S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone 19)

“It’s worth a try,” I’d said.

“Did you know her?” I asked now.

“Sure did. Everybody knew Violet. Feisty little thing with that fiery red hair. She was a beautiful girl with a defiant streak. If Foley blackened her eye, she made no attempt to hide it. She’d sport a bruise like a badge of honor. Damnedest thing you ever saw. Black and blue, she was still prettier than any other woman in town. I wasn’t smart enough to keep my trap shut, and my wife was so jealous I thought she’d spit nails. Violet was the kind of woman men fantasize about. A lot of wives ended up with their noses out of joint.”

“How well did you know Foley?”

“Better than I knew her, given his numerous contacts with law enforcement. That’s how I ended up dealing with him in the first place, because of his smacking her around. I probably went to the house half a dozen times. None of us liked going out on domestic calls. Dangerous for one thing, and for another, it made you wonder what the hell was wrong with folks. Violet and Foley were skating close to the edge. Bad situation. Her little girl was of an age where she’d end up standing in the line of fire. Abuse spills over. It might start with the spouse, but the kids aren’t far behind.”

“What about Violet? Did she have any criminal history?”

“Nope.”

“Foley never had her arrested for assault?”

“Nope. If she hit him, he must have been too embarrassed to call us.”

“Shoot. No mug shots and no fingerprints. That’s too bad,” I said.

“She was clean as they come. She didn’t have a Social Security number because she never held a job, so that’s one more dead end. The only outside dispute she had, she took Jake Ottweiler into small-claims court. His pit bull attacked her toy poodle and killed it outright. I think she collected a couple hundred bucks. Foley probably borrowed every cent of it to pay the bills.”

“Daisy remembers the two brawling. She says neither one went after her, but it had an effect.”

“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “We sat Foley down more than once and gave him a talking-to, but like most abusers, he was busy blaming someone else. He maintained Violet was provoking him, which made it her fault, not his.”

“This was over what period of time?”

“Two, three years, running right up to the last anybody ever saw of her. After we spoke yesterday, I called one of the deputies and had him pull the old file. He went back through the reports and says the two got into a bad one on June 27, a Saturday, the week before she disappeared. Foley flung a pot of coffee at her and it caught her on the chin. She called us. We went out to the house and arrested his sorry ass and then held him overnight until he had a chance to cool down. Meanwhile, she filed a complaint charging him with misdemeanor battery…”

“Why misdemeanor?”

“Injuries weren’t that serious. He’d broken her jaw, it’d have been another matter. We advised her right then to get a restraining order out against him, but she said she was fine. Minute he got out, he went straight to the house. He begged her to drop the charges, but before anything could come of it, she was gone and that was that.”

“When did he report her missing?”

“July 7. In those days, the law required a seventy-two-hour wait if there was no suggestion of foul play, which there wasn’t. So Sunday passed, and then Monday without a word from her. Tuesday morning, Foley came over to the station and asked to file a report. I was the one who took the information, though the story was already out by then, and we knew we had a problem on our hands.”

“How did he seem?”

“He was obviously upset, but in my estimation, mostly for himself. Given his history, he had to figure he’d be first in line when it came to close scrutiny. We put out a countywide bulletin, giving a description of Violet and the car she was believed to be driving, and then expanded that to statewide within two days. We contacted the papers up and down the coast. Didn’t generate much interest, to tell you the truth. Most ran two column inches in the second section, if they bothered at all. Radio, same thing. The story got some local airplay, but not that much.”

“Why no splash? What was that about?”

“The media wasn’t prone to jumping on stories the way they do now. Violet was an adult. Some had the feeling she’d run off of her own accord and she’d come back when it suited her. Others leaned toward the notion she’d never left at all, at least not alive.”

“You think Foley killed her?”