“I just want to know about Weston. The police said you provided his alibi,” Bette explained.
Hillary Meeks said nothing. She continued to stare through Bette with cruel indifference.
Finally, she shifted her eyes to Bette’s face.
“I told the police Weston returned home on Thursday June thirteenth. He became ill. I saw him the following morning, Friday the fourteenth. He was still vomiting in the morning. I visited a friend further up north and returned in the late evening. Weston was still in bed. What he did in the interim, I can’t say.”
“How long were you gone?” Bette asked.
Hillary shrugged. “I left around eight a.m. and didn’t get home until after ten that night. I have a sick friend in Petoskey who I spent a good deal of the day with. Since Weston had been violently ill the night before, I assumed he slept most of the day.”
“Did you have any idea that—”
“He was having an affair?” Hillary asked, her mouth turning down. She shook her head. “No, not a clue. He’s a clever man. He knows how to tell a story. Writers usually do.”
Bette swallowed. “Do you think he did something to Crystal? To hide the affair?”
Hillary rubbed her eyes. She looked tired, suddenly. Bette noticed small lines fanning like spiderwebs from the corners of her eyes.
“I found out a few years ago I can’t have children,” Hillary confessed. “Weston loves children. I think that hurt him. Sometimes I wondered if he’d stay, but I never really believed he would, except for the money, that is. Men never veer far from that.”
“Wes doesn’t have his own money?” Bette asked.
Hillary sneered.
“Oh sure, his salary at the university, but it’s not the money he’s become accustomed to.” Hillary sighed, and her shoulders slumped forward. She put her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands, pushing her fingers into her delicate, pale hair.
Bette almost touched her, some show of empathy, but instead kept her hands close to her own body. The woman probably wouldn’t appreciate comfort from the sister of her husband’s mistress.
“Do you think he killed her, Hillary? Do you think Wes murdered my sister?”
Hillary didn’t look at her. She trained her eyes on the picnic table, and after a moment they filled with tears.
“I hope not. I truly hope not.”
“Are you going to leave him?” Bette asked.
The woman looked up sharply and for an instant, her face contorted with rage. The expression turned her instantly ugly, her thin lips pulled away from a snarling mouth.
She looked away from Bette, seemed to compose herself, and turned back.
“That’s all the time I have, Bette. Best of luck.”
She stood and stalked back to her car, not giving Bette a second glance.
Bette stepped into the Traverse City Library and smiled at the woman behind the desk.
She was a square woman with glossy dark hair parted in the middle. Her shoulders were broad and almost gave her the appearance of wearing pads under her dark blouse.
“Hi, I’d like to look at old newspapers. Can I do that without a library card?” Bette asked.
The woman smiled. “Sure can. I’ll need to hold on to your driver’s license, but I can set you up in the computer lab. We have the microfilm in there.”
Bette followed the librarian, Julie by her nametag, to a little room with three desktop computers.
“I’d like the years 1989 and 1990, please.”
Julie loaded the microfilm into the machine and left Bette alone in the room.
Bette scrolled down, reading headlines.
She found the story of Weston Meeks’ former assistant on the front page of the Traverse City News from May tenth, 1989: Woman Vanishes from NMU Campus.
Bette read the article. The girl’s name was Tara Lyons, and she’d disappeared from the NMU where she worked as a teaching assistant for Professor Meeks, who taught poetry and prose classes. Tara was working towards an associate’s degree in English. The girl had last been seen in the student lunchroom, purchasing a bottle of lemonade and a bag of chips.
Bette studied the Tara’s photo. She had long dark hair pulled over one shoulder. Her head was tilted as she smiled at the camera. She was pretty and wholesome-looking, with big dark eyes.
Tara was originally from Farmington Hills and had moved to Traverse City with a girlfriend after they’d graduated from high school. Her family was offering a reward of ten thousand dollars for any information that led to their daughter’s whereabouts.
The next page made a brief reference to the missing nineteen-year-old. The paper a day later had nothing about Tara.
The following week, on page two, Bette found a short article: No New Leads in the Case of Missing Student, Tara Lyons.
After that, the paper went dark regarding Lyons until a front-page article on the one-year anniversary of the disappearance. The reward had been raised to fifty thousand dollars.
The article outlined the handful of hopeful leads that had come in over the previous year, including a tennis shoe found in the Boardman River believed to be Tara’s, which later turned out not to be hers. The police had identified one person of interest. He had a criminal history involving aggravated rape, but produced an alibi for the day in question.
None, except the first article, mentioned Weston Meeks.
Bette wanted more information, but didn’t know where to turn. She scanned the original article where Tara’s best friend, the girl she’d moved to Traverse City with, had been quoted.
“Tara’s one of the most reliable people I’ve ever met. When she didn’t show up for dinner at Mo’s, I knew something was wrong right away. My boyfriend and I drove to the school, but we never found her. Tara wouldn’t just leave. Plus, her car was there. She obviously didn’t run away without her car.”
The girlfriend’s name was listed as Molly Ward.
Bette grabbed a phone book and searched, finding three numbers in Grand Traverse County for Molly Ward.
Bette jotted all three numbers down, thanked the librarian, and walked outside to use the payphone.
Bette dialed the first number, but received a notice that it had been disconnected. On the second call, a man picked up.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi, my name’s Bette. I’m trying to reach the Molly Ward who was friends with Tara Lyons.”
“Molly’s my wife,” the man said. “She’s at the store and I can’t tell ya if she’s friends with a Tara Lyons.”
The man sounded older, in his fifties at least, too old to be married to the now-twenty-one-year-old Molly Lyons.
“Can you tell me how old your wife is, sir?” Bette asked.
“Not unless I want a swift kick in the ass,” the man laughed.
“I understand. Can you just tell me if she’s twenty-one?”
The man guffawed as if Bette had told the joke of the century.
“If she is, she has not aged well.” He continued laughing.
“Okay, thank you. Wrong Molly,” she told him, hanging up the phone.
She dialed the third number and a younger woman with a small, squeaky voice answered.
“Hello.”
“Hi, is this Molly Ward?” Bette asked.
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“The Molly Ward who was friends with Tara Lyons?”
The woman didn’t respond for several seconds, and Bette worried she’d hung up.
“Yes, this is her,” she responded, slightly breathless. “Have you found Tara?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Bette admitted. “I’m calling because my sister has gone missing. Crystal Childs is her name. We live downstate.”