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He called in Alvarez and Pescoli, Zoller, the junior detective in charge of the Internet research, Deputy Winger as he trusted her advice, and Brett Gage, the chief criminal deputy.
Joelle Fisher, of course, couldn’t let a meeting go without bringing in a tray with two kinds of coffee, cups along with napkins, creamers and sweeteners.
Blackwater finally understood that, especially with the receptionist, there was a certain amount of decorum that had to be followed, tradition, if you will. He could appreciate Joelle’s single-mindedness when it came to a task, but worrying over who drank decaf or avoided artificial sweeteners or that the platter had a damn paper doily covering it, weren’t his top priorities. He wished Joelle would dial it back, just a notch or two, and he’d said as much.
She’d complied, but he sensed it was only temporary. Decorations and baked goods, celebrations of all kinds were part of her DNA, just like her throwback beehive hairstyle.
“Thank you,” he said as she left the meeting room, each step reverberating quickly against the tile floor.
“Let’s get to it,” he said as the invitees took spots around the table.
Other than Gage, no one bothered filling a cup. Alvarez and Zoller each had electronic notebooks, Gage and Pescoli notepads and pens. Blackwater had both at his fingertips. “I know about the prints and the connection, but what do we know about this person, Anne-Marie Calderone? You talked to someone in New Orleans, right?”
“Detective Montoya, yes,” Alvarez said, taking the lead in the discussion and passing out two pages, one with the picture from the suspect’s Louisiana driver’s license, the other a sheet of facts about the woman in question. “Anne-Marie Favier Calderone. She’s thirty years old and, according to Montoya, been missing for several months. He’s sending us the files and a timeline, but the long and the short of it is that she was married to Bruce Calderone, a medical doctor who, until recently, worked at a private hospital in New Orleans. Once connected to the Catholic church, it’s now run by lay people. He was a surgeon.”
“Was?” Blackwater interrupted, feeling his eyebrows slam together.
“He seemed to have disappeared, as well. Both he and his wife. From the interviews Montoya did with friends and family, it appears the marriage wasn’t stable, with accusations of affairs on both sides. Though there were never any charges filed, there were rumors of abuse.”
Alvarez continued on, saying that Anne-Marie Favier had grown up a daughter of privilege. The Faviers had once had family money, at least during Anne-Marie’s youth. According to her parents’ sworn statements, she was headstrong and brilliant but a little unbalanced. In high school, she spent three months in a mental hospital for undisclosed issues. Montoya had said the records were sealed as she’d been a minor at the time. Later, she’d not only finished a four year program but also held an MA in philosophy from Tulane University.
The trouble started after her marriage to Bruce Calderone, a medical student whom she’d helped through school. There followed breakups and reconciliations, even some long separations, which included the last one. She and Calderone had been separated and she’d filed for divorce. She’d signed, but Calderone had balked.
She’d ignored that little fact when she’d married her latest fling, a cowboy by the name of Troy Ryder in a tiny chapel in Las Vegas. When that relationship apparently soured, she returned to New Orleans sans the new groom, but when Calderone learned about the second marriage he’d blown a gasket. Though, again, not reported to the police at the time, the neighbors had heard screaming and yelling which ended abruptly around ten or ten-thirty. The next day, they were gone. Both of them. All of their worldly possessions left behind. It was, according to Montoya, as if they’d each just fallen off the face of the earth.
No cars taken, no credit cards used, no cell phones answered or turned on so the cops could locate them.
“That’s basically it, except for one interesting fact,” Alvarez said. “Though Anne-Marie wasn’t close to either of her parents, she was adored by her grandmother. The grandfa
ther died years earlier, but the weekend Anne-Marie and her husband went missing, the grandmother was robbed. She claimed she had fifty thousand dollars in her safe and no one, other than her granddaughter and her daughter, knew the combination, though they of course could have told others. Montoya thinks the mother is in the clear and that leaves Anne-Marie.”
“She would steal from the one person she loved?” Pescoli asked.
Alvarez paused. “Maybe she was desperate. According to her parents, Montoya notes, that despite all of her education, their daughter never made any serious money or pursued a career in her field of interest. She held odd jobs all through school. Worked as a clerk or a waitress even after she graduated.”
“While her husband finished medical school?” Blackwater asked.
Alvarez studied her screen. “Uh-huh. What little Anne-Marie made, coupled with his student loans, kept them afloat.”
Blackwater asked, “Either of them ever steal before?”
“Neither had a criminal record. So if they had, they were never caught. But if they had the grandmother’s cash to finance their disappearance, and maybe new identities, it could explain why we can’t find either one of them.”
He rubbed his chin and shook his head as he thought. “They hated each other, so it’s unlikely they were on the run together, and if he had a thriving medical practice—”
“Not thriving.” Alvarez shook her head. “In fact, Dr. Calderone not only worked at the hospital but was a partner in a clinic. The business was going bankrupt, though his partners think he was not only syphoning off money but prescription drugs, as well. After he disappeared, a couple women came forward and reported that he’d been inappropriate with them. They’re suing his practice as well as him personally, and as such, his wife.”
“Because she had money?”
“Her family had money, at one time, but according to the New Orleans PD, Mr. and Mrs. Talbert Favier are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s kind of a case of everyone believing everyone else had huge piles of dough stashed somewhere, but the Faviers had invested in real estate and their own business and it was all hit hard during the recession. The only person with any money left is Grandma Favier.”
Blackwater frowned at the flat image of the woman who seemed to be staring up at him from her driver’s license photo. “Do we have any more pictures?”
“Montoya’s sending them through e-mail.” Alvarez checked her iPad. “Oh, here we go. Let me hook this up.” She spent a few seconds connecting her device to a large monitor on the wall and clicked through a series of images of a beautiful woman in her twenties, laughing and mugging for the camera. “Some of these are from her Facebook account. No activity of course since they disappeared. Nothing on any social media platforms. And here.” She flipped through another series. “This is the husband, Bruce Calderone.”
They all leaned forward to look at the picture. Calderone was a big man with even teeth and an easy smile. He was dressed in a lab coat.
“And one more. Anne-Marie Calderone’s love interest. Troy Ryder.” Another image filled the screen, a man of thirty odd years with tanned skin, crow’s feet, and eyes set deep in his skull.
