Missing Persons (24 page)

“She wanted his money,” Lynette said. “He stood to inherit a neat sum from Alex and me.”

I shook my head. “But only if they were married and they weren’t yet. Besides, she’s an heir to Knutson Foods.”

“Well, maybe they’re going bankrupt. Maybe she’s cut from the will.”

Alex put down his coffee. “Lynette, honey. I haven’t read anything that would suggest Knutson’s is anything but a profitable corporation.”

“Well, maybe . . .”

“I guess I can check about her being in the will,” I said, “but she doesn’t seem motivated by money. And if she were, I would bet she has friends who have a lot more money than Alex and you, people with tens of millions of dollars in annual income. If she was looking for someone with money, I don’t think she would have picked Frank.”

Lynette seemed miffed at the suggestion that her upper-middle-class lifestyle wouldn’t have impressed her son’s new girlfriend. “Well, what then?”

“Did Frank mention getting engaged to her?” I asked.

“No! ” Lynette seemed shocked at the very thought. “And he wouldn’t have gotten engaged without telling us.”

“Remember your heart, dear,” Alex said, then he turned to me. “Did she say she was engaged to him?”

I nodded. “On the night Frank died. She told the doctor she was his fiancée. And later, I asked Neal about it and he confirmed it.”

“Does she have a ring?” Lynette asked.

“Not that I know of.”

Lynette pointed toward my hand and the wedding ring I was still wearing. “How can he be engaged to her when he’s still married to you?”

“She must have thought they would marry when the divorce was final,” Alex said flatly.

“That’s the thing,” I said. “According to Neal, Frank seemed to have changed his mind about the divorce. I don’t know if it’s true . . .”

“It is.” Alex took a deep breath. “You know we were paying for Frank’s divorce attorney.” I nodded, and Alex smiled sadly. “I’m sorry about that, but what could we do?”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t really. Frank’s parents could afford a much better attorney than I could, and if the divorce had gone on much longer, Frank would probably have walked away with the house. But there was no point in bringing that up now.

“When I notified his attorney of Frank’s death,” Alex said, “I called him for a final bill. The amount I owed was next to nothing. When I asked why, he told me that Frank had put a halt to the divorce about two weeks before he died. I don’t know the details, but I was hoping it was because he’d come to his senses.”

“And that’s why she killed him.” Lynette sat back, satisfied that she had cracked the case. “He told her he was going back to you.”

A
n hour later, I walked onto the beach at Montrose Avenue and looked for Vera. When people who have never been to Chicago talk about the city, they usually bring up Al Capone and deep-dish pizza. But when they visit, they are stunned to find out how beautiful my hometown is. One of the things that makes it so beautiful is Lake Michigan. We have beaches just a few blocks from skyscrapers. For those precious few months of warm weather, Chicagoans crowd onto those beaches and pretend that winter will never come.

Well, others crowd. My skin is too pale for the sun, and my disposition doesn’t allow for much lying around doing nothing. But other Chicagoans love it. And if they have dogs they’re usually at one of the few beaches with a dog park.

That was where I found Vera. I’d called her as I left Frank’s parents, unsure of what to say but figuring that it was my next logical step if I was to fulfill my promise to Lynette. I didn’t have an excuse for calling, but it turned out I didn’t need one. Vera greeted me like an old friend and insisted I join her, Daisy, and Jay at Montrose Avenue Beach for an afternoon of catch.

To an outsider it looked like an innocent activity—two friends and two dogs spending the afternoon enjoying summer weather. But I was after something more significant than a day at the beach. I sat in the shade and watched Vera and the dogs play and wondered if Lynette was right. Did Vera kill Frank to keep him from coming home to me? It was certainly a logical theory. If Frank was hoping to reconcile, and if he’d told her his plan, Vera might have wanted to kill him. She’d admitted to being lonely, to having little luck with men. Maybe she’d pinned her last hopes for love on Frank and couldn’t handle the rejection. Maybe. But it wasn’t just my curiosity anymore; Lynette and Alex were now counting on me to find out.

The problem was how exactly was I supposed to find out when my entire skill as an interviewer was asking people questions I already had answers to?

“How did the rest of your shoot go?” Vera asked when she and the dogs sat down for a rest.

“Good. Andres and I got what we needed.”

“They’re both such nice people,” she said. “Victor is hysterical. He actually hit on me on the drive home.”

It’s nice to be hit on by a younger man, so I could understand her giddiness at the thought. It’s just that when the younger man is Victor it kind of takes the fun out of it.

“You certainly seemed to enjoy spending the day with us.”

“I did. You’re so lucky, Kate. You get to go to work every day, and on such interesting projects.”

“I don’t
get
to work, Vera. I have to work.”

She nodded. “Being wealthy can be such a disadvantage. When I was just out of college some of my classmates took these awful entry-level jobs and worked twenty-hour days with mean bosses yelling at them—”

“It sounds like my life now.”

“Well, I didn’t. I didn’t have to. My father paid for the house, for travel, for clothes, for anything I wanted.”

“I’m not the best person if you’re looking for sympathy for having too much money.”

She smiled. “I know. It’s not the worst problem to have. But those awful entry-level jobs my classmates had led to real careers. My father paying my way through life led to, well, it led to nothing. I dabble in things, but I’ve never really stuck with anything to get as good at it as you are at your job. And you are good, Kate. I was watching the way you handled yourself with everyone. It was really cool.”

“Nothing stopped you from having a real career, Vera.”

“You’re probably right,” she sighed. “I did try for a while. I got in business with several friends, opening shops and things. I thought something would click for me, but I never found my own passion. And once the businesses were on their feet, every one of my friends bought me out, and that was the end of the friendship.” She turned to face me. “Other than Frank, you may be the first person to like me regardless of the money.”

“I don’t really like you, Vera.”

She playfully slapped my hand. “Then why are you here?”

That was a good question. To help a woman who had spent twenty years trying to get between me and Frank, I was spending time with another woman—who had actually succeeding in doing just that.

“I’m just trying to make sense of it, you know, everything that happened,” I said. “I have so many questions.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know.” I tried to think of a place to start. “Did he give you a ring?”

“What do you mean?”

“The night at the hospital you said you were engaged.”

“Oh. No. He said he didn’t have the money to buy one, and I didn’t care one way or the other. I’m a little old for that sort of thing, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s a nice tradition.”

“You don’t have one.” She pointed to my wedding ring.

“I did. Lynette, Frank’s mom, wanted it back once we separated. It was some kind of family heirloom. She’s very into that stuff.”

“That’s a little pushy. It was your ring.”

“It’s easier not to argue with Lynette,” I said. “Had you set a date?”

She seemed a little uncomfortable, but she smiled. “No. We were waiting until the divorce was final.”

“And Frank had told you the divorce was on track?”

She stared at me. “Why?”

“I’m just curious about Frank’s state of mind toward the end.”

“You think it was suicide?”

“I think . . . we have to consider all the possibilities.”

“He wouldn’t have, Kate. Put that idea out of your mind. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“I don’t feel guilty.”

“Of course you don’t. Why should you?”

“Why would Frank commit suicide?”

“He wouldn’t. I just said that.”

I took a breath and started again. “Vera, according to Frank’s attorney he stopped the divorce proceedings two weeks before he died. Did you know that?”

I watched for that telltale blush that appears across the faces of all liars when they’re caught. All but the best liars. It wasn’t there.

Vera turned her face from me and looked out at the water for a long time. She was breathing a little heavy.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I just don’t get it.”

“You don’t get what?”

“Three days before he died he signed a lease on a space.”

“For an art studio,” I said.

“Frank told you.” She seemed relieved. “He was nervous about that.”

“It wasn’t Frank. It was Podeski.”

“That wasn’t very nice of him. You didn’t need that shoved in your face after everything you’d been through.”

“Vera. Focus. Tell me about the lease.”

“We’d been looking around and we finally found this place. It’s actually not that far from your house. It was perfect for him to paint and to maybe have some students in and teach a few classes. That’s what he wanted to do.”

I’d heard all about Frank’s plans over the years, but we’d never had the money to bankroll them, and after the first few years and the first half dozen plans, I’d given up listening. But now it looked like, with Vera’s help, he was on the verge of making one idea actually come true.

“Do you have a lease or something?” I asked.

“Why? Don’t you believe me?”

And in a move that was uncharacteristically open and honest, I said what I was thinking. “I don’t know what to believe.”

A
fter we’d brought the dogs back to her house, Vera showed me proof. Frank’s signature was on the lease dated three days before he died. It was a year’s lease on a small space just blocks from our—now my—house. It was an inexpensive place, which was getting harder to come by as Bucktown got trendier. I was surprised with Vera’s money he hadn’t gone for something more upscale.

“And, I don’t know if you want to see this,” Vera said, “but I have a video I made the day he signed the lease.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to see it?”

“I don’t know. I just thought . . .” She took a deep breath. “I can’t stop watching it myself.”

Once it began to play, I understood what she meant. Frank was alive again. He was moving and talking and laughing. And he was happy, more than happy. He was practically giggling as he walked around the space, telling Vera where his easel would go. I wanted to reach out and touch the screen, somehow find a way to brush his hair out of his eyes and feel the warmth of his cheek, but I sat still and watched him.

“I can’t wait to start painting again. I feel like I have so many ideas in my head just bursting to get out,” he was saying.

“You’re so talented.” It was Vera’s voice, from behind the camera.

“I just feel like it’s finally my time to get everything going, you know,” he said. “I’ve wasted a lot of years, but I’m really ready now.”

“It’s all going to be wonderful from here on out,” Vera said.

“I love you,” he said to her.

There it was. The punch in the gut I’d felt over and over since the first time I’d heard Vera’s name. I turned the camera off.

If this really was one of my shows, I’d be in heaven: a video of a happy man on the verge of realizing his dream, who won’t live to see the weekend. The point of using the videos on TV is to give some insight into the person, but after watching the video, I only had more questions. If Frank was a man desperate to come home to his wife, as Neal and Alex seemed to think, why was he telling another woman he loved her?

“Do you have a key to the place?” I asked.

“No. I looked for it a few days ago. I called the landlord to tell him about Frank and he asked for the key. It might have been among the things I gave you yesterday.”

“I’ll check.”

“Why do you need it?”

“Just to make sure none of his possessions are there.”

“They aren’t. He kept everything here.”

“What about his paintings? Because there are several that are actually mine. He painted them for me as gifts for our wedding and anniversaries.”

She seemed confused. “You have his paintings. He said he left them in your garage.”

“I don’t have them, Vera.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “I told Frank he could bring them here. God knows there’s plenty of room. But he didn’t want to. He said that he had everything neatly stored away at the house, and since he was going to bring it to the art studio, he didn’t think there was any point in moving it twice.”

“But I don’t have them,” I said again.

“Well, go home and check, because you must have them.” She seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. “Those paintings were everything to Frank. And if they’re gone, if everything he created is gone . . .”

“Calm down. I’m sure they’re somewhere. I’ll look in the garage again. And I’ll call his landlord. It’s possible he had started to move some of his stuff there.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s stupid to get so upset. None of them were even mine.”

“But they were Frank’s, so they’re important to you,” I said, sounding kinder than I wanted to.

“He had planned this painting for me. He just didn’t get around to it. He made a few sketches, so I know what it would have looked like, and it would have been really beautiful. It was going to be me in the garden with the flowers behind me and the sun hitting across my shoulder. Of course, he couldn’t do it until he’d cleaned up the garden first.”