Apples Never Fall

It was a lie. Just like the story about searching through the hedge for a tennis ball was a lie. They’d seized the framed picture in the faint hope that it might contain blood or hair.

Stan Delaney had answered all of her questions yesterday with little to no detail. He said yes, he and his wife had argued, but he refused to say what the argument was about. He said yes, it was out of character for his wife to go away like this. He said yes, it was strange that she had not taken her toothbrush, or any clothes as far as he could tell. He was obviously a smart man. He knew he didn’t have to be polite and that he couldn’t be compelled to say anything he didn’t want to say. He was good. He was bloody good. But Christina was better.

“Your mother is missing and I’m hearing that’s out of character,” she said to Logan. “So all we’re doing at this stage is collecting information.”

“Dad is worried sick. He’s not sleeping or eating. He’s not coping well.”

Christina tapped her pen against the notepad. “May I say, you don’t seem that worried about your mother, Logan.”

He raised his eyebrows. Waited for the question.

“Yet it was you and your sister who filed the missing persons report.”

Again, he waited for the question.

“As you know, we’re holding a press conference later this afternoon. We’re putting a lot of time and effort into finding your mother.”

She saw his good manners kick in. “Thank you. We’re grateful. We’re worried she might have had an accident. Or that she might have had some sort of … episode, or something.”

“Episode?” Christina pounced. “Do you mean a mental health kind of episode?”

“I guess so.” He shifted in his seat.

“Has she been showing signs of depression?”

“Not really,” he said. He winced and then said carefully, “Maybe a little bit.”

“Can you tell me more about that?” said Christina.

“She’s been not quite herself.” He looked past Christina’s head. “She may have been feeling a bit … down.”

“What about?”

“Well,” he said, and she saw him consider and then discard the truthful answer. “I’m not exactly sure.”

“So she sent a text to each of her children saying she was going away, but she left no message for your father. Did you find that strange?”

He shrugged. “They’d argued. You know that.”

She sure did know that.

“My dad doesn’t have a mobile phone, so she obviously couldn’t text him.”

“She could have called him on the landline, she could have left a note, she could have found some other way to communicate with him, surely?” pointed out Christina. The simplest answer is most often correct.

“I understand how this looks to an outsider,” said Logan. “But you’re wrong.”

No one wants to believe their parents are capable of murdering each other, no matter what they’ve witnessed.

Christina pushed the point. “Your mother’s text message didn’t say, Please let your father know I’m going away.”

“Her text message made no sense,” Logan reminded her.

Christina said nothing. She waited. Sometimes her job was all about waiting.

Logan banged a closed knuckle on the edge of his chair as if knocking impatiently on a closed door. He said, “You can’t really be thinking that my seventy-year-old father murdered my mother, disposed of the body, and sent us all a garbled text from her phone to throw us off the scent. Jesus Christ. It’s fantastical. It’s just … not possible.”

“Our records show your father never once tried to call your mother’s mobile phone,” said Christina.