by Dete Meserve
He exhales a shaky breath. Except for the very few times he’s been sick, he’s never missed an entire day of school. Staying home makes this all the more real. “When do you think Dad will be back?”
I look into his brown eyes and struggle to find words that might reassure him. “I hope soon. Maybe his car broke down. Maybe that’s all this is . . .”
After Zack heads upstairs to his room, I scour Ben’s home office, hoping to find some clues to what happened. I’m not surprised that his laptop is missing because he usually shuttles it back and forth to the office. On his desk, alongside a rusty can of WD-40 and a flashlight, is a neat pile of papers. I review each document but see nothing but the usual bills, a request for donations to Zack’s school’s annual fundraiser, and a couple of receipts for coffee.
I lean back in his chair and text my sister, Rachel: Ben didn’t come home last night. Police are looking for him.
Ten seconds later she types back: Oh no! Tell me what I can do to help.
Not sure yet.
I can be there in a couple of hours.
My sister lives in San Francisco, a few hours away by plane, but in recent years we haven’t been particularly close. She’s three years older than I am and can be overdramatic in tense situations. And bossy. Not what Zack and I need right now.
Not yet. I’ll keep you posted. Call you soon.
OK will check in with you later, she texts and signs off with a double heart emoji.
I set my phone down and close my eyes, my anxiety soaring. And not just because Ben is missing.
I had lied to police. Told the detective I came straight home from the airport and then realized Ben was missing. I left out the part about drinking with my CIT colleague at the airport bar. Celebrating with four . . . or maybe it was five . . . shots of tequila. We were happy about our asteroid discovery, the two of us, and the liquor helped us laugh in a way we didn’t—we couldn’t—at work.
Aaron hadn’t been invited to attend the NASA meeting. That privilege was given to me and CIT’s Director of Astrophysics and Space Research, Steven Webster. So when I arrived back in LA, I was surprised to see Aaron walking a few feet ahead of me in the American Airlines terminal. He had been visiting family in Atlanta and his plane arrived just five minutes before mine. He wanted to know every detail about the NASA presentation, so we caught up over a quick drink. Which turned into five. And three hundred missing minutes between the time I landed and the time the driver dropped me off at my house.
I was stupid not to tell police the truth. Especially when they were eventually going to find out anyway. But I knew what they’d think. They’d assume any woman who’s getting drunk in a bar late at night with a man who’s not her husband is unstable. Unreliable.
Maybe responsible for her husband’s disappearance.
CHAPTER THREE
With a name like Stuart Baxter, I expect Ben’s attorney to be British. And because he’s the lead attorney, I also expect him to be older—in his fifties or sixties. But Stuart Baxter is forty-two years old, according to his bio on the firm’s website. Just three years older than I am.
“Sorry to be meeting you for the first time under these circumstances. I came as quickly as I could,” he says.
“When did you last see Ben?” I ask, ushering him into the living room.
He threads his fingers through surprisingly glossy blond hair, then drops himself onto the same sofa where Detective Dawson had been sitting twenty minutes earlier. He sheds a cobalt-blue sport coat.
“Not since last Wednesday. We were successful at getting the trial date moved up, but Ben had said he was dealing with some big stuff, and so we’d planned to meet all day today.”
“Big stuff?”
“He didn’t really elaborate.”
I walk him through the details of everything that’s happened over the last twelve hours but leave out the part about the DVR. He raises an eyebrow when I tell him about the gun.
“That’s strange. Have there been any recent robberies or break-ins around here that might have prompted that?”
I shake my head.
“Maybe he went someplace to get a little R&R before the trial. Do you guys have a second home, maybe a beach house or a cabin in the mountains?”
“No, this is our entire real-estate empire,” I say, but my sarcasm is lost on him.
“What about his parents? Any chance he could’ve gone to visit them?”
“Not without telling me. His mother lives in Chicago. His dad has passed away.”
“He has a sister, right?”
I nod.
“Okay, I’d like you to get started by calling his sister, his mom, and any close friends. Check in. Will is doing the same for his work contacts. I’m going to want a list of everyone with phone numbers and contact info.”
I’d begun a list of friends and family, but held off doing anything with it, not wanting to worry anyone needlessly. Between our family, work contacts, neighbors, friends from Zack’s school, and other friends, the list was enormous. I imagine dialing all their numbers—can you break such troubling news by email or social media? Where would I even start?
“In the meantime, we’re monitoring his credit cards. So far, there’s been zero activity since Tuesday when he spent something like fifteen dollars at the drug store around the corner. We’re working on getting access to his cell phone records. When did you last see him?”
“Four days ago. I’ve been in DC making a presentation to NASA. But our son says Ben left here around five thirty yesterday and was heading to Aurora.”
“He never made it there,” he says without even trying to soften the blow. “Something happened to him in the five miles between here and the restaurant.”
My voice is breathy. “What could’ve happened?”
“Look,” he says, leaning forward. “We have a lot of evidence in this trial. It looks like Ben would prevail. And the other side knew it. I don’t want to alarm you . . . but let me put it this way: at least two of his partners are highly motivated to make this trial go away.”
I feel my heart hammering in my throat. “You mean to make Ben ‘disappear’?”
He looks down and studies the pattern on the carpet. “If Ben prevailed in this trial, which it looked like he would, they had a lot to lose. A lot. What I’m saying is that the stakes are very high, and in situations like this, you never know what people are capable of.”
“Mom, you’ve got to see this,” Zack says, rushing into the living room. “Dad’s on Channel Eleven.” He hands me his phone with a video that’s playing. “Well, not Dad himself, but they’re talking about him being missing.”
I’m surprised at how the media picked up on the story so fast. Standing on my front lawn, a dark-haired reporter named Kate Bradley is saying, “Ben Mayfield is the co-owner of Aurora, one of LA’s top restaurants, and was scheduled to testify against his partners, including movie star Michael Hayden, about the disappearance of several million dollars in Aurora revenues. Sources say that Mayfield was to present tremendous evidence that would favor his case.”
“We’re going to need more help,” Stuart says. And for the first time, I hear fear in his voice.
I have a bigger fear. If Ben stays missing for very much longer, I know that police are going to ask again for the security-system DVR. Even though the drive may be erased and only seventeen seconds is currently recoverable, they’ve got sophisticated technology to recover the data on that hard drive. All of it.
But Ben erased that DVR for some reason. Was there something he didn’t want anyone—even me—to see? I consider the possibility that he accidentally erased it, but that seems unlikely, because he also went into a separate part of the program to stop the cameras from recording, too. That’s not a casual mistake. It seems deliberate. And if Ben had a reason to delete the footage, I need to recover that data and figure out what it is before handing the DVR over to police.
And there’s something else I don’t want them to
see. Something I don’t want anyone to see. The clip with Simone is not the problem. The problem is what I said to Ben the day I left to make the NASA presentation. What I said in the office where the camera and microphone were recording every word.
I think we’re broken.
Whenever I hear about a woman being unhappy in her marriage, it’s almost always assumed to be the man’s fault. He was cheating or ignoring her or abusive. But Ben hadn’t done any of those things.
I had loved him deeply and was happy—joyful—in the life we built together. Until the strain of our everyday, complicated lives of working and raising a teenage son brought out the worst in each of us. Until the life we lived together no longer bore any resemblance to the blissful place where we’d started.
I know that sounds unquantifiable. Shouldn’t I have a list of what drove me to feeling our marriage had reached a place of hopelessness? Isn’t that what we always hear when a friend complains about her spouse: He is rude. He is never home. He is . . .
But this wasn’t about what he does. This was about what he saw. With each passing day, I’d become invisible to him. Like the Trojan asteroid, I was dancing in his orbit day after day, but was completely unnoticed by him.
For months, maybe longer, we had barely exchanged a single word that wasn’t about house repairs, the cars, Zack’s problems, the schedules we were juggling, or the lack of groceries in the fridge.
And when I talked about the discoveries we were making about 2010 TK7, he was always distracted, eyes glued to the blue-light glow of his phone, scrolling through something that was clearly more important to him. “That’s good,” he’d say absently.
How could this discovery, which was so important—no, essential—to me, mean so little to him?
Once, we played. We geeked out looking at the stars or watching sci-fi shows on TV, then snuck back to bed after breakfast waffles. I adored him like crazy. I longed to be with him, to touch him. And yet even though he was still very attractive by all measurable standards, I no longer saw the man I married.
We were broken. And with each passing day, I found myself disappearing from him, visible within plain sight but completely unseen by him. He seemed to have forgotten me as his playful, funny geek, but instead I’d become a kind of generic person who shared responsibility for Zack and the house and spent too much time being paid to look at the stars.
I can’t remember the last time we laughed together. Although I’m sure he probably laughs when he’s at work. When I’m not around.
Richard Jenkins has a voice like a fine single-malt whisky, smoky with a smooth finish. He shapes every word so that it feels like it’s meant for you alone, and he speaks as though he understands you better than anyone in the world.
Some people find that skill mesmerizing. I’m not one of them. Last year he was slapped with multimillion-dollar fines for unpaid back taxes and bragged about evading them.
He is also one of the three partners named in Ben’s lawsuit.
“Sarah,” he says to me on the phone. His voice drips with concern and care. “I just heard about Ben on the news.”
It’s early afternoon, and outside my kitchen window, the sun streams through the stand of tall palm trees that line my backyard. For a moment, I imagine this all has a logical answer. Ben’s car broke down, so he waited for repairs. He’s going to walk in the front door any second.
My voice is unsteady. “When did you see him last?”
“Well, you can imagine it’s been a few weeks.”
I settle into a chair. “What can you tell me that might help us figure out where he is?”
“The media are making it sound like we, his partners, have something nefarious to do with his disappearance.” His voice is gritty now. On edge. “But we all know that’s not true. And if you’re the source of that lie, Sarah, you need to stop.”
I feel a chill run up my spine. In person, Richard is 240 pounds with slicked-back hair and a swollen face that’s perpetually red, which makes him look he’s always primed for a fistfight. “I’m not your employee or your partner, Richard. And I’m not here to take instructions from you. I’m hoping you can help me find my husband.”
“His lawsuit is bullshit.” The whisky tones are gone, replaced by pure vinegar. “Your husband was stealing from us. At least one million. Likely more.”
It feels like he just slapped me. “That’s insane,” I say, louder than I intend. “Ben wouldn’t steal from anyone.”
“I’ve always liked you, Sarah. Admired you, actually. You’re highly accomplished. Smart. But Ben isn’t the saint they’re portraying in the media. Ben was stealing from us.”
“I think you’re telling me a lie, Richard. Because if you had any such evidence, you’d be filing the lawsuit instead of the other way around. But your flimsy accusations are not the point. Ben is missing. Do you know where he is?”
There’s a long silence on the phone. “No idea.”
“Call me when you do,” I say, then hang up.
I wander through the house, trying to shake off his accusations. I can’t imagine Ben stole millions from his partners. Yet, for a brief moment, I wonder if that’s what’s been financing this house, our expensive cars, and Zack’s private-school education. Is that why Ben has been preoccupied lately?
How much do I really know about how Ben does business?
I step into our bedroom and everything seems frozen in time—as though Ben could walk through the door any minute. Yet all that once seemed familiar and ordinary seems strange now, imbued with new significance.
I touch my hand to Ben’s denim shirt at the foot of our bed. It smells like him. Old Spice, his favorite for as long as I’d known him. I hold the shirt up to my nose and remember him wearing it smudged with dirt a few summers ago when things were better between us. He had a flat tire and the towing company had said it’d be forty-five minutes before they could get here, but Ben was sure he could change it in less time than that. Except he couldn’t. Ben had many talents, but fixing things wasn’t one of them, so he didn’t get past trying to get the flat tire off the wheel. He’d stormed into the house frustrated, tossed his tools onto the kitchen counter, and marched upstairs.
I’d followed him to our bedroom. “You okay?”
He wrapped me in his arms, his scent swirling around me, then pressed a lingering kiss to my lips. “I am now.”
As I place the shirt back on the bed, I realize it’s been months since we touched like that, and I can’t remember what it feels like to kiss him. And have him kiss me back.
I head back downstairs and notice that his keys, cell phone, and wallet are missing from the green ceramic bowl where they usually sit on the entryway table. Then I glance through the trash in the kitchen—a frozen pizza box and empty milk carton—in blind hope that he’d written me a note and that it had fallen into the trash somehow. Nothing.
In the hushed stillness of the afternoon, I feel as though the house is holding a secret.
CHAPTER FOUR
It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Ben’s disappearance is because of his lawsuit against his Aurora partners. But our brains are masters at self-deception. Long ago when our ancestors roamed the plains searching for food, jumping to conclusions about the location of a predator helped us survive. In today’s world, our tendency to do the same thing makes us lean toward what appears to be the most obvious, but perhaps wrong, answers.
As I head to the shower, I wonder if presuming Ben’s disappearance is linked to the lawsuit might have us ignoring alternate explanations, ones that might actually lead us to where he is. I’m in the shower for all of three minutes when I hear the doorbell buzz.
Whoever it is leans on the bell for an entire five seconds without break.
I feel a jolt of relief, imagining what it could mean: Ben is home.
I throw on a terrycloth robe, scramble downstairs, then peer through the peephole. Standing on the doorstep is a man dressed in a black tweed suit.
&n
bsp; “How can I help you?” I call out.
“Jeff Rosen. I’m the attorney Ben Mayfield called.”
Attorney? I hesitate a moment then take in his appearance. His slicked-back brown hair says he’s someone in finance, but his leather briefcase definitely reads attorney.
I open the door.
“Sorry I’m thirty minutes late. Is Ben still here?”
“Why are you looking for him here?”
He pulls a business card from his suit pocket and hands it to me. “He asked me to meet him here this morning.”
I glance at the card: Jeff Rosen, Criminal Defense Attorney.
My first thought is that Ben called him to defend himself against his partners’ claims that he was stealing from them. But considering his partners hadn’t actually filed a lawsuit to that effect, and Ben already had a raft of attorneys representing him on the Aurora trial, that didn’t make sense. Then I notice the address on his card: Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
“You’re based in Manhattan?”
He nods. “I was already out here on business,” he says, rocking on his heels. “So I offered to meet him in person this morning. Where can I find him?”
The words are stalled in my throat. “My husband is missing. He didn’t come home last night.”
His smile fades. “I’m sorry, I—”
“It’s been all over the news here.”
“I haven’t been paying attention to—”
“Can you tell me why he needed your services? I mean, you don’t call a defense attorney unless you’ve been charged with some kind of criminal activity, right?”
He clears his throat. “Unfortunately, because of attorney-client privilege, I can’t discuss your husband’s situation.”
I glance at his business card then back at him. “You can imagine that’s not the answer I need to be hearing right now.”
His expression softens. “I don’t mean to be insensitive. I can say in all honesty that your husband didn’t tell me any details of his situation except to say that he needed an urgent in-person consultation.”