The Missing Hour

by Dawn Stewardson

  THE MINUTE THEY PULLED away from the curb, Beth opened the journal to the first page and began skimming the entries.

  “Anything?” Cole said, glancing over as he turned onto Avenue Road.

  “Not so far. There’s no mention of any men except Mark.”

  She went back to her skimming, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. What if Larisa had censored her writing so completely that there wasn’t even a clue?

  Turning another page, she started in on the next entry. “Oh, my Lord,” she murmured, reading it.

  “What?” Cole demanded.

  “It’s here,” she whispered, her mouth so dry she could barely speak. “Listen to this—the entry dated July 1.

  “Today, I made a decision that will turn my life upside down. I’m going to leave Mark for Dennis Roth. I know people will think I’m crazy to leave a psychiatrist for a starving artist—with a ponytail no less—but that’s what I’m going to do.’

  “Ponytail,” she repeated for emphasis. “Cole, that has to be the mystery man!”

  He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “Hallelujah. I didn’t think we’d actually get his name.”

  “Well, we did. So now what do we do?”

  “We go back to your place and check the phone book. And if there’s no listing for him, we turn on the computer and start checking databases. Between city directories, public records, credit records and whatever, it’s not usually too tough to track people down.

  “But what else does it say?” he asked, gesturing toward the journal.

  Her heart beating rapidly, Beth turned her attention back to the entry she’d been reading.

  “ ‘In all the time Mark and I have been married,’“ she continued, “‘I’ve never written down a word about any of my affairs—since that’s all they were. Transient affairs I needed because my sex drive is so strong while Mark’s is virtually nonexistent. The other men never meant anything to me, but it’s entirely different with Dennis.

  “‘I can’t begin to describe how I feel when I’m with him, but I can barely believe how much I love him. Or how much he loves me. I dream of him all night and think about him every minute I’m awake. I can’t live without him. And I can’t live with Mark when I’m in love with another man.

  ‘ ‘ ‘ I’ve made my decision, for better or worse—although I’ve thought of a way to ensure it will undoubtedly be for the better. The only things left to decide are exactly when I’ll leave and how I’ll tell Mark.

  ‘“That’s a moment I’m already dreading. Perhaps it would be best to simply leave him a note when I go. That would be the coward’s way, of course, but I’ve never been a very brave person.’“

  Beth flipped to the following page and let her eyes fly over it. “The next entries talk about Dennis, too,” she told Cole. “More of the same. About his visits, and how desperately she loves him, and agonizing about telling Mark.”

  “Keep going. See if you find anything different. Maybe she’ll talk about a fight or something. If it was Dennis who killed her, he had to have a reason.”

  Rapidly, Beth worked her way through more en-tries. “Here’s something different,” she said at last “But it’s not about him.

  “‘July 22,’“ she read. “‘I had the scare of my life today. I wasn’t feeling well, so I slept in and let Mark make his own breakfast. And when I finally went down to the kitchen, I discovered that I’d forgotten to lock my journal away last night.

  “‘After I wrote in it, I put it on the counter while I made some tea. Then I just left it there and went to bed.

  “I’ve never been that careless before, and it makes me wonder if, subconsciously, I wanted Mark to read it.

  ‘“I don’t know. But consciously, that’s that last thing I’d want. So thank heavens he didn’t. I’m positive he couldn’t have, or he’d have come roaring upstairs like a charging rhino.

  “ ‘But what if I hadn’t been lucky and he had read it? Or what if he starts to suspect something? I’m sure I can’t be acting normally these days, so what if he notices and decides that reading my journal might be a good idea?

  ‘“I’m probably being paranoid, but what if I’m not? If he wanted to, I know he could get my blanket box open. So I think I’d better start keeping this journal in a different place, just in case.

  “‘From now on, I’ll be making a little trip into the attic after I finish my daily writing. The journal will be safe up there, and the exercise can only do me good.’“

  “And that was dated?” Cole said.

  “July 22.”

  “Five days before the murder. Read through the rest of the entries. See if she says Mark’s acting strange or anything. If she decides that maybe he did read the journal.”

  Her pulse racing, Beth read the remaining entries. The final one was dated July 26.

  “Nothing,” she said, finishing it. “Just more agonizing about exactly when she was going to leave. But…You think maybe Mark knew?”

  “He obviously could have.”

  “But…” A horrifying thought popped into Beth’s mind. A second later, she realized it wasn’t even a possibility.

  “Mark was in his office when Larisa was murdered,”she said. “Abbot told us his secretary confirmed that, remember?”

  “I remember. But if Mark did know…”

  “What?” she demanded.

  Cole shrugged. “Abbot told us a lot of things. Including that the murderer could have been a hired hit man.”

  THERE WERE STILL a dozen questions rattling around in Cole’s brain when he and Beth arrived back at her apartment.

  Had Niebuhr read Larisa’s journal? he asked himself while she unlocked the door. Learned about her affair with Dennis Roth? he added, stepping into Beth’s office.

  “We need to put the journal someplace safe,” he told Beth.

  “We’re not giving it to the police?”

  “Uh-huh, but not just yet.”

  “That couldn’t be a problem for you?”

  “No, I told you, a journal would only be considered hearsay, so it’s not like withholding evidence.”

  “But it suggests that Mark had a motive.”

  “Right, but we wouldn’t know there’s anything of interest to the police until we’d read it, and who’s to know we’ve done that yet?”

  “I could lock it in my desk. It would be safe there.”

  As she opened the desk, Cole absently leaned down to stroke Bogey and Bacall, who’d come to the door to greet them, and went back to thinking about those questions that were nagging at him.

  If Niebuhr had found out about Dennis Roth, what were the odds that Glen Gregory wasn’t guilty? And that Roth wasn’t, either? Could the good doctor have actually been behind Larisa’s death?

  He followed Beth into the apartment, telling him-self that if they could locate Roth and get his story, they might have a better idea of what was what

  “Someone called,” he said, noticing the message light blinking on Beth’s machine.

  After she pushed Play, there was a moment of silence. Then a worried voice Cole wouldn’t have recognized said, “Beth, it’s your father. I…I’m sorry. This is a terrible message to leave on a machine, but I want you to hear it from me, and for the life of me I can’t remember your cell phone number.”

  She glanced anxiously at Cole, then turned her attention back to the machine. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders as the message continued.

  “Beth…I’ve been arrested. Charged with murdering Larisa. I didn’t do it. I hope that goes without saying. But the police said they found some evidence and…”

  They’d found evidence? Cole could hardly believe it. Just when he’d started thinking that Gregory might not be guilty as sin, the cops had found enough, evidence to charge him.

  “I don’t think I’m making much sense here,” he was saying. “But…look, maybe you’d better call your mother. They said the evidence was in the house and…She must know more of the details th
an I do. I’ll call you again after I’ve seen my lawyer. He said he’d be here as soon as he could and…Well, they told me I’m allowed reasonable use of a phone, so I’ll call you again.”

  There was a click, then silence.

  “Oh, Lord,” Beth murmured. “I’ve got to go and see him. But where is he?”

  “It doesn’t much matter. Seeing him won’t be an option.”

  “What?”

  “Beth, he’s been charged with murder. Only his lawyer will get to see him without facing a ton of red tape.”

  “Then what do I do? How am I going to find out what’s going on? Does he know I remembered him as the killer?

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and answering her own question. “The way he was talking, he can’t know. But did Mark tell the police, and is that why they arrested him?”

  Cole thought about that for a couple of seconds, then said, “If Mark had told them, they’d already be considering you a witness, so they wouldn’t have let your father call you.”

  “A witness? Against him?”

  “Hey, take it easy,” he said, drawing her close. “We don’t really know what’s happening yet.”

  “But he said evidence. What kind of evidence? And what house was he talking about? The one on Tranby? It almost sounded as if he meant my mother’s.”

  Not knowing the answers any more than she did, Cole simply held her, resting his chin on her head and breathing in the fresh scent of her hair. When she made a sad little noise against his shoulder, he began wishing he could magically do away with all the evils in her life.

  Unfortunately, he was no magician. He was just an ordinary man who had to work through things one step at a time. And in this case, if Gregory figured his ex-wife would know the details, step one was having Beth phone her mother and find out what the hell they were.

  When she called, the line was busy. She fed the cats, looking as if she was about to start crying any second, then tried the number again.

  “It’s still busy,” she said, putting down the phone. “She probably has it off the hook.”

  “Does she do that?”

  “Yes, whenever something stresses her out and she doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “Well, let’s not worry about what she wants just now. Let’s go pay her a visit.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Taurus was in the driveway, but nobody responded to Beth’s knock. She was certain her mother was home, though. Not answering the door was another of her coping mechanisms.

  “Mom,” she called loudly, knocking again. “Mom, it’s me, open up.”

  ‘Try to relax,” Cole said. “We’ll learn exactly what’s happened, then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  His words made her feel a tiny bit better. Even though her world was swinging wildly out of control, he was such an anchor of sanity that, once again, she just didn’t know what she’d do without him.

  When her mother finally opened the door, she looked as if she’d been crying for a week. She also looked as if she’d taken some of the anxiety pills that her doctor prescribed and Beth worried about.

  “Oh, Beth,” she sobbed, falling into her arms.

  Beth took a slow, deep breath. She felt like crying, too. She’d been fighting back tears ever since she’d listened to her father’s message. But letting herself disintegrate wouldn’t help matters.

  “Let’s go sit down,” she said, guiding her mother toward the living room. “We need you to fill us in on things.”

  By the time they were seated on the couch and Cole had pulled a chair over so he could sit facing them, her mother had managed to stop crying and was beginning to ask questions.

  “Beth, why didn’t you tell me exactly what you’d remembered? And why wouldn’t you go to the police? Mark said you insisted on saying nothing, but if your father…” She paused to wipe away fresh tears. “How could you have known he did it and think he shouldn’t have to pay?”

  “Mom, I never knew he did it. And neither did Mark. He just—”

  “Beth, he told me everything. And he told the police, as well.”

  “Oh, no. You don’t mean he told them I remembered Dad as the murderer.”

  When her mother nodded, she looked at Cole, her stomach in so many knots it felt like a solid lump. “You said Mark couldn’t have told them. That if he had, they wouldn’t have let my dad call me.”

  “They shouldn’t have. Whoever did must have been missing a few facts.”

  “But if they have rules like that…He won’t be able to call me again, will he? And I won’t ever be able to see him, will I?”

  “Darling, why would you want to?” her mother said.

  “Because he’s my father!”

  “Beth…he’s a murderer. He murdered Larisa.”

  “No,” she whispered. “How can you say anything that horrible?”

  “Darling…I’m going to tell you something I swore I never would. When you were just a little girl, your father and Larisa had an affair.”

  “No,” she whispered again, feeling as if someone were tearing her insides out.

  “Yes. It was a couple of years before her death. And when I found out about it…Well, I talked to Mark, and we confronted the two of them. And they both swore it was already over and they knew it had been a terrible mistake and…

  “At any rate, I tried to forgive them. I did my best, Beth. I acted as if Larisa and I were still close and I tried to keep loving your father. But he’d screwed around with my sister!

  “I guess Mark handled things better than I did. He was able to forgive Larisa. Of course, as far as he knew—until after her death, at least—she’d only had the one affair.”

  Unless, Cole thought, he had read that journal.

  “But I could never really forgive either one of them,” Angela continued.

  Cole eyed her as she spoke, wondering again about her being the murderer. After all, given what he’d heard about Larisa, she’d probably instigated the affair. And maybe Angela’s resentment had festered and grown until it was too much to bear.

  That thought lingering in his mind, he glanced at Beth and realized she was looking more distraught than he’d ever seen her. He covered her hand with his, wishing he could get her out of here right now. But they couldn’t leave until they knew what the entire story was.

  “Angela?” he said. “It would really help if you walked us through what’s happened in the past little while. Exactly what happened that led to Mr. Greg-ory’s arrest?”

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “How about starting back at yesterday afternoon. What happened after Beth and I left?”

  “Nothing,” Angela said, clearly trying to control her emotions. “Not right away. Mark stayed for an-other cup of coffee, then he left, too. But he called later, after dinner, and said he’d been thinking about those books and was coming back over.

  “And when he got here, he said that he was wondering if we’d been on the wrong track. If maybe the intruder hadn’t really been interested in the books, but had only been taking them down so he could move the bookcases and get at something behind them.”

  “What would have made him think that?”

  “That’s exactly what I asked him. And it was then he told me he thought it was Beth’s father who’d been in here. And that he might have hidden some-thing behind a wall panel—years ago, long’before I had those bookcases.”

  Angela began playing with a loose strand of her hair, looking incredibly anxious. “That he might have hidden something to do with the murder,” she finally added. “Because Beth had remembered seeing Glen kill Larisa. I almost couldn’t believe it when he told me that

  “But he believed it. He said that maybe they’d started up together again and then had a fight and…Oh, he was only guessing about the details, but he wanted to have a look behind the paneling. So we moved everything, and he pried a couple of the panels loose and…there it was. Stashed behind one of them.”

>   ‘‘There what was?” Cole said, his adrenaline pumping.

  “The evidence,” she murmured. “The knife Glen used to murder Larisa.”

  Cole’s heart thudded against his ribs. “You mean you assumed that’s what it was.”

  “What else could it have been? It was wrapped in a piece of bloodstained white terry cloth, inside a freezer bag. But the handle wasn’t covered, so we could see it was a knife. And when the police came and we told them everything, they certainly assumed it was that knife.

  “It was…one from my own kitchen. A special one that had been a gift, and I recognized it—even though it had gone missing decades ago. After that we told the police that Beth had remembered her father as the murderer. And that Glen and Larisa had once been lovers. And when Mark said he thought they might have started up again, and…Well, with the murder weapon having come from my kitchen, and it being hidden right here in what had been Glen’s house, they obviously decided they had enough to arrest him.”

  WHILE COLE CLOSED the passenger’s door and walked around to the driver’s side, Beth did her best to keep holding back her tears. But she’d reached the breaking point, and by the time he opened his own door she was crying.

  “Hey.” He slid into the car and wrapped his arms around her. “Things aren’t always as bad as they seem.”

  ‘‘But this time they are,” she managed to say. “Oh, Cole, he had an affair with his own sister-in-law. And then he killed her. It was him all along.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “What?” When she sat back and looked at him, he shook his head.

  “I know I only met your father once, but he struck me as both intelligent and logical.”

  “He is,” she said, wiping her eyes. “So how could he have even gotten involved with Larisa in the first place?” How could her own father…? She could hardly bear to think about it.

  “Things like that happen,” Cole said gently. “You know they do. Nobody’s perfect. And from the sounds of things, if Larisa decided she wanted a man, she had what it took to get him.”