THE HOME of Anthony and Julie Rodale was magnificent, Villatoro thought. A huge new log home built with a southern exposure and lots of windows, soft underground lights marking the driveway and pathway, thick Indian throw rugs on the hardwood floor, and a cathedral ceiling in the great room that made him feel insignificant. The heads of mounted mule deer and elk flanked the stone fireplace, a half dozen colorful lacquered fish-he guessed steelhead, although he had never seen one-glowed in the light from the chandelier.
Julie Rodale had been watching 60 Minutes on television when he arrived, sitting in an overstuffed chair just a few feet in front of the wide screen, eating a large bowl of macaroni and cheese. She still dug into it unself-consciously as they spoke, sometimes making him wait for an answer while she chewed.
Julie Rodale was tall and blond, with a round face and full cheeks. By the way her clothes strained at their buttons, he guessed she was either newly heavy or had simply refused to admit that she needed a new, more matronly style of dress. She was not hesitant to talk with him.
“You said you were a detective?” she asked. “I thought you were with the sheriff’s office when you drove up. I’m waiting to hear something on my husband, Tony.”
Villatoro took notes on a small pad he’d found in his motel, mainly to be doing something. It was his experience that people tended to talk more and say more when the questioner appeared to be hanging on every word and taking notes. She didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t with the local police or was retired, only that he was interested in what she had to say.
“You said he went steelhead fishing.”
“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes toward the mounted fish on the wall. “He lives for it. Every weekend, at least. All winter he buys equipment and reads fishing magazines, and all spring, summer, and fall he goes fishing. I tried it with him a couple of times, even took a book to read, but I thought it was boring, boring, boring.”
“Does he often go alone?”
She shoveled in a mouthful of macaroni while nodding. “Not all the time. Sometimes he convinces a buddy to go with him. Jim Newkirk goes along sometimes, but you know, he’s got kids at home, and he just can’t get away as much as Tony. Nobody can, it’s ridiculous.”
Villatoro noted Newkirk’s name.
He tried to keep his tone soft and conversational. “He was supposed to be back this morning?”
“If not last night,” she said, chewing. “He said he had something to do on Monday, so I would have expected him back by now. I’m starting to get pretty pissed off.”
“Are you worried about him?”
“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s a tough guy. He always takes his service weapon with him. That’s not what I’m worried about. I just think he got his truck stuck somewhere, or he got lost, or he hit the bottle. I tell him to take his cell phone, but he always claims he goes too far away to get a signal.
“A woman gets lonely being a fishing widow,” she said. “That’s what I call myself, a fishing widow. See all those fish on the wall? That’s nothing. You should see our basement. You want to see it?”
“That’s okay,” Villatoro said. “I don’t want to take too much of your time.”
“Do I look busy?” She laughed.
“So you’ve been here four years?” he asked.
“You mean in the house or in Idaho?”
“Both.”
“Yeah, four years. We moved up here just after Tony took early retirement from the force. I would have moved anywhere, after all of those years of wondering if he was going to get shot, or beat up, or something. It was such a relief, you know?”
“My wife knows that feeling.”
She scooped in a large forkful. “I didn’t think you looked like you were from around here.”
He smiled. “So several of you, I mean several retired officers, all came out here at the same time. Is Tony friends with the others? You mentioned Newkirk.”
For the first time, Julie hesitated for a moment. “Why are you asking me about his friends?”
“I’m curious. I heard several of them were helping your county sheriff with the Taylor case. But obviously, Tony isn’t involved in that.”
She laughed. “Believe me, if he wasn’t fishing, he’d be with them. Tony likes hanging out with all of his old cop buddies. You’d think he’d be sick of them after all of those years, but that’s not the case.”
Villatoro shifted in his chair. “Aren’t they all involved in some kind of charity together?”
“Yeah, something. I don’t know much about it. They have meetings every once in a while. Tony don’t say much about it, though. You mean Lieutenant Singer and Sergeant Gonzalez, right?”
“Do they get along okay? Are they friends?” Villatoro was hoping that Rodale was estranged from the other ex-cops, that being the reason why he had not volunteered with them. If he was having trouble with them, Villatoro reasoned, perhaps he would be easier to talk to than the others.
“I think so,” she said, without conviction.
“Was he a little angry with them recently?”
She blew out a long stream of breath to clear a strand of hair from her face. “I’d say he’s been irritable lately. He wouldn’t really say why. But come to think of it, he’s been pissy since their last meeting a couple of weeks ago. Maybe something was said, I don’t know. Tony doesn’t talk about that stuff.”
“Right. Have you called them to see if they know anything about where Tony went?”
“Sure I did. Yesterday. But all they knew is that he said he was going fishing.”
“So they all knew that? They weren’t surprised when you called?”
She paused, fork in midair: “No, why should they be? They all sounded concerned. Lieutenant Singer especially. He said he didn’t think it was ever a good idea to go fishing or hunting by yourself. I said, ‘Amen, Brother Singer.’ Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” he said, and quickly changed the subject. “This is quite a place you’ve got here,” Villatoro said. “I bet it would cost a few million back home.”
“More than that,” she said, grinning. “Tony did well with his pension. He also did really well with investments. All those years, I had no idea he was buying stocks and stuff. But when he told me he wanted to take early retirement, he said he’s been building up this…fortune… in the stock market. He said he got out before the bubble burst, and we could afford a home like this.”
Villatoro watched her carefully. She spoke without guile. She obviously believed her husband came into their wealth through legitimate means.
“He did well,” Villatoro said, looking around. “My wife Donna would kill for a home like this.”
She smiled in a proprietary way. “The man shocked me. Really shocked me. I didn’t know he had any interest at all in stocks or anything. I didn’t even know about this fishing thing until we moved up here. That just goes to show you that you can live with somebody for twenty years and not really know them, you know?”
She sat back and sighed. “I have to admit, though, I sometimes miss the old neighborhood. There was nothing special about it, just a street with a lot of forty-year-old houses on it. But I miss hearing kids out on the street, and the block parties we would sometimes have in the summer. It was chaos, but I miss being a part of it. I guess I miss neighbors. All I ever hear up here is birds. That gets a little boring at times. I’d like to have a reason to charge out of the house to see what’s going on, you know?”
Villatoro stood up and closed his pad. He felt sorry for her, with her big house and big body and big bowl of macaroni and cheese. She seemed like a nice, normal woman, someone his wife would be friends with.
“I know what you mean,” he said, and thanked her and said he would let himself out.
“Stick around,” she said. “You can watch me pound that guy when he finally gets home. I’ll glue a damned cell phone on his forehead for the next time.”