“Me neither. I just hope she told Ben about the family connection.”
“How does a guy in your line of work come up with that kind of optimism?”
“That wasn’t really optimism. I just don’t want to be the one to tell him.”
She fell silent again, and he heard the sound of someone talking in the background. Irene said, “Let me call you right back. You’re on the cell?”
A FEW minutes later, his phone rang.
He answered and heard her say, “Sorry, newsroom crowded up again. Listen, I spent the morning at the dentist.”
“You did? I didn’t know you were having-”
“No, I mean, about the teeth Sheila supposedly found.” She told him about the number on Sheila Dolson’s message pad and the Fletcher dentists.
“Okay, now I remember you mentioned this to Caleb at dinner.”
“Right. So I went over to this dental office today. When I got there, I ended up talking to a receptionist. Young guy. I told him that I had heard that one of the dentists, Dr. Arnold Fletcher, helped search groups train dogs for finding missing children by letting them use teeth that would otherwise just go to waste.”
“Hmm. Did you read his name tag?”
“Yes. Not Fletcher, but so what? Our good friend Anna Stover-would that have told you she was a Fletcher?”
“Good point.”
“This guy’s name was Bobby Smith, but he’s in the family, all right. Pod people. Seriously. What Caleb’s dad said about the effing clan? Not far off. Anyway, at first Bobby is telling me that I must be mistaken, but everything in his body language tells me he knows something. So I say, ‘Oh no, Sheila Dolson said she couldn’t have done such wonderful work without help from this office,’ and I’d love to start by interviewing him about that. Thank God I used that wording.”
“Why?”
“Because instead of reacting the way I thought he would-you know, sort of excited that something complimentary about the place might be in the paper, and that I’d be helping him get his own first few minutes of fame-he got really flustered and upset, then asked me to wait outside for a few minutes.”
“Did he lock the door and close up for the day?”
“I half-worried about that. But he came back out, sweating and wringing his hands, and said, ‘My cousin promised she’d never tell where she got those teeth!’ And babbles for a minute about how Uncle Arnold, the dentist, will fire him if he finds out. None of this was what I expected to hear, and learning that Sheila was one of the Fletchers left me speechless. Raised more questions than it answered. So I just waited. He said, ‘I took the teeth from a box of old ones that Dr. Arnold keeps in his office. He never does anything with them. I didn’t think he’d miss a few. I felt sorry for her. I wanted to help her out. But she swore that if anyone asked, she’d say that she was the one who took them.’”
“Hmm,” Frank said. “Did he say ‘my cousin’ or ‘Sheila’ when he told you about it?”
“My cousin.”
“I wonder if he thought you meant Anna?”
She considered that for a moment, then said, “No, I only mentioned Sheila to him. Besides, Anna wouldn’t have used the ‘feel sorry for me’ approach to get the teeth. That was Sheila’s M.O.”
“True. Mind if I tell Reed what you’ve told me?”
“I’d hate to get poor Bobby at the dentist’s office in trouble. And-Mark might be able to trade some information for his story. I’ll urge him to call Reed with it.”
“And if he won’t make the call?”
“He will,” she said with conviction.
Knowing Mark Baker, he had to agree. “You left the pad of paper in Sheila’s kitchen?”
“I haven’t started stealing things from crime scenes,” she said indignantly.
He suppressed a laugh. If he told her to calm down now, she’d completely blow her top. “Sorry,” he managed. “I didn’t mean to imply that.”
“You are trying not to laugh,” she said, which made him lose it. But she laughed with him.
“All right,” she said, “I see what you mean. Reed and Vince would get there on their own. Eventually.”
“You and Mark could save them some time,” he agreed.
She was quiet for a long time. “I’m starting to wonder about this family. I started out believing Sheila Dolson didn’t know a hell of a lot of people in Las Piernas. Now I think I was as wrong as I could be about that.”
“It’s something we’ll be looking at,” Frank said.
“I didn’t take all of Altair’s equipment with me the other night-they only let me walk away with the dog and his collar and leash. It might be worthwhile searching those SAR equipment bags and Sheila’s other belongings. If they find a little collection of teeth, it will be easier to prove that Sheila planted the ones she found out at the Sheffield Estate.”
“I’ll mention it to them,” Frank said. “What are you doing the rest of the day?”
“Taking Ethan to see Dr. Robinson at one. Then after that, I’m meeting a photographer at Blake Ives’s house. I’m starting on that follow-up story about families with missing children.” She sighed.
“Not an easy assignment.”
“The best ones never are. Besides, I volunteered for it.”
“Let me know how things go with Ethan. And say hi to Doug Robinson for me.” She promised she would, then added, “Let me know how things go with Ben.”
Which made him realize that he had volunteered, too.
“Maybe it’s none of our business,” he said, knowing even as he did that he was looking for a way out.
Silence.
“I guess Ben has a right to know,” he said. “I wouldn’t want him to hear it from someone else.”
“You want me to tell him?”
He did, but for all the wrong reasons. “No, I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks,” she said, clearly relieved.
They made dinner plans and hung up.
“I must be slipping,” he said to himself, and drove off, wondering how the hell he was going to break this news to Ben.
CHAPTER 29
Wednesday, April 26
3:40 P.M.
LAS PIERNAS
WHAT else do you want?” the photographer asked me. He had just taken photos of a stuffed animal-a lion that’d had most of his mane, whiskers, and one eye loved off of him. It was one of many stuffed animals he had photographed, some in groups, some alone. But mostly he’d taken pictures of the lion, whose name was Squeegee, for reasons known only to a former three-year-old who wasn’t around to be asked about it.
The photographer was being extraordinarily patient this afternoon. He had young children, a daughter and a son, and although his own marriage was in good shape, I think Blake Ives’s story horrified him.
While he had been on toy safari, I had taken possession of three CDs of photographs from Blake Ives. Ives had big blue eyes and dark gold hair; the many framed photos of his daughter on his walls showed that she had inherited those traits from him. “I did what you said,” he told me as he handed over the digital versions of the photos. “There are ones of all of us-me, Bonnie, and Carla. Mostly Carla, though. Bonnie said I took too many pictures of Carla.”
The words were spoken calmly, all the bite well beneath them. The temperamental man who had called me a few days ago was nowhere in evidence. Far from raging, he seemed painfully in control of himself. All three of us were unnaturally subdued, given the reason for meeting-to photograph the Museum of Carla.
The phenomenon wasn’t a new one to me. Over the years, I’ve covered any number of missing-persons stories, and so I had seen these little museums before. Shrines, some would say. Some parents of missing kids had them, others didn’t. A few couldn’t stand reminders, and boxed them up within weeks, as an act of anger or grief or surrender, or all three. Others came to the first anniversary of loss and put everything into the attic or gave it away on that day, as if the motions of closure would bring it about. They undoubtedly knew closure was not to be so easily acquired, although perhaps these actions brought some form of relief.