“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.
CHAPTER FOUR
BETH HATED TO leave her anxious father to face Detective Navarro with no family to support him, only the attorney. She had immediately liked Phil Ochoa, a thin, dark-haired man about her age, at their meeting half an hour ago, but first impressions could be deceptive, couldn’t they?
“Is it okay if I wait in my car while Detective Navarro is here?” Beth asked.
Phil smiled reassuringly. “Sure. We can talk afterward.” After telling her father he’d be right back, he accompanied her to the front door. On the doorstep, he glanced back and lowered his voice. “I see what you meant about him. He doesn’t seem to quite…”
Seeing his struggle, she chose to be blunt, if not quite as blunt as Matt had been. “Grasp that he might be in trouble? No. He’s a strange mix of intelligence and—I don’t even know how to describe it—disengagement when it comes to everyday life. I think as he ages, he’s getting worse.”
“Dementia?”
That was one horrifying possibility that hadn’t occurred to her. “Oh, God. Alzheimer’s does hit this young, doesn’t it?” Given what she did for a living, she’d been amazingly dense.
“I’m afraid so,” he said kindly.
But she shook her head. “The thing is, he’s been this way as long as I can remember. He just…drifts away from anything he doesn’t want to do or think about. It’s almost childlike, in some ways. And yet he’s written well-reviewed articles for journals and has continued teaching at the college level. I’ve seen the notes he writes in the margins on student papers and tests, and they can be really pointed.” She sighed. “When it comes to remembering to put a casserole in the oven, or noticing that the paint on the house is peeling…”