Page 53 of Call Back

“I couldn’t remember anything other than that something really bad had happened. I knew I was in danger, and that me being at home somehow put you and Roy in danger. So I left the next day.”

“You left to protect us?”

“And myself,” I said. “It wasn’t a completely selfless move.”

“And the blood on your dress?”

“I had a cut on my leg.”

She was quiet for several seconds. “And do you remember now?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “It came back in bits and pieces, but I remember it all now.”

“What happened?”

How much should I tell her? The bare minimum. “I stumbled upon someone torturing a woman, and he said if I told anyone, he’d kill you and Roy.” I held her gaze. “His head was covered with a hood, so I never saw his face, but he knew my name.”

She sat back in her chair, looking like she was about to tip over from exhaustion and grief. “Was it Bill James?”

I wasn’t surprised she’d mentioned his name. I had my own suspicions of my father’s former boss, especially in light of Brady’s insistence that I not meet with him. “I don’t know. Why do you think it might have been him?”

She stood, which took such obvious effort I almost offered to help. “That’s why we’re here. Why would Bill have bought the house your father and I used to own? Even stranger, why would he have tried to hide that fact? He bought it through a subsidiary of a company he owns, but I found out nonetheless. I think he’s hiding something here and he wants to make sure no one finds it.”

“What?”

She picked up a paper off the work table. “Not what. Who. His wife.”

Panic wrapped me up like a dirty, unwelcome blanket, and the edges of my vision turned black. I knew I was about to pass out, but I couldn’t pass out in this basement. I stumbled to the chair my mother had just vacated and sat down, leaning forward to get the blood back into my head.

I felt my mother’s hand on my back, moving in slow, soothing circles.

“What makes you think that?” I finally asked.

“She disappeared before your father and I were married. Brian and Bill had just started their business. Since they didn’t have a lot of money, they worked from their own home offices and sometimes worked together. Your dad and I had gone to Seattle for my college friend’s wedding. Bill needed a client file, so Brian told him to come by our house and pick it up.”

“What does that have to do with his wife?”

“When we got back, the house was a mess. I could tell that Bill and some of his friends had partied here, and I was pissed as all get out, but that was the extent of it . . . until I heard she’d gone missing. She’d been at the party, but no one remembered seeing her afterward.”

“You think Bill James killed her. Why?”

“Rumor had it that she was sleeping around. Bill didn’t like it.”

“So he killed her? That wouldn’t be a smart move. Still, I don’t understand what it has to do with him buying your house.”

“There was a leak in the basement,” she said, moving to a far corner and pointing to the floor. “We had to have some of the concrete ripped out and replaced. We had it done while we were on our trip, so we wouldn’t have to deal with the noise and the chaos.”

I swallowed bile as I realized what she was saying. “You think his wife might be buried under that concrete? Did you tell the police?”

“Your father worked with the man, so I didn’t want to falsely accuse him. Besides, it seemed so unbelievable . . . But I wasn’t sure, so I called in an anonymous tip and told the police about the party, and how the floor had been replaced that same weekend. They never came to check it out. Her credit card was used in Las Vegas several days after she disappeared, so they decided she must have run off.”

“And you don’t believe it?”

“Bill was on a business trip when the card was used. His flight was to San Diego and he paid for a hotel there, but . . . he could have booked a hotel in her name and driven there to check in.”

“Did the desk people remember seeing her check in?”

“It never got that far. Her family corroborated his story. I bought the whole thing until a couple of years ago, after Roy started working for Bill. We all met for dinner, and something he said about his first wife made me think he really did it.”

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