by David Bell
She sighed as she told him about agreeing to adopt a dog for Felicity just over a year ago. Erica said she really didn’t want to take on the responsibility of a dog, but she thought it might be good for Felicity. During the summer, the two of them had fallen into the habit of taking the dog to the park in the morning, before the heat of the day set in, and leading it on a long walk. Even that early in the morning, they both ended up sweaty, but Erica still had enough time to return home and shower and get ready for work.
“This morning we went a little later than normal. I’d had a late meeting at work the night before, so I didn’t need to get in as early. I went to the park, got the stupid dog out of the car.” As Erica moved to the events of that very morning, her voice took on the frantic, nervous tone again. Michael felt bad making her relive it, but his desire to know was even greater. “Felicity and I had a fight last night. She wants to get her ears pierced. I say she’s too young. We went around and around about it. When we woke up this morning, she was still pissed at me. She inherited my stubbornness. So she refused to get out of the car and walk with me and the dog.” Erica took one last drag and threw the cigarette out the window, and as she powered it back up, the air made a whooshing noise. “I was over it, Michael. I’m a single mom. I fight all these battles alone. So I told her if she wanted to sit in the hot car and wait for me, she could be my guest. No skin off my nose, right?”
Erica grew quiet. Michael turned onto the state road toward Davenport County. With the window up, the car seemed particularly silent with only the sound of the tires rolling over the pavement and the gentle hum of the motor and air-conditioning. Michael waited, although he might have guessed what came next.
“When I get back to the car, she’s gone. Just gone. No sign of a problem. No blood or scream or anything.” Her breath caught in her throat. Her voice lowered. “Gone.”
“Could she have . . . I mean, kids run away.”
“A nine-year-old? Where would she go? The park’s in the middle of town. She had no money with her. Nothing.” Erica drummed her fingers against the passenger-side door. Thrum-thrum-thrum.
“Sorry,” Michael said. “Were there witnesses? Did anyone see anything or anyone unusual?”
Erica was turned away, her face pointed out the window, watching the cornfields and cattle pastures roll by.
“It was kind of early. About nine. The park still wasn’t very crowded.” She paused. Michael thought she wasn’t going to say anything else, but then she added, “I have a problem, Michael. And it looks bad for me. Since she stayed in the car, and I walked the dog alone, people saw me in the park. But no one saw Felicity in the park this morning. It’s like she hadn’t been there at all. And they’re wondering if I made the whole story up, if maybe I’ve done something to her.”
chapter
nine
TUESDAY, 9:01 P.M.
Angela went upstairs after Michael left, entered their bedroom, and grabbed a sweatshirt. She’d had a plan for the night. She wanted them to share a drink and head to bed early, and then they could take advantage of the time of month to try to finally conceive a child.
She shook her head, felt her cheeks flush. Nothing kills the mood like your husband’s ex-wife showing up. . . .
She turned down the air-conditioning and then came back to the kitchen, taking in the dirty dishes Michael was supposed to do and finding the half-empty wineglass by the refrigerator. Oh, I’m drinking that, she thought, downing what remained in two big gulps and enjoying the heavy taste. She leaned back against the counter, angry at herself for wishing that when she came downstairs, she’d find Michael, his mind changed, the trip with Erica aborted.
But she knew it was wishful thinking. Michael wasn’t the type to change his mind. And she had to hand it to Erica. She knew the right buttons to push, the right scab to dig into. A missing girl who might be Michael’s daughter. A girl who looked like Michael’s dead sister, Robyn.
Well played, Angela thought. Well played.
She poured another glass of cabernet, deciding not to wait for Michael’s return to have another drink, and almost emptied the bottle. No way. She’d earned this one and took it with her as she left the kitchen, carrying the wineglass down the hallway to her home office, clicking on the first-floor lights as she moved. She needed to sort through reports, catch up on what felt like a thousand e-mails. With a vacation just ahead, she needed to work double time in order to be ready to go, to finally unplug and unwind with Michael and nothing else in their way.
Was it selfish to feel like the night’s events had put the vacation and their peace in doubt? After all, a child appeared to be in some kind of jeopardy, a child who might be her husband’s.
She tried not to dwell on that, tried not to contemplate what it would feel like if Michael had a child with another woman and couldn’t have one with her. It was just too much. And too soon, since she knew nothing for certain. She also tried not to think about the night ahead, the “date” she and Michael had since she was ovulating and that was now in jeopardy. She sipped her wine and took a few deep breaths.
Calm, she reminded herself. Calm. I’ll still be ovulating tomorrow. And next month too . . .
But she ignored work for the moment. She almost never pushed her job aside, especially during the precious evening time when Michael watched baseball or read or did his own work, but she needed to check on something, to assure herself of what was really going on.
She took out her phone and opened her Twitter app. She entered “missing child” and “Trudeau KY.”
It took a moment for the information to appear. At first, Angela saw nothing, and her mind raced even faster. But then she saw it. An Amber Alert had been issued in Davenport County.
Nine-year-old girl missing from a local park. Mother distraught. Thoughts and prayers. Any information, call. No witnesses.
Police believe the child is in danger.
Angela let out a sigh, and her heart dropped like a stone. She scrolled through the feed a little more and came across a video, something posted by a news station in Trudeau. Angela pressed PLAY.
She saw a blond-haired girl, a beautiful kid, one who looked like an angel. She stood in front of a piano and sang as someone unseen picked out the notes. It took a moment for Angela to recognize the song. At first, she couldn’t place the lyrics, but then the melody and the words clicked in her brain. It was that song from The Muppet Movie, the one she saw as a kid. The song about rainbows and dreamers sung by Kermit the Frog.
Angela’s eyes burned with tears. The melancholy nature of the song and the sweet innocence of the singing child brought the emotion surging to the surface. She wiped at her tears as the video ended, the image freezing on the girl’s face, her eyes wide, almost haunted.
Or was Angela projecting her own fears onto the child?
Or was she more emotional due to ovulating? Was her desire for a child of her own infusing everything?
She thought, I need more wine.
She started back down the hall, understanding that work might get passed over that night, that she might need a different kind of distraction while she waited for Michael to come home. They could deal with their problems then, discuss and understand and make plans. They’d survive whatever it was, even if the child, the missing little girl, was Michael’s daughter.
She almost laughed. The girl they—especially he—always wanted, delivered to them in the craziest way possible. She again tried to ignore the little knot of jealousy in her gut, the one that arose at the thought that her husband had fathered a child with another woman. She pushed the bad feeling away.
We can handle it, she thought. I can handle it. I can.
What was that old curse? May you live in interesting times.
She reached the kitchen, pulled down a new glass since she’d left the old one on her desk, opened a new bottle, and started to pour. When the doorbell
rang, her hand jumped, and she spilled the red liquid on the counter.
“Damn it.”
She left the wineglass and the spill on the counter, set the bottle down. The house had turned into Grand Central Station, the front bell ringing like a pinball machine.
Could Michael have forgotten his keys? Could it be Erica? But then . . . without Michael?
Or was it simply a chance to buy overpriced candy bars to support a Little League team?
She hurried back to her desk and grabbed her phone. She opened the keypad, walking to the door with her fingers poised, prepared to dial 911 if she had to. She slipped the living room curtains aside and peered out at the almost fully dark street, the tall light poles shimmering to life.
A man she didn’t know stood down at the end of the driveway, leaning close to a white Camry in an apparent attempt to see inside. Angela cut her eyes to the porch, caught a glimpse of a woman in a business suit, hands on hips. Something glinted on the woman’s belt, something shiny and gold, caught by the porch light.
And when she turned her body, looking directly at Angela, the gun on her other hip, a menacing black weapon, revealed itself.
Angela stepped back, her heart thumping all over again.
Cops.
chapter
ten
“Mrs. Frazier? Are you Angela Frazier?”
The woman with the badge on her belt stood with her hands on her hips, her jacket open over a simple white shirt. Angela looked over the woman’s shoulder and saw the man who had been standing by the white car now walking up the sloping driveway, his movements slow and labored behind a large gut.
“I am,” Angela said. “Is something wrong? Has something happened to my husband?”
“I’m Erin Griffin, a detective with the Davenport County sheriff’s office.” She pointed to the man who was just getting close to the front porch, the sweat beading on his forehead, his face red. “This is my colleague, Jim Twitchell. We’re assisting the lead detectives on a case in which your husband’s name came up.”
The man, who had a large moon face and a buzz cut, nodded to Angela but didn’t say anything. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow. He looked to be about fifty and wore a dark suit with a red tie, the knot loose at his neck.
The woman appeared to be in her early thirties, which made her the same age as Angela. Whether because her partner was overheated or because she was just that kind of person, Griffin appeared to be in charge. Her hair was cut short like a man’s, and her blue eyes looked snowflake cool. Only the light spray of freckles across her nose softened her appearance.
“Why are you asking about your husband?” Griffin asked. “Is he not at home?”
“No, he’s not. Are you here because of the kidnapping?”
“Mind if we come in?” Griffin pointed past Angela and into the air-conditioned house, and she seemed to be moving inside without waiting for permission. Angela stepped aside, and Twitchell came in too, nodding at Angela as he passed and letting out a relieved sigh as the refreshing air hit him.
“We can talk in the dining room.” Angela led them through the large foyer and across the living room. She took the seat at the head of the table, the one where Michael usually sat, and the two detectives sat on either side of her. She felt like she was in a crossfire. “I’m sorry if the table is a little dirty. We haven’t cleaned up our dinner mess.”
“No worries,” Griffin said, smiling, but her eyes still didn’t show much warmth. They seemed to be scanning Angela, extracting information from her just by looking.
“Spacious,” Twitchell said, his voice envious.
Angela grew up in a cramped, three-bedroom ranch-style house, sharing a room with her younger sister, then lived in dorms and tiny college apartments. She still wasn’t completely used to all the space they had, still felt slightly embarrassed by the size of it all. “We’re hoping our family expands to fill it.”
“Can I ask you how you know about the disappearance in Davenport County?” Griffin asked. “Did you hear about it on the news?”
Angela looked back and forth between the two of them. Their patient faces gave away nothing. No hope, no fear. No encouragement or disdain. “She came to our house. Erica. She’s still going by Frazier, isn’t she? Erica Frazier.” Angela tried not to sigh or roll her eyes. “She came here and told Michael, and the two of them left together.”
Twitchell’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly. He reached up and wiped his forehead with his left index finger. “Where did they go?”
“To see some guy. Erica told Michael this guy might know something, and she wanted to talk to him with Michael along.”
The detectives shared a glance, their eyes cutting toward each other for one beat and then returning to focus on Angela again.
Twitchell said, “I’m presuming that when Ms. Frazier was here, Erica Frazier, that is, she told your husband Felicity is his child?”
“She did.”
“Is that true?” Griffin asked.
Angela lifted her hands and let them drop back against the top of the table. “I have no idea. I’d never heard anything like it before today.”
“Erica Frazier has told a few of her friends and acquaintances that Felicity is Michael’s child,” Griffin said. “And given the timing of when they were married, it is possible for that to be true.”
Angela leaned back in her chair. “Are you investigating my husband or trying to find a missing child?”
Something crossed Griffin’s eyes, a flash of anger that came and went faster than a lightning strike. A muscle twitched in her jaw. “Is tonight the first time you met Ms. Frazier?”
Angela remained leaned back in the chair. She almost laughed but didn’t because she understood what the cops were doing. They were trying to see if she would tell them the truth about meeting Erica before. They knew the answer to the question. They wanted to see how she would answer.
For the second time that evening she thought, Well played.
“We met one other time,” Angela said. “I’m guessing you have a report on that.”
Twitchell pulled out a smartphone and started tapping it, his lips pressed together with concentration as his meaty fingers did their work. “This was just over a year ago,” he said, his eyes squinting as he read. “The time you went to Erica Frazier’s place of work and got into a screaming match with her in front of her coworkers.”
chapter
eleven
Angela reached up, found the strand of hair that had popped loose again. She started to twirl it but stopped herself and tucked it behind her ear. She didn’t want to look like a twelve-year-old, playing with her hair in front of authority figures.
“I think screaming is an exaggeration,” she said.
Twitchell looked at Angela over the top of his phone. “Well, you spoke loudly enough that the police had to be called. That sounds like yelling at least.”
“We can see from the report that no charges were filed, but do you mind telling us what caused this to happen?” Griffin asked.
“So now I’m being investigated?” Angela asked.
Griffin leaned closer. “We’re investigating a missing child. A child who could right now be in grave danger. It’s a critical time, so we need to understand all the moving parts and how everyone is connected to everyone else in order to help us find her.” She glanced at the clock on the wall behind Angela. “We’ve taken attention away from that search to come here, but we do need to get back to helping our colleagues and the volunteers. So . . . why did you and Erica Frazier have words that day at her place of employment? What happened that made you go that far just to speak to her?”
Angela felt appropriately chastened. And, regardless of what she thought of Erica or Michael’s decision to go with her that night, she hated the thought of a child in jeopardy. Any child, anywhere.<
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“I didn’t go that far just to speak to her,” Angela said. “I was already there, for my job.” She looked back and forth between them again, trying to gauge whether one of the faces was friendlier than the other, whether it made more sense to focus on just one of them. “I’m a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. So I cover this whole area. I go to Trudeau and Davenport County every couple of weeks.”
“Did you know Ms. Frazier was living there?” Twitchell asked.
Angela started to ask them to stop referring to Erica by the name “Frazier,” but she held her tongue. Better to stick to the question she’d been asked. “Yes, I knew. I’d seen her page on Facebook before, so I knew she lived in Trudeau, and I knew she worked at the State Employees Credit Union up there. But I didn’t plan on seeing her.” She shifted her eyes to focus exclusively on Griffin, thinking she could register by speaking woman to woman. “I admit I was always curious about Erica. My husband married her after all. It’s natural to wonder about your partner’s exes. Sometimes seeing them in person deflates all the notions we build up in our minds about what that person is really like. You know, ‘Oh, she’s not really that pretty.’ Or ‘Oh, she looks heavier in person than in the pictures.’ Right?”
Griffin nodded. But Angela couldn’t tell if it was solidarity or an attempt to keep Angela talking.
“I had a break that day because a client canceled. And I looked at Facebook, just to be looking. And then I looked at Erica’s page. Like I said, I do it every once in a while. And what do you think I saw?”
The detectives remained silent. They recognized the rhetorical nature of the question.
“I saw a picture of her and Michael. A wedding picture. She had a few other pictures of her life up, but I noticed this one.” Angela held her hands out above the table, palms up, pleading to the investigators or the universe to understand how crazy the idea was. “Why was that there? My husband, years after they divorced? And she’d captioned the picture. It said something about lost love and bittersweet memories. It really bothered me. It felt like some sort of violation, to be honest.”