Chương 8
A yellow sticky note near the fruit bowl.
“She had a second phone.”
Park waited.
“Margaret?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“Prepaid.”
“Why?”
I rubbed my forehead.
“She volunteered with a women’s shelter after she retired.”
“What did she use the phone for?”
“Sometimes clients didn’t want calls going to our home number.”
“That wasn’t standard practice.”
“No.”
“She handled shelter business privately?”
“She wasn’t supposed to.”
Park’s eyes sharpened.
“You argued about it.”
I looked at her.
“You can tell?”
“You’re defending her and criticizing her in the same sentence.”
Margaret would have liked Park.
That irritated me too.
“She thought policies were written by people who had never tried to get a frightened woman into a motel at midnight.”
“Was she wrong?”
“Usually not.”
Bell shifted in his chair.
“Did Dennis know about the phone?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened to it after she died?”
“I don’t know.”
Park wrote something down.
That answer bothered me more than it should have.
I could picture the phone now.
Black plastic.
Cheap.
Margaret charged it near the spice rack because the outlet there was free.
Sometimes it buzzed during dinner and she would glance at it without answering.
I had complained once that strangers had too much access to our house.
She told me frightened people rarely called at convenient times.
“What was the number?” Park asked.
“I don’t remember.”
She turned the photocopy so the handwritten number faced me.
“Could this have been it?”
I stared.
The final four digits were 4412.
Something in my chest tightened.
“Maybe.”
“You’re not sure?”
“No.”
“Would there be records?”
“Not after seven years.”
“Maybe not billing records.”
Park folded her hands.
“But contacts, notebooks, old devices, backup accounts, papers?”
“Margaret kept everything.”
“Where?”
“My house.”
Bell looked at me.
“Not tonight.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“If Sophie is released to you tonight, your house is being assessed before she enters it.”
“I know.”
“And police going through drawers while she arrives there is not ideal.”
“I’m not suggesting we turn the place into a crime scene.”
Park said, “We may need to search for anything associated with that number.”
“I’ll consent.”
“We can discuss that after we know what we’re looking for.”
I pushed the paper away.
“What does Dennis say?”
“We haven’t interviewed him.”
“He has a phone.”
“He also has an attorney now.”
That stopped me.
“When did that happen?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Who?”
“A criminal defense attorney in Portland named Samuel Hargrove.”
I knew the name.
Not personally.
Everyone who had worked around courts in Multnomah County for long enough knew the names of attorneys who appeared when cases became serious.
“Hargrove is expensive.”
“Yes.”
“Dennis complains when parking costs twelve dollars.”
Park looked at me.
“Do you know how much money he has?”
“I thought I did.”
That answer had become a theme.
Dennis had told me he and Trisha were struggling.
He had complained about property taxes on a house he did not own.
He had asked me to cover a furnace repair because cash was tight.
I had paid it.
“What does he do now?” Park asked.
“Regional sales manager for a medical supply company.”
“Income?”
“Maybe a hundred and twenty thousand.”
“Trisha?”
“Real estate staging and interior consulting.”
“Do they have significant debt?”
“I assumed so.”
Park leaned forward.
“Why?”
“Because Dennis is always short of money.”
“Short of money is not the same thing as in debt.”
I did not like how simple that sounded.
“He spends.”
“On what?”
“Cars.”
“Travel.”
“Restaurants.”
“Things that make him look more successful than he is.”
I stopped.
The sentence had come too easily.
Park noticed.
“You’ve thought that before.”
“Margaret used to say it.”
“What exactly?”
“That Dennis would spend fifty dollars proving he had a hundred.”
Bell looked down, perhaps to hide a reaction.
Park did not.
“Did Margaret and Dennis get along?”
I almost said yes.
The reflex was so old it had nearly become truth.
“Not at the end.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
Park waited.
I corrected myself.
“I don’t know all of it.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
I looked at the door.
Sophie was two rooms away.
Somewhere in Salem, Marissa was lying in a hospital bed because my son had apparently pushed her hard enough to leave her unconscious.
And now my dead wife’s name had surfaced in a plan involving that same child.
“There was an argument about six months before Margaret died.”
“About what?”
“Dennis asked us for money.”
“How much?”
“Forty thousand.”
“For?”
“A business investment.”
“What kind?”
“He said medical equipment distribution.”
“Did you give it to him?”
“No.”
The word surprised Park.
It surprised me too, remembering.
Margaret had refused before I could agree.
She asked Dennis to show us financial statements.
He called her controlling.
She asked for incorporation papers.
He accused her of humiliating him.
Then she asked one question I had forgotten until that moment.
“Who is Marissa?” I said.
Park’s expression changed.
“What?”
I stood.
“Margaret asked him that.”
“When?”
“During the argument.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know.”
“What did Dennis say?”
“He said she was confused.”
“About Marissa specifically?”
“Yes.”
“What happened next?”
“He left.”
I could see it now with unpleasant clarity.
Dennis standing beside our dining table, red around the ears.
Margaret in her blue cardigan, hands flat on the back of a chair.
Me saying everybody needed to calm down because I had spent my life believing calmness was the same as resolution.
“Did you ask Margaret why she mentioned Marissa?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“She said Dennis had lied to me.”
“About what?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
Park frowned.
“Why not?”
I looked at the table.
“Because I defended him.”
No one spoke.
“I told her she had become suspicious since retiring.”
My voice sounded foreign.
“I told her Dennis was trying to build something and that she treated him like a case file.”
Bell shifted again.
May you like
I kept going because stopping would have been worse.
“She said, ‘Elmer, you have spent thirty years telling other fathers that love does not require blindness.’”
