Such a Perfect Wife

by Kate White

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Still, I had no intention of hitting the road with Alice’s killer still at large. I would pay room and board myself if it came down to it.

  I ordered more food for a late lunch and returned to the Internet search. Rather than hunting any farther afield this time, I reviewed the missing-persons cases I’d found earlier, but once again decided that they didn’t seem relevant. By the time I was due to dress for the video, I was almost certain that Alice must have abandoned her research about missing women and moved on to a new area of inquiry—and it was there that she found her clue.

  Without her computer, though, it was impossible to have even a hint of her discovery.

  Sorting through a ball of limp, already worn clothes, I managed to find another top that looked video-worthy, as long as the camera didn’t pick up a dried marinara stain. I threw it on with a pair of jeans and did the best job I could with my hair and makeup, which amounted to nothing more than turning a sow’s ear into a slightly perkier sow’s ear.

  Keith was already in the lobby, studying his phone, when I disembarked from the elevator. I told him about the call last night, convinced I could trust him to keep it confidential, and my fear that the killer might be watching me. He suggested pulling his vehicle up to the back of the hotel and having me jump in there. The back lot was empty and as we drove away, I twisted in my seat, surveying the area behind us. We had the side street to ourselves.

  “So where do you want to shoot this one?” I asked.

  “Dodson wants us to set up in front of Alice Hatfield’s house.”

  I flinched at the prospect of returning there.

  “Keith, we can’t trespass,” I told him. “That would be out of line.”

  “I don’t mean on her property. I checked the place out earlier today and there’s a spot on the road right before you turn into her driveway. We wouldn’t be trespassing, and yet you can still see the house from there.”

  What choice did I have? I couldn’t allow my personal feelings about Alice to interfere with the way the story was presented.

  As expected, the cabin looked deserted. Though the sun was shining brightly today, the air was crisp. I stripped off my jacket when it came time to shoot, fighting off a shiver.

  I went through my remarks as best as possible, but I hated standing there with Alice’s house looming in the background, talking about her death and knowing that many viewers would be titillated by the details. I kept wondering, too, if the killer would be watching. Of course he would.

  “You okay?” Keith asked after we’d wrapped.

  “Yeah, sorry. You’ve probably met rice cakes with more charisma than I managed today. But it’s been such a crazy week.”

  “I hear you. It must be really tough at times to do what you do. Covering gruesome stuff like this.”

  “Yeah, it can be.”

  But that wasn’t really true. Yes, I cared about victims, and was saddened for their families and friends, but my job had never seemed tough to me before. I loved it. Loved chasing down leads and digging for clues, and, when possible, ripping truths out from beneath the rocks they liked to hide under. And yet there was no denying that at the present moment, I couldn’t relish any part of it.

  Keith dropped me behind the hotel and I hightailed it directly to the small café right off the lobby in search of caffeine.

  Now what? I thought, staring out the window and waiting for my cappuccino to arrive. From where I was sitting I could see a slice of the lake. The water was a sparkling blue today, mocking my dreary mood. I felt a desperate urge to take action but had no clue what to do.

  The waitress had just brought my drink when, to my surprise, I spotted Ben Hatfield striding purposefully across the room in my direction.

  Oh God, I hoped he hadn’t been tipped off that we’d been shooting video near his mom’s house. He might have taken it as a real affront, and I wouldn’t have blamed him.

  “Hey, there you are,” he said, reaching me. “I tried your phone a bunch of times but it kept going to voice mail.”

  “So sorry,” I said, realizing I’d switched my phone to vibrate while Keith was recording and hadn’t readjusted it. “How are you coping?”

  “Not great, I have to admit.” He sounded anxious rather than miffed. “Can you spare a minute?”

  “Of course, please sit down. How about some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I’m already over my limit. I’ve been thinking about what you asked—about my last conversation with my mom. You said I should call you even if I remembered something small.”

  A chill raced through me. Do not get your hopes up, I warned myself.

  “Yes, please. Tell me.”

  “It’s so minor, I’m sure it’s meaningless.” He scraped a couple of times at the cuticle of his right thumb.

  “But maybe it isn’t.”

  “Like I told you, my mom and I spoke on Saturday, like we usually did. Our normal routine was for me to call her in the early evening, generally before my girlfriend and I made dinner or went out for the night, but this time she ended up calling me. At around five.”

  It was the same discrepancy my mind had snagged on last night. I took a sip of my cappuccino, thinking.

  “So it was pretty out of the ordinary?” I asked, setting the cup down.

  “Well, not hugely so. Once in a while she’d initiate a call if she wasn’t going to be around at our normal time, but it’d been a while since that happened. My mom used to say there were too many crazies on the road on Saturday night and she preferred to stay in with Netflix and a glass of chardonnay.”

  Perhaps Alice had become apprehensive about her discovery, and, eager for the comfort of Ben’s voice, had called him earlier than usual. But no, that couldn’t be it. She hadn’t turned up the detail that scared her until Sunday morning.

  “There’s one more thing,” Ben said. “Again, it’s probably nothing.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Like I told you, she didn’t mention any leads she had on the murders, but when I was lying in bed last night, I remembered something she’d asked about a guy I’d gone to high school with. She’d heard that he’d once worked at Baker Beverage and she wanted to know if it was true.”

  “Who?”

  “Tom Nolan.”

  My stomach tightened.

  “And he did,” Ben added. “Work at Baker, I mean. Tom was in sales there.”

  “Was this recently?”

  “No, I’d say somewhere around six or seven years ago. The poor guy ended up with cancer and had to stop working for a while. But he’s fully recovered now. From what I hear, he works for one of the hotels.”

  Okay, I could see why Alice’s curiosity had been aroused. And yet his connection to Baker went back years ago, so that hardly pointed to anything.

  “Did your mom say how she found this out? Could it have been online?”

  “No, it sounded as if someone told her, though I can’t recall the exact words she used.”

  “And how did she react when you confirmed it?”

  “She just said something like, ‘Hmm, okay, thanks.’ I’m sorry not to have mentioned this last night. She’d been so nonchalant, I didn’t even think of it until after you and I spoke.”

  I pressed my hands to my lips, thinking. This couldn’t be the scary clue Alice had stumbled on. Besides the fact that she hadn’t turned it up online, she would have already known that Nolan and Shannon were acquainted through the parish, and so why would it have mattered that they might have crossed paths when Nolan worked for her father’s company?

  And yet it was possible that Alice had followed the thread and it led her someplace truly disturbing. Maybe Nolan had developed a desperate obsession with Shannon while he was at Baker but let it subside during his cancer treatment, only to fan the flames again once Shannon began attending mass in July.

  “I’m just glad you told me now,” I said finally. “I’m not sure it’s of any significance, but it�
�s worth checking out, and I’m going to do that.”

  “By the way, the memorial service is going to be on Thursday. I’d love for you to be there.”

  “Ben, I’d be so honored to attend. Will you text me the details?”

  He promised he would and excused himself, saying he needed to meet up with his girlfriend.

  Back in my room, I tried the parish house, hoping to reach Nolan there, but I ended up with the outgoing voice-mail message, which told me the hours were between nine and four.

  I glanced at my watch: 5:24. There was a slim chance Baker Beverage might still be open. I tried the main number, hoping to speak to either Riley or Cody, but the outgoing voice-mail message relayed that business hours ran only until five. I had no luck reaching Cody on his cell, either.

  One option, I decided, was to simply show up at Baker. Even if Cody wasn’t there, Riley might be hanging around, still playing catch-up, and she could fill me in on Tom Nolan’s employment history with the company.

  When I pulled up near the front of the building twenty minutes later, I was relieved to see a light on in the reception area. I parked in the same spot I’d used the other day and hurried toward the building, but before I even had a chance to ring the bell, two men emerged through the doorway, zipping their jackets in unison as one regaled the other with an anecdote. They both wore khaki pants and collared shirts, open at the neck. Sales guys, I figured.

  “Can I help you?” one of the men inquired.

  “Yes, hi, thanks. I’m here to see Riley,” I said, stretching the truth.

  “You know where she sits?”

  “Yes, thanks.” It looked like I was in luck.

  He held the door for me, and I made my way down the long hall to the bullpen area. There was a sweet, syrupy smell to the air today, which I assumed was emanating from the bottling plant.

  Riley was at her desk, eyes glued to her computer screen, and I could see Cody through the glass wall of his office, talking on his landline with the glass door closed and his back to the main room. There was only one other person in the cubicle area, an older woman with long, wavy gray hair, buttoning a red sweater coat. The overhead fluorescent lights were off, which gave the place a slightly more inviting vibe today, though it had to be tough to work someplace without windows.

  Riley looked startled when she eventually caught sight of me, and she rose quickly from her chair. Her glossy hair was pinned in a sloppy bun today, and she was wearing more makeup than she’d bothered with on Saturday. Pretty but professional.

  “How did you get in here?” she demanded.

  “Oh, sorry, someone was nice enough to let me inside. I hope you don’t mind, but I had a follow-up question.”

  “Is there a problem?” She glanced quickly toward Cody’s office, and, perhaps sensing my presence, he swiveled his chair in my direction and raised his free hand in a half wave.

  “Not a problem, no. But I discovered a piece of information that I wanted to run by you. It might be important.”

  “Um, sure. We want to help, of course.” Rather than make me sit on the filing cabinet this time, she pulled a desk chair over from another cube.

  “I understand that Tom Nolan worked here six or seven years ago,” I said, taking the seat. “Did you know him then?”

  “You mean the deacon?” She turned away briefly to wish the departing female staffer good night. “I believe he worked here once, but that was before my time. I only know him because he’s been helping Cody with funeral arrangements.”

  “Would Cody be able to spare a moment so I can ask him?”

  “He’s probably going to be on this call for a while longer. He’s trying to find a counselor for the kids. But, um, why don’t I check.”

  Since he’d first spotted me, Cody had turned his attention mostly back to his phone call, listening intently it seemed, but I sensed him keeping an eye on Riley and me. As she stepped into his office, closing the door behind her, he placed a hand over the phone, gesturing for her to speak. She apparently filled him in and I saw him nod.

  Riley returned to her desk. “He can answer your questions once he’s done with the call, but it’s going to be a few more minutes.”

  “No problem.”

  “Do you mind waiting on your own, though? I’m on dinner duty tonight.”

  “No, please, go ahead.”

  Riley took a minute to straighten the piles on her clean, spare desk, shut off her computer, and throw a nubby brown jacket over her sweater. As she wished me goodbye, a guy in a shirt sporting the Baker Beverage logo emerged from the door at the rear. It was my first glimpse of the bottling area—lots of stainless steel and a long U-shaped conveyor. The guy gave Cody a thumbs-up through the glass wall of his office.

  “You headed home now, Riley?” the man called out, turning his attention to her. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  After they were gone, I dug my phone from my bag. I’d flown out of the hotel in such a hurry, I hadn’t checked to see what might surface online about Nolan and Baker Beverage.

  I clicked on my Safari button and typed “Tom Nolan sales Baker Beverage Distributors Lake George New York” into the search bar. Not much turned up. A link to Nolan as the deacon at St. Timothy’s. And a ghost link to the “About” page of Baker from six and a half years ago, featuring Nolan’s short profile from the time he worked there. And then a link to an article from an online site called the Lake George Bulletin, written around the same time. I clicked on it.

  Cody, then the sales manager at Baker, had won a huge award from the main soda company they did business with. In an interview with the Lake George Bulletin site, he spread the wealth around, mentioning a few members of his sales team, including Nolan.

  I kept reading. Cody sounded like the golden boy, and he addressed how lucky he’d been to be mentored by Shannon’s father.

  Blaine hailed from Texas, the item noted, and hadn’t been to the area until marrying Shannon Baker. “But I knew about the region,” Cody told the interviewer. “An army pal of mine had grown up here and he talked about it—how beautiful the lake was. And the Adirondacks, too.”

  At that moment I heard a sound in my head as piercing as a car alarm. He’d been familiar with the area before moving here.

  Something didn’t feel right.

  Chapter 22

  I BIT MY LIP, MY MIND RACING. CODY HAD BEEN IN AFGHANISTAN ten years ago. Thousands of miles away from here. But he’d learned about the area back when he was in the army. Did that mean anything?

  And if it did, had Alice discovered it? Over the weekend, she’d confirmed with Ben that Nolan had worked at Baker. And she probably turned to Google next, as I had, and would have soon lighted on the article in the Lake George Bulletin. Surely she read Cody’s comment about his army pal. So when Alice called Cody on Sunday, she probably would have asked him to confirm that.

  But according to Cody, Alice had simply asked whether Shannon had stayed at the retreat center as a teen.

  I needed to raise both topics and see how he reacted.

  I suddenly sensed a presence to my right, and when I twisted my head, I realized Cody Blaine was two feet away from me. I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t heard him emerge from his office.

  “Must be interesting,” he said.

  “Pardon me?”

  He was dressed fairly spiffily—navy chinos, an untucked jean shirt, and an olive-green unstructured blazer—but his handsome face was drawn and his eyes were bloodshot. Was that from fatigue? Or had he turned to booze to drown his sorrows?

  “Whatever you’re reading.”

  “Oh, just emails.” I rose so I wasn’t craning my neck and staring up at him, like a staffer talking to the boss. “I was catching up while I waited.”

  “Riley said you had a question about Tom Nolan.”

  “Yes, right, thanks for taking the time. I heard he was in sales here at one point. I was hoping you could fill me in on his employment.”

  “What speci
fically?”

  “How long he worked here. Why he moved on.”

  He narrowed his eyes, curious. “Tom was here for a couple of years, and left, I’d say, about five, maybe four, years ago. He was a terrific sales guy, but after a bout with cancer, he was looking for a job that didn’t involve so much coming and going during the day.”

  “Would he have had much contact with Shannon when he worked here?”

  “Shannon? Whoa. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were eyeing him as a suspect. Tom has been totally focused on fighting his illness and staying healthy in the last few years. He couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened to Shannon—or those two other women.”

  “I appreciate the insight. I’m sure you’re eager to split, so only a few more questions.” I could feel my pulse quicken—because of where I was headed next. “When Alice called you on Sunday, did she happen to ask about Tom?”

  Cody parted his lips and looked off, as if trying to recall.

  “Nope.”

  Wouldn’t she have been curious like me, wondering if Nolan’s employment here was significant in any way? And wouldn’t she have queried Cody about his familiarity with the area before meeting Shannon? That definitely would have stopped her, like it did me.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Um, yes, just thinking. Did she ask you about anything else? Besides, of course, Shannon attending a retreat. Shannon hadn’t, by the way. Attended a retreat. Kelly checked with her mother for me.”

  “No, nothing else. Now, if you don’t mind, I really need to turn out the lights, lock up, and go home to my kids.”

  This was my chance. I had to take the plunge, prick him a little.

  “She didn’t ask if you knew anything about Lake George before meeting Shannon?”

  “No, why would she? But the answer would have been yes. Believe it or not, they teach you about the French and Indian War even in Texas.”

  “But hadn’t an army friend told you about this place? Back when you were in Afghanistan together?”