The Only Suspect Page 6

  “Bring the dog out here,” Dallas called to Rick. He was moving in the direction of Sam’s car. “See if he can pick up her scent on Sam’s Audi.”

  Sam looked like he was ready to throw a punch. Hannah wondered if that’s what Dallas wanted.

  “Of course, he can pick up her scent there,” Sam snapped. “Maureen rode in the car. She sometimes drove it. So what if he finds her scent?”

  “Well, if it’s not a fresh scent ...” Dallas shrugged. “It might clear a few things up if you let us take a look.”

  The muscle in Sam’s jaw twitched. “You haven’t changed at all, have you?”

  “Does that mean you’re refusing to let us search your car?” Dallas didn’t even try to hide the smirk.

  Sam walked back toward the house. He turned and pointed a finger at Dallas. “You can forget about looking around the house too. You want anything more from me, you’d better have a warrant.”

  “Good going,” Hannah said as they drove away.

  Dallas ignored the comment, and the sarcasm. “That mutt’s truly amazing.”

  Hannah was at the wheel, which was reason enough to keep her eyes on the road. “Holmes isn’t a mutt,” she said.

  “No reason to get technical. You know what I meant.”

  Hannah regretted many things about her move to Monte Vista. She reminded herself that her new partner was only one of them.

  “He did it,” Dallas said after a few minutes’ silence.

  Hannah felt like arguing with him simply for the sake of voicing disagreement. But she didn’t want to interact with Dallas any more than she had to right then. And as much as she hated to admit it, she knew the odds in situations like this. There was a reason the spouse was always suspect.

  “Aren’t you jumping the gun?” she asked. “We don’t know for sure she’s even missing under suspicious circumstances, much less dead.”

  “You think she just walked away?”

  “Possibly.”

  Dallas shook his head. “Whatever happened to the second Mrs. Russell, it isn’t good. And my bet’s on Sam.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “He’s a smug bastard, always has been. Thinks he’s better than everyone just because he got all the lucky breaks.”

  “I’d hardly call having his wife murdered a lucky break.”

  “It is if Sam killed her and then walked because some damned bleeding-heart juror refused to believe the evidence.”

  If, Hannah repeated silently. But clearly eleven people had been convinced of Sam’s guilt.

  “We need to get a warrant,” Dallas said. “We want to get our hands on the evidence while it’s fresh.”

  “Yeah, we do need to get one,” Hannah replied irritably. “No thanks to you.”

  “Hey, I did what any cop would do. You know we’ve got to search the house and grounds. What’s out of line about that?”

  “Do you ever think about trying a less confrontational approach?”

  Dallas grinned at her. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “The fun is in the payoff, which at this point is zip.” Hannah was reasonably sure that if she’d been there alone, Sam would have allowed her to conduct at least a cursory search. “We’re going to get nothing without a warrant, and we’re not going to get a warrant without probable cause. I doubt Sam’s prior arrest is enough to convince a judge.”

  Dallas had the good sense to drop the subject. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes while Hannah drove back to the station.

  As soon as they’d gone, I opened the fridge and poured myself a Diet Coke. What I really wanted was a beer. Make that a vodka martini. I yearned for the icy bite on my tongue, the warmth in my veins, the easing of the fear in my chest. I wanted it. I needed it. And for a moment, I actually considered it.

  Then I pushed the thought away as fast as I could. But the seed had been planted. The challenge now was to ignore it.

  I’d really screwed up dealing with Maureen’s disappearance. Right from the start. If I’d just told the truth about what had happened ... No, that would only have made things worse. Damn, why couldn’t I remember what had happened?

  Had Maureen and I left the house together? That would explain her car being there and the dog’s tracking her scent to the garage. I racked my brain for some memory, anything that might help me recall what had happened Saturday night.

  At least the dog hadn’t made a beeline for the trunk of my car. I should have tossed the shoe the minute I found it.

  That was the trouble with lies. They never stayed simple. They grew and took on a life of their own. One lie led to another and another, and before you knew it, you’d wrapped yourself in a tangle of deception that was bound to trip you up sooner or later. I didn’t even know what witnesses there might be. I could well have already backed myself into a corner from which there would be no escape.

  In disgust, I set my soda aside. I went out and and moved the Audi into the garage. Then, safe from prying eyes, I retrieved Maureen’s shoe from the trunk. I stuck it in her closet, noting with distress that its mate was nowhere to be seen.

  How had the shoe ended up in my trunk?

  I felt like a character in one of those horror films who is tied to a conveyor belt moving steadily toward the gnashing teeth of a powerful metal-crusher. I sensed danger ahead, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  Again, the vision of an iced martini flashed in my mind. The sharp, tangy punch of the first taste. The relief of tension. The muting of worry and fear.

  One drink. I could handle it. It had been five years, after all.

  The phone rang, and I reluctantly let the vision go.

  “Hi, Sam,” Sherri said. “Just checking to make sure you were home before I brought Molly over.”

  “I’m home.”

  “Do you have a flyer made up yet? There’s a bunch of us meeting down at the school this evening to distribute them.”

  “I started to work on it, but—”

  “Do you have the photo you want to use? Tell me what you want to say and I’ll have Bill put it together for you. You know how quick he is on the computer.”

  Actually, I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t really know either Bill or Sherri, aside from conversations at kids’ soccer games and an occasional school function. I was filled with gratitude for her willingness to jump in. “Thanks, Sherri. I appreciate this.”

  “I want to help,” she assured me. “We all do. It’s so terrible. Things like this don’t happen in Monte Vista.”

  I told her I’d have the photo for her by the time she delivered Molly then thanked her again. I’d started to work on a flyer myself late last night, but there was something so chilling, so irrefutably real about it that I couldn’t get beyond the word “missing.” I knew, though, which photo I wanted to use—not the glamorous one that greeted me every day from my office desk but one I thought captured the real Maureen much better. It was taken several months after we were married at a gathering Ira hosted in the backyard of his new home.

  Maureen saw only her flaws—her mouth was a bit too large, her eyes too deeply set. And her hair, which always looked fine to me, was, according to her, impossible. But she had an engaging smile and a way of looking at me that made me feel like a million dollars. And those were qualities that came across in the photo.

  I wrote out text for the flyer. Maureen Russell. Missing. Last seen ... Here I hesitated, then wrote down yesterday’s date. Saturday or Sunday, I reasoned; it wouldn’t make a difference in terms of the flyer, and I’d already committed to the story of Sunday. I added a brief physical description and concluded with, Five-thousand dollar reward for information leading to her safe return.

  I considered the amount. Five thousand seemed a paltry sum for the safe return of one’s wife, but I wasn’t sure where I’d get even that amount. I was still paying off legal debts from my defense in Lisa’s case, and I’d depleted my meager savings to buy out my dad’s share of the practice.
Moreover, frugality was not among Maureen’s virtues. I figured our precarious finances were a temporary situation that would improve as soon I paid off my dad and, hopefully, built up the practice.

  True, there was the life insurance payout from Lisa’s death and a small inheritance she’d received from her grandmother, but I’d put all of it into trust for Molly. I didn’t even have access to it except indirectly.

  Still, I felt cheap and uncaring to offer so little.

  Finally, I scratched out five and wrote in ten. I’d cross the bridge of finding the money if and when the time came.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sherri not only brought Molly home, she brought me lasagna as well.

  “I had it in the freezer,” she said. “I figured you wouldn’t feel like cooking tonight.”

  Or even eating. But I thanked her. “I’ve got something written out for the flyer. Are you sure you don’t mind putting it together?”

  “Not at all. I’m happy to be able to help.” She moved into the kitchen with the lasagna and set it on the counter. “This feels so strange, being here without Maureen. The police are taking this seriously, I hope.”

  “They seem to be.”

  “I would guess that sometimes they don’t. With an adult, I mean.”

  I nodded. I’d decided I needed information that Sherri could give me, but I found myself hesitating. Finally I just blurted it out. “When did you last talk to Maureen?”

  Sherri gave me a funny look. “Saturday, when she brought Molly over.”

  Okay, so it was Maureen, not me. That was a place to start. “I meant, what time? I’m trying to put together a framework of her activities in the days before she vanished.” At least that wasn’t a total lie.

  “Early afternoon. She called and asked if she could bring Molly over earlier than we’d planned because she wanted time to get her nails and hair done. It wasn’t a problem for me, and Heather and Molly get along so well. I know if I was being taken to Pietro’s for my anniversary, I’d want to look especially nice too.”

  Pietro’s, our special-occasion restaurant splurge. One more piece of the puzzle fell into place and, with it, the first glimmer of my lost hours. I remembered making the reservations. I’d asked for a table by the window.

  “She sounded a little frantic, trying to fit it all in. I told her to relax, that she’d look lovely no matter what.” Sherri’s voice broke with emotion. “And now she’s missing. God, I hope she’s okay.”

  Chase called. Dad came by. So did Jesse. As word spread, I heard from friends and neighbors and recapped my version of Sunday so often I almost came to believe it. The evening news out of Sacramento carried only a brief mention of Maureen’s disappearance. The account they gave was the same one I’d relayed to the police. Now, mixed with my worry about Maureen, was the worry that someone out there would see the coverage and know my story was a lie. I expected the police to show up at my door any minute and haul me in.

  Later that evening, I was sitting on the couch staring into space when Molly came and sat next to me.

  “Maybe she just took a trip and forgot to tell us,” Molly said.

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, are you, Daddy?”

  I put an arm around her. “No, honey, I’m not. I’m going to be around for a long, long time.”

  “And you’d tell me before you left?”

  “Not only that, I’d call you every day.”

  Molly was silent a moment. Then she snuggled closer. “I’m sorry about what I said this morning. About not caring if Maureen came back. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “We all say things we don’t mean sometimes.”

  “It wasn’t very nice though.”

  I stroked Molly’s hair. “I want you to feel you can tell me the truth, always, even if it isn’t ‘nice.’”

  “She’s okay,” Molly said. “Really.”

  I remembered the other part of what Molly had said. “And Maureen does like you,” I added. “She likes you a lot, which is why she tries so hard to make you like her.”

  Molly looped a finger into the neck of her T-shirt and exposed a heart-shaped locket on a gold chain. “She gave me this,” Molly said. “It was hers from when she was little.”

  I was touched by Maureen’s generosity. The gesture was all the more meaningful because Maureen never talked to me of her past. “That was very nice of her,” I said. “Did she tell you how she got it?”

  “Only that it was part of her lost childhood. That’s how she said it—lost.” Molly scrunched up her face, whether at the idea of a lost childhood or the gift of a locket, I couldn’t tell. “I didn’t wear it before because ... I guess because I didn’t want something of hers. But now I think maybe it’s like a good-luck charm or something, and it might bring her home. Do you think?”

  I kissed Molly’s forehead. “I think you’re the best daughter in the whole universe, and I love you very much.”

  “And wearing the locket?” She looked at me with the same amazing brown eyes her mother had. I felt a pang of loneliness. Ironically, Lisa would have been the one person in whom I could have confided the absolute truth.

  “It will definitely help,” I told Molly.

  Without the benefit of drink to ease my mind, I turned to ice cream and TV. I’d had way too much of both by the time I finally went to bed. But I wasn’t able to sleep.

  The empty space on Maureen’s side of the bed left me feeling unbalanced, as if I were perched on the edge of a vast, dark pit. My mind raced with unanswered questions. My chest was tight with worry.

  Maureen, please be okay. Whatever our difficulties, I want you home. I want you safe.

  No matter how hard I tried to pull up the filament of a memory from Saturday, my mind wouldn’t cooperate. It was like trying to remember an elusive dream. Sometimes I’d get almost to the edge of an image, and then it would vanish.

  How could I not remember?

  I gnawed on those long, dark hours like a dog with an old bone. Where had I gone? Who had seen me? And most important, of course, what had I done?

  The dried blood under my nails. Maureen’s shoe in my trunk and its missing mate. I touched my bruised lip and hoped I’d gotten it defending her, not hurting her.

  The anguish of not knowing was terrifying.

  I tossed and turned, throwing the covers back in the heat of panic one moment and pulling them around me to make a nest the next. Mind and body equally tangled.

  And then a thought flashed through the jumble. Maureen’s car had been in the shop last week. She’d driven me to work so she could use mine for the day. I sat bolt upright in bed.

  There it was, a simple explanation. Maureen must have taken the shoe with her the day she had my car. To the shoe repair, maybe. Or she’d wanted it when she was shopping, to see if it would go with a dress or match a handbag. There were any number of reasons her shoe could have ended up in my trunk. Reasons that had nothing to do with her disappearance.

  I felt the weight in my chest lift.

  But other, more sinister explanations tugged at me as well, mocking my eagerness to embrace such an innocent interpretation.

  I had no doubt that Dallas regarded me as a suspect. I worried what he would find when he pursued that avenue further. The shoe, for example. It now sat in our closet without its mate. Who knew what he’d make of that? It would be wisest to simply toss the shoe. I promised myself I’d do so in the morning.

  I checked the clock. Two A.M. I got out of bed and walked to the window. The night was dark, with only the sliver of a moon for light. Across the road I noticed a shadowy figure partially obscured by a hedge. A neighbor walking his dog, most likely. Or a teen headed home after sharing a six-pack with his buddies. Nothing I hadn’t seen a hundred times before. But tonight it made me nervous. I double-checked the doors and windows then looked in on Molly. I noticed the framed photo of Lisa that she usually kept on her dresser had been moved to the bedside table. I prayed that Maureen
would not become the second major loss in her life.

  By the time I went back to check the window, the figure was gone, but my uneasiness remained.

  I gave up all hope of sleep. I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and turned on the light. I’d let panic take the place of logic, I decided. Not only was it counterproductive, it was unlike me. If I hadn’t harmed Maureen, and that was going to be my working premise for the time being, I’d better find out what had happened. After today’s experience with the cops, I didn’t have a lot of faith they would make finding the truth a priority. Instead, they’d nail me.

  I opened the drawer to Maureen’s bedside table. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I was hoping that something would help me make sense of what had happened. Short of that, I needed to prepare for what the cops might find. I was certain it was only a matter of time before they came back with a warrant.

  The bedside drawer held no surprises. A copy of Cosmopolitan, a Sandra Brown paperback, and a Walkman. Her dresser drawers were equally uninformative. Underwear, pantyhose, nighties, and T-shirts. Maureen kept her things neat, compulsively neat I’d sometimes thought. Panties and bras folded and arranged in rows separated by quilted dividers. Knit tops and sweaters stacked so tidily they could have passed for new. I’d always felt uncomfortable breaching her carefully ordered space, even when she’d asked me to. It felt worse now.

  At the back of the pantyhose drawer, I found a snapshot of me and Lisa, and I felt my throat grow tight. We were sitting on an outdoor bench eating ice cream. It must have been late spring or summer, given our clothing and the surrounding foliage. I didn’t remember seeing that particular photo before, but the memories it evoked were vivid. We’d spent so many afternoons in that crazy joy of simply being together. There were times still when I would see the sun glinting off water a certain way, or listen to the soft buzz of a bee gathering pollen, and turn, expecting to find Lisa beside me.