The Missing Hour

by Dawn Stewardson

  “Of course, the ponytail might not have been for real. And when you factor in the hats, it ups the odds on that. At any rate, we were never able to track him down. But look, I’ve made up a couple of lists for you.”

  He passed several sheets of paper across his desk. “The first one’s pretty exhaustive—most of the people our investigative team spent any time talking to. A lot of the addresses will be out of date, but it’ll give you a start. And this is a list of our suspects.’’ Abbot picked up another sheet of paper and handed it over.

  It was a computer printout headed Prime Suspects. Cole held it halfway over to Beth, so she could see it as well, and scanned the list of names:

  Juan Perez

  Anthony Bridges

  Charles Mantay

  William Colburn

  Susan Colburn

  Unidentified White Male

  Cole’s gaze flickered back up from Unidentified White Male to the name Susan Colburn.

  He’d assumed the female suspect had been Angela Gregory, and it surprised him that he’d been wrong. Or had Susan Colburn not really been the only female suspect?

  Maybe Abbot had decided against telling Beth they’d suspected her mother. For that matter, maybe he’d decided not to mention they’d suspected her father.

  Cole wanted to ask, but not in front of her. He’d phone Abbot later, before he and his wife left for the airport.

  “Juan Perez, as you’ve probably guessed from his name,” Abbot said, “was the Spanish teacher. And Mrs. Niebuhr wasn’t the first of his students he’d done more than give lessons to.

  “Bridges was the massage therapist. Charles Man-tay was a writer who worked in a bookstore—but only evenings, so he had free time during the day.

  “William Colburn was a salesman for a food company. Mrs. Niebuhr met him in a grocery store. And Susan Colburn was his wife.”

  “And she made your list because…?” Cole asked.

  “Because her husband had a habit of meeting women in grocery stores, and Susan had found out about his previous affair. She’d told him the next one would be his last—that if he ever played around on her again, she’d kill both him and the woman.”

  “But you knew the killer was wearing men’s sneakers,” Beth said.

  “That didn’t mean it had to be a man. Now that you’ve remembered it was, it puts a different per-spective on things. At the time, though…Well, Susan Colburn wasn’t exactly a stable woman, and her murdering someone wasn’t beyond the realm of the believable.”

  “But you never charged her?” Cole said. “Or anyone else on the list?”

  Abbot shook his head. “We ended up ruling out everyone except the mystery man, as we used to call him. As far as Susan was concerned, she was shop-ping with a friend on the morning of the murder.

  ‘‘Of course, there was the possibility she’d hired somebody to do the hit. Hell, any of them could have done that and we followed up hard on that. We put out the word to every snitch in town, but it didn’t get us anything except false leads.

  “At any rate, there was a weak link in the theory that Susan might have hired a hit man. We were convinced the killer used a key to get into the Niebuhrs’ house. And where would she have gotten one to give him?”

  “Her husband didn’t have one?” Cole asked.

  “He swore he didn’t, and it was probably true. We asked each of the suspects if Mrs. Niebuhr had ever given them a key, and they all told us she hadn’t. Not that one of them couldn’t have taken a key and had it copied, but we just couldn’t see Susan getting hold of one.

  “As for the male suspects, all four of the ones we identified denied still being involved with Mrs. Niebuhr at the time of the murder. They all said they hadn’t seen her in weeks.”

  “Did you believe them?”

  Abbot shrugged. “The same neighbor who told us about our mystery man, an Esther Voise, said she hadn’t seen any of the others around recently. That hardly proved they hadn’t been there, but two of them had iron-clad alibis for the time of the murder. Perez was teaching classes, and Bridges was booked with clients.

  ‘‘William Colburn, who claimed that he and Larisa had broken things off as soon as Susan found out about them, was working that morning—making his regular calls.”

  “Driving around the city, you mean,” Cole said.

  “Yeah, so he could have stopped by the Niebuhrs’ house. But it would have been impossible for him to have been there long enough to have murdered Mrs. Niebuhr and gotten cleaned up. His customers all remembered him being in their stores, and his schedule was too tight for him to have been our man.

  “Which left Charles Mantay and the mystery man. Mantay’s story was that he was at home, writing.”

  “He have anyone to corroborate that?”

  “No, but we couldn’t come up with a motive, and he claimed that he and Mrs. Niebuhr had parted amicably. So with nothing really pointing to him, and no apparent motive, we’d reached a dead end there, too.

  “That meant we were down to our mystery man. Since we’d eliminated everyone else, we figured he must have done it. That he’d somehow gotten a key and just walked right in. Unless, of course, Mrs. Niebuhr hadn’t checked the doors as well as she thought, and the murderer really was an unknown intruder.”

  “Who brought along an extra pair of shoes?” Cole said.

  Abbot merely shrugged again, but he’d already told them that he’d never really believed the unknown-intruder theory.

  WHEN COLE AND BETH left Frank Abbot’s, both Frank and his wife walked them down the driveway, explaining that they were on their way out to have brunch before they headed for the airport.

  So much, Cole thought, for his idea of phoning Abbot to ask if either of Beth’s parents had been suspects. It probably didn’t matter, though. Not when Abbot had confirmed that Beth’s recollection of the murder was in line with the facts.

  That had to make it almost a certainty her father had been the killer. If every other detail she’d remembered was accurate, why on earth would she have confused her father’s face with the murderer’s? But the sixty-million-dollar question, in Cole’s mind, was how hard would she take it if they found proof of her father’s guilt? Hell, he didn’t want to even think about that.

  After thanking Abbot again for his help, and telling the couple to enjoy their trip, he backed out of the driveway and started down the street. Then, while Beth turned to wave a final goodbye, his imagination began playing with the scenario of Glen Gregory as the mystery man.

  A woman with the sexual appetite Larisa had apparently had wouldn’t likely have kept her hands off Gregory simply because he was her brother-in-law. Especially not when, according to Niebuhr, the Gregorys’ marriage had been on the rocks.

  So, if Gregory had been having an affair with Larisa, and for some reason had decided he wanted her dead…

  He’d even had ready access to a key. Angela Gregory’s key to the Niebuhr’s front door probably hadn’t been misplaced at all. Far more likely, Glen Gregory had taken it

  “Cole?” Beth said.

  He looked over at her.

  “You’re thinking the mystery man could have been my father, aren’t you.”

  “Well…I’ve got to admit the thought crossed my mind.” The moment the words were out, he was glad he hadn’t said he was almost positive, because even his low-key reply was enough to start tears trickling down her face.

  “Oh, Cole,” she whispered. “It crossed my mind, too.” She wiped the tears away, but they were immediately replaced by more.

  He turned onto the next side street and pulled up to the curb. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, digging some tissues out of her purse.

  She looked so miserable that he wanted to take her in his arms, the way he had last night. But he resisted. Holding her the first time had been a mistake.

  After she’d finally gone to bed, he’d lain awake for hours, wishing the soft warmth of he
r body was still pressed against him, and that her fresh-meadow scent was still in the air. And while he’d been tossing and turning on the couch, thoughts of Brian Robertson had begun nagging at him.

  It had been a long, long time since he’d felt the kind of attraction he was feeling toward Beth. And he sure as hell didn’t want to let the feeling get any stronger if she was really serious about some other guy. He’d like to just come right out and ask where things stood between her and this Brian, but it was hardly a good time to ask about her love life.

  Giving her eyes another wipe, she said, “I just…Frank Abbot is certain the mystery man was the murderer, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t think he has much doubt.”

  She slowly shook her head. “You know, part of me still can’t believe there’s even a chance my father killed Larisa. Most of me can’t. But if everything else I remembered is right…’’

  Her words, of course, were echoing what he’d been thinking, but he kept his mouth shut. It would be better to let her arrive at her own conclusions.

  “Our shooter,” she said at last. “How tall was he?”

  “Average height.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” she murmured “But I was still hoping you’d tell me he was five foot one, or six foot nine. And I suppose he was average weight, too?”

  Cole simply nodded.

  “And he probably had brown hair.”

  “Don’t most gorillas?” When he smiled, she smiled back. But her smile looked even more forced than his felt. And that was hardly surprising.

  Last night, Glen Gregory had pulled away from the restaurant before they’d even headed for the parking lot. Which meant he’d have had plenty of time to reach Wilson Place before they did. Of course, the idea of his trying to kill his own daughter…But if he was doing it to save his skin…And since they weren’t really close…

  “The shooter couldn’t have been my father,” Beth said. “He didn’t know I’d remembered a thing until I told him. And you and I agreed that he certainly wouldn’t have been driving around with coveralls and a gorilla mask in his car.”

  “Well, I sure didn’t think it was likely,” Cole said slowly. “But I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was impossible.”

  Beth’s eyes grew dark with fresh tears. “How can we even be speculating along these lines? How can I be thinking it’s even possible that my father had an affair with my mother’s sister? And then murdered her? And that he tried to murder me before I could remember too much?

  “Cole, I just can’t deal with any of those assumptions. He wouldn’t have had an affair with Larisa and he couldn’t have killed her. There has to be some other explanation.”

  “Well…maybe there is.”

  “You really think so?”

  She looked as if she was absolutely desperate to believe he did, so he said, ‘‘There could be. Abbot said that writer, Charles Mantay, had no one who could corroborate that he was home at the time of the murder.”

  “But he had no motive.”

  “None that the police could establish. He’s certainly worth talking to, though. And there was the possibility of a hit man. We’ll keep that in mind, too. But the important thing, right now, is that Abbot figured the killer did know Larisa. Which means he’s got to know who you are. So, as I said last night, if he somehow did find out you were trying to remember…”

  Beth’s tense expression said he didn’t have to elaborate further. There was no longer much—if any—doubt that their gorilla man had been specifically after her.

  “Oh, Cole,” she said. “I just don’t know if I can take any more of this.” With that, she began crying again. But it wasn’t the “tears trickling down her cheeks” variety. It was the heartfelt sobbing of a woman who felt emotionally stretched to the limit.

  This time Cole didn’t resist. He shifted over to the edge of his seat and wrapped his arms around her. And when she buried her face against his chest, he rested his chin on the top of her head and began stroking her silky hair.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, once she’d finally cried herself out. “We’ll make it be okay.”

  “How?” she whispered, drawing back and looking at him. “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, first, we’re going to stop by my apartment again and I’ll pick up some clothes. The way things stand, it only makes sense for me to stay at your place until we get this sorted out.

  “And I’ve got a couple of things to clean up for other clients when I get the chance, so I want to hit my office and pick up my laptop and a few files. After that, we’ll go back to your place and get to work. And we’ll just keep at it until we figure out who killed Larisa.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  “We will.”

  Beth sat gazing at him, her eyes still shimmering with tears. “But if we can’t,” she murmured at last, “he’s going to kill me, isn’t he.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t let anything awful happen to you, remember?”

  She slowly shook her head. “I hope you’re a man of your word, Cole. I hope it with all my heart.”

  Chapter Eight

  When Beth and Cole finally got back to her apartment—after collecting everything he figured he’d need and then stopping for lunch—there was a message to phone her mother. But all she got when she returned the call was her mother’s machine.

  After leaving her own message, saying she’d call again later, she put down fresh water for the cats while Cole phoned in for his voice mail. Then she stood surveying the things he’d brought with him—some clothes, a shaving kit, his laptop, a printer and a briefcase.

  Mere days ago, if someone had told her that a man she’d barely met would be moving in with her, she’d have said they were crazy.

  But here she was, and there he was. And she was only too glad to have him with her.

  “I’ve got to return a couple of calls,” he said from across the room.

  And after that, she knew, he’d be phoning Esther Voise—the neighbor who’d told the police about the mystery man.

  Cole had decided she’d be the ideal person to talk to first. So while he’d been collecting his things at his place, Beth had checked the phone book.

  According to it, E. Voise still lived in the same house on Tranby Street, almost directly across from the house that had been Mark and Larisa’s.

  “Don’t forget about the picture,” Cole said.

  She nodded, resisting the temptation to say she hadn’t been able to forget about it for more than three seconds straight since he’d told her he wanted it.

  Wandering into her bedroom, she opened the closet door and dug out one of the old photograph albums she’d gotten from her mother, unable to keep from wishing that she’d never looked at any of them in the first place. Maybe, if she hadn’t seen all those snapshots of Larisa…

  Telling herself she couldn’t undo what was already done, she took the album into the living room and sat, reluctantly flipping through it, looking for a good picture of her father. Cole, she could hear, had gotten hold of Esther Voise and was asking if he could drop by and talk to her.

  “Four-thirty or five?” he said. “Sure, that would be great. Oh, and I’ll have an associate with me.”

  An associate. She’d been promoted from unpaid assistant to associate. But at this point, she’d far rather be nothing. Nada. Completely out of the investigation. And that included not being in charge of finding a suitable picture.

  Turning over another couple of pages, she reached a snapshot of her father standing alone. Deciding it would do, she slid it out from beneath the plastic covering and put it on the coffee table. Then she sat staring at the other picture on that page, the one of her with him, and let her thoughts drift back in time.

  The picture had been taken on Centre Island, in front of an enormous weeping willow. In it, she was holding her father’s hand and smiling for the camera. He wasn’t smiling—likely because the person on the other side of the camera had been h
er mother—but it was still a nice picture of him.

  “How old were you there?” Cole asked, sinking down beside her on the couch. “About ten?”

  “Good guess. It was my tenth birthday.”

  “Yeah? I can still remember my tenth birthday. My parents took me and a bunch of friends horseback riding. I think they figured it would be easier on the house than a regular party. But we all ended up hardly able to walk—which my sisters thought was hilarious.”

  She managed a smile. “How many sisters?”

  “Two.”

  “Older than you?”

  “No, both younger.”

  “I always used to wish I had sisters,” she said, looking back at the snapshot. “I didn’t like being an only child—especially not after my parents called it quits. That was only a month or so after this picture was taken.”

  “I guess that’s a bad age to have your parents break up,” he said gently.

  “I guess any age is. What about you and your wife? Any children?” As she asked, she remembered she’d intended to keep her relationship with Cole strictly a business one. But it seemed the better she got to know him, the more she wanted to know about him. And it was nice to be talking about something normal for a change, instead of about nightmares and murders and a man in a gorilla mask shooting at her.

  “No, no children,’’ Cole was saying. “Joanne, my ex-wife, didn’t want any.”

  “Oh? The way you said that…You mean, she didn’t but you did?”

  “Yeah, I like kids.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  When he smiled, she found herself trying to picture what he’d looked like as a little boy—and what any children he might some day have would look like.

  Cute, she decided. They’d be cute, smart little kids with deep hazel eyes and adorable smiles.

  “Joanne wanted a career instead of kids,” he continued. “I know it’s something we should have talked about before we got married, but it didn’t even occur to me she might not want to be a mother.”

  “And that was why you broke up?”