Back Against the Wall Read online

  “I think you need a librarian for that.”

  Beth sighed, soundlessly she hoped. No, one of these days, she would tackle Dad’s books, before the heaps blocked access to his desk and computer. Knowing him, he’d buy another computer and settle in at the kitchen table instead of trying to winnow his collection.

  Navarro looked over his shoulder, frowning. “I should have included closets.”

  “The linen closet? You’re kidding.”

  “Why would I be kidding?”

  “Because I took over running the house. Nobody could have hidden anything in there.” She stopped and flung open the door. “See?”

  Phil came down the hall in time to see the detective standing in front of the linen closet with his hands on his hips.

  “Beth, that’s not included in the warrant.”

  “I’m settling his mind,” she said tartly.

  All three of them gazed into the narrow space divided by shelves holding precisely folded sheets, pillowcases, towels and washcloths. Extra blankets and a chenille bedspread claimed the top shelf, surplus toiletries in a clear rubber tote the floor. It was magazine-worthy. The two men appeared bemused.

  Suddenly, Navarro laughed, deepening creases in his cheeks. “Even my mother would be dazzled. You should hire out.”

  The skin beside Phil’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “It is pretty impressive.”

  Beth flushed, as much from the effect of seeing Tony laugh as from the compliment. “It’s easy to keep space neat when no one else ever messes it up.”

  Tony’s smile faded. “You change his bed and do laundry here?”

  “Well...sometimes.” Weekly.

  “I hope your father appreciates you,” he said quietly.

  Without commenting, she backed away. Passing her again, he entered the bedroom and walked around for a minute, not touching anything.

  “Has this carpet been replaced since your mother disappeared?” Died.

  Beth shook her head. “It’s at least fifteen years old.” She calculated. “Eighteen. It really needs to go, but we should do it throughout the house at the same time, and everything would have to be moved out. It’ll have to be done before the house is sold, but as long as Dad doesn’t care...” Becoming aware of the faintly surprised looks on both men’s faces, she trailed off, embarrassed at her rambling.

  Tony disappeared into the bathroom. She heard cupboard doors, drawers and the medicine cabinet being opened and closed. When he came back out, he wore thin latex gloves on his hands. Without looking at her or Phil, he went methodically through the dresser drawers, lifting clothes and putting them back. He pulled the dresser out an inch or so to see behind it. He got down to look under the bed, checked the drawer on the bedside table then started in on the closet.

  Barely glancing at the closet floor—Dad owned only four or five pairs of shoes—Tony moved the clothes on their hangers, slid his hand into suit-coat pockets, rifled through the sweaters on a canvas hanging organizer, then removed one box after another from the long closet shelf.

  Phil went in and sat at the foot of the bed. Beth remained planted in the doorway, her arms crossed.

  The first rubber tote held extra blankets and pillows. Another held trophies and plaques. Even as a child, she’d been surprised to discover that her father had played lacrosse in college. Mom had been a competitive swimmer and later played golf in occasional ladies’ tournaments. Tony lifted a number of these out and studied them before putting them back.

  Another box held books for young children. Mom would have stored it on this shelf. Beth supposed her mother would’ve thought books might not withstand the cold or damp in a garage.

  And finally, he came to the one filled with children’s drawings and the like. Report cards were in there; she saw the detective take one out and study it, the corner of his mouth lifting. Hers, undoubtedly. She’d never been very good at math. She could still hear Mom saying, “But if you’d just try!”

  He dug through this box more carefully. It felt weird, watching him. That was her life he was sifting through, hers and Emily’s and Matt’s, not Dad’s. Keeping her mouth shut was hard.

  When he at last put the lid back on the box, he lifted his head to look straight at her. He must have seen all the complicated things she felt because he ducked his head in a kind of acknowledgment, or apology. Phil glanced at her speculatively but didn’t comment.

  Once Tony slid the box onto the shelf, he peeled off the latex gloves. “I’m done in here.”

  Without a word, Beth turned and walked to the living room. She didn’t see her father, even in the kitchen; he almost had to have retreated to the family room. Had he been bothered to know someone was going through his drawers, inspecting his medicine cabinet?

  At the front door, Phil said, “I won’t hang around while you look through the garage. Unless you want me to, Ms. Marshall?”

  She would have laughed, if her mood had been better. “You’d be here for the next two weeks.”

  “Call if you need me,” he said, shook hands with Tony Navarro, then strode to his car, undoubtedly relieved to have escaped.

  Tony didn’t move. He wasn’t watching the attorney’s departure; he was looking at her, and his expression puzzled her.

  “Do you need the key for the side door?” she asked. “Let me get my purse, and I’ll give you mine.”

  “No—” A hand on her arm stopped her. “Actually, yes, thank you, but there’s something else I’m hoping you’ll do for me.”

  Now suspicious, she echoed, “That I’ll do for you?”

  “You must have taken today off work.”

  “Yes.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Is there any chance you could take more time off?”

  What on earth? “I could, but why?”

  “I could use some help going through the stuff in the garage, and on the lawn.” When she gaped, he grimaced. “The truth is, you’d recognize something that doesn’t belong, or should be there and isn’t. I probably wouldn’t.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m supposed to use up my vacation days to help you go after my father.” Even as she said that, she flashed on that diamond ear stud. If it was a diamond.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Look at it this way. You’ll have a chance to point out evidence leading to someone else.”

  Beth’s first thought was that he would be taking the risk that she’d spot evidence pointing at her father...and bury it. Probably why what he was suggesting had to be unusual, if not unprecedented.

  And he was right—this offer would make her part of the investigation. What could she do but accept?

  Chapter Five

  TONY FELT PROFOUND relief at Beth’s agreement to help but suspected Lieutenant Davidson’s first impulse would be to scold him, once he learned one of his detectives had brought a family member of the principal suspect into the investigation.

  Worry later about justifying this, he decided.

  “Can we get started now?” he asked.

  “Well... I suppose.” She glanced down at herself. “I’m not really dressed for it, but that’s no big deal.”

  “I’ll do any dirty work,” Tony assured her. Those chinos looked good, lovingly hugging well-rounded hips and long legs. Her pretty three-quarter sleeve cotton blouse, striped in two shades of a mossy green, was probably the kind of thing she wore for work. It would be less professional and more sexy if she’d just undo one more button, he couldn’t help thinking, his gaze lingering at the shadowy hint of cleavage he could make out.

  “Let me get my purse.”

  “You don’t think the things in the backyard are worth looking at?”

  “We’ll probably have to, but—Wait a minute.”

  He stayed at the front door as she snatched her purse from the kitchen table, then paused to say something to her f
ather, who was out of sight in the family room. Tony couldn’t hear what was said. When she came back, they went out the front door.

  “I know you’ll need to go through everything, and Emily and Matt are the ones who looked at a lot of the stuff that’s in the backyard, so I’m not sure what’s in some of the boxes,” she explained. “But—” She came to a halt, looking at the yellow crime scene tape. “Should we duck under the tape, or...?”

  “Yeah, let’s,” he said. “I don’t want to take it down yet.”

  She inserted the key in the side door of the garage and blew out a breath at the same time. “What I started to say is we did come across some boxes full of Mom’s things. So I think it makes sense to start there.”

  “Yes. It does.” Damn, could it be this easy? “But if you’ve already looked through the boxes, why are they in here? I assumed you were shifting them outside as you made decisions.”

  “We were.” The door open, Beth ducked under the tape but then hesitated on the threshold, and he couldn’t blame her, considering yesterday’s happenings.

  He reached past her to flick on the lights, which failed to dispel the gloom. Tony ripped away the newspaper he’d taped over the pane of glass in the door, nudged Beth inside, and went to tear down the papers covering the window over the workbench, too. Unfortunately, the improved light made more visible the missing sheet of wallboard, which Larry and Jess had carried away along with the body. Stains remained evident in the baseboard as well as in the soft wood of one of the bracing two-by-fours.

  Beth still hadn’t taken a step inside. Her gaze, shadowed by yesterday’s horror, was riveted to the missing section of wall. “It’s so hard to believe...”

  He wadded up the newspapers and tossed them aside. “I know it is,” he said as gently as he could. “Bad enough if she’d been a stranger, but finding out your mother had been there all these years...” Maybe not the best thing to say, but the section of wall down to bare studs might as well be an elephant swinging its trunk back and forth.

  Beth nodded tightly.

  “If you’ll point out the boxes, we can take them outside,” he suggested.

  She drew a deep breath. “It’s awfully hot out there. I could plug in a couple of those fans in here.”

  He let her do so, placed on the far side of the garage. How much the whirring fans actually cooled the stifling air in here was debatable, but they had to be better than nothing.

  Beth made a half circle to the workbench, probably so she could approach it from the side that didn’t abut the opened wall that had served as her mother’s coffin for thirteen years.

  “There were boxes of baby and children’s clothes. Mom must have thought they might have another baby after Emily,” she said. “So probably she packed those a long time before she...died.” Disappeared was what she’d been about to say—had been saying for all of those thirteen years. “I think those boxes are outside. Matt was going to ask his wife if she wanted to look through them, but I don’t think he actually took any of them.”

  Tony nodded. “Let’s start with your mother’s things.”

  “All this.” She waved, indicating under and on top of the workbench.

  “Tell you what,” he said, grabbing one at random. “Can you bring those lawn chairs back in here? This is a sitting job.”

  “Oh. Yes.” She looked grateful to have something to do—or for the delay in opening any of these boxes.

  When she returned, he said, “You were going to tell me why you left these in here.”

  She scrunched up her nose. “Because I didn’t want to make decisions. Everything else was easy, but these...” Hand on the back of one of the lawn chairs, she stared down at the box. “I think, if she’d been dead—” She flushed, looking up at him. “I mean, if I’d known she was dead, and that long ago, I could have faced sorting her clothes. As it was... My feelings about her were so muddled. Thrift store? Garage sale? It felt so...cold. Even Matt was relieved when I suggested we leave these for last.”

  For another time, she meant. A year, or five years, or ten years from now.

  “Did you really believe she was alive?” he asked, curious.

  Beth squirmed a little. “Then...yes. Except, I couldn’t imagine her abandoning us like that. Matt and Emily and I all went through phases of feeling betrayed and angry. How could she?” She gazed toward the neatly stacked boxes instead of at him. “I suppose, over the years, I started to think something must have happened to her. Because she wouldn’t have done that to us. It could have been a car accident, or...or breast cancer or who knows what? Except it never occurred to me that Dad would have been informed, wouldn’t he?”

  “If they were still married, yes.” Tony paused. “Ideally. If she’d moved out of state with a man who didn’t tell authorities she was married to someone else, had kids...it might not have happened.” He didn’t add But we know she died here, don’t we? The very day she vanished, in fact.

  Beth sighed. “Well, this box is the first one I opened that had her things. Except the Christmas ornaments. I told you about those, didn’t I?”

  “You did.” He’d poked through them in the garbage can, to be certain nothing else had been packed with them. “You say I opened. Your brother or sister weren’t first to look through any of these boxes?”

  “No, we sort of divvied up the garage.” She turned her head. “We hadn’t gotten to the stuff on that wall at all.”

  “Okay.” He pulled two pairs of latex gloves from his pocket and handed one pair to her. “I’d appreciate it if you’d wear these.”

  Expression dubious, she eased her much smaller hands into them and opened the flaps.

  “These weren’t taped?”

  “No. I assume Dad packed them, if you can call this packing.”

  Tony would have asked what she meant, except that he could tell right away. Dumped was probably a more descriptive word. And what he’d have expected of her father.

  Beth had an odd look on her face as she looked at the pink garment at the top. “Matt and I both recognized this blouse right away. It was one of Mom’s favorites. It kind of gave us chills.”

  Putting himself in her shoes, he could imagine. His mother had favorites she wore long past the point when they should have been discarded. Yeah, coming across her ratty red sweater, for instance, would be creepy.

  “Do you have any empty boxes?” he asked, suddenly realizing he hadn’t planned ahead as well as he should have. “So that we can transfer things as we look at them?”

  “Oh. Yes.” She jumped up again, bringing one in from outside and locating a second in the garage.

  It appeared everything in this box had been pulled off the rod in the closet. They decided to take the clothes off the hangers, which she would add later to a thrift store box outside. He’d look, she’d fold and pack the garments into a different box.

  He asked a few questions as they proceeded. Were these clothes that her mother was wearing right before her disappearance, versus older ones she might have pushed to the back of the closet?

  Tight-lipped, Beth said, “Right before.”

  The woman had apparently liked pink, in a variety of shades from pale to deep rose. Envisioning her from the photos he’d now seen, he thought pastels had probably suited a woman who was tiny, blonde, delicately made. She’d had a beautiful smile, although it looked practiced to him. She was in half a dozen pictures on the fireplace mantel in the family room, more in an arrangement on the wall. He’d noticed a certain tilt of her head in virtually every photo. Pretty women learned the angles that showed them to best advantage.

  He’d been struck by how those displays left this family frozen in time. Only a few additions had been made, undoubtedly by Beth. Matt, in his high school graduation robes. Emily in hers. Emily in what was probably a prom dress—pink. Matt in college graduation robes, posing in front of Memorial Hall
on the Wakefield campus.

  Not a single additional picture of Beth. It pissed him off that no one else in her family had noticed.

  He’d also found himself wondering whether her mother had helped her see herself as attractive. With a petite mother and a petite sister, both cookie-cutter pretty, blonde and blue-eyed, Beth could easily have felt like the ugly duckling. Ironic, when he was a lot more drawn to her than he could imagine being to her sister, even if she’d been older and had a stronger personality. Still, at least seven inches taller than either her mother or sister, brown-haired to their bright blonde, rounded cheeks instead of sculpted, probably going through stages of being awkward that never happened to either of them... Yeah, he could see it.

  She was trying now to hide any distress as she shook out each dress, or blouse or pair of slacks and folded it as neatly as she had every towel in that linen closet, but tiny flinches or pained sounds gave her away.

  He’d have been relieved to reach the bottom of the damn box, except it was only the first.

  “I know I should give these to a thrift store,” she said finally. “The styles are mostly timeless.”

  “I’d like you to hold off,” he said. The relief in her tiny nod produced an odd, clutching sensation in his chest.

  The next box held shoes. These seemed to bother her less, probably because they were more generic. Those she packed into a smaller box, saying, “I’ll take these to the thrift store.”

  Tony didn’t bother reminding her to wait. After sliding his fingers inside and then shaking each shoe upside down, he was confident nothing had been hidden with them. Looking at the pile, however, he thought to ask if she remembered any shoes of her mother’s that weren’t here.

  She frowned at them, finally saying, “I don’t know. She could have had another pair of pumps, or open-toed sandals or... Shoes aren’t that memorable.”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t she have any on?” Beth gestured toward the wall.

  “No,” he said again, not wanting to say She wasn’t wearing any pants either.