Page 95 of Nobody's Fool

“Maybe we should take a little break?” Madeline suggests.

“No,” Thomas says. “I’m fine, really. We need to get through this, okay?”

She nods. “Of course.”

“I didn’t answer my sister’s call,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

“I don’t know if I was too wasted to pick up or if, I don’t know, I was so caught up in my own drama that I just ignored my little sister or, who knows, maybe I wanted to keep the line open in case Lacycalled.” He stops to take a breath. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I just know that her call ended up going to voice mail.”

“What did it say?” I ask.

The question seems to surprise him. “Her voice mail?”

“Yes.”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

I wait for him to elaborate. You wait, you sometimes get gold.

“I just heard a lot of party noise in the background.”

“On the voice mail?”

“Yes.”

“But no words?”

“Nothing I could make out. Maybe Vic meant to hang up. Maybe she didn’t realize her phone was still on.”

I mull that over and try to lay out the tracks in my mind. Victoria is at a big millennium party in New York City she helps arrange. Something happens. She reacts by calling her brother. He doesn’t answer. Then she rushes out into the street where she’s seen by the CCTV camera.

“When did you listen to the voice mail?” I ask.

“You mean play it back?”

“Yes. When did you hear this message of party noise?”

“I don’t know. Thing is, I almost never check my voice mail. It could have been days later.”

“But you can’t remember when?”

Madeline seems annoyed by this line of questioning. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m wondering how it all went down,” I say. “Like, did you hear her message and thinkThat’s odd. Did you check your voice mail before or after the family started to get worried about Victoria? That kind of thing.”

“What difference does any of that make?” Madeline asks.

“Probably none,” I admit. “But this is how you investigate. You try to put together a timeline and see where something goes awry.” I turn back to Thomas. “Do you remember when you first listened to the voice mail?”

“I don’t.” He thinks about it a bit and adds, “But I don’t remember thinking it was a big deal, so it must have been before we were worried about her.”

“I assume you no longer have the voice mail?”

“From twenty-five years ago? No, sorry.”

“Do you have a theory on why Victoria called?”

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