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“Most people marry someone they don’t know anywhere near as well as they thought they did,” he agreed.
“With luck, they’ll both work at bridging their differences,” she said. “If not…well. I’m happy with my life now.”
“I’m glad. And thank you for your time.”
Tony put down the phone, braced his elbows on his desk and dug his fingers into his hair. It was hard to imagine how Dr. Alan Schuh could have been a skilled artist without his wife—an artist herself—knowing. Did that mean he could now eliminate Schuh as a suspect?
Maybe. Probably.
Which left him with any number of faceless, nameless men the victim would have met at work, at PTA meetings, in the stands at her son’s baseball games. Hell, at the grocery store, or in the waiting room at the dentist’s or the pediatrician’s.
And then there was Keith Reistad, who didn’t have an ex-wife willing to talk about his flaws. Without more reason to suspect the guy, Tony couldn’t approach his wife.
Back to the people at the accounting firm, he decided. If he was artistic, wouldn’t you think he’d have showed off one of his drawings at some point? Even displayed his work?
Tony had an uneasy recollection of the empty walls in Reistad’s office. What if he’d taken down some of his own work after hearing through the grapevine about the discovery of the body? Or even just because Christine’s body had been found? He’d have known investigators would dig through her stuff. Whoever had drawn that portrait must have worried for years that someone in the family would come across it. It had been long enough he might have relaxed. But no longer.
Tony sometimes paired with a fellow detective in his unit, but most often they handled investigations on their own. As Frenchman Lake had expanded, the department funding hadn’t kept pace. He could talk this over with one of the others, most of whom he liked and respected. But laying out what he did know would take too long, when they were all overworked. And the truth was…he wanted to talk to Beth. He shouldn’t have shared as much as he had with her, but he’d trusted her, found she had a way of arrowing straight to the point.
He missed her.
No—ridiculous. Although he would miss the best sex of his life. Her family, not at all.
He did still care enough to feel a driving obsession to find her mother’s killer. He’d have hated to have to put the murder investigation on the back burner. Pursuing it after Beth was attacked was a given, though. Which made the assault the act of a fool—unless the killer knew for a fact that Beth had seen something he’d drawn.
Was she even trying to remember? Frustrated, he began a search for Andrea Vanbeek in neighboring states. Nothing new about this—he spent most of his days on the computer or the phone. In fact, he jotted a reminder to himself to call the medical examiner’s office to find out what the holdup was.
* * *
BETH SMILED AT the middle-aged woman who sat across the desk from her. Kim Brubaker had dyed blond hair that needed a touch-up, huge bags under her eyes and twitchy hands.
“I hate the idea of putting Mom into a nursing home,” she exclaimed, for at least the third time. “But I just don’t know what to do.”
Beth gently extracted more information. Kim had two teenagers at home, one heavily involved in sports, the other in community theater as well as the high school plays. The oldest had a driver’s license but was too busy to chauffeur his sister. Kim’s husband was a long-haul truck driver, a willing helper when he was home, but gone for days at a time. They’d taken her mother in to live with them a year ago, after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She had inevitably deteriorated, and Kim was afraid to leave her alone.
“I’ve always been involved in my kids’ lives,” she said. “Having responsibility for Mom limits the time I can give them.”
Her mother did have nursing home insurance. Beth suggested checking to find out whether it would also cover in-home care.
Finally, she said, “First, let me say that the likelihood is high that you’ll eventually find caring for her beyond your ability. When that time comes, I encourage you to look at memory-care facilities instead of nursing homes. There are two here in town.” They went on to discuss the possibility of taking advantage of an adult daycare that wasn’t a mile from her home. “That can be full or half day, or even for a couple hours. You’d have some time each day to do errands or just relax. But they close at five, I believe, so I don’t know if that would still free you to drive your kids to after-school activities.”
