Back Against The Wall. Janice Kay Johnson

season. She was a CPA,” he said, seeing Tony’s surprise. “She worked—I don’t know—fifteen or twenty hours a week most of the year, filing for extensions for people, stuff like that. February through April were, like, time-and-a-half. Anyway, I thought maybe she hadn’t been able to get her car started or something, so I called the tax service she worked for to see if she was still there, but she hadn’t been scheduled to work that day. So then we took turns calling everyone we could think of, but no one had heard from her.”

      I. We. The kids had obviously taken leading roles in trying to track down their mother. But then, their father had very likely known exactly where she was.

      “Beth made dinner,” Matt continued tensely. These recollections were understandably vivid. “We kept thinking Mom would walk in the door and be surprised because we were all supposed to know where she’d been, but it didn’t happen. Dad waited until morning, then called the police.” A shrug said, You know the rest.

      “When did someone think to check whether any of her possessions were missing?” Tony asked.

      “The cop did, when he came to the house. He seemed to think we were idiots for not doing that sooner, but... I guess none of us really thought she’d just walk out. We worried she’d been in an accident or something.”

      Except her husband had presumably brushed his teeth before going to bed after her inexplicable disappearance. Shaved in their bathroom the following morning, right before he’d called the cops. Under the circumstances, how could he not have noticed the gaps in the clutter on the counter and in the medicine cabinet?

      “What was missing?” Tony asked, even though Beth had answered the same question yesterday.

      “Her purse, I remember that. It wasn’t anywhere. Her cell phone, which would have been in it.”

      And which, thirteen years ago, would not have had GPS.

      “Beth and Dad thought maybe some clothes. Some of her makeup and some things from the medicine cabinet. You know.”

      Birth control pills. Interesting he didn’t want to say that, given his earlier, scathing speculation on his parents’ sex life.

      “So the responding officer said you’d probably be hearing from your mother.”

      “Yeah, shows what he knew,” Matt said with understandable bitterness.

      “You have to understand that most adults who disappear choose to do so. It puts police in a difficult position.”

      Matt locked gazes with him in a challenge. “But when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.”

      “I can’t deny it,” Tony admitted, then asked, “Did the officer follow up in the next days or weeks? Or did your father contact them when she didn’t reappear?”

      “I...don’t really know.” It was the first time Matt had seemed uncertain.

      Deciding he’d gotten enough for today, Tony stood. “I’ve taken up enough of your time in the middle of a working day. Needless to say, I’ll be in touch.”

      Matt rose, too, his body language tense. “Do you know how she died?”

      “I’m afraid not yet.”

      “All right, then.” His expression hardened. “I hope you’ll go after my father. Who else could have killed her?”

      “We do look first at family,” Tony conceded but saw no sign that it had occurred to Matt any investigation would look at him, too.

      Still, when Tony stepped from the cool interior of Memorial Hall into the heat of the day, he couldn’t deny that Matt’s question—or was it an accusation?—echoed his own thinking. Indeed, who else could have killed Christine Marshall but her husband?

      Matt’s vindictiveness disturbed him nonetheless. How could a vague, essentially absent father cause so much anger? Or had there been more to the relationship? Beth, determined to keep her family whole, could have refused to see what was happening.

      More to the point, what if Matt’s mother had turned a blind eye to physical or sexual abuse by his father? Now, that could fuel rage aimed at both parents.

      Something to think about.