available, Daphne considered how Thea had befriended her at college. Other girls at the dorm had tried with too direct an approach, been pseudo-engaging. Daphne was the girl whose sister had attended the university and been killed during Christmas break.
Some of the old newspaper articles she’d read in grade school and high school detailed how the university offered grief counselors and held a memorial for Suzanne. Her English class had a poetry reading in her name. Another class planted a tree on campus with a plaque announcing Suzanne Mayfield would be remembered in their hearts forever. Daphne shrank from the curious who were drawn to the notoriety of murder, and she hated her minicelebrity status born of having a dead sister.
“Ms. Mayfield, Ms. Roosevelt will be out in a few minutes.”
Nodding, Daphne snapped back from the reverie. There was plenty to worry about without dragging the past around with her. One unsettled and fresh issue niggling her thoughts was Vic’s proposal and her own reaction.
Other moments deserved reflection, and Daphne had pushed them away. Back when Daphne got her union card and her first set of construction tools had early wear, she recalled Thea showing off her press credentials, saying she’d earned her wings. Thea had cut herself off from further boasting, as though it were unseemly or too professional, in light of the blue collar direction Daphne had taken. The moment had crystallized in time, a recollection Daphne could reexamine whenever she chose.
She’d always chosen not to study the moment.
Thea flung herself into the lobby, a wad of papers in one hand.
“Hey, you!” Her one-armed hug came without hesitation, and her voice was high enough to make the front counter woman gawk. “I’m doing a million things at once. What’s up?”
“Hey,” Daphne said. “I … wanted to see you.”
“Let’s go back,” Thea said, nodding them through a doorway.
A few cubicle walls divided the vast open office beyond. Desks crammed with computers and files covered the floor. The walls were covered in newspapers, sections flopped over wall after wall. In every cranny, shredders, waste bins, and computer towers occupied floor space. A sign suspended over one set of tables read News Desk.
Breezing through the first open office, they passed a glassed-in conference room. The polished table within was huge, almost square, and held the majority of the sizable room. Thea strode on, past a corridor sign for the office’s childcare area, past painted walls, vending machines, and people talking into headsets.
“I saw that detective,”
Daphne said in a low voice when Thea swooped around two corners and stopped at another desk piled with papers and folders.
“So, this is about Suzanne,” Thea said.
“Everything’s about Suzanne.” Daphne shook her head, bringing a hand to her mouth. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Thea took a breath. “Even before, I mean … before she went away to college, you must have had questions about her.”
“When she went away to college, I realized how much I missed her,” Daphne snapped then winced. “I just mean, I never got answers. I was a kid and I didn’t know who or what to ask. So I never did.”
“And now you’re asking. What are you actually asking?”
“Everything. I want an explanation. Explanations.”
Thea pursed her lips. “And you don’t want to let things go …”
Daphne spread her hands. “That’s what Vic says. You sound just like him.”
“I definitely don’t sound like Vic.”
“Last night, he was all after me to stop—what did he say? Tilting at windmills. And he proposed—”
“He can’t stop you from checking on anything,” Thea said, her voice severe. “How does he propose to do that anyway?”
Daphne opened her mouth, then shut down her automatic response, thinking hard. Looking down, she mumbled about the threatening phone message they’d discovered after Thea left the house the day before.
Thea raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Weird. But maybe it was a wrong number.”
“Right.” Daphne told her about the police officer taking Daphne to the other side of the Peace Park, knocking on doors, discovering almost nothing.
“Look, Daphne—and I’m not trying to be mean here—picture your mother being older and forgetting things, not making sense, not understanding things. Fading out like you say Vic’s dad does. And you have to pack up her stuff and move her. And she tells people you’re not her daughter and you’re kidnapping her. Can’t you picture that happening?”
“Minerva Watts sold her car. And the car I followed isn’t her car, isn’t the one that’s usually there.” Daphne looked at Thea with hope, wishing the reporter’s instincts would kick in and crucial questions would follow.
Thea shook her head. “I can’t believe they actually did a neighborhood canvass for you.”
“A what?”
“I can’t believe they actually knocked on the neighbors’ doors and asked questions just because some crazy lady spouted off nonsense.”
“She’s not crazy just because she’s old. And dementia isn’t the same thing anyway. It’s not even the same thing as Alzheimer’s.” Daphne folded her arms across her chest.
Thea gave a withering roll of the eyes. “Hello? Crazy lady wasn’t in reference to the old lady. You. You are the crazy lady.”
“Ah. Helpful. Thanks.” Daphne didn’t try to hide her annoyance as she struggled to recall why she’d come to see Thea. The retired detective’s parting words came back. Go back to the beginning. “What do you know about the cold case investigators at the Seattle Police Department?”
“I know,” Thea’s voice softened, “that they have a few cases they’re working on out of a bunch they’re not. On most cold cases, they have nothing to go on, but at some point every one of those cases was reviewed by their unit, step-by-step. And all their cases are reviewed at regular intervals.”
There was more, Daphne could tell. “Right. M’kay, and … ?”
“And I know that your sister’s case is not in their working pile. I checked. I’m sorry that’s the way it is, but they have nothing.”
Daphne felt her chin crumple and she rolled her lips in to keep herself together, until she managed to say, “That retired detective—”
“Who does not know how you found him?”
“N-n-no, not quite.”
“Oh, Christ, Daphne. You are not cut out for this.”
Daphne set her jaw. “No, I’m not. I never was. And that’s fine with me.”
Thea’s gaze drifted down to her desk, flitting to files, Post-its, the computer screen with its open documents.
“Thee, find a woman named Lindsay for me. I don’t know her last name but she went to school with Suzanne.”
“No.”
“What?”
“You heard me. No. As in, no, Daphne. Daph.” Thea’s last word blasted with sarcasm.
Feeling a flush rise, Daphne wondered what Thea based her decision on. Because Thea already talked to the cold case investigators? Because Daphne made Thea’s name one syllable? “Thea,” she said. “Seriously. Her name was Lindsay and she’s the one who first reported Suzanne missing.”
Thea stuck her fingers in her ears. “No. I won’t do it.”
“Come on. You could do it in a flash. It’s just a little thing that retired cop mentioned. I want to ask this Lindsay … I just want to talk to her.”
Thea cocked her head back, reeking offense. “Don’t you think I have better things to do?”
“Look, Thea, what’s the best-case scenario here?” Daphne asked, working it out one more time for herself: to have made the full effort or not. “And the worst?”
“Christ, Daphne. Fuck off, okay? Stop being self-important and melodramatic. Go ask for a deferred prosecution on your reckless charge and quit interfering and creating havoc. There’s nothing here. Not with your sister’s old case, not with the old lady thing. There’s nothing—”
“Wait a minute. Yesterday, you were reading old articles on Suzanne’s case. You had them in your car. What were you looking for?”
“Anything. But there isn’t anything there. We have the old police reports. I looked at everything. I read all the old stories. This is a cul-de-sac. There’s nothing.”
“When I asked you to find a way to contact Minerva Watts, you did it in minutes. You’re great at finding people.”
“That was about your little old lady thing, not your sister from twenty years ago.”
“No one on the planet has something better to do than to help a little old lady. She told me she was being robbed and kidnapped and—”
“And she wasn’t.”
CHAPTER 16
Huddled in her truck in the Weather Service parking lot, Daphne looked at Lake Washington through tears, her fingers hooked on the steering wheel. She sagged, dropping her face into the cradle of her elbows, and shook in silence. It was an amateur’s bawling, a noncrier’s cry. But her body convulsed on and on until the sobs wracking her became wet and noisy. She wanted to turn them off, turn off the world and its confusion.
Metal groaned and cool air rushed into the truck. A man had opened her door, put his hands on her body. She gasped in fleeting terror.
“Hey. Hey?” Vic stroked her hair. “What is it? Did you see that detective? Did he—”
He stopped as she waved him off. His quick compassion and peppered questions agitated her, but she recovered enough to say, “I had a fight with Thea.”
He massaged her biceps. “Well, I’m assuming you won. Is she in the hospital? Is she alive?”
“Vic …”
His smile evaporated. “Call her. Apologize. Now, not later. Patch it up. You two have been friends for a long time. Keep it that way.”
Daphne banged her forehead on the steering wheel, then looked up at him with a grim smile that fell as soon as she saw his considered expression.
His face torqued as he twisted his lips to one side and squinted. “It’s not the only thing bothering you. I know this weekend marks a couple of lousy anniversaries. I know you’re upset about that little old lady. And if I were in your shoes, I might have a good cry myself.” He checked his watch. “We have time before I go get the kids. Let’s get a bite to eat somewhere.”
“But we have to get your car out of impound, figure out how much work it needs, where to take it. And I still have to get my wallet thing sorted out. I went to DMV and got a new license earlier. I canceled my credit cards, but that will make it harder to deal with th
e cell phone thing. I have to shut off the old one, get a new one. If we need to rent a car—”
“Can we handle one thing at a time, please?” he asked.
“Sure. Sure.” Daphne sniffed. “I’m trying to decide where to start.”
“Start with what’s bothering you the most. What is it? Your family? Us? This fight you had with Thea? Do you want to tell me about it? What do you want to do? You’re pretty agitated of late, Daph, and it’s not like you.”
Daphne couldn’t make herself work through it, just one thing. And when she told Vic details about her fight with Thea, he shook his head and said, “I think I’m with Thea on this one.”
“What? No! No, you’re with me. You have to be. Hey, you asked me to marry you.”
“You … didn’t say yes.”
She opened her mouth and shut it. Then she closed her eyes, opening them when tears would have leaked out if she didn’t make way.
Vic massaged her shoulder while he waited for a response. Finally, he asked, “Did you see that retired detective?”
Daphne nodded and sniffed. “Now I want to find Suzanne’s best friend. She was the one who first reported Suzanne missing.”
He rubbed his jaw. “So, it went okay with the detective? It was fine?”
She sprung her fingers from the steering wheel in annoyance. “Yes, it was fine. It was great. My dad killed himself because he lost hope when the detective retired ten years ago. It was fantastic.”
Bawling rocked her shoulders for a long time. Vic said nothing, one palm on her head, the other arm around her body, soft kisses into her hair. He knelt on the pavement, leaning into the truck while he caressed her.
His position couldn’t be comfortable, she realized, working harder to quit crying.
When she could talk, Daphne made her voice slow and clear. “The retired detective mentioned her, this girl, Lindsay. So I want to find her.”
