Footprints in the Ferns, page 16
Instead of texting, Clara phoned her. When Doreen answered, Clara said, “I haven’t touched her room, and, as far as I know, my husband hasn’t touched her bedroom in his house either. Why? Why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t,” Doreen said. “I would just like to know a lot more about Crystal, and that’s one way to do so.”
“When I’m off work, which is in about an hour,” Clara said abruptly, “I can meet you at my house. And I’ll show you.”
“Okay,” Doreen said. “I’ll come up with the animals. I’ll leave here in a bit and meet you at home.” With that, she hung up, glanced around her house and considered that maybe, instead of walking with the animals, she should drive there and go shopping afterward, like she had already told Mack she would do, and then come home to put away the perishable foods.
Not certain about when to go to the store yet, she realized she also hadn’t gone to the bank. That put a little spark into her feet as she hopped up, grabbed her purse, and locked the animals inside. In her car, she pulled into the cul-de-sac and drove to the bank. She hadn’t been to a bank very often—she usually dealt with investors, and they had very different offices.
When she walked in, one of the tellers looked up and smiled. “May I help you?”
Relieved, Doreen pulled out the large stack of cash from her purse and handed it over. And then, finding her bank card, she handed it over too. She watched the process anxiously, but it didn’t seem to take anything at all to accomplish this.
The woman asked, “Do you need any cash?”
“No,” Doreen said. “I have lots with me.” She opened her wallet wider to show her the stash of cash she still had.
The bank teller looked at the money and frowned. “Do you want to put some of that in the bank?”
Doreen hesitated.
“If you want to keep it, that’s fine too,” the teller said. “But don’t leave that kind of money in your wallet, just in case you lose it. And don’t let other people see that cash in your wallet either.”
On that note, realizing she had a grand in her wallet, Doreen pulled out the five hundred from the sale of the two chairs and asked, “Can you deposit this too, please?”
The teller did so and gave her a receipt, showing how much money she now had in her account. Then Doreen, remembering her unpaid bills, pulled them from her purse, and asked if the teller would transfer the funds to pay these.
She smiled sweetly and said, “I’ll set these up online and take care of that right now. It’ll only take a minute or two. Then you should be able to make next month’s payment from your home computer.”
Doreen wasn’t sure how to do that yet, and she didn’t want to ask Mack about it and get laughed at again, but she felt certain she could find instructions somewhere on YouTube.
“Okay, you’re all set. At least for these two bills. As you get other bills, just add them into your bank account information online, as people or utilities or loans or whatever to be paid.”
“Thank you so much.” Doreen turned and exited the bank. Relieved and feeling quite proud of herself, Doreen looked at the receipt, smiling at the thirty-five hundred in her bank account. “Nan, that’s a heck of a lot of money all of a sudden. Especially for somebody who’s starving.”
Speaking of which, she was off to the grocery store next. As she walked into the store, pushing her cart ahead of her, she glanced around. Many times when she’d been here, she had seen people she knew, and sometimes they were helpful to her cold cases work. She really didn’t know who she was supposed to talk to in this case though, but still that weird suspicion remained in the back of her mind. She had no reason for this to be her primary theory, but she was desperate for it to be right.
What if Crystal was alive? Why would she have not tried to contact her mother? Or her father? The first thoughts that came up were either she didn’t want to or she couldn’t. And then Doreen thought about all the different things the little girl may have gone through in the years since she had been removed from her bedroom and how hard it would be to call the people who were supposed to look after her but didn’t.
Was there anything inside that little girl that wanted to call her family? Doreen just couldn’t seem to figure this mess out.
She picked up the basics for sandwiches, cheese and crackers, more cat food—Goliath the monster was going through more food than the rest of them. She got some doggy treats, knowing Mugs would absolutely love a little bit more money flowing into their household. She found a few canned goods, like tuna, and added coffee to her cart. Thankfully that was on sale, and she bought three packages, feeling incredibly abundant as she did so, knowing she was perfectly capable of paying for this. Coffee was something she never wanted to end up short on.
As she stood in front of the meat section, she worried about what to get. She didn’t know how long things took to cook, so she didn’t know if some things weren’t possible for Friday night dinner when it came to a big piece of meat, like a roast or a whole chicken. There were ribs, but she kind of thought they had to be dealt with differently. She didn’t have a barbecue—wouldn’t that have been nice? But that wasn’t in her budget. She wandered along until she came to some pork chops and thought she would enjoy them again, plus they should be fairly easy to cook.
She grabbed a pack and found some preformed and marinated burgers, if you read the packaging. They were also on sale. They looked to be a hell of a deal, so she put those in her buggy too. Surely Mack could show her how to cook them. She wandered along, grabbing eggs and more veggies. Mentally calculating how much she’d spent, she was still under the hundred dollars she had budgeted for groceries. After bagging the groceries and putting them back in the basket, she was feeling positively spry.
As she walked outside, Steve walked in. He frowned at her and slipped past.
She glared at him. “Was that you in my backyard the other night?” she cried out. Several people stopped to look as she raised her voice.
Steve glanced around. “You know nothing. You’re just a lonely old busybody,” he snapped. “You don’t know anything.” And he disappeared.
She frowned, not really liking the man at all but didn’t have any reason to call the cops on him. Just because he’d been in her backyard wasn’t a criminal offense. It was probably trespassing, but she could hardly get Mack to do something about that when much more important issues were ahead of them. There was just something about Steve … Something she didn’t like. Something that was off … She turned back to see him standing there, glaring at her.
With a bright smile she waved at him. No way she would show him that she was unnerved by his presence. Much better that he be nervous of her and what she was up to …
Chapter 25
Wednesday Noon …
Doreen caught sight of a whisper across Steve’s face, a whisper of fear or a whisper of maybe panic? And then he schooled his features to just glare at her. “You don’t know anything.” And this time he took off down the aisle.
One of the women watching the play by play with interest said, “Is he involved in one of your cold cases, dear?”
Doreen looked at the woman who had more purple in her hair than the royal purple shirt she wore and smiled. “I’m not sure,” she said, “but maybe.”
The old woman nodded. “I wouldn’t doubt it. He’s a dodgy one.”
“In what way?” Doreen asked.
“Three wives,” the woman announced. “First one disappeared, second one took off, and then the third one, well, nobody has seen her for years.”
Doreen froze. “What?”
The woman went off in peals of laughter. “He didn’t kill them though,” she said with a big chuckle. “I was just having some fun with you. His first wife took off with another man. The second one he ditched in town, and they split up soon after. No clue what happened to the third one, but I’m sure she made a better decision than to hang around him.” And, at that, she took off, pushing her buggy, half bent over the small cart with a big smirk on her face.
Doreen stared at her in fascination. “What the heck did that mean?” she asked. Of course she would love to find something creepy or criminal in Steve’s past to confirm how something was off about him. The fact that he was hanging around her now and was friends with Penny, already in jail for murder, was disturbing enough. Doreen had caught somebody in her backyard, but she didn’t know who it was, and, of course, she and Steve had already had their altercations. That didn’t mean he had anything to do with this current case. But she filed it away—you never knew what might come down the road.
Worrying about the craziness of some of the local, more colorful people, she wandered back to her vehicle, packed up, and made a quick dash home to unload what food needed to be refrigerated. Mugs could smell his treats, even in their unopened packaging. “I’ll give you something special when I return. Okay, Mugs?” Then, checking her watch, she would be late if she didn’t get a move on to Clara’s place. Driving carefully, she finally pulled in front of Clara’s house, parked, and got out. Clara was waiting on the front step for her. Doreen rushed ahead, apologizing. “I’m so sorry. The grocery shopping took a little longer than I expected.”
“I thought you were going to walk,” Clara said curiously, looking around. “You don’t have any of the animals?”
“No. I was out of time, so I came straight here from home, after putting up the meat in the fridge,” Doreen said.
Clara shrugged and let her into the house. “Come through here to the bedroom.”
As Doreen followed Clara down the hallway, she saw a master on the left and a small bedroom on the far back right. “Did you have a boyfriend at the time Crystal disappeared?”
Clara gave her a sharp look. “Yes, I did,” she said. “I was finding my feminine side again. Nothing like being replaced to make you feel like you don’t have what it takes anymore.”
Doreen didn’t say anything because that certainly hadn’t been her instinctive reaction as a way to handle it, but she knew a lot of women who immediately went out and found new relationships. She’d heard the term “hump and dump them,” but that was too rude and crude for her.
She stepped into the little girl’s bedroom, and it was like going back in time. “Have you taken anything out of here since then?”
“No, it’s exactly the same as when she disappeared,” Clara admitted. “I left it so that, when she came back, it would feel like home. But, of course, the real truth of the matter is, I have no idea if she’s ever coming back. And, when she does, it’s already been ten years, so she’s eighteen. There isn’t anything she wants here now.”
“I don’t know about that,” Doreen said. “I can’t even begin to speak to her mind-set. But I do think, knowing you’ve kept all her stuff still, that will probably make her feel very nice.”
“I doubt it,” Clara said with a note of bitterness. “I’d love to believe she’s alive. But, if she is, why wouldn’t she have contacted me?”
“Only two reasons come to mind,” Doreen said carefully. She stepped forward to the bed, sitting down at the edge, her hands going to the pillow. “Either she couldn’t or she didn’t want to.” On that last bit, she stole a glance sideways at Clara to see her face twist. “Is there any reason why she wouldn’t want to?”
Clara looked at her and frowned. “I don’t think I like what you’re suggesting.”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Doreen said quietly. “And you know perfectly well the police have asked much worse.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Clara cried out. “They suggested all kinds of horrible things back in the day.”
“I’m sure they did,” Doreen said, “but, in reality, they did so for Crystal’s benefit. When they’re trying to find a child, they want to make sure they turn over every stone.”
“Well, they scared my boyfriend away at the time too,” Clara snapped.
“What was his name?” Doreen asked. She had her phone out, and she put it on Audio and Video.
“Tom Delaware. I really, really liked him,” she said with a heavy sigh. “But I don’t know that it would have lasted.”
“Why didn’t he stick around?”
“He didn’t like the police digging into our lives,” she said. “He was on the run from an ex-wife and kids and didn’t want to pay child support. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, so it was a bit disconcerting when he took off with that as his excuse.”
“He told you that was his excuse before he left?” Doreen asked curiously. “That’s kind of odd, isn’t it? Wouldn’t he have tried to avoid telling you why he was leaving?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
“How long had you known him before he took off?”
“Just a few months but we were only close for a few weeks. It was really tough for a while there. And, with my daughter going back and forth between my place and her father’s, for the first time, I had some freedom. Some evenings to myself where I could pursue a relationship. So I did. And it went on until my daughter disappeared, and everything blew up. It would have been nice if Tom had stuck around to help me get through it, but he didn’t, and so I had that to deal with as well.”
“What was your relationship like with your husband during that time?”
“Caring mostly, although there were some arguments, but nothing serious,” she admitted. “For a while there I wondered if all our problems were under the bridge and if we would get back together again, but it didn’t happen. Mary was firmly entrenched in his life and in his home, and she made sure we didn’t get any closer to each other.”
“Was he equally devastated at Crystal’s disappearance?”
“Yes,” Clara said abruptly. “I know the police looked into him very carefully, but they never found anything. And I truly believe he was devastated and wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her. She was our only child, and he’s never had any children with anyone else, so now we’re both childless.” A sob escaped from her throat.
“You’ve never wanted to have any more?” Doreen asked.
“I’ve wanted to,” she said. “But how do you move on from something like that? I also didn’t have a relationship, so that didn’t help. I didn’t want to be a single parent. I wanted to be a parent to Crystal with Eric. It was really tough.”
“Have you got any working theories as to what happened?”
“I had lots back then, but now, over time, it makes me wonder if I saw anything clearly,” she said, sitting down beside Doreen on the bed, her hand grabbing a handful of the comforter and squeezing it tight. “I still think Mary had something to do with it though.”
“What about friends? Did Crystal have any close friends?”
“She did at first but not really after we separated. None of her friends’ parents were going through divorces, and it was very difficult for those parents to understand what we were going through, and the other parents didn’t want their own children to witness Crystal’s parents splitting up. I don’t know what to say, but, for a long time, Crystal didn’t want to come home anymore.”
“Ouch,” Doreen said. “That would have made it very difficult.”
“It did,” Clara said. “I mean, how do you handle that?”
“Did she want to go to her father’s then?”
“She told me that she didn’t want to be with either of us until we stopped fighting. And we did fight, but it was just our relationship. And she didn’t like having two homes. She always wanted to see what the other was having for dinner before she would settle into eating dinner at one place or the other. But she didn’t like Mary, I know that.”
“Any idea why?”
Clara just shrugged and said, “No, not really. Crystal said she didn’t like the way Mary looked at her sometimes.”
Doreen nodded. “I think children, like animals, have a strong instinct when it comes to people. She may very well not have gotten along with Mary, but that doesn’t mean Mary had anything to do with her disappearance.”
“No, but it also doesn’t mean she didn’t.”
“Do you want Mary to be guilty?” Doreen asked point-blank. “Because that’s what it sounds like.”
Clara sobbed for a moment and then choked it back. She stood, wrapped her arms around her chest, and paced the small room. “It’s all I could think about at the time. And I don’t know if that was misplaced anger on my part because ultimately Mary split us up,” she said. “My husband told me that he wanted a younger woman, and he wanted to be with Mary, not with me.”
“Ah, so it wasn’t a mutual breakup?”
“Well, I definitely wanted to break up when I found out he was already sleeping with her. But before that? No. I was doing everything I could to save my marriage. But he had already hooked up with Mary, and he’s never looked back.”
“How long were you married?”
“Ten years,” she said on a bitter laugh. “As long as he’s been with Mary now. For me, those years just seem like a long time ago because I haven’t really moved on. I haven’t filled the ten years since with anything good, whereas he’s had a brand-new relationship to help him get through it.”
“So you were married to him when he was criminally charged?”
At that, Clara sat down with a heavy sag. “Yes,” she said, “technically, yes. I didn’t realize what he was doing. He says he didn’t understand or think that he’d get caught. He ran a pawn shop where people would bring him stuff, and he’d try to resell it online. He did a lot on eBay and websites like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Doreen said, but she didn’t understand. “So you didn’t have any part in it?”
Clara’s back stiffened. “No,” she said. “I never really thought about where he got this stuff. He said he picked it up in auction lots and things like that. But obviously he was lying, but then he lied about a lot of things, like Mary, for instance.”
Doreen waited to see if more explanations were coming. And then finally Clara raised both hands in frustration and said, “It doesn’t really make much difference, but apparently he was with Mary for several months before we split, and then he broke it off with her while we were splitting up. Then, all of a sudden, Mary moved into the house. That was my house, you know?” she said with a sad look at Doreen. “I bought this one afterward with my mother’s help. So I could stay close. I told myself it was so I could stay close to my daughter, and that was true, but I also wanted to stay close to my husband, but that just made it worse when he and Mary got together publicly. She moved into the house as soon as she could. I swear, she moved in the night I moved out. I was pretty upset for a long time.”
