by Jeff Abbott
“You haven’t had anyone to talk to about all this,” Mariah said quietly.
“I don’t need to talk about it.”
She let the silence fill the room, like a therapist might.
Jake broke the quiet. “You want to know what I think happened?”
She nodded, silent still.
“She hadn’t had a great life since her dad died. Her two constants before me were her mother and Andy. Her mother hovered. Andy hovered. I could never figure out what his deal was. I think he couldn’t accept she wasn’t interested in him romantically. I loved her, and I think she loved me, but I was also her escape route. Except, I wasn’t. Her mother was still here all the time, and then Bethany took a job working for Andy. She took off when she realized I wasn’t an escape, maybe she went off with Andy’s money, out of desperation. And I didn’t chase her to Houston, but one of them might have. It could have gone wrong. But no one blames them. Everyone blames me. Suspects me.”
“So Sharon had a motive. What about Andy?”
He took a deep breath. “I think Andy got obsessed with her when they worked together. I think she took that money from Ahoy, and Andy cleared her name because he was in love with her. I think if anyone lured her away, and if her new life in Houston went wrong, then it was him. The two of them. It’s the simplest explanation, and I think it’s the right one. But the police never looked hard at him.”
She tried her own confessional: “People thought my dad had done away with my mom. I mean, my friends…their parents…” She stopped. “You see a side of people you never dream of when this happens. People abandoned every belief they’d held about him for years. It was like who he’d been meant nothing.”
He nodded.
“You said you hired investigators. Did they check out Andy as a possibility?”
He nodded. “I aimed them squarely at Andy. They found nothing. I always wondered if his aunt—she owns Ahoy—”
“Yes, I’ve met Claudette.”
“All the charm of a cobra. But she raised Andy, paid for his college. I could see her paying off my investigators to shield him. I hired two and both quit on me rather abruptly.”
She thought of Claudette, reading off Mariah’s license plate number to someone.
Jake continued: “When the police found out I’d hired private eyes it was politely suggested to me I was interfering in the investigation.”
“Would you show me those files? In case something there relates to my mom?”
He nodded, and she thought, If he’d done away with Bethany or my mom would he have hired investigators, would he share information? It didn’t make her fully trust him, but she almost breathed out a sigh of relief.
“I have the reports in my safe. I’ll go get them.”
He returned a few minutes later with a thin bound document from a company called Marston Investigations, with addresses in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. She paged through them. There were photos of Bethany in happier times, arm around Jake’s neck, wedding picture, other photos from social events. A detailed tracking of her movements on that last day and details of her withdrawal of a few hundred dollars from her bank account, along with an interview with the teller who had waited on her. Then the details of her flight, a statement from the woman who sat next to her on the plane, a statement from the flight attendant who served her on the very short flight to Houston and hardly remembered her. She handed him back the reports. He took them and set them on the coffee table.
“If you were about to make a ton of money with your company, why would Bethany steal from Claudette and Andy? Why risk it?”
He shrugged. “Because there were no guarantees I would succeed…the company, the public stock offering, it could have all flopped.”
“She couldn’t wait a few months? Why risk losing so much leaving you then? I mean, why did she leave at all? For what reason?”
“I don’t know why.”
She felt a sharp, hot pang in her stomach, a bolt of pain in her head. “The answer is in front of us. Your wife and my mom knew each other. We just have to find out what they shared.”
He was quiet, then he surprised her. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “I know it’s early enough for a senior citizen discount, but I skipped lunch.”
“I could, but then I have to go to a support meeting.”
“Support meeting?”
“Reveal runs a discussion group of people who were affected by violent crime. I thought I’d try it.” Reveal had texted her a reminder earlier today.
“He emailed me about that, too,” Jake said, sounding doubtful, given his earlier castigation of Reveal. “But…if you want, we could go to that, too.” He cleared his throat. “So dinner, yes?”
She nodded. He’s lonely, she thought. Not an instant friendship, but an instant understanding. But not necessarily trust.
Because if she’d trusted him, she wouldn’t have waited for him to have his back turned to tear a page from Bethany’s address book and tuck it in her pocket.
Because of what she’d seen written there.
32
CRAIG DUNNING WAITED. He watched. Cars drove by the house, slowing a bit to take in the for sale sign. He could almost imagine the relief of his neighbors. He tried to imagine that at least some of them wished him well with the sale.
The phone calls had started to come about the house. First four from real estate agents asking on behalf of their buyers, trying to set up chances to see the house, leaving messages on the burner phone. Calls from a couple of companies that specialized in tear-downs, then putting up a much larger house on the same lot—he had seen their names on signs when the house across the street was a teardown and one downhill from his home, at the very end of Bobtail Drive. Then a call from two different buyers, calling him directly, and one call from a down-the-street neighbor who said, in a gruff voice that was a sorry attempt at a disguise, “Finally you’re moving. Finally. I hope your house sells fast, murderer.”
Craig didn’t delete that message; he kept it. It would remind him what he was facing.
He got in his car and began to drive to a list of addresses he’d made. These were the three Seans who played trumpet in the Lakehaven High School band. He wanted to see if the car he’d spotted with the man taking his picture belonged to one of the players. That would tell him who this was.
The first Sean lived on the outskirts of Lakehaven, in an older neighborhood that featured lots of unfenced backyards, sloping lots, and streets without sidewalks. This neighborhood, Bonaventure, was an old one that hadn’t been developed in one fell swoop like some of the other neighborhoods in Lakehaven. Here, from the 1960s onward, houses of all sorts: stone, brick, modern, ranch, and so on, had sprung up like strange, unrelated flowers. There was no homeowners association to enforce architectural consistency. He found the address along a side road, unpaved gravel, with a wood and metal fence surrounding the front yard and lots of brightly colored yard art made from metal and wood. There had been a time that artists flocked to this neighborhood, but it had gotten steadily more expensive as Austin had grown and as Lakehaven’s school district reputation soared.
No sign of the car he’d seen—which was a silver SUV, he thought a Ford Explorer although he hadn’t seen for sure. This was Sean Perez’s house, a senior trumpet player. He stopped and got out of the car. He was unsure of what to do—go up and knock on the door and ask if someone from here drove a silver SUV and had been coming to his neighborhood for walks? He felt stupid. But none of the Seans lived close to his house, so if Sean’s dad was the man who had been watching him, then why had he been in the neighborhood? Why had any of them?
He looked at the art: metal sunflowers, a painted windmill. He and Beth had walked through an art display like this once, at a museum fundraiser, full of primitive art. She had hidden behind one of the oversize sunflowers, peeking out, and he remembered with a jolt that she had been pregnant with Mariah then. Suddenly his chest ached.
I miss you, Beth,
I miss you every day, and I don’t know what to do to make this right. I’m scared. I can’t do what I should do.
He stood, lost in thought, suddenly aware that the front door had opened. A woman peered out at him. “Can I help you?” she called.
“I was just admiring your art.” He wondered how long he’d been standing there, thinking. Some days it felt like he was losing his mind.
She stared back at him. “Well, you’ve admired it. Move along.” She had a phone in her hand and she raised it, like she was taking his picture.
Like husband, like wife? Why would these people have a grudge against him?
“I’m sorry,” he called, with a wave. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
He got back into his car, his face burning with shame, and drove off. He’d have to come back later, unless he found the silver car elsewhere.
* * *
The second address—Sean Wagner’s—was in a neighborhood off Old Travis called Grand Creek, and while he didn’t see a creek, the houses were certainly grand. These were all mansions, built in modern or Tuscan styles to complement the hilly limestone terrain of this part of Lakehaven. There were two cars parked in front, a sleek silver Porsche and a black Range Rover. No stickers on either car and no silver SUV. He thought, These don’t seem like the kind of folks who put a sticker on their ride that advertises their kids’ name. He drove by it three times, and the last time he did so he saw, past the iron fence, a woman getting into the Range Rover. She drove off. He left; he didn’t want to be noticed again. Sean Wagner, he decided, wasn’t his guy.
* * *
The third address was for a Sean Oberst, and there was something familiar about the boy’s photo in the yearbook—something in his face Craig thought he had seen before. The house was modest, in an older section of town, near the old elementary that had once been the heart of Lakehaven.
No sign of the silver SUV, but there was a woman in the front yard, holding up paint samples next to the brick and studying them in the light.
He parked and rolled down his window. “Hello, excuse me, Mrs. Oberst?”
“No,” she said. She took a few steps toward him. “Are you looking for her? She’s not Mrs. Oberst anymore.”
“Pardon me?”
“We bought this house from a woman who used to be Mrs. Oberst, but she remarried.”
“Oh, I see. You don’t happen to know where they moved, do you?”
Her smile stayed in place. “May I ask why you’re looking for them?”
“My daughter has a class with Sean,” he said vaguely. “Um, do you know Mrs. Oberst’s name now? They’re listed in the school directory at this address.”
“It’s Marshall,” the woman said, after a moment. He thought he saw the barest flick of disapproval. “I’m not sure where their new house is.”
“Thank you,” he said, and he drove off. In the rearview mirror he could see the woman watching him, trying to decide if he was suspicious.
His phone rang. He hit the Speaker button.
“Craig. What are you doing?” Dennis Broussard’s voice, tight, angry.
“What do you mean?”
“Woman on Granger Drive over in Bonaventure snaps a picture of you as you are standing and staring at her house. Sends it to us. I recognize it’s you. What are you doing?”
“I was standing on a public street,” he said. “I admired her yard art.”
“You frightened her enough for her to take your picture.”
“The art reminded me of Beth.” His voice rose, and he choked it back to a normal volume.
“Listen to me. You can’t do this.”
Craig realized in his anger he’d missed his turn to get back onto Old Travis, the main thoroughfare that wound through Lakehaven. He got on the loop that would take him around Lakehaven.
“Craig. What. Are. You. Doing?”
I’m going the wrong way, Craig thought. He realized then that he was headed for the bridge where the note had threatened to drop a rock. He tensed.
It was just a stupid threat. He’d put up the for sale sign, they had no reason to doubt him now. Idle threat. Plus they couldn’t know if he was there, or en route. His concern was ridiculous.
“Craig, are you there?”
On this stretch of the loop there was no immediate exit, no turnaround. A metal railing separated the highways. He had no place to go but under the bridge, driving his missing wife’s car.
“I’m here. I’m sorry I scared her. It was nothing…”
It was nothing, I put the house up for sale, the tormentor is off the scent…
He went under the bridge.
See, everything is fine…
“Craig, this is a bad idea…”
He exited under the bridge and the back window exploded, glass shattering, the car veering, Craig fighting for control, swerving wildly, the car roaring toward the railing to the cliff below, his only thought Mariah Mariah Mariah, Broussard yelling his name.
33
I KNOW A good Tex-Mex place about ten minutes away. I’m not a great cook, so if you wouldn’t mind talking over dinner…”
“Sounds good,” she said. “And I need to text my dad and let him know where I am.”
“Sure,” Jake said. “Of course.”
She texted Craig as Jake drove them in his Porsche: I’m fine. I’m going out to dinner with a friend. I’ll check in again in a bit. Don’t call, I won’t answer. She decided not to mention her fainting spell in the yard. She still didn’t understand what had happened, and she didn’t want to worry him.
She could see the notification that the text had been delivered. But Dad didn’t answer in his hovering way. Good. He was giving her needed space.
The restaurant on the border between Austin and Lakehaven was a big local chain she’d heard of but never patronized. Jake parked and they walked in, hearing the distant cry of sirens along the highway. There must have been an accident to the west, she thought. She and Dad didn’t eat out much—they had both tired of the stares and the whispers and the inevitable empty chair that reminded them of Mom, who was always the most talkative when they were dining. The restaurant wasn’t busy this early, except for a few tables of happy hour customers who looked to be far more cheerful than she and Jake felt. They were all having margaritas. She decided if she had to question this man through dinner and then get through people talking about their feelings she could face it with tequila and Cointreau.
And she needed to call the phone number on the page she’d stolen from Bethany’s address book.
The last number in the address book. Added at the end, without a name.
Who added someone to an address book and didn’t write down the name? But it was a Houston area code, and Bethany had run to Houston. It was worth a try.
She ordered a top-shelf margarita, and he asked for a beer. When the chips and salsa came, he spoke. “I could see Bethany calling her mom after going to Houston and trying to explain. She would have felt guilty about walking away from her. Maybe she wanted to reassure them that she was OK, since she didn’t want to have contact with me. Or she emailed Julie a second time, gave her more information. And then Andy following her to Houston and maybe it went bad.” He looked at her. “Andy’s alibi for that day she vanished is his aunt. And Julie might protect him. But I got the sense that Julie always resented that Andy paid so much attention to Bethany.”
“He wasn’t seen at work?”
“No. They were all out of town. All claimed to be at their place down on the Gulf, no phones, no internet. An hour from Houston. Andy runs security not just for that company, but he’s like a bodyguard for his aunt. That family is crooked, if you ask me. I always wondered if they transported contraband.”
“Any indications Bethany was having an affair?” She decided to be blunt.
“You really don’t tiptoe around, do you.”
“No.”
“It’s only fair, then, that you share with me about your mom. So, I answer yo
ur question and you answer mine. Since you want to find this pattern.”
It was the first time he’d sounded like a tough-minded executive. For a moment she didn’t speak. Then she said, “I don’t have a nice, reassuring alternate explanation of ‘Mom took off to start a new life.’ My mom had no reason to vanish, and she’s just gone. Without explanation.” Except there was an explanation, the barest thread of one. That her mother had done a favor for Bethany Curtis, and it had caught up with her and gotten her kidnapped or killed.
Maybe by the man sitting across from her. He could be asking about her mother not from his own curiosity but to see what she knew—to protect himself. She reminded herself that he had more motive than anyone else. Maybe he didn’t want to share his riches. Maybe he didn’t want the embarrassment of a partner spiraling out of control. Maybe there is another secret here.
“OK. I’ll go first,” he said. “No, there were no indications Bethany was having an affair. I’d ignored her, for sure, and the marriage was under some strain, but I loved her and I believed she loved me. We’d had a miscarriage two years ago. We decided we wouldn’t try again until I’d launched the business. So getting the business up and running took on a new urgency for me. The business took over every aspect of my life. And if she’d cheated, I think I might have understood, if not approved. But she filled the time with her own interests, like writing, and her work. And her friends that were happy to go party with her. I never much liked bars.”
The story of the lost pregnancy jolted her; a parallel to what her father had told her. But Mariah said nothing, and he said, “Your mom. You were close?”
