CHAPTER 23 - Rita

CHAPTER 23RitaIDIDN’T FEEL LIKE SWINGING BACK BY MY APARTMENT TO CHANGE MY clothes, so I show up at the station in my funeral attire. As I wend my way back to my office, I nearly bump into Doug Schmitt, the other lead detective in our department.“Hey, Rita. Nice dress.”“Gee, thanks, Doug. I almost look as fashionable as you do.” He stands like a GQ model in his dark tailored suit, holding a cup of coffee. Doug’s big on appearances, as though his favorite part of the job is trying to look like some suave movie detective. He starts to walk with me as I make my way down the hall.“Heard you’ve got a homicide cooking,” he says.“It looks that way.”He comes to a stop at his office door, sips his coffee. “Why does everything interesting happen when I’m not here?”“Next time we’ll be sure to schedule a murder for after you get back from vacation.”He smirks as though we’re in on some big joke. It sticks in his craw that the chief gives me the most high-profile cases. That I’ve got fifteen years of experience on Schmitt doesn’t seem to faze him.“Well, good luck with that,” he says, and darts inside his office.As I power up my computer, Chase peers in.“Lauren said they’ve released Mrs. Bradley’s phone.”“Good. Anything pertinent?”“Nope.” Chase clears his throat. “I can run it by her place if you want me to. I was going to head out anyway. I’m supposed to be off.”“Right.” I’d forgotten. “You don’t mind?”His gaze shifts to the window. “No problem. It’s on my way.”I put my hand on my hip. “Maybe we should wait, you know? The funeral just ended.”“She seemed anxious to have it back. It might make her feel better.”“Yeah. I guess. Okay, go for it.” When Chase leaves, I send a picture of the necklace to Mrs. Bradley’s number with a message asking if she knows who it belongs to.Lauren walks in holding her laptop. “I might have something, Rita!” She drops down on the chair facing me. Lauren doesn’t usually get too excited, so her exuberance has my full attention.“What?”“Okay.” She sets her computer on the edge of my desk. She needs two hands to relate her story, I guess. “On a hunch, I’ve been searching for missing persons with the initials A.R.”“And?”She takes a big breath. “Annalise Robb. Twenty-four years old. Disappeared from a bar last summer. She and her boyfriend got into a fight, and she stormed out. Her mom filed the report the next day when she hadn’t returned.”“No leads since then?”“I couldn’t find anything. The sheriff on the case is a Tom Skinner. I’ll forward his number to you so you can give him a call.”“Why do you think the necklace belongs to her? Could be a lot of A.R.’s out there who lost a necklace.”“Because there might be a connection to Dr. Bradley.”I look up from my computer screen. “How’s that?”“She disappeared in Mountclair, New Hampshire.”“Huh. Thanks, Lauren. I’ll give him a call then.”She grabs her laptop and bounces on her way. I look back through my notes, just to be sure. Sometimes those innocuous questions bear fruit. That’s why I ask them despite people’s impatience. I grab my reading glasses and skim down the page, stop where I’ve sketched a little house, and find what I’m looking for. The Bradleys’ mountain home is definitely in a little town called Mountclair. Holy shit. I dial Sheriff Skinner’s number.After I speak with a woman, my call is transferred to the sheriff. He answers, voice gruff.“Hello, Sheriff. This is Detective Rita Myers with Graybridge PD down here in Massachusetts. How are you?”“All right, Detective. What can I do for you?”“We’re investigating a homicide and found a woman’s necklace at the scene, and we’re wondering if it might be connected to a case of yours.”“And why’s that?”“The necklace has the initials A.R. on it, and we’ve discovered that you’ve got a missing woman with those initials.” I stretch my legs under my desk.“What’s this necklace look like?”“Hold on. I’ll send you a picture.” I wait for the technical stuff to happen. Listen to the sheriff breathing on the other end. He’s either a husky guy or has asthma, by the sound of it.After a minute, he clears his throat. “Where’d you say you found this necklace?”“In the home office of our vic. Here in Graybridge. Forty-year-old local psychologist.”He draws another labored breath, covers a cough. “How in hell did it get there?” he mumbles to himself.“Well, that’s what we’d like to know. But there is a connection. The vic owns a vacation home up there in Mountclair. What can you tell me about your missing woman?”The line goes silent. “Wait a minute,” he says at last, and I hear the clicking of what sounds like computer keys.Certainly, he knows the details by heart. How many missing women does he have in that little place? As if reading my mind, he says, “I just sent you a file, but this is the gist of it. Annalise Robb was drinking with her boyfriend at the Mountclair Tavern on July Fourth. She and he got into an argument about one a.m., and she said she’d walk home. We have a bar full of witnesses who attested to that. It was busy, being the Fourth. Anyway, the boyfriend, Lyle Peabody, drank another beer, then left. After that, nobody saw her. Well, somebody saw her, but we just don’t know who.”“The boyfriend?”“We’ve had him in here half a dozen times. Says he didn’t see her. Passed a polygraph. We’ve got nothing to connect him to her disappearance. And no leads. It’s like that girl just vanished.”“This was last July Fourth?”“Yes.”“Busy up there in the mountains during that time?”“It sure is.”“What about the necklace?”He draws a deep breath. “It matches the description her mom gave us.”“Could be our vic happened to find it and picked it up.”“Maybe. What’s his name?”“Dr. Jay Bradley. You know him?”“Yup.” The sheriff clears his throat. “The Bradleys have owned a big place up here for years. So he’s dead? Victim of a homicide?”“That’s right.”“Jesus. We’ll need to get together on this, looks like.”“Yes.” I make some notes, and the sheriff and I make tentative plans. I hang up, lean back in my chair, and let go a deep breath.* * *It’s nearly six o’clock, and I’m starting to get hungry, so I switch off my desk lamp and scrape my notes together to stuff into my satchel. I think about my dinner options. My fridge is empty, as usual, and André and Collin are downtown catering a conference, so I poke my head in at Bob’s door.“You want to grab a bite across the street?”He looks up from the mess on his desk. “Sounds good.”Mac’s is a little place, a bar really, but the food isn’t bad in a pinch. It isn’t busy tonight, not even any cops hanging out having a cold one after their shifts. Mac himself, the big wide-shouldered owner, who played a couple of seasons for the Patriots a million years ago, is pouring drinks. All his former muscle has morphed into fat, and his belly strains his knit shirt.He leans on his hands, takes a raspy breath. “Bob, Rita.” He nods. “How’s it going?”“Just dandy, Mac. You?” I ask.“Couldn’t be better.” He grins. “Angela’s pregnant. Did I tell ya that?” About ten times. His daughter, his only child, beams from a framed photo hanging behind the bar. “Gonna be a grandpa this summer.”“Congrats,” Bob says. “Nothing like grandkids.”Mac nods again and rubs his hands together. “Yous in for a drink or a meal?”“I could do with both,” I say. “Should we seat ourselves?”“Yeah. Anywhere you want. As you can see, the place is packed,” he says sarcastically, but with a smile.The chief and I sit in a dark booth in the back. Mac’s a great guy, but he’ll talk your ear off if he’s not busy, and Bob and I’ve got business to talk about.I fill him in on everything Lauren and I have discovered. He takes a long pull on his bottle of Bud Light. “Jesus, Rita. You think Dr. Bradley was involved in that girl’s disappearance?”I shrug. “Who knows? But there’s some reason he had her necklace locked in his filing cabinet. The most innocent reason is that he found it while out on a walk in the mountains, picked it up, and decided to keep it, but that’s a stretch. Why hide it?”Bob dips a tortilla chip in a bowl of chunky salsa. “You think that’s what the perp was after when he came back?”“Maybe.” I sip my wine. “Worst case, as I can figure it, Dr. Bradley and another man were involved in Ms. Robb’s disappearance. The killer was worried that the good doctor was growing a conscience and going to turn them in, and so he killed him. The necklace was what tied them to the crime, so the perp wanted it.”Bob nods. “Could be. You find anything in the doc’s background that might predispose him to criminal activity?”“Nothing official. When we ran him, he didn’t even have a speeding ticket in the last ten years.” Our server slides steaming plates in front of us, bubbling fajitas for Bob, a cheeseburger and fries for me. “His partner at the therapy practice said he’s a good guy. Squeaky clean. And she seems to know him about as well as anybody.”“But we both know what that’s worth. Some of those twisted guys go years before a whiff of anything sinister comes to light.”I nod and recall various training sessions over the years and the serial killers we’d learned about who managed to blend into society for years before their dark sides were discovered. And I’ve seen enough of human nature to know firsthand that people aren’t always what they seem. Evil lurks, as the saying goes, sometimes in the most unexpected places.“Yeah. I know. Chase and I are going to bring the wife back in and see if we can get anything more out of her.”