Under Cover of Darkness (22 page)

This one just didn't look enough like Beth Wheatley.

Chapter
Twenty-Seven.

Andie finished her Monday morning run in record time. The clouds even parted as she crossed the imaginary finish line outside her town house. A quick three miles with a sprint-kick finish had left her sweaty and exhausted. The phone rang just as she reached her back door.

She had not yet caught her breath as she raced inside the kitchen and grabbed it in mid-ring. It was Gus.

"Good--morn--ing," she said, each syllable separated by heavy breathing.

"Did I catch you in the middle of . . . something?"

"No, not--it's not that," she said, realizing she had the distinct breathlessness of recent orgasm.

"I'd better call back later."

"It's okay, really." She drew a few more breaths. "I was jogging."

"Oh." He sounded relieved.

She pulled the scrunchie from her knotted hair, letting it fall. "What's up?"

"I hate to bother you at home so early, but I've been thinking about something all weekend that I really need to talk to you about. With your psychology background and all, I thought you might be able to help."

"Sure. Be happy to."

"It's about Beth. She seems to have been in some kind o
f t
rouble. Even before she disappeared, I mean."

He had her attention. Andie sank into a chair at the kitchen table as he told her about the bulimia, the shoplifting. She got up once to grab the magnetic message pad from the refrigerator door, then jotted down a few notes with the phone tucked beneath her chin. It took him several minutes to recount everything. She listened carefully, interjecting only a few "uh-huhs" and "I sees" along the way. As he spoke, however, she was internally debating whether to tell him on the phone that the evidence was more than ever pointing to Beth as a likely victim. When he finished, there was silence.

Andie said, "Would you mind if I stopped by your house this morning?"

"That would be fine, I guess. What do you have in mind?"

She caught herself, careful not to use the term victimology with a man who might not be ready to label his wife a victim. "It would be helpful for me to see where Beth lived, how she lived. Maybe even look at some of those things you think she shoplifted. Then we can talk more."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"I can be there in about an hour."

"Great. See you then."

The Wheatley house was even more impressive than Andie had expected. The brick Tudor-style estate was set well back from the street, hidden behind an eight-foot hedge that lined the imposing stone fence and decorative iron gate. A long, curved driveway sloped up toward the house. It was set on the highest point on the heavily wooded lot, perched just above the neighbors' trees for unobstructed views of Puget Sound.

Andie parked beneath the portico and rang the doorbell. Gus answered. He looked tired, as though he'd barely slep
t a
ll night.

"Come in," he said, letting her pass. The double door
s c
losed behind her. She stood beneath the crystal chandelier in the foyer, facing the living room. It was a dramatic room with vaulted ceilings that followed the steep lines of the Tudor design. The floor was oak with inlaid borders of teak and rosewood. A huge stone fireplace covered one wall. Museum-quality artwork covered another. The furnishings were expensive European designs she had admired only in storefront windows. In the center was a silk oriental rug big enough to carpet her entire town house.

"Nice place:' she said as Gus took her coat.

"It's cozy."

Right.
. M
y Subaru is "cozy."

He asked, "Can I get you something? Coffee?"

"That would be perfect."

He directed her toward the kitchen, but they were practically ambushed halfway down the hall as Morgan emerged from her bedroom.

Gus said, "This is my daughter, Morgan."

Andie leaned forward to extend her hand. "I'm Andie." "Andie? That's a boy's name."

"No more than Morgan," she said, smiling thinly.

That seemed to break the ice, as if they had a kinship. "I lost a tooth," she said as she pointed at the gap.

"Oh, my. Does it hurt?"

"A little. Enough to keep me out of school today." "I see," said Andie, smiling with her eyes.

"Are you going to find my mommy?"

Andie and Gus exchanged glances. She sensed the FBI was as yet an unsettled matter between father and daughter. "I'm here to help your dad."

A phone rang. Morgan pulled a cordless receiver from her Barbie shoulder bag and answered, "Hi, Hannah."

"Sounds like somebody found a friend to play hooky with her," Andie said with a wink.

Morgan blushed, guilty as charged. She waved a quick good-bye and started down the hall, then stopped an
d g
lanced back. "You can come see my room sometime, Andie. If you want."

"I'd like that."

Morgan seemed to smile as she ducked into her room. Gus watched, bewildered. "How the heck did you do that?"

"It's a girl thing."

"Works better than the lousy dad thing, I guess." "Come on. Any dad who gets his little girl a pink phone can't be all bad."

She followed Gus into a kitchen that rivaled those dream spreads in magazines. Solid cherrywood cabinets. Lots of granite and stainless steel. An island the size of Hawaii. Andie pulled up a stool at the counter. Gus remained standing, too nervous to sit. A beam of welcome sunlight streamed down through the skylight, almost drawing a line between them.

"You haven't told Morgan the FBI's looking for her mother, have you?" It was a question, but her tone was judgmental.

"Not specifically. I was afraid the mere mention of something like the FBI would only make it more scary to her."

"You need to be honest. Kids are more intuitive than you think."

"Especially this one. If she's this self-aware at six, I'm dreading sixteen."

"A little extra maturity isn't at all unusual in an only child."

Gus poured two coffees, then came to the opposite side of the counter. "Morgan certainly has some adult-sized proclivities," he said, thinking of the little wooden horse that had disappeared from his office.

"How do you mean?"

"Nothing. Have you given any more thought to what I told you about Beth?"

"For the past hour that's all I've thought about." "And?"

"The eating disorder, shoplifting. I'd say they're related manifestations of the same problem. Lack of self-esteem, purpose, identity. Sounds like a troubled woman crying out for help."

"I've heard of eating disorders. Even self-mutilation. But shoplifting?"

Andie sipped her coffee, then glanced at the surroundings. "She lived in a world where no material need went unfilled. Stealing a basic necessity like clothing was the ultimate way for her to break from what she was. Has she ever done anything like that before?"

"Stealing?"

"No. Has she ever shown any resentment for the kind of life you've given her?"

"Not that I know of."

"You have any idea why she would be so unhappy with what she was?"

"That's a more complicated question."

"Let me try to simplify it. Your wife did accuse you of spouse abuse some years ago."

"Yes, she did."

"Abuse has a way of making a woman do strange things. Especially if it occurs over many. years. I've seen more than one abused wife snap and do some pretty strange things."

"Beth was not an abused wife."

She softened her tone, not looking for a confrontation. "Can we talk a little about that? You said the same thing the night we met at the medical examiner's office. I'd like to believe you. But why did she file that report?"

"Like I said. It's complicated."

She wondered if "complicated" meant Martha Goldstein. "I think it's important for me to know, don't you?" He wasn't eager to reopen those wounds, but it was undeniably relevant. "After Morgan was born, Beth had terrible postpartum depression. Didn't come out of the bedroom for days at a time, didn't want anything to do with Morgan."

"That's more common than _you would think."

He stirred a little sugar into his coffee. "That's what I'm told, but that didn't make it any easier. We needed double-shift nannies to take care of the baby, because Beth wasn't even taking care of herself. I tried to get her to see a psychiatrist, but she wouldn't go. It got to be a daily routine. I'd come home, she'd still be in bed where I left her. We started having arguments. Just the exchange of words, nothing else. She would cry and yell at me, saying I ignored her, I neglected her. It seemed like we were having the same argument, night after night. Except, after a while, she started using the word abuse. Things hadn't changed. If I was doing anything wrong, I was still busy at work--ignoring her, as she said. But suddenly she was calling it abuse."

"So you're saying that's the full extent of the abuse?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

"That's not what you'd infer from the police report she filed. She claimed you physically hit her."

"That was pure embellishment."

"Why would she make that up?"

"Why would she steal a size twelve dress from a department store?"

"Is that what you're hoping? That people will hear she was shoplifting and finally believe she made up the abuse allegations?"

Gus looked stunned, then angered. "I have no intention of making this public. I'm telling you this only because I hope it will help you find out what happened to Beth. I called you in confidence."

"Sorry. It's just that you're a very prominent attorney in this town. Kind of hard to believe you don't care what other people think."

"I did care. It bothered me a great deal the way people reacted back then. My friends, her friends. My own law firm. I almost lost my job over it. Somehow, a mere accusation was enough to convict me, even after Beth retracted it."

"It's hard for outsiders to know what to believe in those situations."

"Then why do they always want to believe the worst?" "It's juicy, I guess. A high-powered lawyer who abuse
d h
is wife. Or a desperate wife who makes the whole thin
g u
p to keep him from leaving her for another woman." "Where did you hear that?"

"I can't say."

"You talked to Martha Goldstein, didn't you?"

"I really can't talk about that."

"That's her angle. She plants ideas in your head so she can honestly tell my partners and my clients that I'm under police investigation. It's all a ploy. She's using you."

"I don't know anything about that."

"I know it's Martha. She somehow fancied herself the other woman. Rumors like that only made it harder for Beth and me to patch things up and move forward. It is hard, even if you love each other. And I did love Beth."

"But not enough to change."

He stared into his coffee cup. "We just seemed to drift further apart."

"Over the Martha rumors?"

"No. The real difficulty was me. I never fully believed she made up the charges to get my attention or keep me from leaving her. When she filed that report, it was as if part of her were wishing I had crossed the line. I'm not saying she wanted to be abused. But I do think she wished the issues had been more black and white. It sounds crazy, but the real problem was that we had something really good a long time ago. I suppose she_needed something really bad to make her finally give up on that. You know what I mean?"

His question hit close to her own personal disaster, her own recent pain at the altar. "I suppose decisions are easier when somebody does something horrendous. Like me and my ex-fiance. Barn. I was out of there. No hesitation."

"What happened?"

"Not important. It was so unlike your situation with Beth."

"But you do understand?"

"I understand what you're saying. But if you really loved her, I can't say I understand how you let it get to that point."

He fell silent, absorbing the blow. "Neither can I." "Daddy!" Morgan was sprinting up the hall. Gus turned and braced himself. She nearly ran him over.

"Daddy, you missed it, you missed it!" She spoke in short, panicky breaths, her voice shaking.

"Missed what?"

"I can't believe you missed it!"

Tears filled her eyes. Gus lifted her up and sat her on the counter. "Missed what?"

"Just--just now!"

"Morgan, calm down. What's wrong?"

"While you were talking, you just missed it!"

"Missed what?"

She shouted with all her breath, "Mommy called!" He froze for an instant, then raced down the hall.

Chapter
Twenty-Eight.