A Distant Memory

by Traci DePree

  Was he flirting? Right in front of her husband? She shook the feeling aside as her imagination, then pulled out the pictures she’d taken the day of Sonja’s disappearance and handed them to Dr. Johnson.

  “These were taken on the day Sonja disappeared,” Kate said, adding firmness to her tone.

  Dr. Johnson looked up and pointed to the photo of the man in purple. “This is me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  He admitted it outright. Kate was speechless. After all her searching, they’d somehow found the man in purple!

  He handed the photo back to Kate. “Are you telling me I was one of the last people to see her?”

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  Kate noticed that his breathing changed, almost as if he was suddenly nervous.

  “Why were you in the park?” Paul asked.

  “Picking Sonja up for her lesson,” he said simply. “She called me, I forget what time it was, to tell me that she needed a ride. I thought it was odd at the time, but she was a nice lady, so I helped her out.”

  “So you were just giving her a lift?” Kate clarified.

  “As far as I knew.” Challenge touched his eyes, and Kate’s earlier fear kicked in.

  “Was her car there?” Paul was saying. “Where you picked her up?”

  “No,” he said. “She’d said something about not wanting someone to see her.”

  “Ronnie Gilbert,” Kate said to herself, and Dr. Johnson frowned again.

  “She did mention that name...Who is he?”

  “Who was he is more like it,” Kate said, then added, “Someone from Sonja’s past. Did she say anything else about Ronnie?”

  The professor shook his head. “Listen, I did wonder about why she didn’t have her car, but she wasn’t herself that day.”

  “What do you mean?” Kate leaned forward.

  “She was very irritable, jumpy.”

  Kate pondered the description. The article on PTSD had also mentioned jumpiness in describing its victims.

  “I’d never seen her like that before,” he went on. “Then her lesson didn’t go well, so she was very frustrated with herself.”

  “Did you offer to take her home after her lesson?” Paul asked.

  “I did”—he crossed his arms over his chest—“but she said she had somewhere else to go. An appointment, I think.”

  “Did she say where?”

  He shook his head.

  “So the last place you saw her...,” Kate began.

  “Was in practice room eleven,” he supplied. “When she didn’t come in the following three weeks for her lessons, I wondered what had happened. But every time I called her house, I got a busy signal, and her cell phone must have been turned off. I finally just gave up.”

  “Do you teach piano lessons to noncollege students often?” Kate glanced around the messy room, looking for anything that might offer a deeper insight into this man and whether he could have played a part in Sonja’s disappearance.

  “We have a program for our students at the college here that I’m in charge of,” the professor began. “We match music majors with budding piano students from the community, mostly kids. Then we set up regular recitals and oversee the lessons. The public gets a high-quality program for a fairly low fee. We get up-and-coming musicians for the college down the road, and our students get supervised experience teaching and school credit as well. It’s a win-win. But since Sonja was an older student, I felt it might be awkward for her to take lessons from a twenty-year-old. I have a few other adult students I teach as well.”

  Kate remembered the piano in the Weaver home. “So Sonja was a beginner?”

  The professor nodded. “But she had real potential. I could tell she really wanted to learn.”

  “Did you ever talk to Brad Weaver, Sonja’s husband?”

  The man’s face twitched for an instant before he said, “No. Never met the man.”

  Kate paused to study him. “So no one in her family knew she was taking lessons?”

  “I have no idea if they knew or not.” He shrugged.

  Kate sat back and looked at her husband. She couldn’t think of another question for the man, though it seemed there must be something she was missing.

  “You said she claimed to have an appointment after the lesson. Did she give any indication what kind of appointment it might have been?”

  “Not that I recall. And she was so flustered that I didn’t want to aggravate her by asking too many questions,” he admitted. There was that look again, as if he were sizing her up.

  Kate felt a sudden urge to leave. She rose and held out a hand. The professor had gotten up as well.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk with us,” she said.

  Paul added his thanks.

  “If you hear anything, can you let me know?” the professor said. “If I’d known she was missing, I would’ve come forward, done something to help.”

  “It’s not too late to talk to the authorities,” Kate said.

  The professor nodded that he would do just that, then he reached into the top desk drawer and pulled out a business card, which he handed to Kate.

  Paul and Kate said farewell and left. Kate wasn’t sure what to make of the man’s story. No one had said a thing about Sonja taking piano lessons in Pine Ridge. Had she told Brad and the kids, or Judy? When she’d seen the piano at the house, Becky had said that she was the only one who played. Her mother had only tinkered with it from time to time. Was this another of Sonja’s secrets? Why would something so mundane as piano lessons be a secret?

  Ronnie Gilbert held the key to all of this somehow. What could have caused Sonja to flash back to that awful time when that man had hurt her? Or had it all been an act, a carefully designed act perpetrated by Sonja and Dr. Johnson to make her disappearance look like a woman gone mad?

  Sonja had been an actress in her younger days, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When Kate and Paul arrived downstairs, it was with more uncertainty than ever. Dr. Johnson had admitted that he was the man in the photo. But it seemed weird that Sonja had the presence of mind to call an acquaintance for a ride to Pine Ridge when all she had to do was go back and get her jacket and keys. Though both the professor and Willy Bergen had said that she hadn’t been herself that day. If she’d truly thought Willy was Ronnie Gilbert, perhaps she’d been too frightened to go back for the keys. And she’d kept the lessons a secret, so whatever prompted that desire no doubt prompted her call to Dr. Johnson for the lift rather than Judy or Brad.

  “If Sonja took lessons every week for three months,” Kate said to Paul, thinking as she spoke, “odds are someone saw her. Someone other than our Aidan over there.” She motioned to the boy at the information desk, who was deep in conversation with a girl in torn jeans and high heels.

  “So, what do you propose?” Paul asked. “That we question everyone here?”

  “No. But we can at least question the most likely ones.” She motioned for him to follow her back to the information desk.

  Aidan lifted his eyes from the young lady to Kate. “You’re still here,” he observed.

  “Are there any music majors we could talk to about Dr. Johnson?” Kate asked.

  Aidan seemed utterly dumbfounded by the question, though the perky girl who’d been talking to him lit up like a Christmas tree. “I’m a music major,” she said, flipping her waist-length black hair. “Dr. Johnson teaches half of my class load.”

  Kate couldn’t believe her good fortune. “Would you mind answering a few questions?” she asked, surprised to get a nibble on the first cast.

  “Not at all,” the girl said, holding out her hand and introducing herself as Brandie. “Want to talk outside?”

  Kate glanced at Aidan, who seemed to have gone into zone-out mode. Brandie waved good-bye to him, then motioned for Kate and Paul to follow as she led the way into the bright daylight. The girl walked at a fast pace despite her two-i
nch heels. Kate studied her, wondering why she would wear the uncomfortable-looking shoes with ragged, holey jeans.

  “Here’s a good spot.” Brandie motioned to one of several benches that were spaced around a courtyard of flowers and fountains and statues that bore the names of their makers on placards.

  “So, you wanted to know about Dr. Johnson? I’m actually studying to be a music teacher.” The girl talked as much with her hands as with her mouth. “Hopefully elementary school.” She smiled, revealing even, white teeth.

  Kate set her handbag on her lap as she and Paul sat alongside the perky coed. “How well do you know Dr. Johnson?” she asked.

  “Pretty well, but, I mean, he’s a teacher, so it isn’t like we hang out or anything. But I’ve been in his classes for three years now. He can be a bit weird. I don’t mean that in a bad way necessarily. It’s just that he has this look...” The girl widened her eyes and stared as she set her face a little too close to Kate’s.

  Kate thought of the glimpses she’d noted from the man that had given her pause.

  “I’m not sure if he’s aware of it,” Brandie went on, not needing a question to prompt her. “It could just be a daydreaming thing, but the other girls in his classes have mentioned it too. He’s done it a few times to me, and it creeps me out.”

  “How is he as a teacher?” Kate asked.

  “He is a genius. I’ve never learned as much from someone as I’ve learned in his classes. He really pushes his students, talks a little fast sometimes, but genius types can be that way, you know?”

  Kate opened her handbag and pulled out the obituary photograph of Sonja.

  “Does this woman look familiar to you?”

  The girl’s brows drew together as she studied the picture. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I’ve seen her before. I’m sure of it. I’ve seen her with Dr. Johnson a couple times, actually. I have choir rehearsal on Friday afternoons. I think she takes lessons with Dr. Johnson around then.”

  “She does,” Kate said.

  “Well”—Brandie sat back—“I’ve also seen them at the student union huddled over coffees.”

  This surprised Kate. “How did they act?” she asked.

  The girl seemed to consider her words. Finally she said, “Intimate.”

  AS PAUL DROVE THE SHORT DISTANCE from Pine Ridge to Copper Mill that afternoon, a new foreboding began to grow inside of Kate.

  “Do you seriously think Dr. Johnson might have been involved with Sonja?” Paul asked.

  “I hope not,” Kate said, considering the possibility. “But she and Brad had been having some serious marital problems, and she’d clearly been keeping secrets—about the doctor’s depression diagnosis, the piano lessons . . .”

  “Do you think he might’ve helped her disappear intentionally?”

  “Or if she wasn’t willing, perhaps he was involved in causing her disappearance in a more sinister way,” Kate said as the thought sent a chill up her spine. Then she added cautiously, “We don’t have any proof of that. A student’s comments based on innuendo and some blurry photos. Let’s not jump too far ahead of ourselves.”

  She reached into her handbag to call Becky. She needed to ask the girl if she knew about her mother’s piano lessons. The line rang several times. Finally the teenager’s sleepy-sounding voice came on the line. Kate wondered if she’d been taking a nap after school.

  “Becky, it’s Kate,” she began. “Paul and I found the man in the photo.”

  “Really?” Instant excitement filled the girl’s tone. “Who is he? Did he see Mom?”

  “His name is Dr. William Johnson, and yes, he saw your mom that day. Is that name familiar to you at all?”

  Becky hesitated, then she said, “Should it be?”

  “Apparently your mom had been taking piano lessons up at Pine Ridge College since Christmas.”

  Silence filled the line.

  “Piano lessons?” the teen repeated. “I guess she did play a lot lately. But she had those teach-yourself piano books. I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t she have told us that she was taking lessons?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

  “Did this Dr. Johnson say why he was at the park that day?”

  “He said your mom called and asked him to pick her up to bring her to a piano lesson.”

  “But why? Her car was working fine,” she said. The line was silent for a long moment. Finally Becky said, “I don’t get it. Did he say where she went after her lesson?”

  “He claimed that she said she had somewhere else to go....An appointment.”

  “But what if he had something to do with her disappearance,” Becky suggested.

  “I’m wondering the same thing,” Kate admitted.

  Chapter Thirty

  As soon as Kate got off the phone with Becky, she immediately called the deputy’s office. Skip answered.

  “Copper Mill deputy’s office,” he said in his Southern drawl.

  “I found the man in purple. He gave Sonja Weaver a ride to Pine Ridge after she left the creek,” she said.

  “What?” the deputy said. She could hear him shuffling paper in the background. “How did you...?” he began, then switched to, “Give me his name and number.”

  Kate read off Dr. Johnson’s contact information from his business card and was about to hang up when Skip added, “Kate, I can’t thank you enough for this. If this turns out to be true...”

  “You’ll reopen the case?”

  “No doubt,” he said.

  “Skip, I’m so happy to hear that,” she said, then offered her good-byes.

  The rest of the afternoon, Kate couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d heard the name William Johnson before. She searched her memory banks, even looked through old Copper Mill telephone directories to see where she’d heard the name. It wasn’t until after Livvy called to ask if she could stop by the house shortly after supper that the connection dawned on her. Bill Johnson had been the name of Livvy’s ex-fiancé! He too had been a musician, a student at Pine Ridge College. It seemed too coincidental for it not to be the same man. But what had been the link to Sonja?

  That part of the mystery had stumped Kate until she thought of Caitlin Evans’ story of seeing a strange man give Sonja a business card at the library. Someone who’d said he was an old friend of Livvy’s.

  Kate was barely able to keep the revelation to herself before Livvy arrived. She’d been troubled since meeting the music professor earlier that day, for so many reasons. While there seemed to be no connection between him and Brad to confirm her earlier suspicions, that Sonja had maintained a secret life was not lost on Kate. The professor’s odd looks and the student’s observation that she’d seen him and Sonja in a seemingly intimate moment—it was all troubling. Yet knowing that Sonja hadn’t drowned in the creek meant there was an equally good chance that she was still alive, safe somewhere. But where? And if they did find her, would the reunion bring even more pain for Brad and the kids? Kate desperately hoped not.

  At six o’clock, Livvy was at the front door. She knocked, and Kate wondered why she didn’t just come in. When Kate opened the door, there stood Livvy with a large wooden box in her hands. It measured a good two feet by three feet. The exterior was gray and weathered, and the front consisted of a four-paned window with only air in the spaces of the frame where glass had once been.

  “What in the world?” Kate said.

  “Where can I set it down?” Livvy said, grunting from the weight of it.

  “Let me help you,” Kate said, reaching for one end of the box and leading Livvy into the stained-glass studio, where they set it on the long worktable. “What is it?”

  “A curio cabinet!” Livvy said. “This is what I was talking about on the phone. I thought I could make stained glass for the front of it.”

  Kate walked around the front to get a better look. “Are you sure?” she said, remembering how painstaking it was for her friend to master sun catchers.

  Livvy placed
her hands on her hips. “You don’t think I can handle it?”

  Kate hesitated a moment too long, and Livvy opened her mouth in mock offense. “Okay, so I was hoping you’d help me a little,” she admitted.

  “Of course I’ll help you with it.” Then Kate added, chuckling, “I’m pretty sure Renee has given up stained glass for good. She told me that the experience wasn’t very beneficial for Kisses.”

  “Well, it is hard to cut those lines perfectly with a Chihuahua in your arms,” Livvy retorted.

  Kate laughed, but her mind was on her news. “We found the man in the picture,” she said, “the one in purple.”

  Livvy gasped. “That’s wonderful!”

  “That’s not all,” Kate added. “I’m pretty sure it’s your ex-fiancé.”

  Livvy was completely dumbfounded. “My ex-fiancé?” She couldn’t seem to wrap her mind around what Kate had said. “You mean Bill Johnson? That ex-fiancé?”

  “You have more than one?” Kate said.

  “No,” Livvy said, shaking her head.

  “William Johnson is the chair of the music department at Pine Ridge College. He teaches adult piano lessons. Sonja was one of his students, though she failed to mention that detail to her family. He confirmed being the one in the photo; he was there in the park to pick her up that day.”

  “But there are lots of William Johnsons,” Livvy said, still clearly not convinced.

  “Come on.” Kate led Livvy to the kitchen, where she kept her laptop computer. Flipping it open, she hit the power button and waited for it to boot up.

  “What are you doing?” Livvy said.

  “The college Web site is bound to have pictures,” Kate said with a waggle of her eyebrows.

  “You’re telling me that my Bill Johnson was Sonja Weaver’s piano teacher,” Livvy said, “and that he had something to do with her disappearance?”

  “I haven’t decided yet whether he was involved,” Kate said, “but to everything you said before that, yes, pretty much.”

  Finally the computer was fully booted, so Kate hit the appropriate keys to connect to their dial-up Internet service and waited again.