“Did you tell him any details that you haven’t told me?” I asked. Since the subject had been broached, I decided to push it all the way. If he had truly been talking to Williams about the missing man, what exactly had he told the coach?
“I don’t think so,” he said finally. “It was mostly the same sorts of things that I’ve told for years. After a while, you get into a habit of telling the same details time after time. I don’t think that I’ve told anyone the entire in-depth story in ages. You’re the closest to it, and I could only tell you the things that I remembered after three decades. You wouldn’t know yet, but you can forget a lot of things in that time.”
When we hung up, I was perturbed. Someone had been looking at the case at the behest of a professor, then a policeman from Capital City, and now the coach was missing. Not only was the situation far more dangerous than I had originally supposed, , but Coach William’s case would become an open investigation, which Detective Danvers would use to his advantage in trying to get me off the case.
The worst of it was that Danvers would have the only clue which linked the two disappearances: wrestling.
If I was going to act, I would have to move fast. For me that meant today and tomorrow at the latest. I made a quick phone call to Mrs. Fisher, who agreed to meet me that night. I wanted to ask her questions about the notes, the code and the possible meanings. I asked Kamila if she could get the names of some current wrestlers on the team who might talk to me about Coach Williams and any links to the missing wrestler from three decades earlier.
I gave thought to letting Land talk to the wrestlers. I wasn’t sure how on-board he was with this case. There was no strong motive for him to play a part, and he’d kept the entire thing at arm’s length. I wondered if he would interview the athletes, thinking that he would fit in more with them than a fiery red-headed food truck chef.
With all of that under control, I went back to work—or at least tried. Kamila took over for me with drinks and food orders. I sat on the stool in the corner and tried not to get in the way. I was so pleased to see everyone working so well together, but it made a small part of me feel irrelevant. For so many years, the food trucks had survived because I had been at the helm, watching every move.
Now I was lounging around while others worked. Would this be what it was like when I had a baby? I had been excited about the notion of creating a family with Land, but I wondered if I would lose the urge to push the fledgling business to be more if I was consumed with feeding schedules and diaper routines.
I wondered what the future held, but came back to the reality that all my spreadsheets could be for naught. Ronald Fisher had opened a door and left forever. How was one to plan that?
At the end of shift, Kamila went ahead to Let it Slide, where I’d set it up that morning. I was starting to feel that I could trust her, which might mean that I could allow her to pick up the truck before shift.
I stopped off to say hello to Land. After a few minutes of kissing, he pulled away long enough for me to tell him about the disappearance of Coach Williams and the likelihood of Jax Danvers taking over the investigation.
“That just fell into his lap,” Land said, squinting his eyes at me. I wasn’t sure if he was questioning me to see if I had pushed the investigation to the police or if he considered this a possible maneuver by the detective.
“Do you think that he could have done that? Put some pressure on Williams until he just left too?”
Land sighed. “I don’t know. It’s great to think that Danvers is behind all of this, but at the same time, I don’t know what would drive a coach out during the school year. If it’s not contract time, then the staff are really shackled to a school. It’s the ultimate in bad form.”
I didn’t want to ask Land how he knew that, but I took his word for it. So that meant either Williams had left due to a major event, or the pressure had been too intense. It was hard to think of a reason for the intensity. Even if I could solve the case of what happened to Ronald Fisher, there would be precious little evidence to go on. Even if he had been brutally murdered, Wallace had not asked me to find the wrestler’s body. Even if I did find the body, what was left of it after three decades would likely not be enough to even show if Fisher had been murdered or not.
I wasn’t sure what the statute of limitations was for most crimes, but I knew that only murder did not have any time limit on when it could be prosecuted. The implication from that would be that Ronald Fisher had been murdered. I was rather sad to think that had to be the case. I had rather hoped that he had escaped to a different life, but realistically he would have had to start over with a new degree, four more years of college and more. It was a long shot to think that could happen.
I worked the shift with Kamila after I left Land. We had set up the time for the meeting with Ronald’s mother after he had come home for the evening. Because the word ‘intensity’ continued to crop up when she was mentioned, Land thought it best that I had some back-up. He was going to remain in the back office while I met with her. The risk would be lessened if he was there, and I would stand to get more information woman-to-woman.
She arrived promptly at 7:00 p.m. Land had left work a bit early, and Kamila had graciously agreed to take the truck back. Land suggested that allowing her access to the keys to Let it Slide was perhaps more stressful to me than this meeting with Mrs. Fisher.
The woman pushed past me, strode to the sofa, and sat down next to the boxes she had given me the other day. She treated them as if they were friends, patting one, and looking at the contents of another. I wondered if she had the pieces mentally filed and knew if I had taken any of them out of the box.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked when she was finished with the boxes.
“Hi, yeah. I have a few questions I needed to ask you,” I said, feeling glad for the protection that Land offered me in the other room.
“Have you found out something?” she asked. Her eyes grew wide and I could see her nostrils flare, as if she had sensed something new.
“I’ve found out a few things that I wanted to ask about. The first was this textbook.” I held up the book that Land and I had gone through. “Who has had access to the textbook since Ronald left?”
She paused and stared at me for a moment. “No one except our family. His things were boxed up from the dorm room within a few days of his disappearance. The university called me and I came to pick them up. They’ve been in a closet in his room since then.”
“Did you move or put them in storage?” I asked, trying to come up with a way for the message to have been added to the book.
“No, we’ve never moved—just in case Ronald came back. And I’d never put his things in storage.” Ronald’s mother acted as if I’d suggested raising a baby in a storage locker.
“Then I think we may have a clue.” I opened the book and showed her the message that asked for help.
She ran her fingers over the page a few times, as if to caress the spot where Ronald had highlighted the text. “So he was in trouble. He should have—he could have come to me. I would have done anything to help him.”
I hated to see her in this pain. “You don’t have any idea about why he would have written this?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea why he would require help. He was close to graduating. He was coming home where he belonged. Everything was fine.”
I had a momentary flash of how scary that thought could be. Perhaps Ronald had not wanted to come home. I still wasn’t sure why he would have left the way he did, but perhaps he didn’t have the willpower to leave the moment after graduation with all of his family and all of his possessions in the car.
“Okay, so there’s one aspect that I’ll have to look at,” I said matter-of-factly. I made a mental note to see if there was any particular reason he had not gotten a job after graduation. I knew that I had no stones to cast, since I’d sat on my parents’ sofa for months after graduation, waiting for the perfect job, but I coul
d at least ask around and find out if he had attributed the lack of a job to any particular reason.
I took out the notebook and showed her what had been written on a torn-out page of the binder. She read it twice before speaking. “That’s his handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere, even after all this time.”
“Do you have any idea who he was writing to?” I asked, wanting to find out more.
“None. He never mentioned anything about dating to me. I just thought he was waiting until he got settled with his new life.” She pressed a finger to her eye, but she wasn’t crying.
“Sylvia suggested that he was involved with a faculty member,” I offered.
The woman laughed, a high-pitched tinkle, but I watched as her hands balled into fists. “That Sylvia. She doesn’t care what she says. The security guard at the dorm suggested the same thing. He indicated that Ronnie left the dorm late at night on more than one occasion.”
“He did?” I said with surprise. Trevor Jones had made it sound like Ronnie was a monk, and now I was learning that the guard had seen him leave the dorm late at night, which was suggestive of a relationship, or perhaps something less permanent.
I was beginning to feel like I had some sort of inkling of what had happened, but there were still too many loose threads for me to tuck into place.
“What about wrestling?” I asked, switching pace. I wanted to keep her on her toes, so that I wouldn’t get trapped into a long conversation with her about Ronald.
“What about it?” she retorted, almost making it a challenge. If Ronald had been as aggressive as his mother, then he would have been a world-class athlete.
“Did he mention anything to you during the summer? Was there any tie to what he was doing with his classes?” I was fishing, and I knew it, but I only had this tenuous string to follow between the earlier vanishing act and Coach Williams’ current disappearance.
She gave the questions some thought, which gave me hope. I wished all of the people involved were this reflective about the events from so long ago. As Wallace had pointed out, we forget so much that it becomes difficult to remember what is true and what is just imagined.
“No, he really didn’t talk that much about wrestling to me. You might try his father.”
. I wondered if the disappearance had driven a wedge between them or if the events had only hastened what would become inevitable when they were two people alone in the house.
“Do you have a number for him?” I asked, wondering how I would fit in one more person in the short amount of time I had to complete this case. At any moment, Detective Danvers could come crashing in and tell me that I had to stop interfering in an open investigation. By my count, I’d put in approximately 37 hours, which was close to my goal, but still short of what had been agreed upon.
She gave me a number. With the introduction of Ronald’s father into the conversation, Mrs. Fisher seemed less inclined to share with me. After a few more minutes, she stood up to leave, shooting a longing glance to the boxes of papers.
“You’ll understand what it’s like to have a child someday and then you’ll know that you’d do anything to keep them safe,” she said, taking my hand in hers. I wondered if she knew something that I didn’t about my own body, or if she was merely using a platitude that seemed to strike home at the moment.
“I promise. I’ll only keep these a few more days, and then I’ll return them to you,” I said as I opened the front door.
As soon as she had left, Land appeared from the office. “She’s an interesting one,” he said. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“Call Mr. Fisher and see if he can meet tomorrow,” I replied, wanting to keep up the fast pace.
I punched in the number and waited until a gruff man’s voice answered. “Yeah?” he said, sounding nearly as intense as his wife had been. I wondered how two people of such similar temperaments would have thrived in the same household.
“Is this Mr. Fisher?” I asked, tentatively.
“I don’t want to do an interview about my son,” he thrust into the conversation. “Anything else you want, or was that it?”
“I don’t want to interview you about your son, but I do have something that I think you need to see.” I was going to pull out the textbook and see if the words meant anything to him.
A long pause followed and then a sigh from the man. “This better be on the level, or I will call the police. I’m about done with people trying to make a dollar from my son’s death.”
I gave him references. He hung up, promising to call back within a few minutes.
He did. I answered quickly and he said, “Okay, so you’re legit. What do you want?”
I explained that I had been given his son’s papers and books by his mother, and that I’d discovered something that made me want to ask questions.
He sighed deeply. I wondered how many times he’d been disappointed by people who thought they knew something about the disappearance. I knew that I would not be able to keep getting my hopes up, only to have them crushed again.
“Fine. I’ll come over,” he said finally. He got directions and hung up.
I explained to Land what he’d said and he nodded. This time, we didn’t see a need for Land to hide in another room, so he just leaned back on the sofa to wait.
Mr. Fisher showed up not long after that. He had dark hair with gray strands at wild angles and dark eyes. He was slightly built except for a paunch that covered his belt buckle.
“So what is this?” he said, without waiting for polite introductions. “What’s so important that you had to drag me out here?”
Since he was in no mood for small talk, I pulled out the textbook and showed him the highlighted words.
He looked at me. “How do I know that you didn’t do this tonight—ten minutes before I got here? There’s nothing to show me that this was done in the 1980s. You really need to do a better job of coming up with faked evidence if this is all you have.”
“Then you didn’t think that your son was in need of any help.” I could understand his anger and frustration, but I was trying to help. Perhaps he had been encouraged too many times to feel any hope at all.
The man’s face softened for a second, and I wondered what he was thinking. “He needed help.”
“How so?” I asked, wondering what had changed his mind.
“He didn’t want to move home. He had his own hopes and dreams, which did not coincide with his mother’s plans for his future. He’d had some sort of romantic entanglement that didn’t work out. From what I could gather, he’d been more deeply involved in the relationship than the other person.”
I was pleased with the response, because it renewed my hope that perhaps Fisher was still alive. “I can understand that. I had to move home after graduation. I was in the same degree program as your son,” I added, trying to build up some sort of bond here.
“It wasn’t a pleasant time at our house. My ex-wife and I already had problems before Ronnie disappeared. Who would have wanted to move home to that? She would have interfered in that relationship, to be sure. She was like that, certain that she could fix anything by sheer force of personality.”
I nodded, feeling that he was about to tell me the entire story without prompting. Land gave me a subtle head bob to indicate that he knew my plan.
“She was furious with Ron. All she talked about was him becoming a wealthy stock broker. I don’t think she ever asked him once if that was what he wanted from life.”
“It’s definitely not a job that would be easy to find in Capital City,” I added.
“Anywhere. We were coming off a recession and Ronnie graduated in August. He’d had to make up a couple of classes to get his degree.”
“What happened there?” I asked.
“Wrestling. It was always wrestling with him.” Mr. Fisher sounded resigned to not understanding his son’s obsession. “He had failed a couple of classes because he’d gone to tournaments without telling his professors t
hat he would be gone. He missed the grades and didn’t make them up. The coach was pretty angry with him, since the university is scored on how well the players do academically.”
I nodded. I wondered if the poor grades or the summer graduation or both had been major factors in not getting job offers. Of course, after a few seconds, I stopped that speculation. I had not been offered a job, and I had none of those shortfalls on my resume.
“So he wasn’t happy to be coming home? Do you think that he would have run away?” I used the old-fashioned term, since I had the feeling that neither parent really considered Ron an adult.
He paused for a long-time and I waited. He was obviously thinking about the answer, which is all I could ask for. “Yeah, I always thought he left of his own free will. He was profoundly unhappy. But …”
Again I waited, knowing that most people talked to fill the silence of the moment.
“In all this time, I would have thought that he would have called or come home to visit or something. I know he was pressured by his mother, but I thought he and I had a better relationship than that.”
I felt for him. I couldn’t imagine the idea of losing a child. We didn’t even have any yet and still the thought of losing a baby that you’d loved and nurtured would be overwhelming.
He sighed again. “Is there anything else?”
Almost knowing the answer, he stood up and walked to the door alone. He turned as he grabbed the doorknob, and I had a flash of something. However, I wasn’t ready to do anything with that information while he was here. I needed to check on it and then I needed to think.
As soon as the door shut, I was off like a shot into the back office. I rummaged around until I found the yearbook that Kamila had shown me. I took it back out to the sofa while flipping through the pages.
I came to the photo I wanted and held the book open to Land. “What do you think?” I asked.
He gave a long whistle. “Yeah, that’s a definite possibility.”
I had found the photo of Coach Williams, the missing wrestling coach, and showed it to Land. I had seen a flash of the same expression and facial structure when Mr. Fisher turned at the door. Williams was probably about the same age that his father had been when Ronald Fisher had gone missing.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 143