“One of Shelley’s friends?” I asked. “You mean Roger himself didn’t let you or Nitza know that Eileen had passed away?”
Penny shook her head. “He never said a word! One of Shelley’s good friends, Betsy Norman, was working in the hospital in Homer when Eileen was undergoing chemo. Back when we were kids, Bets and I knew each other from youth group at church. When she got to high school and started running with Shelley and the rest of the cheerleader crowd, the two of us drifted apart. Still, if she hadn’t called to express her condolences about my losing Eileen, Nitza and I wouldn’t have known her mother was gone.”
That struck me as odd. Using my iPad, I made a quick note of Betsy Norman’s name.“No one else called to notify you?”
“Bets was the only one.” There was more than a hint of bitterness in Aunt Penny’s reply, and I didn’t blame her. It was as though once Aunt Penny had taken Danitza’s side in the quarrel between her and her parents, the whole town of Homer had closed ranks against the two of them, with the sole exception being this Betsy person, who happened to be pals with Roger’s longtime mistress and soon-to-be bride.
“Anyway,” Penny continued, “Nitza and I found out when the funeral was scheduled to happen, and we drove over to Homer together, taking Jimmy with us. Except when we got to the church, there was an Alaska State Trooper stationed outside on the front steps. He wouldn’t let Nitza and Jimmy inside, so I didn’t go in either, but Shelley was there in all her glory. She came waltzing up the steps, big as you please, just as we were turning to leave. She was dolled up in head-to-toe black, looking like your basic mourner-in-chief. Knowing what I knew, just seeing her there acting like a full-fledged member of the family made me sick to my stomach. I wanted to grab that woman and strangle her on the spot. How dare she!”
“When you mentioned knowing what you knew, I’m assuming you mean that you were aware your brother-in-law and Shelley were having an affair long before your sister died.”
Penny nodded.
“How long had you known?”
“A year or so before Nitza came to live with us, I was at a restaurant here in downtown Anchorage for a friend’s baby shower when I spotted the two of them together. I recognized Shelley right off. I saw them, but they didn’t see me. They were too busy acting like a pair of love-starved teenagers who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”
“Did you tell your sister?” I asked.
Penny shook her head. “I suppose I should have, but I didn’t. For one thing, Eileen was totally besotted with Roger, and knowing he was cheating on her would have broken her heart. Besides, I kept thinking the fling would run its course and go away, but with Shelley Hollander Loveday in the picture, I should have known better.”
“Wait, are you saying Roger’s other woman was someone you already knew?”
“Oh, I knew Shelley, all right,” Penny sniffed. “I was in school with her, too. I was a junior when she was a freshman. She was the kind of girl who always went for older guys. Even as a freshman, she only dated upperclassmen. She likes her men to be older and well-to-do.”
“Maybe when it comes to liking older men,” Walter observed with a grin, “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Penny returned his grin with a fond smile, as though this older-man/younger-woman issue was a long-standing joke between them. “I dated lots of guys my age before I ended up with you,” she teased.
“So Roger Adams isn’t Shelley’s first husband?” I interjected, trying to steer the interview back on course.
“By no means. Shelley was always a bit of a wild thing. When everybody else was talking about going off to college, she was dead set on becoming a bush pilot, and that’s exactly what she did. As soon as she graduated, she signed up for flight school. Jack Loveday not only owned the school, he was also Shelley’s flight instructor. He might have been twenty years older than Shelley and married at the time, but that didn’t keep her from putting the moves on him. She got what she wanted. Jack and his first wife, Lois, divorced. Lois went away, and Shelley became the second Mrs. Jack Loveday. Jack gave Shelley her very own Piper Cherokee as a wedding present.”
“Generous,” I commented. “Where’s Jack now?”
“Dead,” Penny replied. “He was badly injured in a plane wreck and ended up committing suicide, but I don’t know any of the details on that,” she said. “What I do know is the whole time Shelley was pretending she and my sister were the best of friends, she was screwing Roger behind Eileen’s back. I wanted to tell Nitza about what was going on between them on our way home from the funeral, but she was too upset. I kept my mouth shut then, but when Roger and Shelley got married barely two months later, that was it. That’s when I finally broke down and told Nitza.”
In that moment my heart went out to the late Eileen Adams. While in high school, she’d been pursued by not one but two of the local hunks—Richard Danielson and Roger Adams. When she opted for Roger, I’m sure she thought she was making a good choice. I knew now, with the benefit of hindsight, that neither of them had been decent husband material. Eileen would have been far better off going after someone who wasn’t close to being a high-school stud.
“So let’s go back to when Chris went missing,” I said, changing the focus of the conversation. “I’ve been working on a timeline. The weekend before Chris disappeared, he and Nitza spent Saturday night together. The next day when Nitza woke up, she was ill so he took her home. When she was still sick on Monday, that’s when her mother must have stumbled onto what might really be going on and had—”
“Nitza take that home pregnancy test,” Penny supplied.
I nodded. “When the results came in, all hell broke loose. Nitza went to Chris’s place, thinking he’d come home after work. When he didn’t, she came here to you.”
“And never saw Chris again,” Penny said.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Wally had been quiet during most of this conversation, but now he spoke up. “I’ve always thought Roger had something to do with that boy’s disappearance,” he asserted.
His comment caught my attention and Penny’s, too. She was clearly surprised.
“You did?” she asked. “How come you never mentioned it?”
“I don’t always say everything I’m thinking,” he replied. “Besides, things between you and Eileen and between Nitza and her folks were already complicated enough. I didn’t see any reason to heap more fuel on the fire.”
I had made no mention of Harriet Raines or the human remains, and it sounded as though Walter was still sold on the idea that Chris had simply taken off.
“Mr. Olmstead,” I asked, “what makes you think Roger Adams might be involved in Chris’s disappearance?”
“Please call me Wally,” he said. “As for Chris? I’ve always suspected Roger paid the kid off, telling him to get lost and stay that way.”