Unveiling the Past

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

Diane shot a wry grin over her shoulder at her mother. Who would have thought four years ago that she would not only choose to live under the same roof as Hazel Blackwell-DeFord but actually come to enjoy her mother’s company? And her mother’s baking. Mother made some mean vegan chocolate cookies. If her nose served her correctly, the first batch of tonight’s offering was about ready to come out of the oven. She’d have two with a glass of almond milk as a reward for getting through these term papers.

  She settled her glasses back on her nose. “It’s not bad at all. This one was fascinating, really—the student did a great job with the research and explanations. It’s gratifying to see all the things I taught over the course of the year about sentence structure and citing sources done so well.”

  Mother wiped her hands on her apron’s gingham skirt. The bibbed apron protected her floral blouse and hot-pink pedal pushers. With her classy way of dressing and her always perfectly bobbed snow-white hair, she could be a model for Seniors Are Us—if such a magazine existed. There probably wasn’t a more stylish eighty-three-year-old in Kendrickson than Hazel Blackwell-DeFord. She glanced at the stack of term papers, then smiled at Diane. “So you don’t regret having to shift from political science to English?”

  Diane held up one finger. “Honors English. Remember, these are the cream-of-the-crop kids.” She lowered her hand and sighed. “No. Oh, I admit I was apprehensive at first. I’d taught political science for so many years that it felt like second nature, but I’ve really come to enjoy teaching literature and English.” She loved teaching, period. Loved interacting with and inspiring the kids. The paperwork? That she could do without. “The grading is just…time consuming.”

  Sympathy lined Mother’s face. “Well, you’ve been sitting there since you got home from school. You sat there yesterday all the way to bedtime. Maybe you could space them out a bit. So it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.”

  “I’ve got history finals to grade, too, and the end-of-year scores are due Thursday afternoon. I can’t waste any time right now.” She reached for another folder. “I’ll have plenty of time to relax this summer, though. The principal called a special meeting after school to let us know that the summer tutoring program went kaput. Funding issues.”

  Dismay flooded Mother’s features. “Oh, no. So no extra income this summer?”

  Diane shook her head. “I was counting on it, too, to put new tires on my car. But”—she shrugged—“it is what it is. That means I’ll be at loose ends and underfoot all summer.”

  Mother’s expression brightened. “Maybe you can join our book club. The ladies would welcome you, and—”

  The oven timer buzzed, and at the same time, Diane’s cell phone sang “My Girl,” the ringtone for her daughter. Diane glanced at the clock. Five past eight, which meant five past ten in Arkansas. An odd time for Meghan to call.

  She tapped Accept Call on the phone as Mother removed the tray of cookies from the oven. “Meghan. What’s wrong?”

  “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “The hour, that’s why. Isn’t it bedtime over there?”

  Mother placed the cookie tray on a stack of hot pads on the counter and crossed to the table. She gazed down at Diane, worry furrowing her brow.

  “It’s definitely getting close, but—”

  Mother tapped Diane’s shoulder and then pointed at the phone. Diane pressed the speaker icon.

  “—I wanted to make sure I didn’t interrupt your dinner.”

  Mother leaned over the phone. “Hello, Meghan. How’s my favorite granddaughter?”

  Meghan’s laughter rang out. “Sure am glad I don’t have competition for that title or I might not hold it. I’m fine, Grandma. How are you?”

  “Fair to meddlin’. And you know I meddle a lot.”

  Meghan laughed again.

  Mother returned to the cookie tray and transferred cookies to a cooling rack.

  Diane turned off the speaker option and put the phone against her ear. “What’s up? Is everything okay with you and Sean?”

  “Everything’s fine.” A hint of tension in Meghan’s tone said otherwise. “We’re taking on a new case.” Sean’s low voice rumbled in the background. “Well, we’re thinking about taking on a new case. We’ll know tomorrow for sure after we’ve talked to the person who asked to open the investigation. Captain Ratzlaff said she works nights as a certified medication aide at a rest home and sleeps until three or so. So she’ll come to the office later in the afternoon to discuss it with us.”

  Diane fiddled with the corner of a waiting term-paper folder. If this wasn’t an emergency, she should probably ask to table the conversation until she’d finished her grading.

  “But I wanted to let you know I’ve made a decision. I’m going to contact my father.”

  Diane went still. Even her breath caught in her lungs and forgot to escape. Mother placed a saucer of cookies in front of Diane. The sweet aroma of chocolate filled her nostrils, a contrast to the bitter taste of regret flooding her tongue. “Why?” Her breath whooshed out with the word.

  Another laugh came, but this one sounded nervous. “Why not?”

  When she’d given Meghan her father’s name four years ago, she’d expected Meghan to contact Kevin Harrison right away. But as time went by, Diane had decided Meghan was content not knowing. What had changed her mind? “I mean, why now? Has something happened—a health issue or something?”

  Mother sank into the chair next to Diane and picked up one of the cookies, but she didn’t carry it to her mouth. She watched Diane’s face the way a first-time mother might watch her colicky newborn sleep.

  “No, no, nothing like that. I’ve just decided…it’s time. Time for me to know who he is. To know about the other side of me.” Another nervous chuckle. “You’re okay with that, aren’t you? I mean, you did tell me I could find him if I wanted to.”

  Yes, she had. So why did it bother her that Meghan was following through? “If that’s what you want to do, then you should do it. Are you planning to email or call?”

  “I was actually thinking about showing up in person. This new case—if we take it—will mean going to Fort Smith, since that’s where the family lived at the time the father disappeared. So I can arrange to stop by his office. If I have a face-to-face meeting, I ought to get a pretty good read on him. Especially if I take him by surprise. His response ought to tell me right away if I’ll have an actual relationship with him or not.”

  “He’s still in Fort Smith?”

  “Yeah. A simple internet search turned up his name and company address. Apparently he’s in corporate real estate—owns office buildings all over the U.S.”

  Diane always knew Kevin would be successful. He’d had the drive to excel. At least in business. “When do you think you’ll go to Fort Smith?”

  “It really depends on how the investigation pans out. But soon.”

  Mother’s intense scrutiny was making Diane want to squirm. She’d be bombarded with questions the moment she disconnected the call. But that wasn’t the reason she extended the conversation. “Meghan, may I make a suggestion?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Reconsider the idea of surprising him.”

  “Why? I just said—”

  “I understand why you want to surprise him. But I also understand…him.” He hadn’t liked surprises. She’d always wondered if things might have gone differently if she had chosen another way of breaking the news of her pregnancy. She’d also never forgotten the pain of his crushing rejection. She couldn’t set up her daughter for the same kind of treatment. “It would be better to give a little advance notice. The meeting will be less…”

  She taught honors English, but she couldn’t come up with an appropriate word.

  “Volatile?”

  Meghan had chosen well. Diane nodded. “Yes. That.”
/>
  “Well, Mom, I’ve encountered volatile situations before in my line of work. I can handle it if he gets verbally combatant with me.”

  “Those situations had to do with other people’s lives, Meghan, not your own. There’s a difference.” Silence fell at the other end of the call. In those few seconds of quiet, Diane sent up a quick prayer for guidance. An idea seemed to fall from the sky. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “What?” She sounded apprehensive, but at least she was willing to listen.

  “Give me his contact information. Let me get in touch with him first. Prepare him for your meeting.”

  “Mom, I—”

  “I know you’re an adult and capable of doing this yourself. I know you want to see his honest reaction to meeting you. But believe me”—Diane released a rueful snort—“Kevin Harrison was never one to hide his true feelings. Even with advance notice, you’ll get the real McCoy when you meet him. But let me tell him his daughter wants to meet him. Let me be the one to—”

  “Take the brunt?” Meghan was catching on.

  Diane squeezed her forehead, where a headache began to throb. “Yes. I wasn’t the world’s most protective, involved mother. Let me make up for some of that now. Please?”

  A heavy sigh met Diane’s ear. “All right. I guess I can do that. I’ll text you the contact information I found online. But don’t wait too long, okay? I’m kinda eager to get this over with.”

  “Let me finish grading all the final-semester tests and so forth and get scores turned in to the office.” The headache changed from a throb to a pound. “Then I’ll get in touch with him.”

  Little Rock, Arkansas

  Meghan

  “She’s here.”

  Meghan acknowledged Sean’s statement with a nod, closed the file on her computer screen, and looked toward the double doors that led to the cold-case unit. A woman with shoulder-length straight blond hair and a petite frame stood talking to Captain Ratzlaff. Her tunic-styled tank top, holey capri jeggings, and gladiator sandals identified her as young, but her tense, unsmiling countenance gave her a hardened yet weary appearance. Apparently the burden of responsibility—or maybe dragging around a boulder of bitterness—had aged her. Sympathy struck.

  The captain led the young woman toward the cluster of desks, and Meghan and Sean rose. Captain Ratzlaff gestured to Meghan first. “Detective, this is Sheila Menke. Sheila, Detective Meghan DeFord.”

  Sheila extended her hand, and Meghan took hold. She had a strong handshake. What Meghan would call a commanding grip. The corners of the young woman’s lips jerked upward into a brief, stiff not-quite-smile. “It’s nice to meet you.” She turned to Sean but didn’t offer to shake his hand. “You must be Detective Sean Eagle. I hope you won’t mind if I call you two Sean and Meghan. Detective and Detective feels stuffy.”

  Sean nodded. “Sean and Meghan is fine, Sheila. Or do you prefer Miss Menke?”

  “I prefer to not need your services. But that’s moot.”

  One of the other agents snickered. The captain sent a quick frown in the direction of the sound, then ushered Sheila across the floor. “Let’s go to my office. We’ll be more comfortable there.”

  Meghan and Sean trailed the captain to his office. He rolled his desk chair out from behind his desk and offered it to Sheila. Sean and Meghan took the sofa, as they’d done yesterday, and Captain Ratzlaff sat on the edge of his desk and folded his arms over his chest. “Sheila, I’ve told the detectives the timeline for when your father went missing. They also know a judge ruled that he fled the country with stolen money. As much information as you can give them about what you remember from your dad’s last days at home will help guide their investigation. So the floor is yours.”

  Sheila crossed her legs, then placed her hands in her lap. It seemed a relaxed position, but she wove her fingers together so tightly her fingertips reddened. Every fingernail was bitten down to the quick. Tension seemed to pulse from her, and a nerve pinched in Meghan’s neck—a telltale signal of discomfort. Yet sympathy still rested heavily on Meghan’s chest.

  “First, my mother swore my father was an upstanding man who would never steal. She said he loved all of us and wouldn’t walk away without a word. What I remember about him would support that. I have good memories of him reading to us kids, taking us for ice cream on payday, helping me with homework, and tossing a ball back and forth in the yard with my brothers, Wayne and Brandon. I thought he was a good dad.”

  She recited pleasant memories, but her tone was flat and her expression blank, as if she shared details of someone else’s life. The nerve in Meghan’s neck throbbed.

  “Mom worked as a school secretary until my youngest brother, Brandon, was born. She got sick during the pregnancy, and her health fell apart. She got worse and worse. Now she’s dead.” Sheila bit her lip and lowered her gaze.

  Sean leaned forward slightly. “We’re very sorry about the loss of your mother. You have our condolences.”

  Sheila’s head lifted, and determination gleamed in her blue eyes. “She never went back to work after Brandon was born, so even though I wouldn’t say we were poor, we didn’t have a lot of extra money. Then Dad left and we didn’t have any money except Mom’s disability. Mom wanted to keep our house in Fort Smith. She wanted to be there when Dad came back. But the bank—the same one Dad had worked for—foreclosed, and we ended up moving into subsidized housing here in Little Rock because the complex had an opening. Mom stayed in touch with our old neighbors, though. They promised to let her know if they saw Dad come around. But, of course, he never did.”

  She turned to the captain. “I don’t really remember anything significant about the days before Dad left. He seemed uptight, but Mom was going through a rough patch. She had those—times when the sickness was worse than usual. He always got uptight then, worrying about her and worrying about the doctor bills and worrying about us kids. He worried a lot. I remember that.”

  Captain Ratzlaff rubbed his chin and pinned Sheila with a frown. “You said your dad seemed uptight before he disappeared. You also said he got uptight when your mom wasn’t doing well. Do you remember anything he might have said—to your mom or on the phone to a friend—that would shed some light on whether there was something more than your mom’s health bothering him?”

  Sheila shrugged. “If there was something related to his job, we wouldn’t have known. Dad had this habit of leaving work outside the door. He never talked about anything work related. At least not in front of us kids.”

  This investigation was supposed to be Meghan’s. If she was going to take it on, she needed to connect with Sheila. She braced her elbow on the sofa’s armrest, bringing her a few inches closer to the younger woman. “What about something personal? Illness, and the stresses that accompany taking care of someone who’s sick much of the time, can really take a toll on a relationship.” Grandma had often talked about how hard it was on her family to watch her father’s health fail due to alcoholism. His addiction ruined his relationship with his wife and daughter. “Did you hear them fighting, maybe about bills or about him spending time with someone else or doing things your mother didn’t approve of?”

  A short, half-amused, half-disgusted huff left Sheila’s lips. “He and Mom didn’t fight. Not where us kids would hear. They took their private conversations behind their closed bedroom door, and they never got noisy. My mom said she made Dad promise to never fight in front of us because she spent her childhood witnessing explosive arguments between her parents. She didn’t want us to feel afraid in our own home.”

  “Sounds like your mom was a very loving person.”

  Tears glistened in Sheila’s eyes. She sniffed, then blinked, and her expression turned sullen. “Loving, yeah, and naive. I wanted to have my dad’s disappearance investigated years ago, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. She told us over and over again he had to have met with foul play o
r he would’ve come back to us, but she wouldn’t let us try to prove it. I think deep down she was scared I was right—that my dad got fed up with taking care of a sick wife and three kids. He saw the chance for a new, better life, and he took it. Mom didn’t want us to find him living on some tropical island, free of responsibilities.”

  Sheila seemed to examine her ragged thumbnail. “Now that she’s gone, I don’t have to worry about sparing her feelings. And I need help. Financially, I mean. If my dad’s dead, I need to know. There’s a sizable life insurance policy through the bank that would sure make things easier for us. And if he’s alive, then I want to know why he left. He owes us an explanation.”

  Meghan wanted an explanation from her own father, too. Why had he so easily walked away from her and Mom? Her life would have been so different if she’d had both a father and a mother.

  Sheila rocked the chair, her gaze darting between Meghan and Sean. “It’s been fifteen years. Do you think it’s possible to figure out where he is?”

  Meghan nodded. “Of course it’s possible.”

  “But it’s not a given.” Sean gave Meghan’s knee a light squeeze. “None of our cases are.”

  Sheila’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you saying you won’t try?”

  Meghan met Sean’s gaze. She knew him well enough to recognize apprehension in his tight lips and wrinkled brow. They’d worked with needy people and angry people and hurting people. With some who were needy, angry, and hurting all at once. Resentment seemed to be Sheila’s main emotion, but who could blame her? The girl believed that she’d been duped by the man who should have nurtured and supported her.

  The nerve in Meghan’s neck continued to pinch, proof that Sheila’s hardened attitude put Meghan on edge, but she wanted to find Anson Menke. As Sheila had said, the man owed his children answers. She wanted those answers for Sheila. And she wanted them for herself.

  Six

  Sean

  The clock showed 5:40—ten minutes past their official quitting time—when Sean, Meghan, and Sheila left the captain’s office. The other detectives had clocked out for the day, and the room was quiet.