Missing Persons (18 page)

“But her mom said that you and Theresa were serious. If they were close wouldn’t she know that wasn’t true?”

“Theresa probably just said that to get her mom to calm down. Mrs. Moretti was really angry when Julia got engaged before Theresa.”

Now I was the one taken off guard. “She was angry? Why?”

“Julia and the guy she married were together, like, six months before he proposed. Theresa’s mom would go on and on about how Julia didn’t know the guy. Shit like that. Sorry, I’m not supposed to swear on camera.” He looked toward Andres.

“It’s fine. Just tell me again. Did Linda not trust Julia’s husband?”

“I don’t think she even knew the guy. I met him once, at their engagement party. He seemed okay. A little dull, but a good guy. But Mrs. Moretti didn’t like him. It was like he was stealing away Theresa’s chance to be the first of the kids to get married. I don’t get it, but Theresa used to say that her mom liked the limelight, and now Julia had it and that pissed her off.”

“She doesn’t strike me as someone who craves the spotlight,” I told him.

“You should have seen her after Theresa disappeared. She couldn’t do enough interviews.”

“Her daughter was missing. She was desperate.”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“I was under the impression that you spoke with Linda every week.”

“She calls me. What am I supposed to do? If I don’t pick up, she calls again and again. My girlfriend said I should just change my number, but I’d feel like a heel. I get that she’s lost her daughter, and I get that she thinks she and I share that. But how long am I supposed to stop my life?”

“It doesn’t seem like you stopped it for very long. You were dating someone else pretty quickly.”

“I was in bad shape. I needed someone to be there for me.” He was getting defensive. “I met Karen when she came to a play I was doing. We just hit it off right away.”

“What play?”

“It was a production of
Peter Cottontail
, an adaptation of the TV special.”

“A children’s play?”

“Yeah. Karen came with her niece.”

“But
Peter Cottontail
is an Easter story, isn’t it?”

“Yep. We had a really cool production. Great costumes and stuff. I have a flyer around here somewhere, if you need it.”

“You never know.”

“And listen, I know you guys put reenactments in these kinds of shows, so if you can pass my résumé to your casting guy I’d appreciate it.”

“I
f I were Theresa I’d have run from these people,” Victor said, as he, Andres, and I ate lunch at an Indian restaurant. “They all seem like freaks.”

“And the way he handed Kate four different head shots,” Andres added. “What was that about?”

“He’s doing this for some TV time,” I said. “Not the first.”

“But it was like Theresa was some booty call,” Andres said. “You would think he would be smart enough to at least look like he cared about her.”

I finished my samosa. “Last year Easter was early April?”

“Yeah. So?”

“And Theresa went missing in late May,” I pointed out. “More than a month after he met his new girlfriend.”

“Is that a motive? Why not just break up with Theresa if he’s into somebody else?”

“I don’t know, but it might be an interesting angle for the show. Maybe we imply that he tried,” I said. “Maybe she was persistent, like her mother. Maybe she called and called.”

“Why would she?” Andres asked. “She had the ex-boyfriend in her back pocket.”

“Unless she didn’t want the ex. If Theresa was lonely, if she decided Wyatt was the one for her, maybe she wouldn’t let go. Maybe, even if it wasn’t the greatest relationship in the world, we could get some sound that suggests she would have done anything to keep it.”

I didn’t know Theresa, but it didn’t seem far-fetched. If she did want to get married, she could have married Jason. But that was not what her mother wanted. Her mother wanted Wyatt. And Theresa wanted to please her mother. Besides, if she loved Wyatt, she might do anything.

“So she won’t let go, and Wyatt can’t take it?” Andres was seeing where I was headed. “Or maybe she was dumping him for the other guy Julia mentioned, and his ego couldn’t take it. Or maybe he found out about the money, or the strip club.”

“And, maybe by accident, he kills her,” I said. “Pushes her, head hits the coffee table, that sort of thing. It would look great in a reenactment.”

“And then what?” Andres asked. “He buries her somewhere?”

“Maybe. Or he dumps her in the river or in the middle of Lake Michigan. Who knows?” I sat back.

“Or she said to hell with this, and she’s sitting on some tropical island somewhere.”

“Or the guy who gave her the ten grand killed her and took back the money,” I said. But as the words were coming out of my mouth I changed my mind. “There’s records of those things, right? If Theresa had taken the money, or someone else had, the police would be able to trace it. So why hasn’t it led them anywhere? And why did Rosenthal want to hide it from me?”

“It’s got nothing to do with money.” Victor finally chimed in with an opinion. “It’s Wyatt.”

Andres shrugged. “I don’t know. I can see how he might have killed her but it’s been more than a year. The longer he talked, the more it seemed like he’d be too stupid to get away with murder.”

“Didn’t care for the guy the moment I met him,” Victor said. “Did not care for him.”

“You didn’t like him because he’s good-looking,” I said.

“I didn’t like him because he’s not telling the truth about something. You have to remember, the two of you are staring at the guy. He can charm you with his pretty-boy looks. But all I’m doing is listening. And I heard something.”

“What?” Andres asked.

“A lying douche bag.” Victor sat back, put his headphones on. “Mark my words. He knows where Theresa is.”

“Yesterday you were sure it was the ex-boyfriend,” I pointed out.

“I didn’t have all the evidence. Now I do. When Theresa’s body shows up, that Wyatt guy will be her killer.” Victor clicked on his iPod and sat back, content to end his part of the conversation with a prediction.

“It doesn’t really matter, does it,” Andres said. “Without a body, we can make all the guesses we want, but there’s no evidence that a crime was even committed.”

“Like the cause of death being listed as undetermined,” I said, more to myself than to Andres.

“What do you . . .” He suddenly understood. “Is that what it’s listed as . . . Frank, I mean?”

“I think I’m officially a suspect,” I whispered.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s what I tried to tell Detective Podeski, but Gray Meyer said Podeski thinks I killed Frank.”

“What does Gray Meyer have to do with it?”

“No idea,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter. Without a cause of death, there is no crime, so I don’t need to get freaked out that the police are going to show up at my door.”

“You didn’t do anything, Kate.”

“Remember that story we did about the guy who spent ten years in prison for killing his neighbor?”

“The one for Science Television? That was all about DNA. What’s that got to do with Frank?”

“An innocent person got sent to prison. That’s what it has to do with Frank. It happens, Andres. Innocent people get convicted. But if the cause of death remains undetermined, they can make all the guesses they want and I don’t have to worry.”

Andres moved his fork back and forth across his curry. “Except, Kate,” he said quietly, “if someone did kill Frank, don’t you want to know? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life like Theresa’s family, wondering what happened?”

T
hat question was still on my mind as we set up the interview with Julia at her Ravenswood apartment. Her husband, David, arrived early from work to offer his support, and the two held hands and spoke softly in a corner while Andres and Victor set the lights.

Julia seemed to have moved on quite easily with no answers about Theresa. So had Wyatt. But Linda and Jason were stuck reliving, and rewriting, the past. Did I need answers? What would it change if I knew why Frank had died? If Vera had killed him—and who else could it be?—would seeing her in prison make me feel vindicated?

I know the answer to that is supposed to be a resounding yes. But I wasn’t sure that knowing Frank was the victim of a homicide would make his loss easier than thinking of it as just an untimely end. I’d been around enough families of murder victims to recognize the hollow misery they shared. They can’t let go, can’t stop wondering “What if,” can’t stop imagining the last moments of their loved one’s life.

I didn’t want that for myself. I wanted to be Julia and Wyatt. But even as I thought it, I knew I couldn’t be. If there was a chance that someone, and by “someone” I meant Vera, had killed Frank, I had to know.

“Hey, Kate, we’re ready.” Andres tapped me on the shoulder. “You’ve been off in your own world.”

“I was just looking at Julia and David.”

They were still in the corner, hands touching, whispering, smiling and gazing at each other. I’m not sure they remembered the rest of us were even in the room.

“Newlyweds,” Andres said. “There ought to be a law where they’re banned from public view.”

“I think it’s called a honeymoon.”

“Two weeks is not long enough to stop the newly in love from being annoying,” he said. “It’s just hard to believe my wife and I were ever like that.”

“I know the feeling.”

 

 

Once Julia was in the chair facing me, I maneuvered things so that David sat in the corner of the room, out of camera range and with Julia’s back to him. If he was within her line of sight, I knew she would spend the entire interview looking at him for approval, instead of me. But I could see David, sitting on the edge of the couch, hanging on her every word.

The first few questions were the softballs. Julia and Theresa had met in grade school. They had known each other for all of life’s turning points from the first kiss to the first heartbreak. Theresa was supposed to be Julia’s maid of honor at her September wedding.

“At first I was going to cancel the wedding. I figured David and I could wait until Theresa was found, but no one thought that was a good idea,” she said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see David frown.

“Even Theresa’s family?” I asked.

Julia looked about to cry. “I think they did. They insisted on making my cake and the whole family came to the wedding. But I did hear Theresa’s mom had told someone that she thought it would have been more appropriate if David and I had gotten married more quietly, you know, instead of having a big party and a band.”

“But Theresa had been gone for nearly four months by then.”

“Exactly! Life has to go on. I can’t sit and wait for Theresa to come back. She might never come back.”

“But you can understand that her mother doesn’t share that view. For her, life can’t go on without Theresa.”

“But for the rest of us, it has to.”

I could tell she was getting frustrated, and we were getting off track. “Tell me about the day Theresa disappeared,” I said.

“I got a call from Mrs. Moretti at about midnight. She said she hadn’t seen Theresa since the afternoon. She thought Theresa and I were supposed to meet up at some coffee shop. I told her we didn’t have plans to do anything and that I’d been shopping all day.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. I was buying gifts for the bridesmaids, so obviously I wouldn’t want Theresa with me.”

“Was Theresa close to her family?”

I could see panic in Julia’s eyes. She looked around for David.

“Julia,” I said, “there’s no right or wrong answer. Just tell the truth.”

She nodded and took a breath. “She was close to her family.” There was hesitation in her voice. “I think, though, that she was growing up and it was hard for her mom to see that.”

“I’ve been told that her mom wasn’t pleased that you were getting married before Theresa.”

Another deep breath. “I think Mrs. Moretti had been planning Theresa’s wedding since she was a little girl. When I picked robin’s egg blue for the bridesmaids’ dresses Mrs. Moretti tried to get me to change it. She said robin’s egg blue was Theresa’s favorite color, but if I used it, Theresa would look like she was copying me when she got married.”

“Was Theresa close to getting married?”

“I don’t think so. She was dating Wyatt but it wasn’t going any where.”

“Mrs. Moretti seemed to think they were serious.”

“That’s what she wanted to think.”

“Was Theresa in love with Wyatt?”

Julia sat quietly and we all waited in silence for her answer. “I think so,” she said. “Or at least I think she wanted to be. Theresa wasn’t a rebel. She may have done some drinking and some . . . some other stuff her family wouldn’t have approved of, but she did want to please her mom. I think she did want to get married, and I think maybe at least for a while, she convinced herself she was in love with him.”

“But he wasn’t in love with her.”

“It didn’t seem that way. I only met him a few times, but I didn’t get the impression he put much effort into Theresa. I think he was just going to have fun until she became a nuisance and then he was planning on dumping her.” She paused. “He said something like that to David at our engagement party.”

I looked to David, who nodded.

“I have to say it’s never made any sense to me why Linda Moretti would prefer Wyatt, a struggling actor, over Jason, who has a good job, ambition, and genuinely seemed to love Theresa. What did she have against him?”

“Jason is a good guy but he loved Theresa a little too much, if you know what I mean. When they were dating he would call her ten times a day, show up at her school—things like that. Even after they broke up, he still called.”