Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
A n alarming clanging startled me awake. Bleary-eyed and nauseated, I squinted at my bedside clock, surprised to see it was past ten in the morning. I sat up, looking around, trying to identify the source of the agitating noise. My cell phone, on the dresser. I didn’t even recall leaving it there. I lunged for the device, imagining Tim on the other end telling me all sorts of horrors that had beset our daughter: sudden fever, an accident...
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Case?”
I hesitated, unable to speak. Is it the hospital calling? Telling me Emmy is in the ER? My heart pounded, making it hard to breathe.
“Mrs. Case?”
“Yeees,” I wheezed. It was hard to talk around the heartbeat pulsing in my throat.
“This is June from Dr. Ellison’s office. You’re past due for the six-month checkup.”
I closed my eyes; my racing heart slowed even as acid reflux torched my esophagus, making my throat sting and my eyes water. “I’m sorry,” I said, exhaling.
“The doctor wanted me to reach out and discuss why you’ve missed your last few visits. He’s concerned.”
“Tell him not to be, June. We’re fine. Just very busy. Business has stepped up and I have a lot to juggle.” My face reddened with the lie. Even before Tim left, I’d had a hard time meeting my work deadlines. MediSource, the medical billing company that had employed me for more than five years, temporarily suspended my assignments while I battled postnatal depression.
“Would you like to schedule a new appointment?” June asked in a monotone voice. “We now work on Saturdays.” She didn’t sound happy about that.
“Not just yet. We’re fine. Healthy. No need for a checkup.”
“The doctor thinks?—”
“Thanks so much.” I hung up on her, taking a deep breath to settle my surging stomach. Even the suggestion of Emmy in danger made my insides heave. And the meds I was swallowing like sugary treats didn’t help.
Fumbling through the bathroom cabinet, I grabbed a bottle of Mylanta and drank from it like a baby hungrily devouring the contents of a nursing bottle. I sat on the closed lid of the toilet, breathing hard as I waited for the liquid to coat my windpipe and stomach. What I needed was a distraction. I shuffled to my desk in the corner of my bedroom and fired up my laptop.
As if on their own, my fingers typed in Jeffrey Trembly’s name and the local newspaper he worked for. News features with his byline flashed across the screen. I scrolled through dozens of stories from across the region. Everything from town board meetings to ribbon-cutting ceremonies, local fundraisers, and human-interest stories.
I thought about the expression on Jeffrey’s face when he’d admitted his feelings for the mysterious Annie Connolly. Raw. Devastated. Would Tim look that way if I were gone? If he realized, too late, all he’d had and lost?
I rolled my eyes and called the newspaper. When an efficient-sounding woman’s voice answered, I asked for Jeffrey Trembly.
* * *
I sat across the table from Jeffrey in a local diner, Rex’s Roadkill, off Route 22. I leaned my forearms on the tabletop and, noting how they stuck to the Formica surface, decided the place was aptly named. I was glad I was only having coffee. Still, meeting in a shabby eatery with dated decor was preferable to being alone in my kitchen with a man owning a key to a missing woman’s house—no matter how innocuous he made the possession seem.
“I can’t stop thinking about Annie,” Jeffrey said, staring into his coffee cup. “I’ve tried to track her down, but it’s as if she and that asshole she calls a husband have spontaneously combusted.” He looked up. “I’m sorry, that was probably inappropriate.”
I smiled. “I won’t report you.” God knew I spent half my days having thoughts many would deem inappropriate. “But catch me up here. When you say you’ve tried to track her down, what do you mean?”
“I started with the obvious: social media, online searching, and trying to follow her moves through her iPhone.” He rubbed his chin, looking thoughtful. “Turned up nothing.”
“And you went through her mailbox?” My favorite means of discovery.
“Obviously. I work for a newspaper, Caroline. I checked for mail about five minutes after I realized she was missing.” He looked at me pointedly and my face reddened, but he seemed not to notice. He began tapping the beige Formica between our coffee cups, his long fingers strumming an agitated rhythm against the tacky surface. “I also hit up the local hospitals, coroners, and even jails. After that big zero, I accessed the NamUs system.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a national database. Records of missing and unidentified persons.”
That surprised me but I wasn’t sure why. It made sense that some agency or other would set up a digital clearinghouse for missing and potentially missing people. “Can anyone use it?”
He nodded, his gaze flicking around the diner before landing on me. “The problem is, it’s no help if a disappeared person doesn’t want to be found.”
“So, you think maybe her husband took off with her to?—”
“Or she decided to leave, either with or without him.” Jeffrey’s expression was bleak. “She could have felt threatened.” He looked down at his suddenly stilled fingers. “Or maybe she was just done with the bullshit between us, the sneaking around. The lying.”
“But you said she filed for divorce.”
“That’s what she told me. I can’t verify she did.”
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. The silence stretched between us, but the ambient restaurant noises—clashing metal utensils, other diners’ murmurs, and softly filtered rock music from unseen speakers—rounded the sharp edges of our uncomfortable conversation. Finally, I asked, “Did Ray Connolly know what Annie was, um, up to... with you?”
He slowly raised his eyes until they met mine. “I think so. But she told me he cheated on her first. That they had sort of an open arrangement.” His expression was as combative as a sullen teenager expecting a lecture on morality.
I sat back, raising my hands, palms out. “No judgment from me. I just want to know what happened—if she was the woman I saw. Do you have a photo of her?”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and swept his forefinger across its surface. “I took a selfie of us a few months back. Annie was angry; made me promise I’d delete it, but I didn’t.” He held the phone up for me to see. “I had to have just one shot of us together...”
I leaned forward and squinted at the blurry shot of Jeffrey with an unsmiling dark-haired woman, her eyes half closed. It was clear he’d caught her by surprise. A portion of what looked like fingers bordered the bottom of the photo as if she’d raised her hand to block his attempt to capture their images.
“It’s not the best picture of her,” he added, sounding apologetic. “Annie thought it was dangerous to have tangible evidence of our... well, she didn’t want to give Ray ammunition.”
I stared at the image. If the couple had an open marriage, Ray wouldn’t be angered by her actions, would he? “She has the same hair color and build as the woman I saw, but I don’t know. I can’t really see her eyes.”
“So, you can’t tell for certain that it was Annie you saw that night?” Jeffrey’s voice sounded so hopeful that I found myself wanting to encourage him.
“From this photo, I can’t tell if this is the woman in the window.”
He sat back and sighed. “That’s reassuring, I guess.”
Something occurred to me. I leaned forward and propped my elbows on the sticky tabletop. “Did you ever meet Ray Connolly?”
He shook his head. “No, just saw him in the yard once.”
I thought of the only man I’d ever seen on the property, the handsome sandy-haired man, Matt.
“What does Ray look like?”
Jeffrey shrugged. “A muscular guy. Annie said he was a bodybuilder, but I don’t know what kind of a living he could make doing that.” His voice held a note of disdain, as though increasing muscle mass through strenuous exercise was innately evil.
I rubbed my brow, recalling Tim telling me he’d worked with Ray Connolly. Should I reveal that to Jeffrey? Something told me to keep that fact to myself. “Do you recall anything else? His hair color? Outstanding features?”
“He was wearing a ball cap the evening I saw him leaving their house.”
“Hmm,” I said. Of course, a man would zero in on another guy’s muscle mass, while a woman noticed his overall attractiveness. I recalled Matt’s trim, taut muscles. Was he muscular enough to be considered a bodybuilder? I had no idea. I thought of something else: Matt and Melanie dancing in the living room at 21 Pine Hill Road. “Tell me, does Annie like to dance?”
“Dance?” Jeffrey’s nose scrunched, making his eyes squint. When I nodded, he said, “I don’t know. I never danced with her, but that means nothing. I have two left feet.”
I decided Jeffrey didn’t need the visual of Annie dancing with another man, husband or otherwise.
His gray eyes met mine. Tilting his head with what appeared to be curiosity, he asked, “What’s your story?”
The question jolted me out of my musing. I shook my head. “You sound just like a reporter.”
He smiled but said nothing more as he looked at my face. Waiting for an answer.
“I’m just a mom, recently separated from her husband,”
“Do you have any other family?”
“No, I have no siblings, my dad’s been gone for years, and my mom died recently,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. People so seldom asked me about my life that I was unused to revealing anything about myself. I quickly turned the focus back on him. “Are you happy in Deer Crossing? Do you live alone?”
He nodded absently. “I do. I’ve been divorced for just over a year. I like Deer Crossing okay, but my ex never wanted a house. She was a free spirit. Conformity didn’t appeal to her. She’d take temporary jobs, save up cash, and travel. I was enchanted by her, at first. The age-old story is I thought I could settle her down, lure her into complacency with a house. My folks left me a small inheritance. I used it to buy the worst house in the nicest neighborhood, thinking I could improve it over the years. But I knew almost from the day we moved in that it wasn’t going to work. Not only do I have zero ability to renovate, but my wife had even less desire to be tied to a property. Her mantra was weekends were for partying, not fixing a leaky roof. We only shared the house for nine months before she took off.” He ran a hand through his nearly black hair. “I was going to sell the place. Then I met Annie at a homeowners’ association meeting.” He shook his head. “When I think of all the crazy twists and turns that my life has taken in the two years since I moved to this town, well... guess I don’t make the best choices when it comes to women.”
“I understand,” I said. “I didn’t make a sound choice either. After Tim and I had Emmy, well, our relationship changed. He moved out.” I sighed. “Mine is probably a story old as time too.”
“Doesn’t matter. The story is new to you.” His gray eyes dodged away from me. He was already losing interest in my life.
The server came with our check and Jeffrey quickly reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a leather wallet.
“Let me pay for mine,” I said, reaching for my purse handle, slung over the back of my chair.
“My treat,” he said.
“But I?—”
He smiled, handing the server a ten-dollar bill. “Caroline, it’s a cup of coffee.”
* * *
I didn’t want to go back to my lonely house. I spent the next few hours driving around the area, eventually pulling into a shopping mall three towns over and hitting up the food court for dinner. Something nibbled at the back of my mind as I ate a greasy chicken sandwich. Thinking about my diner meeting with Jeffrey, it hit me: he had been the man I’d seen Melanie—Annie—embracing in her front foyer. Had I not been so distraught when we’d first met, I’d have likely made that connection much sooner. Lost in thought, I headed to the children’s section of the department store in the center of the mall, buying Emmy a ruffled pink romper on clearance. Did knowing this about Jeffrey and Annie change anything? I supposed it did. It validated his claim of loving the mysterious woman, which probably shot my theory of him as her killer to pieces.
Toting my tiny bag, I wandered aimlessly in and out of boutique shops upstairs and on the ground floor until I noticed the sun setting beyond the oversized plate-glass window at the mall’s entrance. Where had the day gone?
When I swung my car into my driveway, I cursed myself for not thinking to leave on a single light in the house. I looked at the darkened windows of my tiny ranch. Without Emmy inside, there seemed no reason for me to be there either.
I leaned back in my seat, the nape of my neck against the headrest, staring vacantly at my house. That’s when I saw it: a flicker of light in the living room. I blinked, sat bolt upright. Trained my gaze on the front bay window. Sure enough, a light glimmered there for the span of a few heartbeats before going out. A giant firefly of incandescence, brief and illusionary.
Panic spiked in my chest like a syringe of adrenaline had been shot directly into my heart. Someone was sneaking around in my house.