The Family Gathering (Sullivan's Crossing #3)(60)

“Hey, if she had a plane reservation, wouldn’t she have had a suitcase?” Dakota asked.

“She might have, but we were looking in alleys and Dumpsters for anything that might have been hers. If her purse was lost or stolen, usually the IDs, credit cards and cash are taken out and the purse discarded. There was nothing. But I think you should start there. You might uncover something by talking to the people who last saw her—waitstaff, cashier, busser. Then walk around with your flyers. In the meantime, we’re putting her picture up on social media and in the patrol reports so officers can be watching. Do you have any help in the search?”

“For now it’s just me but I’m meeting the private detective after I leave here. We’re meeting at the restaurant where she had her last meal.” That statement made him wince.

*

Dakota talked to Bob Packard at least twice during the day and every evening. He gave him a full report on what he was learning and urged him to stay in Connecticut on the chance Sedona found her way home. Bob agreed, with great difficulty as he was growing impatient and ever more worried.

“My mother and sister are staying at the house, propping us up and feeding us during this crisis,” he said. “I’ll stay a few more days but then I’m coming to Colorado to help look for her. That’s where she disappeared, that’s where she’s going to be found.”

“I agree that’s likely,” Dakota said. “Stay where you are a little longer while I keep canvassing the area she was last seen. And tell me more about Sedona.”

“I didn’t notice anything was wrong for a long time. She was a quirky perfectionist but I worked with a guy who lines up his pens and polishes the glass top of his desk every morning. She was not very social—she didn’t like to be around people she didn’t know well and crowds made her crazy. Is that weird? I run an architecture firm, and talk about antisocial perfectionists... She was always busy, she worked hard and for a long time was an amazing wife. Amazing. A spotless house, smart and clean children, good food on the table every night. I took her completely for granted, but she said she liked it that way. It wasn’t until two, three, maybe four years ago that I started to notice patterns—like a routine for how she worked in her kitchen, a routine to include things like wiping the counter a certain way, then going back and doing it all again...and again... She folded things like napkins a certain way, making a little V at the end of the toilet tissue. And she wasn’t sleeping much. She was jumpy and edgy, and when she thought I wasn’t paying attention, she was talking to herself. Not a little bit. A lot. That’s when I started to get worried. But I didn’t think it was anything that couldn’t be fixed.”

“Did you suggest counseling?”

“Oh, hell, no,” Bob said. “I told her to go to a doctor! I told her I bet she should be on some tranquilizer or antidepressant, like Prozac. I wanted her to do what she usually does—just go take care of it.”

“But she said... There was talk of divorce?”

“She was folding clothes that had already been folded, cleaning bathroom tiles with a toothbrush she had to then throw away, washing clothes three times before they were clean... And maybe she wasn’t talking to herself. Maybe she was talking to people the rest of us couldn’t see.”

“We called them Jed’s ‘special friends,’” Dakota said.

“I started to suspect she was crazy. Like her father.”

“The good news is, she is nothing like our father, who is schizophrenic and has an entirely imagined life that isn’t based in reality. But Sedona could have similar problems if she’s sleep-deprived,” Dakota said.

“I’m really surprised she’s not manic depressive. I thought that’s what I was witnessing. Wide awake for days... What if something terrible has happened to her? I waited too long. I should have taken her to the doctor myself. But I wouldn’t have known who to call.”

“I’m planning on everything working out okay,” Dakota said. “She’s going to be okay.”

“Man, I thought she was okay,” Bob said. “I’ll never trust myself again.”

*

During the first several days that Dakota was in Denver, he talked to a lot of people, then began knocking on doors in the neighborhood, particularly those between the restaurant and Maggie’s house, to ask if anyone had seen her. The restaurant, small and upscale, was one of several and was located in a neighborhood of shops and salons, a seniors’ extended-care apartment complex, a nursing home, a school, a couple of markets, two churches and a group of medical offices. The private detective, Ben Cousins, visited most of the shop owners and was looking for security video, but since Sedona had been missing for more than twenty-four hours before they started canvassing, there was no relevant surveillance video available. Most of the shop owners agreed to put flyers in their windows.

Then they had their first real break—her purse was found. It was emptied of credit cards, money and ID, looked like it had been run over by a truck that left some tread marks on the leather, but inside was Dr. Tayama’s business card with her cell phone number written on the back. The doctor said she didn’t make a habit of doing that and none of her friends or acquaintances had mentioned losing a purse. Of course, it could have been given to a charity like Goodwill or a homeless shelter and the card overlooked and left inside, but they were operating under the assumption that it was Sedona’s purse.