A Son's Tale

“Don’t borrow trouble, Dad, please. I’ve been working on this for years and nothing has happened. Don’t let that call to the nursing home bother you. Life is trying to look up for us. Let it.”

Adding his ground beef to his father’s sauce, Cal set the mixture to simmer and filled a pot with water to cook the spaghetti.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING, before class, Cal remembered his words to his father about borrowing trouble when he listened to the voice mail in his office. Ramsey Miller needed him to call.

Guilt was a like a chronic disease in his gut, an albatross, an unwanted but very familiar companion. If it hadn’t been for his testimony, his father would not have been a suspect twenty-five years before.

But Miller already had that testimony in his files. Cal’s book dealt more with their lives after they’d left Comfort Cove, his own thoughts and memories and anger, and chronicled his research methods and findings, right down to dates and times of discovery. And not one piece of information had led to Claire Sanderson.

So there was nothing to worry about.

With his father’s fearful reaction the night before fresh in his mind, Cal dialed Miller’s number.

“I found something,” Miller said.

No. Life did not work this way—all neatly tied up. “What do you mean?”

“Your book. Chapter two. You talk about a delivery truck on your street the morning that Claire Sanderson went missing.”

“The truck I hid behind to sneak back to our place.”

“You didn’t mention the truck in your testimony to the police.”

So that made him suspect? Or somehow cast further suspicions on his father?

Was it too much to hope that the two of them be happy? For at least a few days?

“I didn’t deliberately withhold the information from them, if that’s what you’re implying,” Cal said, hand in his pocket as he took the handset from his office phone over to the window to look out at the campus. “It’s not like the truck means anything except that the guy delivered meat,” he said now, remembering the truck, the writing on the side, as if he’d seen it the week before. He gave Miller the details. “It was at the neighbor’s house every single Wednesday morning. Three doors down from us. They didn’t buy their meat at the store like we did, and Emma and I asked our parents why. It was there every week, and it wasn’t anything that had ever been a danger to us. The guy was known in the neighborhood. Believe me, there’s nothing suspect about that truck. The police asked me if I’d seen anything unusual, but seeing that particular delivery truck in our neighborhood was normal.”

“I understand. I read the book. You mention it only because you hid behind the truck as a means to sneak back to your house and into your backyard because you didn’t want to go to school that day.”

“I’d thrown up there the day before.” A humiliation a guy didn’t forget.

“I understand that the truck doesn’t seem like evidence to you, but reading about it struck a chord,” Miller said. “I remembered another abduction where a delivery truck had been seen in the area. That one didn’t pan out in terms of a connection to Claire’s disappearance—the child was found asleep in a tent in the neighbor’s backyard. But I pulled records for other meat delivery routes. I ran that against reported abductions and had two hits.”

What was Miller saying? “Does this mean my father is in the clear?”

“No. But it means there’s a possibility of a break in the case. You say that meat delivery truck delivered to a neighbor three houses down?”

“Yes.”

“Did your father have any association with them?”

“No. My… Rose Sanderson, Claire’s mother, knew them, but not well, as I remember.”

“Has your father ever had meats delivered?”

Here we go again. “No.” Cal didn’t bother to hide his frustration.

“I’m going to run cross-checks between the other two cases and the evidence we do have. I’ll also be checking the records from the delivery company to see if your father’s name comes up. If it does, I’m going to need to talk to him. Either way, I’ll get back to you.”

“Please keep me informed,” he said. Miller hadn’t had to call him. He could have called the nursing home first, looking for his father to ask about his meat truck associations. “And I’d like you to call me before you contact my father. At least give me a heads-up.”

“I appreciate your position, Professor. I’ll do what I can.”

Which meant nothing at all.