The Detective Megapack®

IT TORE THE LAUGH FROM MY THROAT, by Meriah L. CrawfordI was supposed to be on vacation. I was supposed to be relaxing, putting my feet up, reading. I was supposed to be eating locally-caught seafood—like drum, soft-shell crab, and oysters dug fresh. I was supposed to be sitting on the porch of my little rental cabin on Chincoteague, enjoying the break I’d earned after nearly four solid months of long hours, seven-day weeks, and living out of my car while working on a huge class-action lawsuit. The phone was not supposed to ring, and if it did, I was not supposed to answer. But it did, and I did, and this is what happened. * * * * “Is this Lauren? Lauren Lindsay?” I could tell from the voice that something was very wrong. “Yes?” I said. “My name is Harriet Reynolds. I was Jess Walter’s college roommate.” Jess is a lawyer friend of mine who I work for as a private investigator. She sometimes referred clients to me, but she also knew how much I needed this time off. “It’s my husband,” she said, her voice breaking. “He’s—he’s missing.” Harriet began sobbing. I could almost feel her body shaking over the phone. I’d had people start crying before—usually while telling me they suspected their husband or wife was cheating on them—but not like this. I waited for a couple of minutes until the storm began to ease, then said, as gently as I could, “I’m so sorry about your husband. Tell me what I can do to help.” “I want you to find him. Please.” Though I was exhausted and reluctant to take any new work on, for Jess’ sake I decided to at least hear her out. I pulled out a notebook and pen, and sat at the small dining table to take notes. Her husband Tom, a retired bank manager, went to visit his mother one afternoon, just over a week ago. Harriet stayed behind because of a migraine, and went to bed early. When she woke up at almost eight the next morning, Tom still hadn’t come home. Harriet called his mom, who told her that Tom left just after eleven the night before, saying he was going straight home. Harriet then began a frenzy of phone calling: hospitals, the police, friends and family in the area. Nothing. After another call to Tom’s mother, who was starting to get frightened, Harriet drove the route to her house, and then back by a slightly different path. There was no sign of him. Nothing at all. Later that same day, she told me, the police found Tom’s car parked at the edge of a field. It was a couple miles off his expected path, which was explained by the fact that the fuel tank was empty. The working theory was that he’d noticed he was low on fuel sometime after he started home, and turned toward the main highway where he knew he could buy gas at that hour. He’d obviously run out before he got that far. It seemed reasonable to think he’d simply started walking, since it was only about a mile to the nearest gas station. But, what happened next was anybody’s guess. Finally, after a week’s work with no solid leads, the police had admitted that there wasn’t much more they could do. And that’s when Harriet called Jess, who sent her to me. I’d worked missing persons cases before, but they were all fairly basic: finding old friends, former employees, or catching up with a rebellious son who’d left home at sixteen and not been heard from since. It was usually a matter of doing a bunch of online searching followed by, at most, a few phone calls. There was one young woman I hadn’t been able to find for seven months, but it turned out she’d moved to a different state and lived with friends for half a year while saving up to rent an apartment. That kept her name out of the databases for much longer than usual. But, this? Harriet’s story just didn’t make much sense to me. It all came back to a simple question: If he wasn’t dead, why hadn’t he called? There was a time before cell phones, when some rural areas didn’t have phone service available for every home, that he might just be sick or hurt and not able to let her know. But the man had a cell phone, as do most people nowadays, and service was fairly good on the peninsula. It seemed clear to me that he was gone either because he wanted to be, or because he was beyond wanting. Beyond anything. Either way, it wasn’t going to end well for Harriet. After briefly flirting with the idea of declining the case, I suggested we meet to talk in person. Why didn’t I just tell her I couldn’t do it? Two reasons. First, I owed Jess. She’d helped me deal with the murder of a dear friend the year before, and then put me to work when I needed it. I knew I’d earned my keep working for her, but she’d risked a lot on a rookie. If a friend of hers was in trouble, there was no way I could turn her down. The second reason was that it was an interesting case. I’d like to say I did it because I care, because Harriet’s pain touched me—and it did. But, as much as anything, I just wanted to dig in and find the answer for myself. Harriet gave me directions, and I headed out. I hadn’t seen much of the Eastern Shore on my drive to Chincoteague, because I’d gotten a late start. It had been well after sunset when I rolled off the bridge onto the southern tip of the peninsula. What I found in daylight was a single north-south highway lined mostly with tiny strip malls and fields of corn, soybeans, and tomatoes. A foul stench announced the presence of the area’s other major industry: a chicken processing plant. I slid the window up and put the air on recirculate, trying not to think about the smell and the flocks of seagulls rioting over the back lot. Away from the commercial areas, on narrow, winding country roads, I saw a mix of farmhouses, mobile homes, and small housing developments sprinkled among fields and a few tracts of wooded land. A nice place to visit and drive through, but rural areas like that always make me feel sorry for the local kids, imagining the boredom they must suffer growing up. And there were so many bleak houses that bore signs of neglect and deep poverty. It made the small housing development that Harriet had directed me to all the more striking. They owned a recently-built single-story brick house with a view of the Chesapeake Bay between two houses across the road. It was lovely, but utterly silent. There wasn’t even the sound of birds. When the houses were built, they must’ve scraped the land clean, because the only landscaping I could see consisted of saplings and clumps of ornamental grass that wasn’t dense enough to sustain much in the way of wildlife. When Harriet ushered me into the dimly-lit living room, it felt like a house already in mourning. For her sake, I wished there was a small crowd of family and neighbors there, but during the nearly two hours I was with her, no one knocked, the phone didn’t ring, and no cars even drove past. It made some sense when she told me they’d just moved to the area to help take care of his mom, but it was still so grim. I sat quietly and listened to Harriet tell me the story again, encouraging her to add more details or explain when it seemed relevant. She had an easy manner about her, and a gentle, quiet humor that, even in the midst of this nightmare, peeked out now and then. But she was clearly both physically and mentally exhausted, and when she finished, she sat and stared silently out the window, as though she lacked the energy to even think of what to say or do next. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but there’s something I have to ask.” “You want to know if he might have left me,” she said tonelessly. I waited for her to continue. After a moment, she shook her head and turned to look at me. “No.” She straightened and gave me the most confident look I’d seen from her so far. “I understand why you’re asking, but I would bet the whole commonwealth of Virginia that he’d never cheat on me. Not ever. And lord knows, he’s had opportunity to. Conventions, business trips, late nights at work.” “Then, how…” I paused, knowing she could guess what I meant, and we’d both like it better if I didn’t need to spell it out. Still firmly, she said, “Because he tells me everything. He told me the time he got drunk during a conference and called his boss a jackass. He told me when he dented his rental car and reported that he had no idea how it happened. He even told me when his assistant at the bank told him she was in love with him—and he let me decide what to do about it.” She nodded to herself at the memory. If nothing else, she was sure of her man’s devotion, and for that, at least, I envied her. I don’t know whether it’s me, or the men I choose, or simply a reflection of the times, but three of my last four boyfriends had found monogamy too great a burden to bear. Good riddance to them. Of course, it was also possible that she was just in denial. Clients are often wrong, whether willfully or not. “OK,” I said. “Is there any other reason he might take off without telling you?” She tilted her head to the side, giving me questioning look. “Maybe rescuing a friend in distress?” I said. “Helping a family member he knows you don’t like?” I frowned, thinking, grasping for something even remotely plausible, and she stared at me eagerly, hoping for more. She seemed to realize I had nothing else to suggest, and sat back, looking momentarily numb again. “No,” she said. “Nothing like that. I did wonder at first if he ran into someone. Decided to go for a beer and managed to get drunk, then slept on their couch. But of course, as that first day wore on, that got less and less likely. And by now…” “You’ve called everyone?” “Yes.” She rested her hand gently on a stapled stack of papers on the table beside her. “I called everyone I could think of. Everyone in his contact list in his e-mail program that might have heard from him. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.” Her fists suddenly clenched, her eyes narrowed, and her lips pressed tightly together. I kept going, hoping to distract her. I asked about money, his credit cards, retirement accounts, investments. Nothing had been touched. She’d spent considerable time over the past few days going over the last three years worth of financial data, and nothing seemed amiss. Nothing was missing from the house, as far as she could tell. He didn’t even have much money with him. She thought it would have been less than $20, since he rarely carried much cash anymore. “Oh,” I said quickly, “why is that?” She half smiled. “He’d always be donating money, or loaning it out, or just giving big tips to people wherever he went. I don’t mean to sound…I mean, I love that about him, that he’s so generous, but you see—well, he’d just go through the money so quickly, so we agreed. He carried just enough for a paper, lunch, maybe a few little things, and told everyone his wife had him on a strict allowance.” She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose people thought I was controlling and cheap, but we really couldn’t afford for him to spend so much.” She looked intently at me, as though waiting for my approval or my judgment, so I said, “Sure, that makes sense.” She nodded again, and began shuffling through the papers. Based on what she showed me, it was clear they were comfortable financially, though not wealthy by any means. Most of their money was in the house, which was paid for, and their two cars. Kidnapping seemed unlikely, but still worth considering, I suppose. “Had anyone asked either of you for a large loan recently, or seemed particularly interested in your finances?” “Not so far as I know.” I continued. “Since the night he disappeared, especially right afterwards, were there any strange phone calls or hang-ups?” “No.” “Any odd letters or packages?” She froze. “Gosh, I don’t know. We don’t even have a mailbox here. Everything goes to our post office box, and there’s been nothing unusual there. I guess someone might have put something in a neighbor’s box by mistake.”