Gone(10)

“Correct.”

“And you’re unmarried?”

“Divorced. I changed back to my maiden name last year.”

He nodded, sensing that she didn’t like to get personal. But personal it was going to have to get.

“And you live in Indian Lake?”

“I have a house there. Just for the past couple years.”

“You don’t live there full-time?”

“No.”

Stokes pressed his lips together, eyes flashing. He’d given Rondeau Indian Lake as Addison Kemp’s sole address.

She was sharp. “Your partner probably found me there because my other residence, in Albany, is still under my married name. I have an LLC under that name and changing it was not an option.”

“What’s the business?”

She’d had both feet planted, massaging her knuckles. A real tomboy. “I have a cleaning business. Industrial, residential. Mostly industrial.”

“Wow, great. Okay. So you divide your time between Albany and Indian Lake.” Rondeau pulled out a legal pad from a drawer.

“Something like that.”

He looked up at her. He took the pad and set it on the desk, which he had spent five minutes cleaning off in anticipation of their meeting. Now he couldn’t find a pen. He searched in the drawer. Addison Kemp leaned across and handed him one. “Take mine.”

Green Clean was embossed on the side. “Thanks.” He jotted a note about the split residences, asking, “Do we have your contact information for both places?”

“I gave everything to your partner.”

He clicked off the pen and set it down.

“Okay. So it’s Ms. Kemp?”

She nodded. “Addie is fine.”

“Addie. Okay. When was the last time you spoke to your brother?”

Her body language changed. She leaned forward and put her elbows on the desk. “I talked to him on the phone fifteen days ago.”

“Fifteen?”

“Exactly fifteen days. It was his birthday; I called him up.”

“Talk long? How did he seem?”

“He seemed good.”

“Yeah?” Rondeau already sensed hesitation again. Things were veering back to the personal. In just a few minutes, right or wrong, he had sized up Addison Kemp: She had money, or she had secrets, or both, and that gave her a general wariness. She preferred facts and specifics to conjectural territory. A business woman, despite fashion choices to the contrary.

“He, you know . . . he was having some trouble.”

“He was?”

“Family stuff. Work stuff. Life.”

“Life.”

“Right.” Her eyes danced.

“Ms. Kemp . . . sorry, Addie — anything you can tell us right now, everything, no matter how small the detail, can help us right now. We need to determine—”

“He wouldn’t do anything.” She shook her head back and forth, mid-length hair slipping across the leather jacket shoulders. “He wouldn’t hurt them. Ever. He wouldn’t hurt himself. It wasn’t that kind of trouble.”

“Okay. Good . . .” He felt like she was sending mixed messages. “What kind of trouble, then?”

“I guess . . .” She looked down for a moment. “Trying to juggle family life, trying to juggle a marriage along with a consuming career. A job that . . . you know. He could really lose himself in.”

Rondeau leaned back, forgetting about the chair’s tendency to squeak. “Let’s talk about his work.”

Now her face brightened. She smiled for the first time, just a touch of it on her lips. “He’s good. I love my brother’s movies. Have you seen them?”

Rondeau glanced at Stokes again. It was a kneejerk reaction, the kind of thing you do when you’re busted; look for someone to share it with. “Ah, no I don’t think so. I’m not a big TV guy.”

“Citizen Farmer is amazing. Totally put me off of meat. I’ve been a vegan for three years, one month, twenty-one days. Never looked back. Don’t miss it.”

Never looked back, Rondeau thought, noting the irony. She never looked back, but knew how long she’d been a vegan, to the day. He could understand. While he wasn’t one of them, most people in AA had their sobriety charted to the day, even the hour. He was an outlier, his own date of cessation hazy. He’d relapsed a couple times and stopped keeping track.

“That’s great,” he said to her, not knowing what else to say. And thinking that even if cow farts were destroying the ozone layer, or whatever, he liked his burger with Swiss cheese and bacon. Side of mayo. “So he’s a hard worker? Always got something going?”

“For sure.”

“Was he working on something recently?”

She seemed stuck for a moment, and Rondeau realized it might be his phrasing — referring to her brother in the past tense.

Before he could correct himself, Stokes interjected, “New project in the works, right? About waste. All the things we throw away every day.” Stokes had done the research.

Addie looked at him. “That’s right. At first I was like, ‘alright, Hutchie. No one wants to watch a movie about garbage . . .’”

“I would,” Stokes said. “I like that kind of stuff.”