Point Of Departure. Laurie Breton
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I gotta run, the bell just rang. If I’m late for English class, Miss Crandall will have a bird. See you tonight.”
And he was gone, the connection broken, leaving Mia holding a dead telephone receiver. She should be glad he was growing up, should be proud of the man he was turning into. And she was. It was just happening so soon. She wasn’t ready. Maybe she never would be.
She’d just hung up the phone when her brother burst into her office, looking like a wild man, his hair awry, his shirt wrinkled and blind fury in his eyes. He flung a sheaf of papers on her desk and demanded, “Did you know about this?”
“What’s going on?” she said. “Have they found Kaye?”
Her brother planted both fists on the edge of her desk and loomed over her, his face dark with fury. “You heard me, damn it! Did you or did you not know about this?”
She’d never seen Sam like this, not even when they were kids and he’d had one of his weekly go-rounds with their dad. Fury didn’t set well on her brother’s handsome features. His complexion was mottled with rage, his eyes bloodshot and wild. Like some kind of caged animal.
“I don’t know,” she said, reining in her own too-short fuse. “Maybe it would help if I knew what ‘this’ refers to.” She fumbled for her reading glasses, slid them onto her face and peered through them at the paperwork he’d so unceremoniously deposited amid the sales contracts and the flyers and the gazillion notes that littered her desk. “‘Petition for Divorce,’” she read. “‘Katherine Bradford Winslow, plaintiff.’” Mia raised startled eyes to his, then continued reading. “‘Samuel L. Winslow, defendant…’ Christ, Sam. I had no idea.”
He continued to sway over her desk, so close she could smell the coffee on his breath. And something else, something slightly medicinal. Had he been drinking? At ten-fifteen in the morning?
“No idea,” he said. “You’re her business partner. Her sister-in-law. You see her, you talk to her, every blessed day of your life. And you want me to believe she decided to file for divorce and didn’t bother to mention it to you?”
Mia’s anger caught up to her. “Believe what you want,” she snapped, removing the reading glasses and tossing them down on the desk. “But you might want to take a look in the mirror before you attack me. Because it seems she didn’t bother to share her plans with you, either.”
“Jesus Christ.” He wheeled away from the desk, raked his fingers through his hair as he paced to the window and back to Mia’s desk. Through the open doorway, she saw Bev watching, her hand on the phone and her face etched with concern.
Behind Sam’s back, Mia frowned and shook her head. Bev took the hint, discreetly moving to another corner of the office, where she pulled out a file drawer and focused intently on her filing.
“Shut the door,” Mia ordered him.
His mouth set in a grim line, Sam closed the door with a little more force than was called for. “This is a place of business,” she snapped. “You can’t just come storming in here, roaring like a lion and sending people running for cover. Around here, we act civilized.”
“How could she do this to me? After all the shit I’ve gone through with that woman, how could she do this now? I’m on the verge of getting tenure. The least little thing rocking the boat could end it all. I could strangle her.”
Mia just stared at this wild-eyed stranger who looked like her brother, walked like her brother, even sounded like her brother. Except that the words coming from his mouth made no sense. “Under the circumstances,” she said, “that’s a pretty unfortunate choice of words.”
“If I don’t get tenure, my career is over!”
“Your wife is missing,” Mia said. “Maybe dead. And all you can think about is your career? I don’t think I know you anymore, Sam. I don’t think I want to know you anymore.”
He deflated abruptly, like a balloon stuck with a hatpin. “Shit,” he said.
“Will you please sit down? Have you called Detective Abrams yet?”
He slumped onto the chrome-and-tweed chair opposite her desk. “I’ll get to it.”
“You’ll get to it,” Mia repeated. “While your wife is out there God knows where, maybe hurt or kidnapped or dead, you’ll eventually get around to telling the cops about evidence you’ve been withholding?”
“I’m not withholding evidence!”
“You lied, Sam. That’s withholding evidence.”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell Abrams everything. It shouldn’t matter anyway. My fight with Kaye is not relevant to any of this.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Because! Because I just know!”
“Oh, so now you have a crystal ball? Tell me, oh great one, what are my odds of winning the lottery next week? Probably one hell of a lot better after you look into your crystal ball and give me the numbers ahead of time.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Listen to me, shit-for-brains. I hate to tell you this, but relevant or not, that divorce petition is a matter of public record. It’ll take the cops about ninety seconds to unearth it. When they do, you can be sure they’ll come knocking at your door again. If you’re on their short list—which we don’t know for sure yet—right now all they have is suspicion. Once they get their hands on that—” she indicated the legal papers “—then they’ll have motive. In my experience, cops are quite fond of motive.”
“You know damn well I didn’t do anything to Kaye.”
“Well, the cops don’t know it, and they’re the ones that matter. It’s time to come clean with them, Sam, before this gets any worse than it already is.” She eyed him speculatively. “Unless there’s some reason you don’t want her to be found.”
“Jesus, Mia, I can’t believe you’d say that.”
“Why not? Your wife just filed divorce papers. Maybe she’s leaving you for another man. Maybe your ego can’t take it. Maybe she’s threatening to take you to the cleaners. Leave you with nothing but a toothbrush and a pup tent. Take away your daughter. Lie to the courts and tell them you’re an abusive husband, a lousy father. So maybe you decide there’s only one way to shut her up, and that’s to get rid of her—”
“Stop it!” he shouted. “Just stop it!”
“What do you expect, Sam? That’s exactly what the cops will be thinking once they find out about the divorce petition. You have to tell them before they stumble across it.”
“You don’t know, do you?” he said. “You really don’t know.”
There was more? Awash with dismay, Mia clasped her hands in front of her and stared at him, not sure she wanted to hear it. She hadn’t slept worth beans last night. She’d skipped breakfast, she was exhausted, and it wasn’t yet ten-thirty. She still had a lot of day to get through. “What?” she said wearily. “What is it I’m supposed to know now?”
“If the cops start digging, they’ll find ample motive. Kaye’s been cheating on me.”
“What?”
Her brother’s eyes softened. “You really didn’t know, did you?”
“Come on, Sam. You must be wrong.”
“She admitted it, Mia. I confronted her, and she admitted it to my face.”
“Oh, Sam,” Mia said. “I’m so sorry.”
He tucked his hands into his pockets, walked to the window and stared out at the back of the brick apartment building across the alley. “Yeah, well, it’s not the first time.”
“She’s