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“That woman has been playing me from the start,” I fumed, pacing in front of Charlie, Raoul, and my mother.
We had driven to Charlie and Raoul’s house after leaving Ursula’s. The three of them had secured seats in the living room, but I’d been too keyed up to sit still.
“She seemed sincere,” Raoul commented.
“That’s because she’s had three years of practice in this role!” I shouted. “She’s probably been honing her story all this time, adding in details to make it more believable.”
“Like what?” Charlie said.
“Like how she swore Leticia would only become romantically attached to a man willing to start a family.”
My mother furrowed her brow. “You claimed Ursula confirmed Leticia’s involvement with a married man.”
“She didn’t confirm it, but she said she came to that conclusion,” I said.
“What married man would want to start a family with his mistress?” my mother asked the wall.
“I’m sure it happens all the time,” I said, exasperated by her ignorance. “Haven’t you ever heard of a second wife? How many of those women started off as mistresses?”
My mother screwed up her face.
“But that’s not the point,” I said impatiently. “The point is Ursula didn’t deny the affair. Instead she made up a half-truth about Leticia fooling around with a younger, married man. That would match up to any observations of her sneaking around, but it wouldn’t link her to Dad, which might expose her embezzlement scam. Ursula would prefer that people thought of her daughter as just an adulterer, rather than an adulterer and a crook who fled the scene of a fatal accident.”
Charlie drummed his fingers on his leg. “That’s pretty clever, actually.”
“Of course it’s clever,” I said, my temper boiling again. “The woman is a devious, conniving witch. Even her name is fit for a witch!”
“Ursula?” Raoul queried, his face blank.
“Wasn’t that the name of some evil character in a movie?” my mother asked.
“The Little Mermaid,” Charlie said. “She was the octopus.”
Raoul scratched his head. “Octopus?”
Charlie placed a hand on Raoul’s thigh. “I take it you didn’t see the film.” Raoul shook his head, and Charlie simpered at him. “We’ll rent it sometime. It’s a classic.”
I stopped in front of them and bent forward to hiss at my brother. “Can we please stay focused here?”
Charlie straightened. “So, assuming Ursula knows where her daughter is hiding, she’s not willing to part with that information.”
“We’ll have to force it from her.” I resumed my pacing. “We’ll have to trick her or something.”
“I don’t think she’s amenable to seeing us again,” Raoul contributed.
“Then we’ll track her down on the street,” I improvised. “I can follow her around, accidentally bump into her wherever she goes, and hound her until she tells me what she knows. She’s bound to crack at some point.”
“I think that’s called harassment,” Charlie supplied.
“Stalking,” my mother countered, never one to let the chance for an argument pass by unrealized.
I glared at them. “Whatever you want to call it, that’s my plan.”
“But that’s illegal,” Charlie said. “You can’t follow this woman all over town and not expect her to file a formal complaint.”
I clenched my hands into fists. “So? I’ll submit my own complaint! I’ll tell the police about her urging her so-called missing daughter to steal papers from my mother’s house and place threatening calls to my phone.”
“We don’t know that Leticia made that call,” my mother said.
I whipped around to face her, anger flushing my face. “If Leticia didn’t make the call directly, then someone dialed on her behalf. Like her mother. Or one of the hundreds of other actors in their artistic”—my lips curled up in a sneer—“family.”
“Do we have any proof tying Leticia or one of the Robinsons to that call or the missing invoices?” Charlie asked.
I snapped my fingers together. “The police can dust Mom’s house for fingerprints.”
“They won’t find anything,” Charlie said with annoying assurance. “Even if she touched everything Mom owns, unless her prints are on file nobody will be able to match them to her.”
His logic failed to discourage me. “That limits me to forcing a confession out of her mother then.”
Charlie sighed. “You can’t go around harassing Ursula without expecting her to issue a restraining order.”
I paused from pacing and mulled over the notion. “That’s just a piece of paper, right?”
Charlie gripped his knees. “You still can’t ignore it. You could go to jail.”
I considered the sacrifices I was willing to make in order to coerce information from Ursula. Spending a few nights in a cell would be a small inconvenience if in exchange I obtained a confession.
Charlie reached out and squeezed my arm. “Betsy, be logical. Who would protect your daughters if you went to jail?”
“Derek,” I said, although I began to relent before I even reached the second syllable of his name. Derek could watch over the girls every second of every day and I would still be frantic over my inability to protect them myself.
Charlie and my mother exchanged a look. Even my mother seemed to think I was nuts, no doubt unwilling to spend time in jail for her own children.
Charlie turned back to me. “Okay, let’s assume for a minute Ursula had been telling you the truth—at least the truth as she knows it. What did she tell you about her daughter’s disappearance during your first visit?”
I stared at him. My conviction over Ursula’s deception remained so firmly rooted in my head that I couldn’t immediately absorb Charlie’s incompatible suggestion.
Charlie peered at me. “Betsy?”
I blinked, forcing myself to entertain the possibility of Ursula truly being in the dark. “She said Leticia disappeared without warning, and she’s convinced she fell victim to foul play.” I narrowed my eyes. “Of course the entire police force had a different opinion, believing instead that Leticia left voluntarily.”
“Voluntarily but without telling Ursula,” Charlie said.
My cheek twitched. “That’s still up for debate.”
“Assuming Ursula really doesn’t know where her daughter is, who else could have supplied Leticia with the details of your investigation?” Charlie asked.
“Her sons,” I replied. “Her wonderfully talented actor sons. Ursula could have told them about my investigation the minute I left her house last weekend.”
“Who else besides members of the Robinson family?” Charlie amended. “Did Ursula mention anybody in particular who acted unconcerned over her disappearance?”
“Harold, maybe,” I said. “He didn’t even mention her disappearance when I spoke with him, but he had been in Florida at the time. They worked quite closely together before Track-It folded.”
“Could Harold have helped her hide out in Florida?” Charlie asked.
I scrunched up my nose. “I doubt it. And if Harold had enabled her disappearance, he had to have known about the scam. In that case, why not sign off on the Phoenix Microchip invoices himself? He’d authorized every other supplier expense. Why change the company pattern, which could only alert Dad to something fishy going on?”
Charlie rubbed his chin. “Okay, so Harold seems unlikely. What about people not affiliated to Track-It? Did Leticia regularly consort with any friends you know of before she went into hiding?”
Larry, I thought, his name popping into my head with such force it knocked me dizzy.
Larry had known Leticia. And I had been keeping him informed of my investigative progress this whole time. He knew I suspected her of sleeping with my father and abandoning him when his car crashed. He knew about my awareness of her embezzlement, and my belief that she was hiding out somewhere under a fake identity.
But why would Larry be in contact with Leticia? Had he only pretended to be her real estate agent to cover up the true nature of their relationship, a relationship more romantic than professional?
I sucked in a noisy breath. A relationship that at this very moment continued?
Larry certainly fit Ursula’s description of Leticia’s mystery man. He fell close to her in age and wanted a family. Maybe Monday and Thursday nights were unusually slow evenings for him, or days he kept clear from house showings.
Larry’s unmarried status was his only incongruous characteristic. Why would Ursula suspect her daughter of adultery if she’d been dating free-as-a-bird Larry?
Because Larry knew about the embezzlement, I silently answered myself. Maybe he had encouraged Leticia to seduce my father in order to pawn off those fake invoices. Or perhaps she had thought up the scam all on her own, excitement compelling her to tell Larry. Either way, if Larry and Leticia were scheming together, their illegal activities explained why they needed to be so furtive, furtive enough for Ursula to conclude her daughter had been hiding a man with a wife rather than an accomplice to a crime. She, in fact, had been hiding both.
I can be very cunning when I need to be, Larry had said to me the other day. The words chilled my blood as what I believed then to be a humorless joke took on new meaning now.
Had Larry helped Leticia vanish after my father crashed, my father’s belated awareness of their scam heightening their fears about its discoverability? Larry’s part in the crime would be well concealed, but Leticia had her signature scrawled all over the fraudulent invoices. She might have felt safer abandoning her life as Leticia Robinson and adopting a new identity in case their crimes came to light.
Had Larry only started dating me because he knew about my circuitous connection to Leticia? I thought back to the day we’d met, when he had been at Katherine’s school to watch some so-called niece run track. I’d never spotted him at any other competition before or since then, although he had theoretically only attended to cover a conflict the girl’s mother had. The mother was some obscure distant cousin whose convoluted relationship as Larry explained it now struck me as manufactured, a connection impossible to verify with the aid of any normal family tree.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t witnessed Larry interacting with an actual girl from the school that day. He had just faded into the crowd after we exchanged phone numbers. Could he really have fabricated that whole story, boldly planting himself where he knew I would be so he could launch a romance on the off chance I’d someday start looking into the circumstances surrounding my father’s death, unveil Leticia’s coincidental disappearance, and then locate evidence of her embezzlement? That hardly seemed plausible.
And even if Larry had only started dating me to keep tabs on my knowledge of Leticia’s activities, then why even admit he once knew her? Surely he would fear such an association would only make him more suspicious in my eyes.
Unless he’d only confided his acquaintance so he would have a reason to ask for investigative updates. To that effect, he’d concocted a tale about acting as her real estate agent, a role that would serve the purpose of establishing an innocuous relationship between him and Leticia.
“Betsy?” my mother said, her tone suggesting this wasn’t her first attempt to draw my attention.
I started, noting my mother, Charlie, and Raoul all watching me with concern. “Larry knew Leticia,” I said. Hearing the words—and what they implied—out loud filled me with dread.
“Larry, your . . . friend?” my mother asked, her eyebrows arched.
I nodded numbly. “He was her real estate agent. At least, that’s what he told me. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Wait a minute,” Charlie interjected. “This is that guy you mentioned earlier? How did he become involved?”
I twisted toward him, my body feeling unusually heavy. “He knows I suspect Leticia of disappearing deliberately, and that I figured out her embezzlement scam. He could have been the one to warn her about us looking into Dad’s death.” My chin started to quiver. “He might have encouraged her to threaten my children. Or, he may have made that call himself.”
Charlie’s eyes widened with understanding. “So you think Larry had a personal relationship with Leticia.”
“Has,” I corrected in a whisper. “If Ursula or one of the other Robinsons didn’t tell her about me nosing around, then Larry must have.”
“We’re still not sure that phone call even concerned Leticia,” my mother said.
I stiffened with a start, ignoring my mother’s lingering denial as I turned to face her. “I bet Larry stole the Phoenix Microchip evidence from Dad’s office Thursday during his walkthrough. That’s probably why he never returned my call yesterday. He knew I would be asking about those invoices.”
My heart constricted as I recalled the events that had transpired that day. Larry had ducked into the study alone. He had probably noticed the embezzlement papers and quickly tucked them away. Then, when he found me standing in the hall ruminating over Derek’s appealing set of hands, he had brought up having dinner together and how serious we were becoming. Why? To distract me from his recent theft?
“Larry and Leticia could be the ones truly involved in an affair,” I said. The idea made me sick to my stomach. To think I’d actually slept with the man. “Which means Leticia really did only seduce Dad so he wouldn’t catch on to her stealing from the company.”
My mother inhaled sharply. “Larry has keys to my house.”
My head snapped toward her. “He what?”
She met my appalled gaze with one of her own. “I signed him as my agent, remember? So, naturally, I had to give him keys to my house.”
“Well, I think we should notify the police,” Charlie said, slapping his thighs. “If Leticia is out there hiding and now she’s making threatening phone calls—or Larry is calling on her behalf—and people are running around stealing evidence of her crimes, the police should know.”
I frowned. “We don’t even have any proof about the embezzlement now that the papers are gone. The police will think I’m just a vengeful loon, someone trying to incriminate the woman who stole her father’s attentions away from her mother by framing her own two-timing boyfriend.” Although, really, I was starting to believe I might be going a touch insane myself. Everyone was beginning to seem complicit in Leticia’s criminal activities, even the police who had failed to track her down when she first went missing three years ago.
My mother stood up. “Even so. Charlo—Charlie makes a valid point. The police might even reopen their investigation into Leticia’s disappearance.”
Charlie rose as well. “We can at least file a report. Mom and I will go with you.”
I trudged after them as they headed toward the door, unable to stop myself from glancing enviously at Raoul, who got to skip this latest outing. He smiled, likely for encouragement, but he reminded me instead of an asylum visitor trying to placate an unpredictable patient.
A belated guilt for involving Raoul in this mess seized me. When I’d scheduled this evening’s family dinner, I hadn’t envisioned that in lieu of eating dessert the guests would first badger an elderly woman before rushing down to the police station to file an official statement.
If Raoul stuck with Charlie after today, nobody would ever be able to mistake him for a commitment-phobe.
* * *
“That was a complete waste of time,” I said as Charlie, my mother, and I exited the police station.
Charlie shrugged. “I didn’t expect it to lead anywhere.”
I stopped walking and planted my hands on my hips. “Then why did you even suggest talking to the police?”
He grabbed my elbow. “Because documenting the threat you received is a good idea even if nothing can be done at the moment. That way, if things escalate the police will have some history of you being harassed.”
I allowed my brother to lead me across the parking lot, figuring his logic made some sense. As an added benefit, I’d now established a line of communication with local authorities. If I discovered anything more about Leticia or her whereabouts, the police shouldn’t react as harshly when I filled them in. By then they should be used to my crazy rantings.
When the police had asked whether I had any inkling of who had placed the call earlier today, I’d only mentioned Leticia. Not only did I want to avoid their questioning of Ursula—whose perspective could only damage my credibility—Ursula’s entire extended family, and Larry—who would naturally deny my allegations and could panic and destroy the embezzlement papers if he hadn’t already done so—but I didn’t want my long and diverse list of Leticia’s potential accomplices to cloud the police’s judgment of my complaint’s validity.
“I find it difficult to believe they can’t trace where that call originated,” my mother contributed.
“They probably can, but don’t want to bother,” I grumbled. “That would mean more paperwork.”
I experienced an overdue flash of regret as I recalled how I’d reacted when my mother had first explained her suspicions about my father’s mystery woman. If my easy dismissal had caused her to feel anything like I did now, I couldn’t fault her for turning argumentative. She had probably lashed out just to maintain some dignity.
After we climbed into Charlie’s truck and he’d started driving, I bent toward the passenger seat. “Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when you first mentioned Dad’s mistress.”
“Oh.” She tried to turn her head, but we weren’t positioned in a way conducive to facing each other. “I suppose I did spring it on you without warning. I can understand why you thought it seemed rather implausible.”
“But I still should have listened with an open mind. I should have been more receptive and not rejected the possibility right away.”
A moment passed before my mother replied. “Well, I appreciate that you did listen. And started looking into things too. You’ve been a big help, Betsy.”
Unsure of what else to say, I leaned back in my seat. Although I often sarcastically told my mother I was sorry for some childhood offense committed decades ago or when circumstances warranted the extension of sympathy, I rarely apologized because of something I sincerely regretted. The experience felt alien to me.
Charlie cleared his throat. “So, Betsy, I guess you need a new place to stay tonight, since Larry’s is out.”
His words jarred me. I’d forgotten about my plan to spend the night at Larry’s. Thank God I hadn’t called him to invite myself over yet.
“Mom’s got the spare bedroom at our place,” Charlie continued, “but you can take the couch, or I can throw a sleeping bag on the floor next to Mom’s bed.”
The thought of sleeping on another couch caused my skin to itch. And despite our temporary truce borne of a mutual mission, lying on the floor next to my mother all night didn’t appeal in the slightest.
“I might just stay with Derek,” I said, reconsidering the offer my ex-husband had extended earlier.
Charlie raised his eyebrows at me in the rearview mirror.
“That way I can be close to the girls,” I explained, suddenly desperate to see my daughters. The familiarity of Derek’s presence wasn’t entirely unwelcome at the moment either, but I wasn’t about to confess that to Charlie and my mother.
My heart ached when I thought about Larry threatening my daughters. I could be wrong about his complicity, I reminded myself. Perhaps he truly was just a harmless real estate agent.
Or, perhaps I was becoming as talented in the denial department as my mother.
I sighed, not in the mood to dwell on the idea anymore. Tonight, I just wanted to collapse at Derek’s place and, if he was amenable, pretend we still cared about each other.
