Page 10 of Valley of the Moms
Denny raced through the schedule in his mind. His life now existed on two planes: Before and After. Before, he had a complete life, a life with a wife, a life with a family. After, he had a life that was just skeletal remains. A half-life. Barely a life. What was he doing in those Before Times? Who could remember that far back? Now he had to try. Monday: Spanish. Tuesday: Library. Denny could see the schedule in his wife’s messy handwriting. On Wednesday evenings, the kids had ski lessons at Bradford for two hours, from four to six.
“The school bus brought the kids home a little after three,” he said. “I remember, Anna told me she was going out with friends and that she wouldn’t be home until late and that I shouldn’t wait up.” He paused. Thought back. It had gotten late. That had been normal. Then, it had gottenverylate, and it had stopped seeming so normal. He had called her phone, twice, he thought. Sent her a few texts. “We went to Bradford. Ski lessons. I made dinner for the kids. After I put the kids to bed and I got into bed myself andtexted her and when she didn’t write back, I thought something might be wrong. That’s when I texted Di.”
“Who is Di now?” Sticks asked.
“Anna’s best friend since childhood. They had gone out together. Or I thought they had.”Out with friends.That was what Anna had said. But which friends? Denny had thought instantly of Di, but Di hadn’t seen her that night, she said.
“And Di—is this Diane Maguire?”
“The same.”
“She hadn’t seen her?”
“No.”
“And you don’t know who was out with her?”
“I . . . No, I don’t.”
“You don’t know who your wife’s other friends are, Mr. Plummer?” Sticks looked at him with concern.
“She’s usually with Di. Di was also worried, and she was trying to help me find out who else had seen her.”
Sticks stopped, shook his head, and took a few notes.
“Those skiing lessons are, what, two hours?” he asked, redirecting.
“Yes, plus it takes about a half hour to get there and back,” Denny said.
A half hour. What could he have done in that time? How much time had he wasted, not knowing, not acting, not thinking? Sticks, with his questions, barking up the wrong tree, but Denny could not stop his own thoughts from their downward trajectory:What if it was his fault? What if he had driven around the haul-out? What if he had found her? What if he could have stopped it?
“Know how long it takes to get to the canoe haul-out from Bradford?”
But how could he have known where to look for her? How could anyone have known?
“I honestly don’t,” Denny said.
Who had hurt his wife? Didn’t he have the right to know?
Sticks leaned back and seemed to consider this. The coffee had created an unfortunate-looking ring on the metal table, sticky. “It takes, oh, I’d say, twenty minutes. Faster than that if you can drive pretty good.”
“Before we go any further,” Denny said, “do I need to get a lawyer?”
That gave Sticks pause. “I find,” he said, “that the only people who ask for lawyers are the ones who are guilty of something.”
Denny felt that wave of nausea again. He also knew that wasn’t true. People got lawyers to protect themselves. But here he was, stuck between a rock and a hard place. He wanted to be indispensable to the police, mostly because he wanted to know more about what had happened to his wife. He also wanted to loosen whatever tension had suddenly emerged in this bright, windowless room, where he was being treated not as a grieving husband but instead as a homicide suspect.
That tone, anyway. It sent Denny into a tailspin. Few things could make him react—it was a common grievance of Anna’s that Denny was too slow to anger, even when he should feelsomething—but the implication that he was somehow responsible brought the blood to the tips of his fingers, up to his throat. He could feel it rising like bile. Maybe that was the intention, he thought, to rile him up, to get him to scream. Well, Sticks was going to get exactly what he wanted, then.
“I’ll tell you what you need to know, but I also need to know what happenedto my wife!” Denny said, slamming a hand down on the table. Sticks looked momentarily startled before twisting his mouth into a grin, and Denny realized that this had been the point, to provoke a reaction, to prove that he was capable of violence.
“Can we go back to where we were, then, Mr. Plummer?”
“Yes, sure, ask me what you’d like to ask, but I’d also like to ask some questions myself,” he said.
“We’ll see where we get,” Sticks said, making no promises.“You’ve lived here how long? I mean, probably long enough to know how long it takes to get to the haul-out, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Plummer?”
“I know how to get to the haul-out. I don’t know it well,” Denny said.
