by Lee Winter
“What day was that?”
“Last Tuesday. About noon. He missed his Skype call on Wednesday and didn’t answer my calls. I called his LA office, and they hadn’t seen him. Then I called Barry here, and he said he’d spoken to him on Tuesday night but not since.”
“Barry?”
“Barry Whiteman. His best friend. He works in accounting for the state.”
“They work together?”
“Different departments, but yes.”
“Did Barry say whether Jon was acting out of character when they last spoke?”
“Barry didn’t say much of anything. He’s almost as upset as I am.”
“Would he mind if we called him for background information?” Lauren asked. “Can we get his number?”
Della shook her head firmly. “One thing he and Jon share is a dislike of the media. He wouldn’t want me to give out his number to you.”
“That’s okay,” Lauren reassured her. There were other ways. “So when did you call the police?”
“Wednesday night. They said they were busy, and he hadn’t been gone long and to wait and see if he came back on his own. I called back the next day and kept on calling until they started investigating.
“Then they wanted to know if we’d been having marital difficulties. Was Jon a ladies man?” She glared. “What a joke! Jon would never stray. He’s a devoted family man.
“When they went to his apartment, they found the lock had been broken. All his things had been gone through, but some cash in the bedroom was untouched.”
“The police must have taken the case more seriously after that?” Ayers said, speaking for the first time. “Men running off with mistresses don’t usually tip their apartments upside down first.”
Della’s jaw tightened. “Oh sure. Detective Rankin went from asking me about his secret girlfriends to what business Jon was really into. Drugs, gambling…”
“Well, is it possible that he—” Ayers began.
“No!” Della slapped the armrest hard. “Not drugs, not gambling, not crime of any kind. And even if you don’t believe me, look around you! He liked everything organized…” She gestured at the book shelf.
“How did you two meet?” Lauren asked curiously, wondering how a woman like this, who’d look at home pulling beers at a sports bar, wound up with the uptight Sands.
Della’s eyes warmed. “He was in Las Vegas for a Business in Technology convention. I was working as a waitress for the caterer. He was almost the only guy who talked to me—my eyes, not my boobs or my ass.”
She laughed. “He didn’t care that I didn’t know one thing about technology stuff. All he cared about was me. He gave up his career for me.”
“What do you mean?” Lauren asked in confusion. “He still works with computers.”
“Oh he had this much better job, but he quit and came here to be with me. I couldn’t leave Carson City—my family and home are here. So he moved, we got married, and had Fee. And it was all fine.” She hesitated.
Ayers studied her. “What happened?”
Della didn’t answer immediately.
“Jon has been going through a difficult time lately,” she said and paused. She fidgeted with her watch again. “He’s become more and more secretive. Maybe a little paranoid. He talks to himself often. That happens with very smart people sometimes,” she said anxiously. “Right?
“Something wasn’t okay when he left for LA.” A faraway look crossed her face. “He wasn’t like this when we got married. He was the sweetest man.”
“It’s odd,” Lauren murmured. “He seemed fine when I spoke to him last Monday. Well except for the rant about the mainstream media.”
Della smiled. “Well, don’t try and figure it out. I discovered long ago that my husband’s brilliant mind processes things in curious ways. Nothing works quite the same way for him as it does for everyone else.”
“Do you think it’s possible his paranoia got the better of him? That’s why he’s missing?” Ayers asked carefully.
“Did you forget the part about his apartment being ransacked?” Della said sharply. “That was no figment of his imagination.”
“Do you have any ideas where he might have run to?” Ayers tried. “Friends? Family?”
“Why does everyone think he ran? What if someone has him? Our accounts haven’t been touched. Who runs without money? Besides,” her tone softened, “he would not leave our little girl. Those two are like peas in a pod. Fee misses her daddy.” Her hand curled into a fist, and she met their gazes. “Jon would never ever leave me or his baby girl. His family means everything to him, no matter what might be going on with his state of mind. Do you get that at least?”
Lauren and Ayers both nodded, which seemed to satisfy her.
“When did Jon start to decline?” Ayers asked.
Della eyed her warily. “About eighteen months ago.”
“Can you tell me all the things that happened around then? Even if they seem insignificant?” Ayers clicked her pen.
Della rubbed her temple as she thought. “Susan—that’s his sister in New York—came to stay. Jon started following the news. Don’t ask me why. He also bought Fee a little laptop for her third birthday. We had a terrible fight about it. It seems silly now, but I was so angry. I think three is far too young for computers, don’t you? Even one that’s a pink My Little Pony thing.”
She sighed. “Anyway, that’s about everything. Now can I ask why you’re taking such a sudden interest in Jon’s case? You know he’s been missing for a week already.”
“We only found out today,” Lauren said.
“A lot of people go missing,” Della said, frowning. “Why do you care about him?”
Lauren wasn’t sure how to answer that. She was fairly certain that mentioning a party full of hookers and cheap booze had led them here was not a good idea. Della’s bloodshot gaze swung between them as she waited.
Ayers answered for her.
“A lot of people do go missing, Mrs. Sands,” she said, smoothly. “But it’s like you said, what if Jon didn’t run?”
Della nodded, pleased. “Thank you. For keeping an open mind. That’s more than the police are offering.” She stood, making it clear their chat was over.
“Take my business card,” Lauren said as she rose and handed it over. “Call any time if something comes up. And we’re really sorry for what you’re going through.”
Della didn’t reply but nodded and led them to the door.
* * *
“So…” Ayers said as they stretched their legs out at a grassy park. “What does a tech expert having a meltdown have to do with a bus driver fleeing to Mexico and embezzlement costing the state of Nevada $100,000?”
Lauren glanced cautiously around. There were three teenage boys hanging out in the distance, two on skateboards. Otherwise, they had their corner of the park to themselves. Lunch was at their sides, and notebooks and pens were scattered around them as they brainstormed.
“What does a huge payroll business with expansion plans have to do with any of this,” Lauren countered. “Are they even linked?”
“What’s the common denominator?” Ayers asked. “Money? Power? Who gains what?” She reached for her coffee and took a swig.
“Politics,” Lauren said. “I think it comes down to Governor Freeman somehow. He’s up for re-election, right? He was counting on claiming SmartPay as one of his wins—the local start-up going global. He can’t do that if a whiff of scandal is attached to it. He’s being targeted.”
“And yet the other side isn’t saying a word,” Ayers said, tapping her cup. “I have sources there, too, and there’s no chatter at all on this. It’s not them.”
Lauren reached for a can of cola.
“That stuff will kill you,” Ayers said in disdain.
Lauren pointed to Ayers double espresso. “Ditto. Besides I have excellent metabolism. And good genes.”
“Well,” Ayers said. She placed her now empty coffee cup on the
ground. “Lucky you.”
“Speaking of lucky genes…” Lauren said, carefully. “I gather you grew up with money, but I’m sorry I laughed at the one percenter crack. That was rude.”
“I can’t help being born into money,” Ayers said in a clipped tone. “But if it sits better with your working-class reverse snobbery, I bought my house with my own money. I didn’t get a dime from my family.”
Her tone was oddly stripped of emotion, and Lauren felt a little startled to be told even that much.
“Did you have some moral objection to using their money? Wanted to ‘make it’ on your own or something?” she asked.
Ayers’s lips thinned. This time Lauren knew she was well and truly trampling all over the woman’s comfort zone.
“Yes,” she said curtly. “But either way it’s irrelevant. My parents had a rather…strenuous objection to me pursuing the career I did. I was given an ultimatum—journalism or the family money.”
“Your parents weren’t proud as hell about the reporter you became? You ran a news bureau! My dad would have been doing handsprings and boasting to everyone if that was me.”
“Well,” Ayers said, and her eyes returned to staring at her sandwich. “As I said before, lucky you.” She bundled the remains of her lunch into its wrapper, fisted it into an angry ball, and dropped it on the grass.
“Um, what exactly did they think was a good career for you?” Lauren asked tentatively.
“They had me in line for an esteemed Fortune 500 company.”
Lauren’s eyebrows shot up.
“As a secretary. In the family business.”
“Shit.”
“Mmm. Or I could have married a nice man with impeccable credentials and retired to the upper echelons of the Boston social set. Thrown elaborate parties and fundraisers and so forth. My mother would have approved of that rather a lot.”
“Ew,” Lauren said, and screwed up her face. “It’s sort of weird you ended up attending those kinds of events anyway. All day every day in fact.”
“The irony hasn’t been lost on me. Now, if we’re done?” Ayers reached for her cell phone. “I’m calling Whiteman again. For the ninth time. You’d think he’d want to help us find his best friend.”
“Maybe Barry just hates the media more than he likes his friend,” Lauren shrugged.
She finished her potato salad as she heard Ayers go through the switchboard and ask for the accounting office.
Ayers suddenly sat up straight, quickly thumbed her phone across to speaker mode, and made a writing motion in Lauren’s direction.
Lauren scrambled for her notebook and pen ready to take notes as Ayers launched into one of her rare charm offensives.
“Mr. Whiteman,” she began. “Catherine Ayers from the Daily Sentinel. I’m very sorry to intrude, but I’ll be brief. It’s about your friend, Jon Sands. I really think we should meet.”
* * *
Lauren pulled over and turned off the ignition. “Are you sure the address is right? This place is creepy.”
“You wrote it down,” Ayers said. “You tell me.”
They were in a small, dark alley behind a series of shops. The area was filled with large dumpsters, smaller trash cans, and the smell of rotting food pervaded the air. Rear doors lined the alley from the businesses that backed onto the area, and as Lauren glanced down to check what she’d written, one of them opened and banged shut.
“Your scrawl appears accurate,” Ayers murmured and pointed. “Over there.”
They watched as a man in his early forties, overweight, pale and anxious, with a five-o’clock shadow, shuffled out. He wore ill-fitting tracksuit pants and a faded Guns N’ Roses T-shirt that was a size too small. Lauren opened her door, about to get out and greet him, but he shook his head and pointed to the rear of the car.
He dropped into the back seat with a grunt and slammed the door on The Beast so violently that Ayers offered Lauren a vaguely sympathetic glance.
“Christ,” he said by way of introduction. “I can’t believe you kept calling me at work,” he hissed. “Everyone’s twitchy enough as it is right now. I had to tell them I was going to the gym. Like that was believable. And then I had to borrow gym clothes. God, look at me!”
“Barry?” Ayers checked, twisting to get a proper look at their passenger.
“Yeah, oh hell, sorry. Barry Whiteman. So let’s cut the crap. Have you heard from Jon?” He peered at them hopefully. “Della calls me every day, worried sick. He has a daughter, you know. Those two adore Jon. If anything happened…” He began to gnaw on his fingernails as he watched them.
“Why do you think something’s happened to him?” Ayers asked.
“I just told you. Why would a man choose to disappear when he loves his family that much? Hell, he must love them—why do you think he left Washington for this dump?”
Ayers started. “Sands used to work in Washington?”
Barry gave a short laugh. “Big time. I met him at a convention in Nevada, and we hung out some. Same event he met Della at.”
He stared out the window. “I helped him get a job here. It was a crappy gig compared to what he had, but it was all that was available at the time in IT. He didn’t mind though. He got to be with Della.”
“What did he do in Washington?” Lauren asked.
“He wrote programs to crunch political poll data. He was freelance, and he was so accurate at predicting how elections would swing in which districts that both sides would hire him on and off. He didn’t care which persuasion paid his check, either. Jon’s not political. It’s all just numbers to him.
“When he quit, there were head hunters coast to coast trying to lure him back. They had no chance. Only Carson City had Della.”
Ayers considered that. “Was he happy here? Away from all the DC action?”
“More or less,” Barry said. He swallowed. “Look, you know that SmartPay party? The one with the hookers and booze charged to the taxpayers?”
“You know about that?”
He laughed dryly. “You kidding? Everyone does. People have been losing their shit trying to find out what the hell’s going on. IT was given the job of investigating it and worked out pretty fast it was an inside job because too many safety protocols had been sidestepped. But after that, they were stumped. It seemed like heads were gonna roll.”
“Barry,” Lauren said slowly. “Why are you talking in the past tense? Do they know who did it now?”
He began to fiddle with the door handle.
“Barry?”
“I didn’t know,” he said gruffly, choking on his words. “I just…I was trying to be helpful.”
“Go on,” Ayers urged.
“One of the IT guys, well, he and I would sometimes hang out at a bar after work. The political minders were giving him hell for being incompetent for not finding the thief immediately and figuring out what happened. I wanted to help him.”
He ran a hand shakily through his thinning hair. “So I said, ‘Hey, Jarmal, why don’t you ask Jon to help you find the bastard? He’d track him down in, like, five minutes.’ A couple of the higher-ups from work who were at the bar must have been listening in ’cause they came over, saying ‘Jon who?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh you know, Jon Sands. Uh, the guy who went to California to help with SmartPay? The guy who’s a tech genius?’
“And they’re all, ‘Come on, how could some low-level grunt know anything about catching this guy? Whaddya mean ‘genius?’ And that’s when I remember none of them know his background. Jon didn’t want to be overlooked as too qualified when he applied here, so he left a bunch of the incredible stuff off his resume.
“So I tell them. All of it. About Washington, and him being the highest paid tech-head in DC. You shoulda seen their faces. Especially my IT buddy—he’d just assumed all this time Jon was some dumb-shit basic code monkey. Jon was always too modest to ever hint otherwise.” He sucked in a shaky breath. “They were shocked. And the higher-ups start clapping me on the shoulder an
d saying, ‘Yeah, we sure will follow that up.’ And ‘Good work.’ I suddenly had a bad feeling about it.
“So that night, it was, what, Tuesday the fourteenth, I give Jon a call, a little head’s up that they’re going to maybe ask for his expertise. Sometimes he freaks a little if you spring stuff on him that’s out of his usual routine. And oh man, it was the worst.
“He was all, ‘Barry, why’d you have to go and do that? Why’d you tell them who I used to be? You put me in the crosshairs for this. They’ll think I did it now. I was invisible, everyone left me alone and you’ve ruined that.’
“I tried to calm him and said ‘Nah, nah they won’t think it’s you, don’t be paranoid. Come on, this is just a challenge to solve. Solve it, and the rest will all go away.’ But he was convinced I’d put a target on his back. First time I’ve ever known him to get mad. And that was the last I spoke to him.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t told Della any of that. She’d kill me. But the worst part is he was right. They did decide he’d done it.
“I don’t know what happened after that. Maybe someone got to him. Hurt him or took him or worse. Or maybe he did run, and they went through his shit later—I don’t know. But next thing you know, he’s not there. And here, with no one else to blame and Jon suddenly gone? You know how that looked.
“The bosses decided he had to be guilty and told anyone who’d listen he was a ‘lone rogue.’ I told them it was crazy. What does a man who doesn’t drink or go to parties, who’s straight as an arrow, and who has never even been late with a library book have to do with this shit?
“Know what they said? ‘It’s a good fit and gets the governor off our cases. Now stop rocking the damn boat.’ And that was that. Everyone bought it, shrugged, and moved on. All ’cause I opened my big trap.”
There was a silence.
Ayers studied him. “You don’t think he did it?”
“He had no motive,” Barry growled in frustration. “Why would he? Risk his family for this stupid crap? And it doesn’t fit his personality. Jon lives for rules.”