Point Of Departure. Laurie Breton
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there. Her body language didn’t scream guilt, but there was something I couldn’t put my finger on. She’s maybe not as fond of her sister-in-law as she’d like us to think.”
“If it was a crime to dislike your in-laws, half the population of the United States would be behind bars.”
“Good point. Understand, I’m not ready to write her off completely. But I like the husband better for this.”
“So you think he did her?”
“I dunno.” Lorna picked up a pen from her desk and began doodling on the desk blotter. “Scott Peterson was polite and cooperative with the authorities, too. At least he was at first. Handsome son of a bitch, too. Just like Winslow. Didn’t seem particularly distraught, either, if memory serves me.”
Policzki nodded slowly. “Mark Hacking reported his wife missing and then went out, cool as a cucumber, and bought a new mattress.”
“Lot of wives going missing these days.”
“Lot of guys who seem tired of being married.”
“Guy reminds me of Chuck Stuart. Slick, sincere, good-looking. With a dark side lurking underneath the surface.”
“I know I’ll hate myself later for asking this, but who’s Chuck Stuart?”
Lorna grinned. “I forget you’re just a baby. You were probably in diapers when the Stuart murder came down.”
“Hey, watch it. I’m not that young. The name’s vaguely familiar. I just can’t place it.”
Lorna got up, walked to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup of sludge. Perching on the corner of her desk, next to the stack of empty paper cups that were starting to resemble antique collectibles, she crossed one leg over the other and said, “Guy’s driving back from Lamaze class with his pregnant wife. They’re somewhere in Mission Hill when he calls 911, says they were robbed and shot by a black man. He’s got bullet wounds in the leg, the abdomen. Wife was shot in the head. She never stood a chance. Baby was born by C-section, but he never really had a chance, either. The case started one hell of an uproar. Black perpetrator, middle-class white victims just minding their own business. Everybody was, ‘Poor Chuck this,’ and ‘Poor Chuck that.’ Except that poor Chuck’s story started unraveling after his kid brother admitted he’d ditched a gun for big brother that night. Once the story fell apart, so did Chuck. A couple months after his wife and kid died, he took a header off the Tobin Bridge. And if you think racial tension was bad before he jumped, imagine how much hotter things got when the truth came out that there was no black man, that Chuck’s gunshot wounds were self-inflicted.”
“Sounds to me like the plot to a bad Lifetime movie.”
Lorna took a sip of coffee. “Now that you mention it,” she said, “I believe they turned it into one.”
Policzki tapped his PaperMate against the edge of his desktop. “So you think Winslow’s tired of being married?”
“I couldn’t say for sure, but you know what they say. If it walks like a rat and smells like a rat, has a long, skinny tail and likes cheese—”
“Chances are pretty good,” Policzki said, “that it’s a rat.”
“Exactly. I think we should do us a little checking up on the good professor. Open a few closet doors, see if we rattle any skeletons.”
The show must go on.
The old showbiz cliché ran through Mia’s head all Wednesday morning. No matter how hard she might wish it, the real estate industry wasn’t about to grind to a screeching halt because there’d been a homicide and her partner was missing. Mia still had to check the Multiple Listing Service for new listings, still had to answer a raft of e-mails and wade through a dozen voice mail messages. She had to finish the comparative market analysis she’d promised a new client who was in a rush to put his condo on the market because he’d just been transferred to San Francisco and had to move in three weeks. She had to make follow-up calls to touch base with contacts she’d met at yesterday’s seminar who might prove useful to her in the future. A closing to attend at eleven-thirty, which meant she probably wouldn’t get a copy of the settlement statement until ten forty-five, at which time she would have to call the client to make sure everybody was on the same page before they all converged on the title company. She had to follow up with a nervous buyer who needed a gentle nudge to commit to bidding on the house she’d looked at three times but couldn’t quite make up her mind about.
In her spare time, Mia had to deal with the fallout resulting from Kaye’s absence. The story had hit the papers this morning, and the phone was ringing off the hook. The ever-competent Bev was a godsend, juggling phone calls and walk-ins, routine paperwork and the random crisis with a finesse so smooth it seemed choreographed. She gleefully hung up on reporters, then, in an abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde, offered warm reassurance to clients who phoned to inquire about Kaye’s welfare.
Yolanda Lincoln, the part-time agent Mia and Kaye had brought in six months ago, did her best to help pick up the slack. But Yolanda and Mia both had their own busy schedules to keep, so plugging the holes Kaye left was a challenge. She’d been scheduled for two closings today. Mia sent Yolanda to the nine o’clock in her place, but Yolanda was already tied up midday, and Kaye’s own one o’clock was too close to Mia’s eleven-fifteen to guarantee that they wouldn’t overlap. So Mia conveyed her regrets to the title company via Bev, then called the buyer and spent twenty minutes calming his fears and convincing him that everything was in place, just as it should be, and that he’d make it through the closing just fine without his Realtor by his side.
The closings were the only piece of Kaye’s schedule that Mia was privy to. Because they worked in a small office with only three agents, she knew many of Kaye’s clients, just as Kaye knew quite a few of hers. But without access to the woman’s electronic date book, she had no way of knowing where Kaye was expected to be or when, not until a disgruntled client phoned to complain, or a stranger walked through the door to announce that he had an appointment with her.
Mia forwarded Kaye’s calls to her own phone and left a message on her partner’s voice mail saying that she was away from the office until further notice. This thing would probably blow over, or at least that was what she tried to tell herself. Kaye would come home, everything would be explained satisfactorily and her disappearance would turn out to be just a simple misunderstanding.
Kevin called from school around ten o’clock. “You didn’t give me an answer about Tampa,” he said.
With all the chaos surrounding Kaye’s disappearance, Mia had completely forgotten about Tampa. Or maybe it was just unconscious avoidance. She glanced at her watch and said sharply, “Why aren’t you in school?”
“Relax, Mom, I have a free period. I’m sitting in the cafeteria right now, drinking an orange juice. You should be proud of me. It’s not even carbonated.”
It was a not-so-subtle dig at her determination to save her son from the self-imposed junk food diet he was equally determined to live on. They’d had a number of go-rounds on the topic. She’d lectured him on good nutrition and he’d pointed out that he was a teenager and that junk food went with the territory. They’d finally reached a compromise. He agreed to eat the healthy, nutritious meals she prepared for him at home, and she agreed not to ask what he was eating when he walked out the door. What else could she do? Soon he would be eighteen, and her flimsy parental control, such as it was, would be ended for good. She might as well start getting used to it. Once he went off to college, she’d be an empty nester, rattling around that big old house all by herself. She might as well start getting used to that, too.
“Well?” he said. “Can I go or not? They need an answer today.”
She’d loved him since the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. It seemed only yesterday. Hard to believe that seventeen years had passed, harder to believe that it was time she started loosening the apron strings. She knew she was an overprotective mother, but she couldn’t seem