Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 57



I could tell the moment I stepped into the motel room that something wasn’t right. When I closed the heavy door, the breeze from outside followed me in. I whirled around. The front window was wide open. I remembered opening it a crack, but not that much.

All of the covers were pulled off the beds. At first, I thought the housekeeping service was there.

“Hello?” I called.

No response.

Both of my laptops—my Gretchen one and my new personal one—were gone. My overnight bag was gone, too, as was the pile of notebooks I’d left in the corner.

“Shit!” I whispered.

I rummaged through the covers, but knew it was no use. Everything was gone.

I dialed Sam’s number.

“Hey,” he said. “I was hoping you’d check in. I was trying to call you this morning.”

“Sam, someone’s broken into my motel room and taken everything.”

“What’re you talking about? Who?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure. But I have a feeling it was the same person who broke into our house. Sam, when our house was broken into, some of Gretchen’s notebooks were taken.”

“Jesus, Jamie. What’re you saying?”

“I didn’t mention it at first because I wasn’t sure, but I think whoever broke into our house was after Gretchen’s research, not our stuff.”

“Jamie, call the police. I don’t know who you’re talking about, but call the police! Are you sure the person isn’t still around?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Can you please call the police right now? Or go to the police department. Do it right now, will you? Promise me. Should I come up there? It’s in Emerson, New Hampshire, right? What did you say it was, a Motel 6 or something? I can look up the—”

“That’s not necessary,” I assured him. “I’m leaving for the police department right now.”

After I hung up, I took out my iPhone and looked up the address of the Emerson police station.



“That motel is not very secure,” the balding police officer informed me. “The staff should have advised you not to leave any valuables there. It could’ve been anyone.”

“True. But I don’t think it was anyone. This is murder evidence. I’m pretty sure it was someone who knew about Gretchen’s research.”

“But you didn’t see a license-plate number on this orange Honda?”

“No.”

“What made you notice that car out of all the cars in the hotel lot?”

“There actually weren’t very many cars,” I said, but then tried to explain about the similarity to the orange car Ruth Rowan had seen in the library lot.

The policeman, who had previously introduced himself as Officer Rice, folded his arms. “Ms. Madden, are you conducting your own investigation of Ms. Waters’s death?”

“I’m Gretchen’s literary executor,” I said. “The family gave me all of her manuscripts.”

“Literary executor?”

“Yes. I’m just doing what her family asked me to do. Organizing her writing. You know she was a writer, right?”

Officer Rice raised an eyebrow. “Of course, Ms. Madden.”

“So, I have . . . well, had, before it was stolen . . . the material she was writing right before she was killed.”

“As you may know,” Officer Rice said, “the state investigator has been looking at some recent drafts on her computer, talking to some of the people she’d encountered for her research on her mother’s death. We’re aware that she was involved in that.”

I nodded. “Okay. Yeah, I did know that. But she didn’t write exclusively on the computer. More often, she wrote her stuff out longhand. There was much more in her notebooks than on her computer. And either way, it looks like someone was eager to get at it. And I guess I should’ve been more careful.”

The officer sighed and put his chin in his palm, thinking.

“Do you have any thoughts on who, specifically, it might have been?”

“I have one idea,” I said, and then mentioned Diane.

“Diane DeShannon?” Officer Rice looked bemused. “Dr. Skinner’s daughter?”

With Emerson being such a small town, I wondered how well Officer Rice knew Diane. I wondered how well he knew all of the players in Gretchen’s book.

But he didn’t say anything more about Diane.

“Why don’t you sit tight for a minute?” he said instead.

“Okay.”

He was gone for a while.

When he finally came back into the room, he handed me a plastic cup full of water.

“Thought you might want this,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, shifting in my chair. I wished he’d skip the prenatal chivalry and focus on getting back Gretchen’s manuscripts, but I couldn’t tell how seriously he intended to take me.

“So,” he said. “We’ll be talking to Ms. DeShannon shortly, Ms. Madden, just to clear the air. And of course we’ll let you know if we find your things.”

“Okay.”

“But before you go . . . just a question, Ms. Madden. This additional material you say you have . . . we’d like to take a look.”

“I can’t let you look at it if someone else has it. That’s why I’m here, sir. But yes, of course.”

“All right, Ms. Madden.”



I sat in the police department parking lot for ten minutes and I didn’t see any officers leave the building or approach any of Emerson’s three police cruisers.

“Jesus,” I muttered, thumping my steering wheel with my palm. “Take your time, folks.”

Then I sat for a few more minutes, thinking about various conversations I’d had with or about Diane.

First, there was her certainty about seeing Frank’s car that morning in 1985, when Kevin was certain of the opposite. I thought, too, about her story about Shelly’s prescription blunder, which neither Dorothy nor Judy could remember and Phil Coleman wouldn’t confirm. And then there was this business about Diane being the only one Shelly had ever told about Frank hitting her. No one else seemed to have seen or heard this firsthand from Shelly, and Gretchen, based on her childhood observations, had never been able to fully believe it.

Also, in your days as a reporter, did you start to develop any skill for telling who is lying to you?

It took me a moment to realize that my gentle thumps at the wheel were turning into loud, painful wallops. I stopped so as not to upset Charlie, then glared at the police station’s white steps and glass doorway. Still no movement. I took out my phone and called Dorothy.

After I convinced her I was indeed Jamie Madden, and not someone selling something, I asked her where Diane lived.