Missing Persons (31 page)

I sat across from Gray, a charming, handsome, rich, successful man, and felt as sorry for him as I had been feeling for myself all these months. I reminded myself I didn’t care who had actually killed Theresa, only who I was going to make
look
guilty, and I no longer had the heart to fit Gray for the part.

“Let me ask you about Wyatt,” I said.

Gray seemed puzzled. “What about him?”

“You helped him get an agent. Why?”

“I gave him the name of an agent. I just thought it would help.”

“Back to helping everybody.”

“That really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a little too good to be true.”

“I know that in the fields of politics and entertainment this doesn’t always apply, but some people are who they say they are.”

“Are you who you say you are?”

“It depends on who’s asking.”

“I’m asking.”

He smiled a little then fidgeted with his tie before looking back at me. “Probably not. But then, you have a camera in my face.”

“What about with Theresa? Did she see the real you?”

He leaned forward, well out of the shot. “Theresa was just a young woman I knew. And I did not . . .” He glanced over at Victor, obviously aware that, whether his face was on camera or not, he was being recorded. “Theresa was the best friend of my friend’s daughter. And she did a little work for me. That’s all.”

“Okay. You can lean back,” I said. Gray nodded and readjusted his position. “Let’s get back to Wyatt. Do you think he is who he says he is?”

“I don’t know. Did you ever check out that bar he worked at?”

“He and Theresa had a big fight a few days before she disappeared. But you knew that when you sent me there. Do you think Wyatt did it?”

He glanced toward Andres. “Can you stop the tape?”

Andres turned to me and I nodded. I heard the camera click off.

Gray returned his eyes to me. “It was only three days after Theresa went missing. We were all at a call center that had been set up in the basement of a church. The same church she was just buried from. Everyone was in shock, as you can imagine. Theresa’s family was falling apart. Jason was hovering around outside, just trying to be a part of the whole thing. Julia was calling everyone she could think of, trying to find Theresa. And Wyatt was asking me if I knew the name of an agent. Seventy-two hours after his girlfriend vanishes and he’s worried about his career. Honestly, Kate. What’s that about?”

A
n hour later, Wyatt sat in the same chair Gray had occupied. I didn’t bother with lead-ins. I just went straight to the question Gray had wanted an answer to.

“Why, in the midst of a search for Theresa, were you hitting Gray Meyer up for the name of an agent?”

Wyatt was caught off guard. “I don’t think it was in the midst of anything.”

“At the call center, less than seventy-two hours after Theresa went missing. Seems an odd time to be worried about your career.”

“I was just making small talk. I’d never met Gray before. Theresa had talked about him. She said he was all connected and stuff. I was just curious if he knew. I didn’t expect him to give me a name. When he did, what was I supposed to do?”

“You started dating your current girlfriend before Theresa was even gone, didn’t you? You met your current girlfriend in April; Theresa disappeared in late May.”

“I met her. I didn’t date her.” He shifted in his chair.

“But you were ready to move on.”

“I suppose. What’s going on here? I thought we were going to talk about how sad we all are that Theresa’s dead.”

“Theresa’s dead because somebody killed her,” I said. “That’s not conjecture anymore. That’s fact. Now we have to ask who.”

“Well, it wasn’t me.” He laughed a nervous laugh. “What about that ex-boyfriend of hers? The stalker.”

“You told me he was harmless.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before, you know, her body was found.” He took a breath. “But now that we know for sure that she’s dead, he seems like the best suspect, doesn’t he?”

“Because she dumped him for you?”

“That’s exactly why. He couldn’t handle being rejected. Theresa didn’t want anything more to do with him. She was scared of him.”

“You didn’t say that before. Did you tell the police?”

“I didn’t want to ruin the guy’s life.”

“Your girlfriend was missing and you didn’t tell anyone you thought Jason had something to do with it because you didn’t want to ruin his life?”

“I didn’t really care.”

The words came out like bullets, and when he was finished he looked as shocked as I was. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t care about Theresa. That much was obvious from the beginning. But it was astounding that he would say it. On camera.

 

 

After Wyatt left, Andres placed his finger on the rewind button. “Are we keeping that?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know. That’s going to be really hard for Linda to hear, don’t you think?”

“I haven’t gone that soft. That will be the best moment of the show, especially with Linda’s buildup of him being Mr. Wonderful. I’ll try to prepare her, though.”

I wasn’t really sure how I would do that. I called Linda to confirm our interview for the next day, hoping to softly broach the subject. I was expecting a tearful conversation, but Linda was quite upbeat.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” she said. “I’m going to bring lunch, so don’t eat before the interview. And we might actually have some other people join us.”

“Other people?”

“I talked to Gray Meyer at the funeral about putting together a nursing scholarship in Theresa’s name and he’s going to help arrange a benefit to get it started. He’s going to meet me at the restaurant where we are doing the interview. We’re going to brainstorm ways to raise funds. Maybe you can put something about the scholarship on the show.”

“Yeah, sure. I just interviewed him today and he didn’t mention it.”

“Oh, he’s so modest,” she gushed.

“Did you know he gave Theresa a bracelet?”

“The charm bracelet? She loved it. I showed you the photo of her with the nurse’s cap, didn’t I?”

I remembered that she had. “Did Gray give her that charm?”

“I did. What’s a charm bracelet with just one charm on it?” She seemed almost playful. “By the way, I’ve told Tom to be with me just in case I need him. I’ve also left a message for Julia to meet up with us for lunch. And of course Wyatt. I’m really hoping to see him.”

I took a deep breath, ready to tell her about his comments during the interview. Then I chickened out. “We should talk about him tomorrow.”

“Okay, Kate. I’ll see you at one o’clock. And thanks so much. I know you’re going to do everything you can to honor Theresa’s memory.”

I didn’t respond to that. I just said good-bye and hung up. There was one other call I needed to make before Julia, and probably David, showed up for the final interview of the day.

“Jason?” He had, much to my surprise, picked up.

“Hi, Kate. Look, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. It’s just, well, now that we know what happened, this whole thing seems really creepy.”

“I know you haven’t been comfortable with this from the beginning, Jason, but it’s even more important now that you get your side of things out there. More and more people are pointing their finger at you. And that’s easy to do if you’re not there to defend yourself. I’d like you to have a chance to talk about how you feel knowing that Theresa is dead and her killer is still out there.”

“Maybe next week.”

“I need to do this tomorrow,” I said.

He spoke so softly that I almost couldn’t hear him. “Is eleven okay?”

As soon as I agreed, he hung up, leaving me wondering if he would be able to go through with it. Jason struck me as a little fragile, and maybe talking about Theresa’s death on a television show was the last thing he needed to do. But it was my job, and if he wanted to say no he would have, I told myself. Except I knew I wasn’t letting him say no. I was pushing, and maybe I was pushing too hard.

I
turned to see Julia and David come into the room. David immediately went over to Andres and Victor to say hello but seemed to be avoiding me. Or maybe I was just reading into things, because of what had happened at Hank’s Restaurant.

“How are you doing?” I asked Julia.

“I feel like it happened all over again. Like it’s the first day and she’s missing and we’re all in shock.” She hesitated. “But now, you know, it’s over and we can move on without any more interruptions.”

“Interruptions?”

“David and I had been planning to look at houses this week. He just got a promotion at work and we thought it would be a good time. But we had to spend the weekend at the search, and then the wake and funeral, and now this interview,” she said. “I don’t mind doing it . . .”

“Of course not,” I agreed. “It’s just that all this stuff that’s happened with Theresa is sort of overshadowing what’s happening with you.”

“Exactly. It’s happened our whole lives. Did you know that my birthday is three days after hers?”

“I didn’t.”

“When we were growing up, her mother would throw this huge birthday party for her, and by my birthday everyone was sort of over it. My getting married was the first time I was going to have all the attention.”

“And then she had to disappear and throw the dimmer switch on your spotlight.”

Julia froze. I probably shouldn’t have said it. Well, actually, I know I shouldn’t have said it, since I was supposed to be her friend until I got the final interview on tape. But I was getting tired of Theresa’s death having been either an inconvenience or an opportunity for these people. Vera, Frank, and I might have made for a screwed-up threesome, but at least we hadn’t entirely lost perspective on which of us had the worst end of the deal.

My big mouth had exactly the impact I’d expected on Julia’s interview. For the entire time, I got “Theresa was amazing and we all miss her” as the answer to nearly every question I asked. Even when I brought out Rosenthal’s questions, Julia used the subject of the missing charms as an opportunity to praise her dead friend, and she repeated, almost in the same words, where she’d been on the day Theresa disappeared. For a nice added touch, she named the stores where she’d been shopping for bridesmaids’ gifts.

“You must have shown the police receipts,” I said.

“I didn’t buy anything. I was just looking. I ended up getting all the gifts online a few weeks later.”

That was convenient. I asked a few more questions but the interview was going nowhere. Rather than continue past the first tape, I turned to David, who was hovering at the back of the room.

“Why don’t we get you in here?” I asked. “I think you would have an interesting, more objective opinion about her.”

He shook his head. “Camera shy.”

“You weren’t the other day at the bakery,” I reminded him. “Look, David, I have Theresa’s friends and family and I think they’re all in such shock that it’s difficult for any of them to give me what I need for this to be a good story. But a man in your field is used to being objective, to setting aside your own emotions and opinions and just looking at things as they are. I really need that.”

He nodded. It’s amazing how people can be so easily stroked. Once he sat down, my attitude changed.

“One thing that’s interested me as I’ve done these interviews,” I said, “is that everyone describes Theresa as a nice girl, a good girl. Maybe she enjoyed a drink or two, but what twenty-two-year-old doesn’t. How is it that the only people to hint at a dark side are you and Julia?”

“We knew her better than the others.”

“Okay. So what is the dark side? Who is it that she was involved with?”

“I never got a name.”

“What did Theresa say that made you think there was someone?”

“I don’t know. She just said there was someone.”

“She told you.”

“Yes.”

“You must have been close, if she was confiding in her friend’s fiancé about behavior that everyone else has described as outside her character.”

“I guess.”

“So what did she tell you?”

He squirmed a little. “Maybe it wasn’t anything specific. I just got a feeling that she was stepping out on Wyatt.”

“Did she give you any details?”

He looked around. His neck was getting red and he was looking down at his hands. I waited but he didn’t answer.

“You really have no idea whether Theresa was actually involved with anyone other than Wyatt, do you?” I said. “You just made it up.”

“I don’t know.” I started to have the distinct impression that I’d been duped. Had I really been manipulated by this dull-as-toast husband?

“Why would you tell me that Theresa had a dark side? Were you trying to get me to look somewhere else? Not to look at you and Julia?”

He looked up at me. “Why would you look at us? We didn’t do anything.”

“Did you know Hank’s Restaurant, where Theresa said she was going?”

“No. Never been there.”

“You’ve never walked inside that place? Not once in your life?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know it now. But I assumed you were asking about before.”

“So you go there now. Do you go frequently?”

“No. I think you misunderstood. Because of Theresa’s disappearance I’ve certainly heard of it. I may have gone there once or twice.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Then how come the manager and a waitress recognized you from footage I showed them? In fact, the waitress even knew you ordered a BLT no mayo and chocolate cream pie. She said they were your favorites.”

I heard Julia gasp. She almost got to her feet but Victor motioned for her to stay where she was.