“His wife has been traveling a bit over the last couple of months. That, combined with lies, made it work. He told her he was slammed with grading and exams, that he’d volunteered to work with a writers’ group. He lied, Bette.”
Bette sagged back into her chair, feeling suddenly sick.
She thought of Crystal’s adoring eyes as she spoke of the man she’d claimed was her soul mate after they’d only shared a coffee together.
It had all been a lie, a total fabrication.
“It gets worse, I think…” Hart continued. “And this is between us, got it?”
Bette put her hands to her face, unable to look at him, unsure if she wanted to know how it could possibly get worse.
“A young woman disappeared from Traverse City two years ago,” Hart confided. “She was Weston Meeks’ assistant at the college. I have a friend in the force up there and I called him to see if Meeks had ever been in any trouble. No record, but my friend questioned Mr. Meeks extensively two years ago about his missing assistant. She disappeared without a trace. They’ve never found her.”
Bette pulled down her hands and hunched over in her chair.
She struggled to breathe, to think, to piece together what he was trying to say.
Why would that be connected? Why would it matter? But she knew why. The fairytale man had lied to her sister; he had a wife, and now Crystal was missing—and she wasn’t the first young woman to go missing in Weston Meeks’ life.
“Was he seeing her? Were they having an affair too?”
Hart shook his head.
“They never found evidence of that, but she was very pretty, and apparently she worshipped the ground Weston Meeks walked on. It’s not a huge leap to assume that something was going on.”
Bette sat up and tried to channel her breath. It rushed in and got stuck in her throat as if her constricted diaphragm refused its passage. The room before her narrowed to a pinhole. Dark blotches shuffled at the edges of her vision.
“Bette?” Hart asked.
He stood and walked around the desk. He touched her arm and she blinked at him, but he was fading. She couldn’t catch her breath. She hadn’t had a panic attack in years and yet one was upon her, its concrete arms wrapped tight around her body hugging, squeezing until she’d suffocate and die.
Hart reached for his desk, grabbed something and shoved it into her face. He gently pressed the back of her head toward her thighs.
“Breathe into the bag, Bette, breathe,” and as her breath whooshed into the paper bag, releasing a wave of crinkling, she remembered Crystal doing the exact same thing after their mother died.
“Breathe, Bette. It’s okay, come on, just breathe,” she’d whispered into Bette’s ear. The sack had ballooned out, collapsed, ballooned again.
Hart’s fingers brushed Bette’s long dark hair from her face as if she were a co-ed who’d had too many plastic cups of cheap beer. His fingers felt cold and clammy against her neck, not unlike her own hands, tightly woven together in her lap. The sensation, the coolness of his touch, drew her back from the tunnel of dark she’d been slipping down.
As she blinked toward the paper bag, it slid into focus. The hysteria ebbed away and the overbright fluorescent lights filtered back in.
“I’m okay,” she murmured, sitting up. “Thank you. I’m okay now.”
Hart let go of her hair and removed the bag. He walked back to his chair and sat down.
“I’m sorry. That was too much, too quickly. I’ve been guilty of that before. Tactless, my ex-girlfriend called me.”
Bette would have smiled but the muscles in her face felt weak as if she were a mannequin in a wax museum. She managed a nod of her head.
“What now?” she asked, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. So tired and so afraid that she couldn’t imagine walking into the dark evening, climbing into her car and driving home.
Hart glanced at the sheaf of papers on his desk.
“More interviews. I’m heading to Traverse City tomorrow with my partner. We’re going to talk to Hillary Meeks and look into the case of the missing assistant. It’s never good when we find another missing person’s case related to a suspect, but it does give strengthen the theory that Weston Meeks was involved.”
“Suspect. He’s a suspect?” Bette asked.
Hart nodded.
“He is now.”
13
Then
“This love is better than books and movies. It’s better than any fictional romance I’ve ever heard of,” Crystal said, sitting on the floor in the living room and drawing invisible circles in the cream carpet.
That morning she’d arrived at Bette’s house, formerly their childhood home, and Bette had been grilling her for details on Weston Meeks.
“Better than Ralph and Meggie in Thornbirds? No way!” Bette said, finishing her cup of coffee.
“Way better than that,” Crystal insisted. “It’s not forbidden.” Though something tugged at her spine when she said the word “forbidden,” that creeping sense of knowing. She pushed it down.
“Except it is forbidden, right?” Bette countered. “He’s a professor. You’re a student.”
Crystal shrugged. “We’re careful.”
“Refill?” Bette asked, standing and holding out a hand for Crystal’s mug.
Crystal handed it to her. It was pink with white polka dots and said “World’s Best Mom.” They’d given it to their mother for Mother’s Day the year before she died. Crystal loved the mug and chose it whenever she had coffee in her childhood home.
“He sounds too good to be true. When will I meet the fairytale professor?” Bette asked.
Crystal watched her refill the coffees, adding milk and sugar to Crystal’s cup. The sugar caught the sunlight filtering through the window. It fell like fairy dust, glittering and unreal.
“Too good to be true,” Crystal murmured, returning to her carpet designs.
“Is he?” Bette asked, overhearing her.
She handed Crystal the mug.
Crystal took a drink. The coffee still tasted bitter. The fairy dust hadn’t done the trick.
“No, he’s perfect.”
Bette rolled her eyes.
“Come on,” Bette took a big swallow of her black coffee and set it on a coaster on the coffee table. “Tell me what’s wrong with him. Not for my sake, but for yours. You need to ground this thing back in reality before the rose-colored bubble you’ve stuck your head into explodes.”
Crystal laughed. “He loves fish, like loves it, loves it. We’re going on a date tomorrow night to some place called Frasier Gorge, and he’s bringing his specialty. Fish tacos!” Crystal moaned.
Bette made a gagging face. “You’ll have to throw yourself into the gorge to escape them. Ugh! What kind of person chooses fish tacos as their specialty?”
Again, Crystal laughed. She and Bette both had a lifelong aversion to fish, a repugnance born from all the fish sticks their father fed them in the years after their mother’s death.
“Tilapia tacos,” she added. “I’ve heard tilapia’s not that bad, sort of tasteless.” She wrinkled her nose and Bette nodded.
“Sounds delicious. This guy’s clearly got issues.”
Crystal stuck out her tongue and reclined on the floor, propping her knees up.
Chai jumped down from the couch and padded over, nuzzling her face into Crystal’s hair.
“Hi, Chai baby. How’s the best kitty in the whole wide world?”
“Don’t let Oolong hear you,” Bette told her. “She’s already licking her tail bald. If she thinks you prefer Chai, she might start on her hind legs.”