Cookie looked up at last. “Do you know why?”
“No, she took off before I could talk to her.” I scooped enough coffee grinds into the filter to give it the taste and texture of unrefined motor oil.
“That is strange. You know your dad’s going to figure out you’re stealing his coffee. He was a detective for over twenty years.”
“See this?” I asked, showing her my pinkie between the doorways. “I have that man wound tight around this baby. So don’t sweat it,
“Don’t expect me to visit you in prison.” A tinkling bell sounded as the front door opened. “Can I help you?” Cookie asked as I walked into the reception area for a look-see.
“Yes, I need to talk to Charley Davidson.” A nice-looking man with light hair and pale blue eyes walked up. He wore a white doctor’s lab coat with a sky blue shirt and navy tie and had an expensive briefcase in one hand. With my super-sleuth powers of deduction, I decided he could be the very doctor Garrett had told me about.
“I’m Charley,” I said, but I didn’t smile in case I was wrong and he was really there to sell me magazine subscriptions. I didn’t want to encourage him.
He reached out his hand. “I’m Dr. Nathan Yost. I got your name from Garrett Swopes.” For a man with a missing wife, his innards were oddly panic-free. His emotions were in turmoil, just not the kind of turmoil one would expect from a man with a missing wife. A missing dog maybe. Or a missing eyebrow after a night of debauchery, but not a missing wife. Still, his hair was mussed and unkempt and his eyes were lined with fatigue and worry, so he fit all the grieving-husband criteria at first glance.
“Please, come in.” I showed him into my office. “The coffee’ll be ready in a minute, or I can offer you a bottled water,” I said after he sat down.
“No, nothing for me, but thank you very much.”
“Not at all.” I sat behind my desk. “Garrett told me you’d be coming in. Can you tell me what happened?”
He straightened his tie and glanced around at the artwork covering my walls. I had three paintings that my friend Pari had done. Two were very old school detective — the detectives female, naturally, with fedoras, trench coats, and smoking guns to go along with their sultry gazes. And the one right behind my desk was a little more goth, with a young girl washing blood from her sleeves. It was just enough of an abstract to make it difficult to see exactly what she was doing, an inside joke between Pari and me. Mostly because laundry day ranked right up there with paper cuts and stubbed toes.
“Absolutely,” he said after taking a deep breath. “My wife has been missing for a little over a week.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, fishing out a notepad and pen from my desk. “Can you explain what happened?”
“Of course.” His expression turned mournful. “My wife was out late with some friends, so I wasn’t worried when I woke up around midnight and she wasn’t home yet.”
“What day was this?” I asked, taking notes.
He raised his eyes and thought back. “Last Friday night. So, I woke up Saturday morning and she still wasn’t home.”
“And you tried her cell?”
“Yes, and then I called the friends she’d been out with.”
“And was her cell on?”
“Her cell?”
I paused and looked up at him. “Her cell phone, when you called it, was it on or did it go straight to voice mail?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, his brows sliding together. “Um, voice mail, I think. I was very upset by that point.”
Wrong answer. “Naturally. What time did she leave her friends?”
“Around two.”
“I’ll need their names and contact information.”
“Of course.” He combed through his briefcase and handed me a piece of paper from a leather portfolio he’d retrieved. “This is a list of most of her friends. The ones she was out with that night are starred.”
“Great, thank you. And what about family?”
“Her parents died a few years ago, but she has a sister here in Albuquerque and a brother in Santa Fe. He owns a construction company. You know”—he scooted closer to my desk—“they weren’t really close. It’s not something she liked to talk about, but I wanted you to know in case they seem uncooperative.”
Interesting. “I understand. Little of that in my family, too.” While my sister and I had recently reconnected after years of borderline apathy, my stepmother and I had barely spoken in decades. Since most things out of her mouth were rude and self-centered, I’d always considered our cool relationship a good thing.
I took down the names of her siblings and the places his wife had done volunteer work, just to make it all official looking. He’d stumbled a little with the verb tense, but I let it go for now.
“Has there been a ransom demand?”
“No, that’s what the FBI’s waiting for. I mean, that’s what this has to be about, right? I’m well off. They just want money.”
“I can’t say, but it’s certainly a motive. I think I have enough to get started. I just have one more question.” I fixed an Alex Trebek gaze on him, sympathetic with a trace of arrogance, mostly because Alex clearly has the answer to Final Jeopardy! ahead of time. Kind of like me now. “Sometimes, we have a feeling, Dr. Yost, a gut instinct. Do you ever get those?”
Pain flashed across his face and he lowered his head. “Yes, I do.”
“Do you have one now? Do you feel like your wife is still out there, waiting for you to find her?”
With his stare still locked on the floor, he shook his head. “I would like to believe she is, but I just don’t know anymore.”
Wrong answer again. He would totally suck at Final Jeopardy! The slip in verb tense, the fact that he didn’t know if his wife’s phone had been on or not — had he actually been looking for her, he would have known — and the fact that he hadn’t used his wife’s name throughout the entire conversation all added up to a wealthy doctor with blood on his hands. The omission of his wife’s name meant that he no longer saw her as a living, breathing person. While that didn’t necessarily mean Mrs. Yost was dead, it was a strong indicator. Either that or he was purposely trying not to see her as a person, trying to put her out of his mind.
But the final nail was the fact that people with missing spouses or children clutched on to the belief that their loved ones were still alive with every ounce of strength they could squeeze out of their bodies, especially after only a week. Sometimes even seeing a loved one’s remains didn’t help. They simply couldn’t let go. But someone who had killed his spouse would never know to cling on to that hope, no matter how false it might be. Which meant Mrs. Yost was most likely dead. But I wasn’t about to tip him off to the fact I knew he was as guilty as sin on Sunday, just in case I was wrong. If she were alive, I’d need time to find her before he finished the job.
“I understand,” I said. “But I want you to hold on to the belief that she’s okay, Dr. Yost.”
He looked at me, his eyes filled with fabricated grief. “So, you’ll take the case?” he asked, his face brightening. After all, a grieving husband doing anything possible to find his missing wife would look less suspicious.
“Well, I have to be honest, Dr. Yost, with the FBI already on it, I’m not sure what more I can do.”
“But, you can do something, right? I can write you a check right now if it’s about the money.” He pulled out a checkbook from the portfolio and patted his shirt pocket for a pen.
“No, it’s not about the money,” I said, shaking my head. “I just don’t want to take yours if there’s nothing I can do.”
He nodded in understanding.
“Let me look into this for a couple of days. If I think I can be of any help to your wife, I’ll give you a call.”
“All right,” he said, a spark of hope resurfacing. “So, you’ll call me?”
“Absolutely.”
I led him to the door and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I promise, I’ll do everything I can for her.”
A sad smile slid across his face. “I’ll pay anything.”
