I watched through the living room window as Isabel’s stepfather got out of his truck and started walking toward the house.
Tracey Webber was tall-maybe a couple of inches taller than me, and I’m six one. He was a big guy, and he had a bit of a belly-but there was a lot of muscle there, too. My guess is he weighed two-thirty or so. He wore black work boots, dark blue mechanics pants and a matching shirt with his name stitched on the left breast in silver cursive. The shirt was un-tucked, and both shirt and pants had grease stains-some looked recent; some looked like they’d been there awhile. He was dirty and sweaty and he looked like he’d had a long day. He stopped as he came through the door and checked us out. He had the confident big-guy swagger of a man who’d been through many scraps and knew he could take care of himself. He also had a mean face.
“Hi, honey,” Mary said as she walked over to greet him. She stopped short of hugging him when she saw up close how grimy he was.
Webber said nothing and looked past Mary toward us. “Honey, these people are private investigators,” Mary said, anticipating his questions before he had a chance to voice them. “They’ve stopped by to ask some questions about Isabel.”
He seemed to consider this for a second, before he said, “Why?”
The fact that his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter had been missing a month wasn’t a big deal for him, I guess. Either that, or he already knew why and was just playing dumb.
“Mr. Webber,” I said, “I’m Danny Logan. This is my associate Toni Blair.” He looked us over. I should say, he glanced at me briefly but took his time checking Toni out. This was something I’d gotten used to, but I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Still, I’m a professional-I bottled it up. “We’ve been retained to look into Isabel’s disappearance,” I said. True-not counting the retainer part.
When I mentioned Isabel’s name, he turned back and looked at me, a little more carefully now. His cold, penetrating blue eyes sized me up. So far, my thirty-second snap judgment was that Tracey Webber was a purely physical guy-someone not too burdened by cerebral concerns. I’m usually pretty accurate with these assessments.
“What’s to look into?” he said, breaking eye contact with me and moving to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. “She ran away. Been gone a month now, and it don’t look like she’s coming back.” He set his keys on the counter and looked back at us. “Want a beer?”
“No, thanks,” I said. He walked around the bar into the kitchen, where he got a bottle of Rainier Beer from the refrigerator. He twisted the top off and left it on the counter. He took a long pull from the bottle before turning around.
“Who’d you say you’re working for?” he asked, as he walked back into the living room.
“We didn’t say,” I said. “Our client wishes to remain confidential.”
“Hmm,” he snorted. “That’s pretty chickenshit. What’re they hiding from?”
I smiled. “A pretty fair number of our clients wish to keep their identities hidden. You shouldn’t read anything into that,” I said. I wanted to try to take control of the conversation. “We were just about to leave, but since you’re home, would you mind if we ask you a few questions? We talked to your wife for a few minutes, but she wasn’t able to shed much light on the situation, since evidently she works swing shift and isn’t home much.”
He looked at Mary, then back at me. “Let’s do it,” he said, confidently. He took a long drink from his beer- probably draining half the bottle. “Think I’ll have a seat. Been standin’ all day long.”
“By all means,” I said. He plopped himself onto a bar stool and took another shot from his beer bottle, draining it all the way. Then he smacked it down on the bar. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at me. I halfway expected him to belch, but he didn’t.
“Fire away, Chief,” he said.
“Okay. As I said, we’re trying to figure out where Isabel went. If we can find her, we’re hoping we can talk her into coming back home.”
“Hmmm,” he snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Seems to me she’s been acting like she couldn’t wait to get away from here for the past two years or so.”
“What makes you think that? Has she run away before?”
He shook his head. “Nah. She never ran before. She just comes home from school and then scoots on up to her room and closes the door. She acts like she don’t want nothing to do with this family.”
Can’t imagine why not. “Understood,” I said. “Teenagers can be a handful.”
“Damn straight,” he agreed.
“Tell me,” I said in as non-threatening a tone as I could muster. “What was your relationship like with Isabel?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you and Mary have been married what-five years now? Almost five years? That means you’ve been around Isabel for almost a third of her young life. You’ve gotten to know her. You’ve had the chance to interact with her. Did the two of you get along?”
He seemed confused at first, but then he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah. We got along fine. I’d get home-she was already home or sometimes she’d get home later. Like I said, she’d walk right straight through and march on up to her room. She didn’t have much to do with me.”
“Did she have any disciplinary problems?” I asked. “Did she ever get in trouble? Did you ever have to punish her?”
He shook his head. “Nah, she was a pretty good kid when it came to stayin’ out of trouble. She didn’t cause no problems-she was just real quiet and kept to herself. Spent all her time up in her bedroom.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me ask you-it’s a little after four now, and you just got home a little while ago. Is this about the same time you get home every day?”
“Yeah. More or less.”
“So seeing as how Mary works swing shift, that makes you the parent who probably spent the most time with Isabel. Did she ever confide in you? Tell you about any problems she might have been having in school? Something that might have made her want to run away?”
He pretended to think about this for a few seconds. I say “pretended” because he made a good show of staring off into space for about ten seconds, seemingly lost in thought. I figured this was a good eight seconds past his maximum attention span. Finally, he shook his head and said, “Nah-she never said anything. Like I said, she kept to herself.”
“I understand. Do you know if she had any friends? If she did, maybe we can talk to them and help look for her that way?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know any of her friends,” he said. “She got rides to school and back from a girl who lives somewhere around here, but that’s about it-leastwise, as far as I know.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll check at her school. They might be able to help us locate some of Isabel’s friends.”
I looked down at my notes, then back up at him. “That’s pretty much it for me-I don’t really have anything else-we’re actually just getting started on our investigation. Is there anything else you can think of?” I asked. “Something else you might be able to add?” My point in talking to him hadn’t been so much to get any information out of him-I didn’t expect that would happen. Mostly, I just wanted to deflect his attention from Mary.
He looked at me and then shrugged. “Sorry, Chief,” he said.
I looked at Toni. “Anything else you can think of?” I said.
She shook her head no.
“Well, okay then,” I said, smiling. “I guess that’ll do it for now. Thanks for helping us out. We won’t keep the two of you any longer.” I took a step for the door.
Mary opened it for us. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. “You can’t be two places at the same time. Gotta work. I know what that’s like. I turned to Tracey. “Mr. Webber, thanks again for your help. If we find anything, we’ll keep you posted.”
Webber didn’t respond. Apparently, he hadn’t fully appreciated the way Toni fills out a T-shirt when he came inside and checked her out. Now that he’d had a chance to take a second look, he was definitely noticing. In fact, he
