The Disappearance (20 page)

For the most part, the people who live on Puerto Salle Street have jobs and work hard at them. Their houses are modest wood-frame-and-stucco structures no more than forty feet apart, in some cases considerably less; if you want privacy you shut your windows and keep your voices low. In this neighborhood, where everyone knows everyone, that’s uncommon. The houses are neat and trim, in good repair—no peeling paint coming off the exterior walls—the small patches of front yard are manicured, borders etched cleanly, walkways graveled, bricked, or paved. Most of the houses have flowers around the perimeters, with stone birdbaths and statuettes adorning the lawns. There are large cactus plants in abundance, flowering jacaranda, red and orange bougainvillea vines clinging to fences. It’s a community of families; during the day when school’s out there are always kids chasing each other across the street, riding bikes, skateboards, rollerblades, throwing balls and frisbees.

Luke and Riva pull up in front of Maria’s house. When Luke phoned to set up this meeting and get directions, Maria’s English seemed fine, not even much of an accent. But Riva’s Spanish still might come in handy. Besides, he’s always felt it’s good policy to have a woman present when interviewing another woman. It makes for a more comfortable environment, and there’s never a question later about harassment.

They sink into overstuffed armchairs in her small, cluttered living room. She offers them lemonade; they accept. Then she sits opposite them on the sofa, folds her hands in her lap, and waits.

“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” Luke begins. “I know it must have been a difficult time for you. The events of last year.” She’s younger—to his eye in her early thirties—and prettier than he’d somehow expected. Her dress and accessories are fashionable, understated. She was the head housekeeper of a multi-million-dollar estate, he reminds himself. She learned from that.

“Very difficult.” She nods in agreement. “I loved Emma like I love my own children.”

“We understand,” Riva says, joining the conversation. She won’t speak Spanish to this woman, it would be patronizing. Also unnecessary. “How long did you work for the Lancasters?”

“Ten years.”

“Since Emma was—four?”

Maria nods. “I raised her up from a small child,” she says proudly.

“You aren’t employed by either of the Lancasters now, are you?” Riva asks.

Maria shakes her head. “They’re divorced now, and …” She hesitates.

“Yes?” Riva prompts.

“I decided not to,” Maria continues. “Mrs. Lancaster asked me to come work for her in her new house, but I didn’t want to.”

“Because of Emma, and the circumstances?”

The woman takes some time before answering. “Things changed.”

“Did you and Mrs. Lancaster not get along as well after what happened?” Luke asks, taking a flyer.

She nods. “Mrs. Lancaster changed after Emma died.”

“That’s understandable,” he says. “She suffered a great tragedy.”

“Yes.” She pauses. “Mrs. Lancaster was very good to me. When I went to work for her, I was an illegal. Under the wire. She helped me bring my husband here, helped us get our green cards. I owe my life to Mrs. Lancaster.”

That kind of loyalty can be blind, cause a shading of the truth. He’ll have to watch for that with her. He takes from his briefcase a sheet of paper on which he’s written some questions. “What was the situation like in the Lancaster household before Emma was kidnapped?” he asks. “Was it a happy situation? Did everyone pretty much get along with each other?”

“It was normal. For that kind of family,” she adds.

“That kind of family?” He glances over at Riva, who’s listening intently. “What does that mean?” He drinks some lemonade. It’s good, made from real lemons, not a mix.

“Rich, involved in many things, always on the go. Emma spent more time with me than with either of her parents,” she tells them.

Not uncommon, he thinks. “How many times a week did the family eat dinner together?” he asks.

“One or two. Emma usually had dinner with me, because her parents didn’t get home early enough. They both had busy lives.”

“You lived in, is that correct?” he asks. “You have your own family?”

She nods. “I have three children. That was another reason I didn’t want to work for Mrs. Lancaster anymore. She wanted someone to live in, even though there were no children to take care of. I want to take care of my own children now.” Answering the first part of his question, she says, “I came and went. Some nights I stayed all night, some nights I left after Mr. or Mrs. Lancaster was home, or sometimes I just left. There were plenty of others there to look after Emma. She was getting older, she didn’t need someone to watch out for her as much anymore.”

She did that night, he thinks. But knowing what he knows now, or thinks he knows, would it have mattered?

“When you said ‘that kind of family,’” Riva kicks in, “did you mean anything else besides their busy schedules and their money?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Maria says to her, a sudden evasion in her voice.

Riva struggles up from her chair and goes over and sits down next to Maria. “Was it a happy place? Did they get along well?” She pauses, looking directly at Maria. “Or did they fight?”

Maria takes a deep breath, sighs heavily. “There was … they didn’t get along so well, not all the time.”

“What did they fight over?” Riva asks, gently pushing the woman.

The woman squirms uneasily. “Different things.”

Riva inches closer to Maria. Their knees are almost touching. “Did they fight about—how shall I put it—relationships either one had with someone else? Lovers?”

Maria nods. Riva glances at Luke, who’s right with her. “Did they fight quietly, or yell at each other, or …”

“Mr. Lancaster did not yell.”

Luke asks, “Were they ever physically violent with each other?”

“Sometimes she would hit him, or throw things,” she says. “Only a couple of times.” Looking across the room at him, she asks a question of her own. “What difference does that make? What does that have to do with Emma’s killer, sitting there in jail?”

“
If
he’s the killer,” Luke corrects her. “He hasn’t been convicted yet.”

“The police say he did it,” she says passionately. “They have the evidence.”

He lets that pass. Emma Lancaster’s death was as hard on her as it was on Emma’s parents, this he knows.

“Did they fight about anything else?” he asks, pursuing the previous line of questioning.

The woman’s brows knot up. “Sometimes Emma and her mama fought. All teenage girls fight with their mothers,” she adds quickly, as if she’s upset with herself for letting a bad genie out of a bottle.

Luke doesn’t let her off the hook. “What did they fight about?”

Maria turns away from him.

“Did they fight about men?” he asks. “About men or boys she might be seeing, that her mother didn’t approve of?”

Maria nods slowly. “Sometimes.”

“Emma was seeing some boys her mother didn’t approve of?”
Or men?

“She thought Emma was too young to date.”

“But Emma did. Behind her mother’s back,” he guesses out loud.

Another nod. “Yes.”

“And when Mrs. Lancaster caught her, she yelled at her?”

“They yelled at each other,” Maria says. “Emma was very headstrong. She did what she wanted. Her mother couldn’t discipline her.”

Glenna told the police, on the day Emma disappeared, that Emma didn’t date at all. Now this woman, who knew Emma as well or better than her mother, is saying the opposite. And that Glenna knew about Emma’s seeing boys (and men?) and fought with her daughter about it.

She isn’t going to give him any more—she’s already angry with herself for being this forthcoming on the subject.

“Were you at the house the entire night when Emma was kidnapped?” he asks, changing direction for safer territory.

Maria shakes her head. “No. I was there pretty late, because Mrs. Lancaster had her friends over, and Emma didn’t come home until after eleven, but I did not stay all night.”

So she wasn’t on the premises when the abduction and murder actually took place. No, not the murder—that would have taken place somewhere else, off the muddy trail where Emma was found, or closer to it.

He’s almost done, only a couple more questions. “Was Mr. Allison a frequent guest at the Lancaster house?”

“Yes.” She nods. “He was there often.”

“To see the Lancasters.”

“Yes. He was friendly with both of them.”

“What about Emma? Was he friendly with her?”

She moistens her lips. “I think … I think Emma had a crush on him.”

“Did he ever … did you ever see him …”

“Did Joe Allison ever make a play for Emma?” Riva says, bailing him out. A woman asking a woman, easier.

Maria smiles, remembering. “They flirted with each other.” The smile goes away. “She was fourteen years old. And he worked for her father.” She pauses. “There were enough adult women interested in Mr. Allison that he didn’t have to worry about a fourteen-year-old girl.”

“Are you saying Allison was involved with women besides his girlfriend?” he asks. “Do you know that for a fact?”

“I don’t know about that,” Maria Gonzalez says stiffly. “Perhaps you should ask Mr. Allison.”

Thanks, he thinks to himself, but I already did.

Nicole Rogers has a willowy figure and a heart-shaped, heart-breaking face. Her hair, blond with tinted highlights, falls softly over her shoulders. Allison was sleeping with her, Luke thinks. Some guys have all the luck.

But that’s not true. Far from it. He’s with a terrific woman himself, so there’s no jealousy on that score, just the normal testosterone kick. And Joe Allison’s in jail awaiting trial for murder.

No one has all the luck. Not all the good luck.

She’s invited him to meet with her in her small office. She’s an associate at Meyers and Harcourt, one of the largest law firms in town, a practice that’s mostly corporate clients, including some of the oil conglomerates. She’s been here six months, since she passed the bar.

She’s dressed lady-lawyer style. A suit with a skirt, dark blue. An ivory blouse buttoned to her neck. Sensible heels, opaque hose. A woman who doesn’t downplay her attractiveness but keeps it in check—at least at the office. She meets him in the reception area and walks him to her cubicle in the back, passing several large offices on the way. They sit facing each other across her desk.

“What kind of law are you practicing?” he asks conversationally.

“Whatever’s needed,” she answers. “Mostly I do research for the senior partners, to get a feel for everything we do. I want to move into environmental law eventually.”

“Big field around here,” he comments. “For or against?” He knows the firm’s bias, but they work both sides of the issues.

“The big money’s with the big companies,” she says. “I’m not in it for the glory.”

Practical. He isn’t going to have to play games with her. “What can you tell me about Joe Allison?” he asks, beginning his formal questioning.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Sure. Let me start from the end and work back. Do you think he could have done this?”

“
Could
he have done it?” she says in a tone that indicates she’s asked herself that question already. “I guess so—theoretically.”

“You can’t alibi him for that night.” Allison’s already told him she couldn’t, but perhaps her take on it is different. He has to ask the question anyway, because if she’s called to the stand, the opposition will.

She shakes her head. “We were together that evening, but we didn’t spend the night together, so no, I couldn’t.”

“Do you think he did it?”

Another negative shake. “No.”

“Why is that? You seem certain.”

“Joe isn’t violent. He never made a threatening gesture of any kind towards me, in the year and a half we were going together. Towards anyone. It’s not in his nature.” She ponders the rest of her answer for a moment. “I can’t imagine Joe doing something like that.”

“Killing someone?”

“Kidnapping her.”

“What if he wasn’t kidnapping her?”

She looks at him quizzically.

“What if it was consensual?”

“You mean … Emma going with him willingly?”

“Yes.”

She sits up in her chair. “Why in the world would you think that?”

“Because it’s possible, in fact likely, that Emma Lancaster knew whoever it was who took her out of her room that night.”

Big exhale. “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s becoming the most likely explanation. The young girl who saw it happen told the police Emma didn’t struggle. She told me that, too. So you have to think of that possibility.”

She thinks about it. “Would that be—” She stops herself, as if debating whether to pursue this line of thought, then continues. “Are you talking about sex? A sexual involvement?”

“It’s possible.”

She sits back. “I wondered about that. Not with Joe, I could never see that. But it’s there, I guess. No one wants to think that or talk about it,” she says, “but I have thought about it, and I’m sure other people did, too.”

“Are you seeing Joe now?” he asks. “Have you been down to the jail?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t been to see him.”

“Are you going to?” Then: “Do you want to?”

“I’m not going to. And I do want to, but … I’m not going to.”

“Is there a particular reason?”

“We’d stopped seeing each other. The night he was arrested was our swan song.”

“What was the reason? Or reasons?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. “We were going in different directions,” she says at length.

“Careerwise?”

She nods. “Yes.”

“Are there others?”

She looks away.

It hits him—the simplest explanation is often the best. “Was Joe seeing someone else? Is that the reason you broke up with him?”

She turns back, her chest rising under her proper lawyerly blouse. “Yes.”

“You know that for a fact.”

A shake of the head. “I don’t know it for a
fact
. I don’t have physical proof. I never caught him with another woman.” She gathers herself together. “But I know he was.”