Six

We sat silent for a moment. What was behind Sheila’s anger? It had to be fueled by something beyond the immediate shock of Brian’s disappearance.

I thought back to the fight they’d had during their last phone conversation. It had been a bad one, she said. Was their marriage in trouble?

“Sheila...” I began.

“I didn’t want to move here,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave Sonoma. We had a great house there, lots of friends, a wonderful life. We lived there ten years, ever since we got our first teaching jobs, after we graduated from Davis.”

A wonderful life, I thought. The phrase made me think of the classic Frank Capra film It’s A Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, who decided, after various trials and tribulations, that he really had many blessings after all. However, the film had a dark edge to it. Maybe Sheila’s recollection of good times in Sonoma didn’t jibe with those of my brother. Maybe that was the undercurrent running beneath all this.

I’ll be thirty-six this year, and Brian just turned thirty-two, so my kid brother is four years younger than me. Sheila is the same age as Brian. They met when they were undergraduates at the University of California in Davis, in the Central Valley near Sacramento, and they married the summer after they graduated. After receiving their teaching credentials, they both got jobs in Sonoma, Sheila teaching elementary school, Brian in middle school. Then, with the arrival of their children, Sheila became a stay-at-home mom, planning to go back to work at some point, when the kids were older.

So they’d lived in Sonoma long enough to put down roots in the community. Sheila was a small-town girl who liked small-town life. She was born and raised in Firebaugh, an agricultural town in Fresno County, with a population of about seven thousand people. Sonoma, with its historic old plaza and wineries, was about eleven thousand people. Petaluma was much larger, with a population of about fifty-eight thousand. The distance between Sonoma and Petaluma was only about fifteen miles, but the difference between the two communities was even more dramatic to Sheila. To her, Petaluma was a big city, and she didn’t like cities.

“I don’t understand why Brian would give up a perfectly good job in Sonoma to move to another district here in Petaluma,” she said. “It’s not a promotion.”

“More of a lateral move?”

She nodded. “The salary is about the same. Plus, he’s got to start over at the bottom of the pecking order, since he’s new to this district. I just don’t get it. Why did he do this?”

“Surely you discussed it before—”

“No, we didn’t,” Sheila interrupted. “I wasn’t consulted. This whole job change and move, it came at me out of the blue.”

I sipped my lemonade. She was angry about the move, but there was something else going on here, I was sure of it. But I didn’t have any idea what it was, not yet anyway. Brian could have commuted to Petaluma from Sonoma, but it sounded as though he wanted to leave the town as well as the job. I wondered why.

Okay, I thought. Let’s focus on the job situation first. It wasn’t like Brian to do something as important as changing jobs and moving his family without talking it over with his wife. My impression was that my brother viewed marriage as a partnership. He was conscientious, a fine, four-square, upstanding, all-round nice guy.

Or was he? I was his sister. Despite viewing him as a bratty annoyance when we were kids, I had a different view now that he was older. I thought Brian was a good guy. Certainly I would admit that my opinion was colored by our family relationship. But I’d never seen my brother behave in a fashion that would explain this situation, or my sister-in-law’s anger.

I set my glass on the table between us. “You say Brian had a perfectly good job in Sonoma. Think back. Are you sure he didn’t say something that indicated he was thinking about making a change? Was he dissatisfied with the job in Sonoma? Did something happen?”

Sheila frowned. “Well...yes. Just over a year ago, in April. The principal of the school where Brian was teaching suddenly died of a heart attack. Brian was very upset. He really liked the man who died. They were friends, and they had an excellent working relationship.”

“April of last year.” In my head, I counted back on the calendar. “So that would be about sixteen months ago. After his friend the principal died, did Brian bring up the possibility of changing schools?”

She nodded. “That’s when the subject came up. But he just mentioned it, in passing. Not anything definite. He didn’t like the man who was assigned as the temporary principal, and hoped the guy wouldn’t get the permanent assignment. But last summer, the temporary assignment became permanent.”

“Did Brian want the principal’s job?”

“I don’t think so,” Sheila said. She thought about it and shook her head. “No, I can’t picture it. Brian likes teaching kids. He hates all the administrative stuff that gets in the way of teaching. He doesn’t want to be a principal. He’d have to deal with all the politics and the district hierarchy. Teachers get enough of that anyway. Being principal would drive Brian crazy.”

“Why didn’t he like the new principal?” I asked.

Sheila shrugged. “Clash of personalities, maybe. I remember Brian saying this guy is a bully, a martinet, a petty tyrant. You know the type, one of those by-the-book disciplinarians who’s difficult to work with. Brian doesn’t like that kind of work environment.”

“So Brian talked about changing jobs,” I said, “but you didn’t think he was serious.”

She threw up her hands in a frustrated gesture. “He made a couple of offhand remarks about it, at the start of the school year, and again later in the fall. I didn’t think much about it, just that maybe he was considering a transfer to another school in Sonoma. I don’t remember him saying anything about it after that.”

Late fall, I thought, followed by the distractions of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I asked the question that had been running through my mind. “Is it possible Brian didn’t mention his plans because of the situation with your father?”

Sheila looked startled and I figured she hadn’t considered this. In January, after the Christmas decorations had been put away for another year, her father had been diagnosed with cancer. In the months since his diagnosis, Sheila’s father had had surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. I gathered from what Brian had told me that the prognosis wasn’t good. During that time, Sheila had been going to Firebaugh constantly, sometimes for long weekends, ­other times staying a week or more, usually taking the children with her, but not always. That sort of thing could put a strain on a marriage, too.

“I guess so,” Sheila said. “This business with my father hit me hard. I’m the youngest, and the only girl out of a family of four boys. I’m Daddy’s little girl. And he’s always been so big and healthy and vital. When he got diagnosed with cancer, it was such a blow.”

Sheila sighed. She rattled the ice cubes in her glass. “I know I’ve spent a lot of time going back and forth to Firebaugh. For all I know Dad may not last till the end of the year. Brian knows how important it is for me to be there for him, and help Mom.”

“I just wondered,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t want to put anything else on your plate by talking about his problems at work.”

“Even so, taking a new job and moving, that’s a big deal. Yes, I’ve been gone a lot. But I thought he understood about that. I certainly didn’t think he’d come home from work one day and announce that he had taken a job in Petaluma. It was a fait accompli. We’re moving. I’m supposed to uproot myself and the kids, pack up everything we own, put our house in Sonoma on the market. He’d already rented this house, before he told me he’d taken the job. I hadn’t even seen the damn place before we moved in.”

That was out of character, I thought, frowning. “Just like that?”

“Yeah, Jeri, just like that. I didn’t have any say in the whole damn fiasco. I’m pissed. Then he disappears. I feel...” She paused. “I feel like I don’t know him anymore.”

“What did you fight about, on the phone?”

Sheila’s mouth tightened and she took a sip of her lemonade. “I left on Thursday, twelve days ago. I was supposed to come back last Tuesday. We were going camping before school started, up in Plumas County. We had a reservation at a state park campground up there, starting last Thursday.”

“But you got home two days ago, on Sunday. You decided to stay in Firebaugh?”

She nodded. “When I got there, I found out my aunt, my dad’s oldest sister, was coming to visit. She was due to arrive on Wednesday, the day after I was going to leave. She was bringing her daughter, who’s my age, and her grandkids. I hadn’t seen any of these folks in a long time, Jeri, because they live back in Ohio. So yes, I decided to stay longer. I called Brian last Monday and told him I’d be coming home Sunday instead of Tuesday.”

“How did he react?”

“He was upset, angry. He didn’t want to cancel the camping trip. He said he’d come and get the kids and take them camping. I said, no, I wanted the kids there to see my family. I asked him to come down to Firebaugh, but he didn’t want to come. We argued and I hung up. Later that evening I called again and he didn’t answer. In fact, I called several times over the next few days, and he didn’t pick up the calls.”

So Brian resented Sheila and the kids being gone, and Sheila’s change of plans brought things to a head. Something else was lurking under the surface, though. I steered the conversation away from their argument and back to the move.

“How did Brian come to rent this particular house, without you even taking a look at it?”

“It belongs to Lance...and Becca.” Sheila’s mouth twisted, as though she’d bit into a particularly sour dill pickle. The tartness seemed to be reserved for Becca.

“Lance, Brian’s buddy from college,” I said. “He was best man at the wedding.” I’d met Lance at Brian and Sheila’s wedding ten years earlier. I dredged up a memory of a tall young man with sharp features and dark hair. “And Becca’s his wife?”

“They dated the last year of college and got married a year after we did,” Sheila said. “Lance was born and raised here in Petaluma. After school he went into business with his father, a real estate agent. Lance is now a big-deal Petaluma real estate tycoon and mover-and-shaker. Which is somewhat ironic, since he and Becca are such big environmentalists.” She shrugged, reaching for her lemonade. “Lance is all right.”

“But you don’t like Becca,” I said.

Sheila took her time answering, as though choosing her words. “Becca can be...overwhelming. She takes charge of things and bosses people around. Her way is always the right way. She’s a true believer—always involved in some cause. Lately it’s environmental stuff, everything from climate change to Sonoma County land use issues. Ever since we moved here, Becca’s been recruiting Brian to join this or that organization. Right now Becca’s energized about the Friends of the Petaluma River. She’s a member and she convinced Brian to go to a meeting with her.”

“Brian’s always been interested in the environment and the natural world,” I said. “He loves to camp and hike.”

“I know that,” Sheila said. “He takes the kids on nature walks. He enjoys birding with your father. Although I think that’s not so much the birding as a chance to be with your dad, now that he’s retired. But...”

The Friends of the Petaluma River sounded like a rather benign organization. Going to a meeting and joining the group would be normal activities for someone with my brother’s interests, especially since he’d just moved to Petaluma. He had been active in community life in Sonoma when the family lived there.

But that didn’t explain the frown on Sheila’s face.

“Is there something else? Something you’re not telling me?”

Sheila didn’t answer right away. She set down her glass. Her mouth tightened again, and I saw tears in her eyes.

“I think Brian’s having an affair.”

I sat back in my chair. My kid brother, cheating on his wife? I didn’t believe it. But that was Jeri, Brian’s big sis. The private-eye Jeri took a different view.

“What makes you think that?”

“Something I found,” Sheila said. “Wait here. I’ll get it.”

She got up and disappeared into the house, returning a moment later with a note card. She handed it to me. It was about four by five inches, and the front showed a delicate color sketch of a bird, a yellow-rumped warbler, a bird common to the woodlands in Northern California.

I opened the card. The inside was blank except for a handwritten message that looked as though it had been written in a woman’s hand. In a few lines, she said she’d enjoyed talking with him, and that she hoped they could meet again soon. The signature read “All the best, Willow.”

“How did you get this card?” I asked.

“I found it in Amy’s room, right before I left for Firebaugh. She must have liked the picture. She said she took it from the recycling bin. When I read the message, it set off alarm bells.”

“You might be reading too much into it. It sounds innocent enough.” I set the card on the table between us.

“Am I? I asked Brian who Willow is. At first he didn’t answer. He just seemed evasive. Then he said she was a casual friend, that he’d had coffee with her. Finally he admitted he’d had coffee with her several times. If that’s all there was to it, why didn’t he say anything about meeting her? He kept saying I was getting upset about nothing. But I was upset. I still am.”

She seemed to be blowing up something trivial. But Sheila was definitely on edge. With everything tossed into the mix—Brian’s dissatisfaction at work, Sheila’s preoccupation with her father’s illness, and the missive from the mystery woman—it sounded as though the conflict had been ripening into battle stage.

Had my brother’s meetings with Willow moved into a different kind of relationship? Had Brian gone off somewhere to meet another woman? Sheila was certainly entertaining that thought.

But it was so out of character for my kid brother. So was the vanishing act. Besides...

“That still doesn’t explain how Brian’s MedicAlert bracelet wound up on a boat with a body,” I said, thinking out loud.

Sheila’s face crumpled and tears began to flow. “Oh, Jeri, do you think he’s dead?”

I hastened to reassure her, although I’d reluctantly considered the possibility, then pushed it back into the darker reaches of my mind. “No, I don’t think he’s dead. I think we just have to keep looking, to figure out where he might have gone.”

“I do love him,” she said. “In spite of being angry with him, I love him. Oh, hell, I want him home.”

“We’ll find him,” I said, as much to myself as to Sheila.