“We knew that, but we were so wrapped up in Melissa’s situation we didn’t get too involved. A deputy stopped by and asked Melissa a few questions, but I don’t think she had anything to tell him. To be perfectly honest, I think she might’ve been too drunk to know what else happened that night.”
“Do you think she was too drunk to say ‘no?’”
Dolores pondered the question. “If she didn’t said no, why did Kenny beat the hell out of her?”
CHAPTER 11
No one answered the phone at the Schotten house and Floyd hung up when the answering machine beeped. He called the Redwood Falls hospital and asked to speak with Melissa Schotten. After being transferred twice, and cut off once, he got the nurses’ station on the maternity floor.
“This is Melissa. How may I help you?”
“This is Floyd Swenson from the Pine County Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to ask you about a picture that showed up in an old camera. Do you have a moment?”
“Hang on,” she said. In the background were the sounds of a busy nursing station in the middle of the day. “I’m back. You said something about an old picture?”
“That’s right,” Floyd said. “An old camera was purchased at a garage sale and when the film was developed there was a picture of a group of people, including you.” Floyd weighed his next words carefully. “It was taken the night before Aaron Roberts disappeared. I was hoping you might remember something from that night that might help us.”
Floyd stopped when he realized that he was speaking to a dial tone. He redialed and was quickly connected to the maternity ward. When he asked for Melissa Schotten he was told that she had left with a sudden illness.
Rather than risking another sudden phone-related illness, Floyd decided to drive two hours to Brooklyn Center where Betsy Webb and her husband lived in a townhouse development. As Floyd wandered the meandering streets with British sounding names he was struck by the feeling that this would be a drunken homeowner’s worst nightmare. Each house was absolutely identical to the next, and the addresses repeated on every street. “How would someone with significant alcohol impairment ever find their way to the right house?” he muttered.
As expected, the Webb’s townhouse was unremarkable. The beige exterior was accented with white trim and shutters. Enough driveway was provided outside each double garage so two cars could be parked off the pavement because the street was so narrow that cars parked opposite each other would block the road. Floyd pulled into the driveway and checked to make sure his cruiser was completely out of the roadway when the front bumper was against the garage door.
A teenaged girl trying to look twenty met him at the door. Her skintight jeans were low on her hips, exposing about ten inches of flat belly between the jeans and a cropped top. The gap exposed a silver navel ring. Her hair was in blonde cornrows and each ear was adorned with at least eight earrings.
“Is your mother home?” Floyd asked.
The girl’s eyes narrowed. “You know,” she said, looking at Floyd’s badge, “this isn’t Pine County.
“You know, young girls shouldn’t open the door without looking to see who is on the other side. I might’ve been a kidnapper.”
“MOM, there’s a cop here to see you!” The girl walked away from the door with obvious contempt.
A harried woman appeared behind the screen door. “I’m sorry, but my daughter thinks her smart mouth is cute sometimes. What is it that you wanted?”
“I’m an investigator from Pine County. Could we talk for a few minutes?”
Betsy Webb opened the screen door. “Please come inside where it’s air conditioned. It must be close to ninety out there.”
Betsy was short, dressed in wind pants and a floppy shirt that hid her slightly heavy figure. Her hair was as blonde as her daughter’s, but worn in a short cut that accentuated the roundness of her face. Betsy led Floyd into the small living room and shooed a cat off a chair to make a place for him to sit. She picked up a laundry basket from the couch and plopped where it had been. Her collapse seemed almost theatrical.
“We found a picture in an old camera that had been sold at a garage sale. You’re one of the people in the picture. Could identify the others for me?”
Floyd handed the picture across the laundry basket just as the teen appeared at the door. “Hey, Mom, I don’t have a clean pair of socks.”
Betsy reached into the basket and rummaged for two that matched. Holding them out she said, “You know, I’m not the only person in this house who can match socks and fold towels.”
The girl rolled her eyes and took the socks. She sat on the floor and pulled them on as Betsy looked at the picture. Betsy’s eyes grew wide as she recognized the faces.
“Where’d you find this?”
“The woman who bought the camera had the film developed. That picture was already in the camera.”
The girl got up and pushed next to her mother on the couch, trying to see what had captured her mother’s attention. “Eeeww,” the girl exclaimed. “You and daddy look wasted!”
“Go put the rest of these clothes away,” Betsy said sternly. “And I wasn’t wasted,” she said to the girl’s back.
“You look kind of wasted to me, too,” Floyd said quietly.
“Shh. Alyssa doesn’t need to know that.”
“Do you remember when this picture was taken?”
“It’s got to be back after we graduated from high school. It looks like we’re in a bar somewhere, and Aaron Roberts was still around.”
“The film was in Ken Solstad’s camera. This picture was taken the night before Aaron disappeared.”
Betsy’s mouth dropped open. “Then,” she took a deep breath, “Kenny took this picture the day before he was killed in the car accident.” She took a deep breath and tears welled in her eyes.
“What do you remember about that night?”
“The six of us went out drinking. Kenny had just gotten orders to report for deployment to Iraq. It was his last night with us so we went out and partied hard.”
“Do you remember what happened to any of the other people that night? Were you all together for the whole night or did Aaron leave early?”
Betsy continued to stare at the picture. “I guess I don’t recall. I was with Mike, my ex-husband, that night, and Aaron was with Kathy Tucker. Melissa Smith was Kenny’s date. I remember that there was something going on between them. All night Kenny was edgy and bitchy. Melissa told me she didn’t want to be there when we went to the bathroom.”
“Was Kenny’s bitchiness directed at anyone in particular, like Aaron?”
“Oh, no. He was being bitchy to everyone. He acted like he was pissed at Mike and I because we were happy together. He was trying to pick fights with guys in the bar who he thought were looking at Melissa wrong. He was arm wrestling with everyone to prove how strong he was. Like I said, he was just generally bitchy.”
“Do you remember if Aaron and Kathy left together?”
Betsy blushed. “Actually, Mike and I got tired of Kenny’s antics and we left.”
“Did you know you blushed when you told me that?” Floyd asked. “Is there something else wrapped up in that memory?”
“Sometimes I hate having a fair complexion,” Betsy said. “I, um…” She hung her head. Floyd’s experience said she was either carefully weighing her words or composing a plausible lie. “Mike told Kenny that I was horny and that he was going to help me take care of it. He figured that was about the only excuse Kenny would accept for us to duck out of the party. Even at that he called us short hitters and party-poopers.”
“Did you see Aaron or Kenny after that?”
“I wish you’d stop asking embarrassing questions,” Betsy said with another blush. “Mike and I drove out to a country road and parked for a couple hours. We never went back to the bar.”