Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [48]
“Look, Hailey, I need to find my wife. I need to know she’s safe,” Matt said. “I’m doing most of the talking here, and yet I don’t know anything about you. I get the feeling we both care for Caroline and both want what’s good for her, but you’re going to have to tell me what you know. Anything might help.”
His face fell as he spoke the last sentence, and I knew he was right. I couldn’t expect him to contribute everything.
“I don’t know much,” I said, “but I’ve been looking into how my mom died.” Look closely. “So I’ve been asking around, trying to find out what happened and where my brother and sister are.”
“Why not ask dear old dad?”
I shot him a cool look. “Because it upsets him too much.”
“Oh, I bet.” Matt’s voice rang with sarcasm.
“What is it with you and my father?” My voice rose a little despite myself. “So what if your wife had a bad relationship with him? So what if she talks to him once in a while?” As I asked these questions, my mind echoed with another: Why didn’t my father tell me he kept in touch with Caroline?
Matt leaned forward, his eyes awake now, hard. “Will Sutter clearly terrified Caroline. That was obvious every time I found her speaking to him. But I could live with that. What I can’t live with is my wife disappearing. I have good reason to believe your father was the cause of that.”
“Why?” Immediately, I wished I could take the question back. I wanted to leave that sunny, dusty room. I wanted to forget Caroline’s quilt and the daisies and the apple tree outside.
But I didn’t move. I sat still, listening to a breeze blow the wind chime into song again.
“He called the day before we left for Charleston,” Matt said. “I was barbecuing in the backyard, and I came inside to get the garlic salt. Caroline likes that on everything.” He paused for a second, his eyes elsewhere, before he looked at me again. “Anyway, it was just like that other phone call. I found Caroline sitting at the kitchen table on the phone. She was hunched over. She was talking like a little girl. She was saying, yes, no, I understand, stuff like that. When she saw me, she hung up fast, and I asked her who it was.”
Matt stopped and stared past me to the kitchen, the room where it had all happened.
“And,” I said, prompting him.
Matt returned his gaze to me. “And,” he said, the emotion gone from his voice, “she said it was Will. Two days later she was gone.”
Matt remained still, looking at me, as if daring me to challenge his assumption. Something trembled inside me, and yet I ignored it. I did what I’d been trained to do, to analyze the situation. It wasn’t necessarily a logical assumption, I decided, to think that the phone call was somehow a precursor to Caroline’s disappearance days later. Yet nothing about the last few weeks was logical. I had received the letter and started investigating my mom’s death. Around the same time, my father called my sister, and then my sister disappeared.
“Maybe you’re looking for someone to blame?” I said weakly.
“Are you kidding me?” He nearly shouted the question, and I flinched involuntarily. He pulled his glasses off again, and I thought he might cry. “I’m not looking to blame someone. I just want her back, and I’ve done everything I can think of. I’ve talked to the police here and in Charleston. I’ve been sitting around here every minute like the police told me, in case she calls.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Is there anything I can do? I’d like to help.”
Matt replaced his glasses and stood up. “I’ve got to get out of here. Even if it’s just for half an hour. Do you want to get a bite? I haven’t eaten all day.”
I glanced at my watch: 5:00 p.m. There was no sense in checking into a hotel and trying to sleep before my flight. “Sure,” I said, and then as an afterthought, “Are you sure you want to leave? What if she calls?”
Matt opened his mouth then closed it again, his eyes roaming his house as if he was searching for something. “I’ve been holed up here since I got back from Charleston. I haven’t gone to work, nothing. I’m about to