Now when she opens the front door, there’s a flicker of happiness and not just a letdown because I’m not the long-lost daughter; there’s a flicker of happiness for me.
Eve begs me to bring her to the nursing home, but I know it would be more than she can handle. She wants to talk to Mrs. Thatcher, mother to mother. She thinks there’s something Mrs. Thatcher might tell her that she wouldn’t tell me. But still, I tell her no. She asks what Kathryn is like and I tell her that she’s a strong woman and defiant. Eve tells me she used to be strong; fine china and haute couture have made her weak.
As soon as Mrs. Thatcher is fully stabilized, she’ll go to live with a sister nearby, a woman who, apparently, hasn’t so much as turned on the evening news for the past few months. I phoned her the other day at Kathryn’s request. She had no idea her nephew had gone AWOL, had never heard a word about the search for Mia Dennett.
I’ve been assigned to other cases. A fire in an apartment building that’s possible arson. Complaints from numerous teenyboppers against a high school teacher.
But at night when I retire to my own apartment, I drink to help me sleep, and when I do, I fall asleep to the image of Mia Dennett on video surveillance, being shepherded from an elevator by the abrasive Colin Thatcher. I imagine a bleak Eve crying herself to sleep. And I remind myself that I’m the only one who can stop it.
*
I’m visiting the nursing home one snowy Tuesday afternoon when Kathryn Thatcher turns to me and asks about her neighbor, Ruth Baker. “Does Ruthie know I’m here?” she asks and I shrug and say that I don’t know. I’ve never heard of this Ruth—aka Ruthie—Baker. But she tells me how Ruthie checks on her every week, during the week when Colin can’t be there. She says that she collects the mail every day and brings it with her, to Mrs. Thatcher’s home. I envision the mail in the mailbox nearly tumbling to the ground, stuffed to the point it was impossible to close the door. There was so much mail I needed to drive to the Gary Post Office with a warrant to collect what the mailman couldn’t stuff into the box. I spoke to the neighbors, but there was no Ruth or Ruthie, no Mrs. Baker. Mrs. Thatcher tells me that Ruth lives in the white Cape Cod across the street, and it’s then that I remember the For Sale sign out front. No one answered the door.
I do my research and stumble upon an obituary from the first week of October. I pull up the death records and find that Mrs. Ruth Baker had a stroke and died at 5:18 p.m. on October 7th. Mrs. Thatcher has no idea. Mrs. Baker was supposed to be keeping an eye on Kathryn Thatcher while Colin was away. I’m guessing that wherever he is, he doesn’t have a clue the seventy-five-year-old woman he left in charge of his mother is dead.
My mind reverts to the mail. I pull out the stack of mail I swiped from Mrs. Thatcher’s box and collected from the post office, and sort it by postmark date. Sure enough, there is a gap, from Mia’s disappearance until the bills and past due notices begin. About five days. I wonder who the hell has Mrs. Thatcher’s missing mail. I return to the home of Ruthie Baker and knock on the door. Again, no answer, and so I track down a next of kin, a woman about my own age, Ruthie’s daughter, who lives in Hammond with her husband and kids. One day I knock on her door.
“Can I help you?” she asks, startled when I show her my badge.
“Is your mother Ruth Baker?” I ask before I ever say my name.
She says that she is. Anytime a cop shows up at your door, the first thing you wonder is: What’s wrong?
I forget to tell her that I’m sorry for her loss. I jump right in, with only one thought on my mind: finding Mia. “I believe your mother might have been collecting the mail from a neighbor of hers. Kathryn Thatcher,” I say and a wave of guilt and embarrassment washes over the woman. She begins to apologize up and down. I know she’s sorry, but I think she’s also worried she might be in trouble. Mail theft is, after all, a felony, and here I am, a cop standing at her front door.