Mother of All Secrets(15)
Louise whistled softly, clearly an old habit, as she moved and chatted, but her hands shook slightly, and she kept clearing her throat, possibly as a way to fight off tears. Still, she was keeping it together remarkably well, given the circumstances. If I were missing, I don’t think that my mom would have been able to even get dressed for the day, let alone make small talk with guests. Of course, I’d never know.
Vanessa broke the silence and pulled me back from my wallowing drift into thoughts of my mom. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, do the detectives have any leads?”
“Well. I know they’re working hard. The first step is always to look at the husband, so they’ve been talking to Connor quite a bit. Fortunately, I think they’ve more or less ruled him out, which is a relief for all of us. Not that we’d ever suspect him, but . . . you know.” Louise raised her eyebrows and took a sip of her coffee.
“That’s . . . great,” I said, feeling a bizarre sense of disappointment. “How were they able to rule him out so quickly?” I was aware that this may have been pushing too far, but I had never been in the situation of having a missing friend and so had little sense of what was appropriate and what wasn’t. Louise’s anxiety about the situation seemed to be loosening her lips, and while I hated to take advantage of that, it was hard to resist.
“Well, it’s lucky that your generation is so obsessed with watching your babies at all moments of the day! Isabel and Connor have a—is it called a Nest?—set up in their bedroom, since Naomi still sleeps in there some of the time. The camera was able to confirm to the police that Connor was in bed sleeping when Isabel disappeared. He was the one to discover she was missing in the morning when Naomi’s cries woke him up. Usually, Isabel would have been the one to get her”—of course—“but she wasn’t there. I’ll tell you, when I was a young mother, we definitely did not have the surveillance capabilities that you all do. I’d be in the yard gardening or something and Isabel would be up from a nap screaming her head off and I’d have no idea. Especially since I was on my own—sometimes things fell through the cracks. My husband died when she was a baby, and I never remarried.”
So Isabel was raised by a single mom, too. I wish we’d talked about this. I hoped we would still have a chance to.
“I’m babbling again,” Louise continued, her frenetic energy making her appear bizarrely chipper. “But my point is, even without these snazzy Nest cams, our babies still survived!” She started to laugh, then seemed to realize the weight of her comment and stopped laughing abruptly: her baby had survived her camera-free childhood, yes, but may not have survived whatever had recently happened to her.
Connor’s whole Nest camera alibi sounded flimsy to me. Couldn’t the camera have shown, like, a body-shaped pillow under the covers? Or, more realistically, Connor easily could have hired someone to abduct or kill Isabel, if he’d wanted to. Him being in the bed when she actually went missing didn’t clear him of anything, in my opinion.
“And did the camera pick up any clues about her disappearance?” Again, I knew I was probably crossing a line of nosiness at this point, but Louise seemed perfectly willing to discuss it. Vanessa was tending to Phoebe on the floor, but I could tell she was listening intently.
“Unfortunately, nothing helpful. She left the house at around ten to walk Murphy”—I’d totally forgotten that Isabel had a dog—“and then Murphy came back to the house by himself and apparently stayed outside all night. He’s still very spooked, poor thing. There are no street cameras until the next block, but they’re reviewing the footage. None of the people at nearby bodegas remember seeing her. She just truly disappeared. But something must have happened. I know she wouldn’t leave Naomi. Besides, if she had wanted to leave, which she didn’t, she wouldn’t have brought the damn dog with her.” This rang true. No one who’s planning to run away, or hurt herself, brings along the dog.
I was considering whether it’d be completely over the top for me to ask about the bloodstained sidewalk when Connor entered the kitchen. He was even taller and more handsome than he’d seemed from afar. He appeared to be freshly showered, and there was gel in his perfectly coiffed hair, which irked me. I knew I was being too judgmental about the way other people dealt with stress (especially given that I didn’t have the best coping mechanisms myself), and I shouldn’t be comparing, anyway, but I did not think Tim would be primping and fixing his hair up if I were a missing person. Connor was cut and lean and looked as if he probably kept up with an intense workout regimen. The inconvenient kind, like six-hour bike rides, or triathlons in remote places or something.
“Hi,” he said quietly, his lips flashing the briefest closed-mouth smile, which was not reflected in his brown eyes.
Vanessa covered us again. I guess we had established that she was in charge of social niceties, and I was in charge of gracelessly asking invasive questions about the investigation. “Hi . . . I’m Vanessa,” she said to Connor, putting her hand on her chest. “I spoke to you here yesterday, briefly? We are so sorry for what you’re going through. We’re all praying that Isabel turns up soon. It’s just awful.”
“Thanks,” he said shortly, barely looking at her, instead turning to his mother-in-law. “Louise, just remember you aren’t supposed to discuss the case.” He took out a mug and poured himself a cup of coffee, not acknowledging Naomi in her bouncer.