Back Against the Wall

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Her father was gaping but didn’t intervene. He usually did what she told him to.

  The knotted muscles in the detective’s jaw told her how mad he was. He looked at her father. “Mr. Marshall? Are you willing to speak to me without an attorney present?”

  Dad looked at her. “Bethie? Do you think I need a lawyer?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “Talking to an investigator at this point without an attorney present wouldn’t be smart.” She probably hadn’t been smart yesterday. She hesitated. “Did he tell you—”

  “I did,” Detective Navarro said.

  Tears formed in her father’s brown eyes. “I wondered why we never heard from her, but I never dreamed...” He swallowed. “To think she was here all this time.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I know. Let me see the detective out, and then I’ll come back.”

  His head bobbed. She stared a challenge at Detective Navarro, who gave a choppy nod and headed for the front door. He opened it but turned, looming over her.

  “He only looks guiltier, insisting on an attorney instead of being willing to talk to me.”

  Beth huffed. “Does that argument convince many people?”

  “I’d think you would want to know who killed your mother.”

  “I do.” She couldn’t falter, not now. Not in front of him. “But I know it wasn’t Dad, and I won’t let you bulldoze him.”

  “Because that’s how I do my job.” His pissed gaze held hers long enough to sting before he shook his head. “Good day, Ms. Marshall.”

  Feeling as if she’d lost something, she had a lump in her throat as she shut the door. Maybe...maybe this was the mistake.

  But almost immediately, she shook her head. She’d done what was best for her father. Detective Navarro—she couldn’t think of him as Tony now—had been nice yesterday. He’d really seemed to feel protective where she was concerned. But even if he had been sincere, it wasn’t as if there was anything personal between them. With her mother’s identity confirmed, he had gone straight for the obvious, and convenient, suspect: Dad. With a side thought for Matt because he’d lived here, too.

  Beth understood, but she knew her father.

  She couldn’t believe a teenage Matt would have done anything that horrible either, but he wouldn’t appreciate his sister interfering. Maybe she should call to warn him...but the stuff he’d said yesterday still rankled, as did his willingness to believe the worst about his own father.

  Who else, Beth? Use your head, for once. And not to forget his additional digs. You live in your own damn dream world, just like he does. Everybody is nice. Well-meaning.

  As if not sharing his cynicism made her stupid.

  She’d always sensed his underlying contempt. It had to be tied to the anger at Dad that she didn’t fully understand. Matt didn’t have much respect for Emily, either. Did he feel that way about all women? Beth had wondered, unable to tell despite watching him closely when he was with Ashley.

  Most of the time, she tried to pretend their family was normal. What family didn’t have tensions? But she’d been kidding herself, of course. So maybe Matt was right.

  You live in your own damn dream world, just like he does.

  She blew out a breath then turned to go to Dad. It wasn’t in her to let him down when he needed her most. Even if he didn’t know he needed her.

  * * *

  ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED, Tony drove straight to Wakefield College, taking for granted that Matt would be at work. Would he arrive to find Matt already lawyered up? Remembering Beth’s fierce glare, he thought it likely.

  The college, on a semester system rather than quarters, didn’t hold a summer session, but the admissions department would be busy. Summer was the season for kids between their junior and senior years of high school to tour colleges with their parents.

  He had to park a distance away, by the tennis courts, and walk to Memorial Hall, the granite-block edifice with a bell tower that housed the college administrative offices. Like everyone else in town, he’d become accustomed to hearing the hours tolled.

  The campus was noticeably deserted, although he saw a cluster of people moving between buildings across the broad lawn that, in another six weeks, would be filled with students reading in the shade of leafy trees or playing Frisbee or soccer in the sunny center.

  The daylight basement level of Memorial Hall housed some offices, but probably not Admissions, he decided. No reason for the parents, who wrote the tuition checks, to see the basement, right?

  On the first floor, high ceilings and wide halls led in three directions. He immediately saw a sign pointing to the right to admissions and financial aid offices. Inside Admissions, a young woman sitting behind a desk beamed at him. “How may I help you?” Before he could answer, her gaze lowered to his badge and weapon. The smile dimmed.

  “Is Matt Marshall in today? I’m Detective Navarro.” Tony smiled reassurance. “He knows me.”

  “Yes, I’ll just—” She jumped up and scurried to one of several closed doors with glass insets. After knocking, she cracked it open and talked quickly.

  A moment later, she returned to the desk, and Matt appeared in the doorway. “Detective? Come on in.”

  He wore chinos with knife-sharp creases and a polo shirt the same shade of blue as his eyes. He smiled, undoubtedly for the benefit of the receptionist and an older, rumpled man who stepped out of a second office and raised his eyebrows when he saw Tony.

  Matt closed the door behind him and went around to sit behind his desk. “Have a seat.”

  No attorney.

  Tony sat. “I’m sorry to interrupt your day, Mr. Marshall, but—”

  “The body is my mother, isn’t it?”

  Beth hadn’t called, then. Because he had asked her not to or because she was mad at her brother after yesterday?

  “Yes. I’m sorry. None of this is pleasant.”

  “Pleasant.” Matt cracked a laugh. “I assume you’ve already told my father.”

  “And your sister.”

  “Beth.”

  “That’s right.” It was easy to forget about Emily, although he couldn’t let himself. “I plan to sit down this afternoon to talk to your father at length, but I’m hoping you can give me some time right now.”

  “Why not?” Matt made every effort to look relaxed; he pushed back his chair and crossed his right ankle over his left knee.

  Tony wasn’t fooled. “You were old enough to be observant about the state of your parents’ marriage,” he began. “Or anything else out of the ordinary happening in your home at the time.”

  “Out of the ordinary?” Matt looked incredulous. “Like what? Dad and I being best buds? Beth throwing temper tantrums instead of trying to convince everyone we were happy, happy, happy?”

  Huh. That was a lot of anger to hold onto for so long.

  “Even that long ago, you and your father didn’t get along.”

  “No, we didn’t. Although I’m not sure he noticed. He lives in his own little world.” Color streaked his cheeks as he apparently recalled that Tony had overheard him saying much the same to his sister. “I didn’t mean what I said to Beth. I get frustrated with her constant defense of Dad. She refuses to acknowledge how...lacking he is.”

  “Lacking in what way?” Not that Tony couldn’t guess.

  “In any way? I figure if he and Mom ever got it on in bed, the initiative had to have been hers. His body must have cooperated—hey, they had to have done it at least three times, right?—but he was probably thinking about some philosophical conundrum while he pumped away.” He muttered an obscenity, swiped a shaking hand over his face and gave up on the relaxed pose. Both feet on the floor, he rolled his chair close enough to the desk to allow him to brace his arms on the blotter. “That was crude. I’m sorry, but, you know, I wanted a father, sort of lik
e my friends had. A guy who’d pitch a baseball, come to games, give me advice. Me, I had to depend on my mother.” Anger rolled off him in waves, but he managed a shrug. “And then she was gone.”

  “Sounds like you were lucky to have her as long as you did,” Tony remarked mildly.

  “Her leaving the way we thought she did was a shock.”

  “I bet.” Tony studied him. A shock? A betrayal was what he really meant. Tony had to wonder again if she hadn’t betrayed her kids in a different way while she was still alive, and if Matt hadn’t been well aware. “Was there any more conflict in your home than usual right before she disappeared?”

  “I’m not the best person to ask. That was my senior year. I tried to be gone as much as possible.” His expression was no longer as readable.

  “Anything going on with friends of your parents...?” He hung that out there.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you recall the day she disappeared?”

  Matt looked at him as if he was crazy. “You think?”

  “Will you tell me what you recall?”

  His mouth tightened, but after a minute he said, “It was a school day.”

  Tony made a mental note to find out if high school attendance records still existed for that year.

  “I had football practice after school. When I got home, nobody had started dinner. Beth had had something after school, too, and I think Emily had gone to a friend’s. Dad wandered out of his office—Emily and Beth were stuck sharing a bedroom so he could have his little sanctuary—and asked if dinner was about ready.” He shook his head, his disgust apparent. “He hadn’t even noticed Mom wasn’t home.”

  “But her car must have been in the garage or parked out front.”

  “She got the garage.” He winced at the unintentional meaning. “So I guess Dad might not have noticed. But, yeah, it was weird that she hadn’t taken her car.”

  “Did she work?”

  “Part time. Well, except during tax season. She was a CPA,” he said, seeing Tony’s surprise. “She worked—I don’t know—fifteen or twenty hours a week most of the year, filing for extensions for people, stuff like that. February through April were, like, time-and-a-half. Anyway, I thought maybe she hadn’t been able to get her car started or something, so I called the tax service she worked for to see if she was still there, but she hadn’t been scheduled to work that day. So then we took turns calling everyone we could think of, but no one had heard from her.”

  I. We. The kids had obviously taken leading roles in trying to track down their mother. But then, their father had very likely known exactly where she was.

  “Beth made dinner,” Matt continued tensely. These recollections were understandably vivid. “We kept thinking Mom would walk in the door and be surprised because we were all supposed to know where she’d been, but it didn’t happen. Dad waited until morning, then called the police.” A shrug said, You know the rest.

  “When did someone think to check whether any of her possessions were missing?” Tony asked.

  “The cop did, when he came to the house. He seemed to think we were idiots for not doing that sooner, but... I guess none of us really thought she’d just walk out. We worried she’d been in an accident or something.”

  Except her husband had presumably brushed his teeth before going to bed after her inexplicable disappearance. Shaved in their bathroom the following morning, right before he’d called the cops. Under the circumstances, how could he not have noticed the gaps in the clutter on the counter and in the medicine cabinet?

  “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...”

  “You think this was one of the problems he and your mother had.”

  Beth couldn’t see any reason not to be frank with this man. He represented her father. He was he
re to defend Dad.

  “I’m sure it was. Even then, I could see it. It had gotten so she was always exasperated, and that can’t be healthy for a marriage.”

  “No,” Phil said somberly. “But you don’t see him as violent.”

  “Never. He floats gently through life. I’ve never seen him mad, or, really, even irritated. I can’t picture him ever reacting with a powerful enough emotion to push him into violence.”

  “All right.”

  They both, at the same time, saw the unmarked police car coming down the street and slowing.

  He added, “I will tell you that the detective can’t arrest your father with no proof beyond the body being found here in the house. If they didn’t find DNA evidence with her body, this is a fishing expedition, no more. In fact, even DNA evidence can be explained away, given their relationship. So don’t worry. If it’s okay with your dad, who is legally my client, I’ll tell you how it goes afterward.”

  Beth nodded her gratitude. “Thank you.”

  Tony Navarro strode up the driveway even as she started toward her car. His gaze swept her from head to foot, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, although she had a suspicion.

  He bent his head. “Ms. Marshall.”

  “Detective.” She made her tone as scrupulously polite as his had been. Opening her car door, she heard the two men greet each other by first name before they shook hands with apparent cordiality.

  How friendly was their relationship? Before she could get alarmed, she remembered how short the list of criminal attorneys had been in the phone book. A detective was bound to know them all, and vice versa. Frenchman Lake wasn’t that big.

  Her phone rang as she started the car to take advantage of the air conditioning rather than swelter. Matt. Oh, joy.

  Without so much as a Hi, he launched into his complaint. “That detective came to the college this morning to talk to me. Howard saw him and wanted to know what it was about.”

  Howard, she knew, was the director of Financial Aid. She couldn’t remember his last name. He was a Very Important Person in her brother’s world.