Page 29 of You Can Leave Your Hat On

“Hi, Mrs.Chester. My name is Maisey. I’m helping Aaron with this case. So you’re looking for your husband?”

“Ex-husband,” the woman corrected.

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry. Ex-husband,” Maisey repeated.

“Yes. That’s why Marshall is here with me. He wanted to stay there, stay at his school, so we made arrangements for him to stay with Alan most of the time. But then one day he called me and said that he’d been alone at home for three days. Alan had stopped coming home, and then Alan’s girlfriend had disappeared. The only person in and out had been the housekeeper, and when she’d realized the second day that Marshall had been home all night by himself, she stayed because she didn’t want him to be alone. On the third day, she told him he had to call me, so I came down and picked him up. I went to the police station in Barbourville and told them he hadn’t come home, but they didn’t seem to care. Marshall’s been with me ever since, and Alan has never called. He’s never answered his phone.”

“Can you give me that number?” Aaron asked.

“Sure.” They could see her scrambling around on her phone and then she read it off. “That’s it.”

“We’ll see if we can find the phone. Maybe that will tell us where he is. What do you know about the woman he was dating? HazelPuckett?”

“I know she was a teacher at the school. I know they were living together.”

“Did Marshall say anything about her?”

“No. He liked her okay.” She hesitated for a second, then asked, “Would you like to talk to him?”

“That might be helpful.”

They waited while Marsha yelled for the boy and in just a few seconds, a young teen came into view. “This is a deputy from WhitleyCounty and his wife; she’s a social worker. They’re trying to find your dad and they’d like to talk to you.”

“Okay.” The child looked into the camera and waited.

“Hi, Marshall. I’m Aaron, and this is my wife, Maisey.” Maisey gave him a little wave. “What can you tell us about your dad before he disappeared?”

“He was upset. I don’t know what he was upset about, but he was upset.”

“Anything in particular that you remember?”

“Yeah. A couple of days before he didn’t come home, a man came to the house. He was yelling and screaming and asking for money, but Dad said he didn’t have any. And the man said he’d pay for what he’d done, whatever that meant.”

“Did you recognize the man?”

“No. I’d never seen him before.”

“Okay. What about Ms.Puckett?”

“She cried a lot.”

That’s certainly interesting, Maisey wanted to say, but she didn’t. “Do you know what she was crying about?” Aaron asked the boy.

“No, but I think it was money.”

“Were they fighting and arguing and things like that?”

“No. She just cried. A lot. And Dad kept telling her it would be okay.”

“When was the last time you saw your dad?”

“I don’t know. I don’t… Wait. On the first night that he didn’t come home, I got upset because I had a field trip with Mrs.Conseco’s class the next day and he’d never signed the permission slip. Mrs.Fields signed it for me.”

“Mrs. Fields?”

“Yeah. Our housekeeper. She felt sorry for me so she signed it. So whatever day that was, it was the day before. Hazel couldn’t sign it because she’s a teacher, not a parent.”

“And when was the last time you saw Ms.Puckett?”

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