“I, uh, I met Julia at a conference on running a small business.”
He liked saying her name, she could tell. Red flag number one.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Sonora took out her mini recorder. Checked the tape, turned it on. “Excuse me, let me ask that again. Mr. Barber, when was the last time you saw Julia Winchell?”
He moved sideways, shoulders low even when he sat. “At that last workshop, I guess. The one on dealing with the IRS.”
“And that was the last time you saw her?”
He nodded.
“Say yes,” Sonora said, tapping the recorder.
“Sorry. Yes.”
“When was that, exactly?”
“Saturday, late in the afternoon. The fifteenth of July.”
“You call her? Afterwards?”
Pause. “No.”
“Has she called you? Written you? Gotten in touch with you in any way?”
“Why would she? You haven’t—Has something happened?”
“Mr. Barber, have you called Julia Winchell since that last workshop on the IRS? Her hotel, her home, whatever?”
“No ma’am.” Very softly lying.
Sonora sighed, rubbed her forehead, held up a finger. “Number one, you’re making this hard. And number two”—another finger—“you’re not helping me. I see your point of view, believe me, but I got to tell you you’re not helping yourself at all here.”
She was playing with him. Julia Winchell had gone somewhere, if only to a shallow grave by the side of the road. And if suspect number one was the husband, the lover was candidate number two.
“Work with me on this,” Sonora said.
“I’m not sure what you—”
“Describe your relationship with Mrs. Winchell.”
His color drained, left hand making a fist. “Is she … you said you were a homicide detective. Is Julia … did something happen to her?”
“Were you expecting something to happen to her, Jeff?”
He bit his lip. “No. But—”
“But what?”
“Please, just tell me.”
“She’s missing, Jeff. She hasn’t been seen or heard from for two weeks. She hasn’t called about her children for fifteen days. You may be the last person—”
“To see her alive?” he asked.
“Jeff, you keep harping on that. Why do you think something happened to her? You do, don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“I don’t.” He gave her the puppy dog look.
It probably worked, with kinder females than she’d ever be. She wondered how long he’d been trading on his tragedy. Glanced at the picture of his family. “If your children were missing their mother—”
“Please don’t do that. Don’t use my children.”
Sonora nodded, pursed her lips. “Mr. Barber, it might be a good idea for you to answer my questions downtown, as they say, and with you the attorney of your choice.”
“But why? If she’s missing—”
“See, you’re not working with me on this, Jeff. And I don’t understand why you won’t help me. I’m not an unreasonable person.” She opened her arms wide. “But if you won’t work with me, it makes me think you’ve got something to hide.”
“I will work with you.”
“You’re going to have to do better than you have been.”
He nodded at her.
“Jeff, let’s start at the beginning.” She pitched her voice low now, quiet honey. “What was your relationship with Julia Winchell?”
He put both palms on his lap and wet his lips. “We were friends.”
“More than friends,” Sonora said. A statement.
“She was married,” he said flatly. Looked at Sonora. She stayed quiet and he shifted sideways in his chair. “We hit it off, we were friends. Men and women can be friends.”
Sonora waited. She had conversations like this with her son. Waiting for the truth to come. Barber looked around the room the way Tim did when he didn’t want to tell her something. Were they looking for a way out? Of a conversation?
Sonora kept her voice soft and matter-of-fact. “I’ll make it easy on you, and tell you what I know. You and Julia Winchell were having an affair. It’s not like a new concept, okay, Jeff? I’m sorry to intrude into your privacy, but if you care for Julia you’ll help me out.”
“I cared for her. I loved her.”
“Tell me this, Jeff.”
He waited, expectant.
“Why are you using the past tense?”
12
Jeff Barber was not happy to be downtown at the Board of Elections building talking to Sam. Barber was having a break and a ham sandwich with catsup.
Sergeant Crick stood in the hallway, arms folded. He glared at Sonora. “Catsup? On a ham sandwich? And you let him?”
Sonora yawned, covered it with her hand. “I’m not his mother.”
“If you were, I’d tell you to get him a haircut.”
Crick was clearly in his usual good humor, Sonora decided. He wore a shirt that hung loosely across swollen biceps, the collar buttoned tight across the short thick neck. His air of disapproval was a constant and he was broad and massive and intimidating, until you got to know him and were legitimately afraid.
“How long they been boinking?” Crick asked.
“He won’t admit to the boinking. He says they just met at the conference.”
“He’s full of shit,” Crick said.
Sonora inclined her head. “True.”
Crick shifted his weight from his left leg to his right. One of his bones popped. He had brown eyes, intelligent and wise, and he stood too close.
“So, Sonora, why don’t you believe him? Just because he looks like a lying shit?”
“For one, the sister says there was somebody. For another, Julia Winchell brought lingerie with her. One black teddy, and one blue nightie.”
“Maybe she always wears them. Call up her husband and ask him.”
“I was just thinking there might be a kinder way.”
“Like please does your wife wear black teddies? Since when were you kind?”
“See,” Sonora said. “You caught me. I’m not being kind. I don’t know if Butch Winchell knows his wife was fooling around. If he does, we got motive. I’d kind of like to have my stuff straight and hit him with it when I can watch his face.”
Crick scratched his nose. “Let’s say they been screwing a while, long enough for this little girl to get her lingerie together. Theorize on that. How you going to prove it? The sister ever meet him?”
“No.”
“Know him by name?”
“No.”
“So then?”
Sonora leaned back against the wall. “See if he’s ever been to Clinton, Tennessee. See if they went to school together, way back when. Phone records. Maybe he’s been calling her house. He called her hotel room, we got that cold.”
Crick shook his head back and forth, clearly unimpressed. “He’d brush that off in no time. Say it was conference stuff. What’s this guy do for a living?”
“Photographer.”
Crick frowned at her. “Hell, there you go.”
“Pictures?”
“If they just got together, maybe no, maybe yes. But if the sister and the nightie hunch prove right, they’ve known each other a while. What photographer could resist taking pictures of his lady love?”
“Think so?”
“I was in love once. I think so.”
Sonora waited outside the door of Interview One while Jeff Barber ate the second half of his sandwich. Sam sat across from him, watching him chew and swallow. Sonora considered inviting Sam out for a conference, decided no. He could follow her lead. Anything else would look too contrived.
She heard footsteps behind her, heavy and light.
“Sonora.” Gruber. Sounding pissed.
She turned sideways, saw that Sanders was with him, thin-lippe
d, cheeks flushed. She’d never seen Sanders angry, but this might be it.
“This is my personal life and nobody’s business but mine. We are not going to have this conversation,” Sanders said.
“Oh yeah we are.” Gruber had his jaw set hard.
Sonora looked at him. “If Sanders says we’re not having this conversation, we’re not. I got work to do, and kids at home eating pizza and watching MTV and Mayberry reruns instead of doing their chores. I’d like to get back to the house to make sure they’re not conducting satanic rituals at the end of the driveway. You know kids today.”
“See? She’s too busy, anyway.” Sanders folded her arms and puffed air between her lips.
Sanders petulant and angry in the space of a minute. Sonora looked at her, then back through the two-way. Barber was still chewing. He ate a Frito.
One more bite of sandwich, and she was going in.
“Here’s what we want to know,” Gruber said. “How can you tell if the guy you—” He looked at Sanders. Lowered his voice. “The guy you’re crazy about is married.”
Sanders leaned close. “The symptoms are these—”
Sonora held up a hand. “Why are you asking me?”
“We figured you’d know,” Gruber said.
Sonora gave him a look. “I don’t even want to think about why you said that.” She looked back through the two-way. Barber was on his last bite. There was catsup and a large white bread crumb on the left corner of his mouth.
“Look, Sonora, if we’re bothering you.” Gruber waved a hand.
“You are bothering me, but I’ll give you what I got. One. When’s he call you, Sanders? Between eight and five? That means he can’t call you from home.” She glanced at Sanders, saw her go still and watchful. “Two. Did he fall in love and decide you were soulmates in the first forty-eight hours? Married guys are usually in a hurry. Three. Does he watch the clock when you guys are together? Because if he’s married, he’s usually supposed to be somewhere else. And four.” Sonora glanced back through the two-way. No more ham sandwich. She was definitely going in. She looked back over her shoulder. Saw Sanders heading down the hall toward the ladies room.
“She left after three,” Gruber said. “What’s four?”
“You’re a guy, you were married, you probably already know.” Sonora headed through the door into Interview One.
Barber was not glad to see her. She handed him a napkin. “Catsup on your mouth.”
He took the napkin and wiped his lips, crumpled it into a ball.
Sonora sat on the edge of the table, swinging her right leg. Barber still had the bread crumb hanging from his mouth. She knew it was going to drive her crazy. “Okay. Let’s speak hypothetically here.” She looked at Sam, who poured a handful of Fritos in his hand.
Barber crossed his legs, thighs pressed tightly together. He flipped a wave of dark hair out of his eyes and the bread crumb fell off the corner of his mouth. Sonora breathed a sign of relief.
“Now, Jeff, let’s say, just for the heck of it, and hypothetically you understand, that while you been here talking to Sam and eating your sandwich, that I got a court order and went to your photography studio there. And let’s say I found pictures of Julia Winchell. Pictures taken before this conference. I’d have to decide you’ve been lying to me, and I’d want to know why. I might suspect you of something awful. I might have to talk to your friends and neighbors and also, not incidentally, to my sergeant and a judge about my suspicions of you.” She stopped talking for a minute, watchful. Heard Sam crunching Fritos. Sonora leaned in close. “We got witnesses, Jeff. People who know the two of you were together, people who will testify that you and Julia Winchell were having an affair.
“Now, Jeff, Julia’s been gone fifteen days—as far as we know, in touch with nobody. Her husband’s worried about her. I’m worried about her. What I don’t understand is why you’re not worried about her. It makes me think you already know what happened to her.”
Barber leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and covered his eyes with his hands. He looked like he was going to be sick.
Could have been the sandwich, Sonora thought.
She noticed that his palms were large and square. She pictured them around Julia Winchell’s neck. Cop imagination.
Sonora gentled her voice. “We need to find her, Jeff. We need you to talk to us, tell us everything you know. I think—I get the feeling that you know something that could help me find her. You need to talk to me, Jeff. Talk to me for Julia’s sake. You care too much about her not to help us. Don’t you, Jeff?” Sonora took a breath. “Jeff? You with me here?”
He raised his eyes, hands still covering his mouth. “Of course I care.” The words were muffled behind the thick fingers.
“If you care you’ll talk to me.”
He looked from Sonora to Sam. “I think … I think something did happen to her.”
Sam quit crunching Fritos.
Sonora nodded at Barber. “Been worried about her, haven’t you?”
He nodded.
“It’s got to have been hard for you. Nobody you can ask, nobody you can talk to. How long you been worrying, Jeff?”
“Since she didn’t call.” He swallowed so hard it made Sonora’s throat hurt. “She was supposed to call. We were going to … to meet together. But she didn’t, and so I knew something had to be wrong.”
The male ego, Sonora thought, glancing back at Sam. Something had to have happened to her, or she would have called.
“How long have you two been … together? Jeff?”
Barber let his hands drop between his knees. “I was down in Knoxville picking up a lens a buddy of mine was selling. He was retiring, getting rid of a lot of his equipment, and I went down to buy stuff off him. They’re doing a lot of construction on I-75 down near Knoxville, so this guy tells me my best bet getting home is to take Maybryhood Road and go through Clinton. That way I bypass all the mess and the traffic tie-up. Said there was a good place to have lunch there—the Blue Moon Diner. Near some place where some twins used to have a restaurant, I don’t know. But that’s where I met Julia.”
He said her name with a gentle hunger.
“So you met her in the diner,” Sonora said.
Barber brought up a bright red flush. “A woman like that, running a diner in Clinton, Tennessee? Have you seen pictures of Julia?
“She had beautiful cheekbones, a kind of round, Slavic bone structure. I asked if I could take her picture. I did, and went home. Could not forget her. So we—we talked on the phone, a lot of that. I told her about this conference, the small business thing.”
“Whose idea was it for her to come up?”
“Mine. But she wanted to come. I think she did.” He frowned. “She wasn’t happy at home. I mean, she wasn’t unhappy, but she wasn’t happy either. To be honest, she was fine either way without me. But I wasn’t fine without her. It’s like …” He looked at the wall. “It’s like she woke me up. I’ve been on autopilot since … for a while now. First it had to be that way, then it just got to be the way it was. I mean stupid stuff. Like I didn’t notice how ratty and dusty my office was, till I got Julia in my life. I don’t know what I’ll do without her.”
You could clean your office, Sonora thought.
Sam leaned sideways. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“We had dinner at the Montgomery Inn, the one on the river.” His voice had gone low and gravelly. “We were supposed to go out again the next night. But there wasn’t a next night.”
Maybe she had indigestion, Sonora thought. “What happened?”
“I went back to my room late. We were supposed to meet for breakfast—they have a breakfast buffet. It comes with the room.”
Sam nodded, man to man. The importance of a breakfast buffet was not lost.
“She called my room early that morning. Said for me to go on without her. She seemed distracted and, I don’t know, kind of angry. I thought she might be mad at me, so I tried to talk to
her, but she said she’d call me later.”
“Did she?”
“I didn’t wait. I thought something was wrong. Like between us. So I went to her room.”
Might be true love, Sonora thought. Passing up that breakfast buffet.
“What was up?” Sam said.
“She had a newspaper. One of those ones they leave outside the door. I wish they hadn’t.”
“Why’s that?” Sam said.
“She had it folded back to a picture of that prosecutor who’s going after that Bengals player. Drury.”
Sonora nodded. “Keep talking.”
“She’s using nail scissors to cut this article out of the paper. Says she saw this guy Caplan kill somebody eight years ago.”
Sonora looked at Sam, then back to Barber. “Tell me exactly what she said.”
He swallowed. “It happened while she was in school.”
“She say what school?” Sam asked.
“University of Cincinnati. I mean, people get killed around there every year. I thought she must have meant some kind of thing in the streets. But she said this happened inside. And she saw it.”
“Did she report it?” Sonora asked.
“She told the security guard, but when she took him back inside, there wasn’t anybody there—no body, no murderer. Guard thought she was a crank. But she was really positive about it. She got a good look at this guy, and she’s sure it was Caplan.”
“Who got killed? Did she know the victim?” Sam asked.
“It was a girl, that’s all she told me. And she was pregnant.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all. She was trying to decide what to do about it. She felt funny about going to the police, since it had been so long ago. Eight years. She was going to look into it, that’s what she said.”
“Look into it how?” Sam asked.
Barber shrugged. “I know she went to the library, because she asked me for directions on the best way to get there. Said things had changed so much in the last eight years she couldn’t find her way around. I wanted to go along with her, but she said no. That’s the last time we talked.”
“Did you call her again?”
“Yeah. But it was like I was on the back burner all of a sudden. She got real busy, and I could never catch her in her room. Since then, no calls, no letters.”
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