You Deserve to Know

Chapter 25

25

NOW

Sometimes husbands don’t come home for the night.

Aimee stares at the phone. Did the 9–1–1 dispatcher really just say that to her? The woman didn’t say it in a cruel way—there was no mocking undertone, no sneer in her voice. She was gentle, as if she had heard it all and was trying to reassure Aimee.

“He’s been gone what, four hours?” the dispatcher asks.

“I know that doesn’t seem like a long time to you, but trust me, I know my husband. He’s not answering his phone.” Aimee is pacing the kitchen as she says this. She was able to keep it together while getting all three kids to bed, but now, in the empty, quiet house, her anxiety has taken hold. “He could be hurt somewhere, his car in a ditch.”

“And you’ve called all the local hospitals?”

“Yes, I told you that already.” She catches herself. She doesn’t want to take out her frustration on this woman, who is only doing her job. “Sorry. I know you’re trying to help. But he was supposed to pick up our daughter. He wouldn’t just not show up.”

“Look, we can fill out a missing persons report if you’d like.”

“I would, yes.” Aimee answers a barrage of questions. Name: Scott Crowder. Height: six-one. Hair: brown. Eyes: brown. No distinguishing scars or tattoos.

“And when exactly did you see him last?”

“He drove off around six P.M. ” Aimee looks at the mess in her kitchen from dinner. It already feels like he’s been gone for ages.

“Does your husband suffer from any mental health issues, meaning, are you concerned he may cause harm to himself?”

“What? No. Absolutely not.”

“What about medical conditions—epilepsy, diabetes, heart condition?”

“No. He’s very healthy.”

The woman takes down the make and model of Scott’s car, along with the license plate. “I will file this and we will let you know if anything hits on his car,” she says. “Feel free to call our missing persons department tomorrow to follow up.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“Listen, most people who are reported missing show up on their own.”

Aimee hangs up and gets to work cleaning the kitchen. A week ago, she was preoccupied with the stress of daily life—ordering plants, making payroll, arranging checkups for the twins, and Noa’s psychological report. Now all she can think about is what has happened to Scott, and whether his not coming home is connected to the money he said he was scammed out of. He was going to answer all her questions tonight, tell her everything, and then—poof—he’s gone.

Sleep doesn’t come easily. Aimee wakes at the slightest sound, thinking it might be Scott coming home, but it never is. When her alarm goes off in the morning, she sighs. At least the long night is over. She puts her hand on Scott’s side of the bed, as if she can divine some information about what has happened to him by laying her palm flat on the mattress. But no answers come to her. Scott is missing and she has no idea why.

She goes downstairs with the faintest flutter of hope that she will find him in the kitchen, but he’s not there. Scott never came home. He didn’t sneak into the house in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness and crash on the sofa. She checks her phone. Nothing. No text. No voicemail.

Panic swells within her anew. She is surer than ever that something has happened. Scott would never put her through this kind of worry. She doesn’t have time to dwell on those thoughts; she can hear the kids are up. The morning is a blur. When Noa asks where Dad is, Aimee tells her he had to leave early for work. Noa accepts this answer without question. And why not? It’s been the case so many times before. Aimee wishes it were true, that Scott had come home late and left for work early. As soon as the kids leave for school, she will call the police again.

She walks the three kids to the bus stop, her thoughts far away from their chatter. Noa finds a spot under a tree, takes out her Warrior Cats book, and begins reading. The boys run off to find their friends and Aimee steps back from the crowd slightly so that she is close enough to keep an eye on things, but just far enough away to discourage anyone from talking to her. She takes out her phone to check her email. Several consultation requests from new clients have come in, and she needs to respond. She likes to get back to people within twenty-four hours, but with everything going on in the past few days, she hasn’t had a chance.

“Aimee? Yoo-hoo, Aimee!” Gabby from around the corner rushes up, her son dawdling behind. “I’m so glad I caught up with you.”

Aimee feels her body tense up. She normally enjoys Gabby’s company at the bus stop. But this morning the thought of dealing with the woman’s high-octane energy exhausts her. In addition to working as a fundraiser at the headquarters for the American Cancer Society in D.C., Gabby runs the school’s PTA Listserv, organizes the twice-yearly neighborhood yard sales, and coaches girls’ soccer.

“Hey, Gabby.”

“Aimee, oh my gosh, how awful. I am devastated.” She looks around to make sure her child is not in earshot, and when she spots him a few yards away with a cluster of boys, she turns back. “Anton killed,” she stage-whispers, “right here in our own neighborhood. Who would do such a thing? What is this world coming to? Gwen, you, those poor kids. What can I do? How can I help? Say the word.”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can really do right now except cooperate with the police.”

“The police, of course. I’ve been meaning to ask you. Have the police arrested anyone? I keep looking online and there’s nothing. It must be someone from D.C., or farther out in the county. There’s more and more of that, you know, outsiders coming into Bethesda to rob people and commit, you know…”

“I haven’t heard that it was a robbery.”

“Homicide,” Gabby mouths silently and then nods at Aimee. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since it happened. And I know I’m not the only one.”

Aimee makes a noncommittal grunt. She has no patience for this, not today, not while Scott is still unaccounted for. She wants to shake Gabby’s shoulders and scream I don’t care if you can’t sleep. My husband is missing.

“You’re so close with the Khourys,” Gabby says. “And we all feel terrible for Gwen. But at the same time, we’re victims, too, in our own way. We all feel very unsafe right now. I was talking with a few other moms, and we need some answers. We’re thinking of asking a Montgomery County police officer to come and give a talk about safety. What do you think?”

Aimee narrows her eyes. “About which part?”

“Should we invite Gwen? Is that rude? I don’t want her to feel excluded, but at the same time, I’m sure she has a lot on her plate.”

Aimee laughs before she can stop herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh.”

“This isn’t funny, Aimee. A man was killed. In East Bethesda, no less.”

“No, you’re right. It’s not funny.” Aimee glances at Gwen’s house, wondering if she’s home. Her car is out front. After she calls the police about Scott, she vows to check on her later. “I think giving Gwen a wide berth on your public safety campaign is probably a good idea right now. I don’t think that’s going to help her heal.”

“I do want to help her. Really. I could organize a meal delivery train, you know, do dinners on different nights.”

“Now that I think would be nice,” Aimee says, feeling a bit guilty for her impatience. But she needs to see the kids off and get back to the house. “I’m sure she’d really appreciate it. I should have thought of it myself.”

“Oh, I’m sure you have a lot on your plate.”

You have no idea , Aimee thinks. The bus pulls up, and all the kids pile on board.

“Do her kids have food allergies or preferences? Is gluten okay? What about dairy?”

“Who cares, Gabby? I’m sure anything you make is fine. Don’t overthink it.” Allergies and food preferences seem so petty compared to what she and Gwen are dealing with. A dead husband. A missing one.

Gabby stares at her in shock.

Aimee backs away, offering an apologetic smile, and then turns and speed walks back to her house. Inside, she pours a large mug of coffee and picks up her phone. She is afraid of being dismissed, of appearing hysterical. Instead of calling the police she decides to re-call all the hospitals first. But there are no patients named Scott Crowder at Sibley, at Suburban, or at any of the other local hospitals.

Sometimes husbands don’t come home.

But not hers. Not Scott. Scott always comes home. She can count on one hand the nights they’ve slept apart. Occasionally Scott travels for work, but not more than a few times a year. Maybe some husbands take off, but not Scott.

Finally, she calls the police.

As soon as she explains to the sergeant on the line why she is calling, she feels like she’s been plunged into Kafka-esque nightmare, restating the same information as last night and in return receiving the identical responses. No , he’s not at any of the hospitals. No, he doesn’t have a history of mental illness. The sergeant checks the car’s license plate number against traffic accidents in the area, but there’s no match.

“Sometimes people need to get away from their families for a day or two. They usually turn up,” the sergeant says. “Has there been any tension in his life recently? A fight?”

“No, nothing like that,” Aimee says. But there has been tension, hasn’t there? One hundred thousand dollars’ worth of tension. Not to mention Anton’s murder. The police were poking around, asking Scott questions. You could definitely call that tension. Yet if she mentions the missing money to the police, she knows how it will look. Like he took off. They’ll never take it seriously that he might be hurt somewhere. They’ll chalk his disappearance up to marital strife. She gets off the phone and immediately texts Tim that she won’t be able to meet him today at a job site. He texts back saying he will handle it, and she feels some relief knowing at least one thing in her life is under control.

Alone in the house, the panic builds within her until her heart is beating so fast she thinks she might pass out. She can’t do this all alone, but she doesn’t want to burden anyone else. Besides, what help could anyone else offer her? She hunts down the business card left by the detective who visited them.

“Hello, Detective Salazar? This is Aimee Stern. Scott Crowder’s wife? I need your help. Scott is missing.”

It takes him less than twenty minutes to pull up in his sedan. Aimee notes with some irony that seeing this same car outside Gwen’s house on Saturday morning was the first sign that something was amiss on Nassau Court. Back then, she considered for a brief moment that Gwen and Anton had been in some kind of domestic fight. Is that what other neighbors will think now, of her and Scott? She opens the front door and greets the detective.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” he says once they are both seated in the living room. “You say your husband left the house to pick up your daughter?”

Aimee leans forward, desperate for help. “Yes. Around six-fifteen. Noa, that’s my daughter, was visiting a family friend in Potomac.” She stops herself. “She’s a client of mine, I run a landscape design business, but she’s become a friend.”

“And what’s this woman’s name and address?”

Aimee reels off Cathy’s address, which she knows by heart. “But he never showed up.”

“When did you realize he was missing?”

“Around seven-thirty maybe? Cathy brought Noa home and said Scott had never shown up. And his phone had been turned off, because when I called, it went straight to voicemail.”

Salazar pulls at his chin. “Six-fifteen to seven-thirty. That’s an hour and fifteen minutes. You didn’t become concerned that it was taking so long to get to Potomac and back?”

Aimee straightens up, rebuked. “I was preoccupied with something here. Otherwise, I would have noticed.”

“I see. And you haven’t heard from him? No texts or phone calls.”

“No,” Aimee says. “Like I said, his phone is off.”

“We can try to track it. Has your husband ever done anything like this before? Stayed out late, maybe had a few too many, slept at a friend’s?”

“No, nothing like that. He’s not like that. He’s a good man. He’s a good father. He would never not contact me and leave me worrying like this. That’s how I know something is wrong.” She searches the detective’s face for some sign of understanding but sees none. “We have twins, and a girl. Neither of us would just leave the other with the kids.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Wow, three kids. That’s a lot.” He gives her a sympathetic shrug. “I’ve got a newborn at home, and sometimes just the one feels like more than I can handle.”

Aimee bristles. “You’re not getting it. Something’s happened. I know it.”

“What about Anton Khoury? What was your husband’s relationship with him?”

Aimee blinks, startled. “Anton? What does he have to do with this?”

“How often did the two of them spend time alone?”

“Basically never. Not that I know of. It was always as part of a larger group or sometimes just us four. Me and Scott. Anton and Gwen.”

“How did Scott react to Anton’s death?”

Stunned, Aimee stands. “I’m not comfortable where this is going. My husband is missing. He might be hurt somewhere, and you’re asking me all these questions about Anton Khoury.”

The detective stands as well. “You have street parking, right? No garage?”

“What does that have to do with—”

“You said you were asleep when Scott went out. That you didn’t hear him leave. If Scott did drive to Villain & Saint on Saturday, there would be no garage door opening to alert you.”

“We have a doorbell camera, remember?” she asks. “It would be on the video I sent you.”

“Ah, the video.” He gets up and walks to the front window, peering out. “It cuts off at the hedge. If your truck is parked right in front, as it is now, Scott would have to park past the hedge. And if that were the case, the camera wouldn’t catch him driving away.”

Aimee feels like she’s been slapped. She invited Salazar here to help her find Scott, and now he’s twisting everything around, talking about the night Anton died. “I don’t understand. Why do you keep implying that Scott is involved in Anton’s death?” Her voice has risen to a sharp shrill, but she can’t stop it. She is on the edge of hysteria. “He explained it to you! Anton came here drunk and he took him home. You talked to his friend from the bar, right? He must have told you that Anton wasn’t there. So why do you keep coming back to that? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

He turns back from the window, giving her a long, hard look. He’s evaluating her. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the details of this case with you,” he says. “But if your husband should contact you, you need to tell him we want to speak with him immediately.”