“I don’t know what I’m . . . going . . . to tell . . .” And she was sobbing again. How were you supposed to explain this sort of thing to a nonverbal three--year--old? John’s best trait by far was that he was one of the most engaged fathers she’d ever seen, and his permanent absence might lead to Daltrey’s permanent muteness. Her precious son, fatherless. But what had she thought? That she’d allow visitation with a crack addict? Never.
“Is there anyone I can call for you?” Isabeau said. “Family or friends or something? Somebody who can come and be with you?”
“No,” Nessa said.
“What about your parents?”
Nessa shook her head.
“Mr. Donati’s family?”
This hadn’t occurred to Nessa. She was going to have to tell John’s brother and sister, not to mention his parents, who were scheduled to pick Daltrey up later in the month and take him to Kansas City for a few days. Sadly, they would not be that surprised. They’d suffered through his mental illness and addictions even longer than she had.
“You know what,” Isabeau said. “I think maybe you ought to wait to tell them anything. If they’re anything like my parents, they’ll freak and be all in your face, and you probably don’t want that right now, am I right?”
Nessa nodded.
“Besides, there really isn’t anything to tell them, until after the police drag the river and the lake and maybe . . . find . . . something. You know what I’m saying?”
Nessa did know what she was saying.
Isabeau pressed a finger to her lips. “But . . . what if they don’t find anything?” she said. “What if he’s, like, dead, but they never find his body? What happens then?”
She slid to the floor, opened up her laptop, and began typing furiously. Nessa watched as Isabeau’s eyes tracked back and forth, reading, her eyebrows drawn together, her lips moving a little.
“Oh, wow,” she said. “It takes seven years after a person goes missing to have him declared dead, unless you go through the courts with a petition and apparently it’s a big old hassle.” She typed some more and read some more. “Did—-does Mr. Donati have a life insurance policy?”
“Yes,” Nessa said.
“You’re not going to see any of that for seven years either.”
Daltrey would be ten by then, almost eleven, with very little memory of his father.
“Boy,” Isabeau said. “It’s a good thing you’re the main bread winner, huh?”
It was a good thing. This tactless statement actually surprised Nessa so much that an equally inappropriate laugh escaped Nessa. She covered her mouth with her hand to quell it.
“So you never did tell me what the vet said yesterday,” Isabeau said.
The vet. That seemed a lifetime ago. It was only yesterday? She felt like she’d aged five years. “The vet said it was antifreeze. That’s what killed him.”
Isabeau looked confused. “Antifreeze?”
“Yeah. I guess it’s lethal to pets. It causes their . . .”
Isabeau’s face had gone white.
“What is it?” Nessa said.
“Is antifreeze green?”
“I’m not sure,” Nessa said. “Maybe.”
Isabeau pulled out her phone, thumb--typed on the tiny keyboard, and waited. She focused on the screen, then her head dropped back on the couch and she closed her eyes.
Nessa took the phone out of her hand and saw an image of antifreeze. Green.
“I found a plant water--catcher next to the boathouse with, like, this acid green liquid in it. I didn’t know what it was so I tossed it out—-didn’t want Daltrey to get into it.” She opened her eyes and lifted her head, then covered her mouth with both hands. “I didn’t even think about poor old Declan MacManus.”
By the boathouse.
“Was that before or after the break--in?” Nessa said.
Isabeau’s eyes tracked upward as she thought. “It was after,” she said in a flat voice.
Did John deliberately leave antifreeze out to kill the dog and punish Nessa? There was no way. John loved their family pet. But crack had made him do horrible things. It was certainly possible.
It was after ten when Isabeau finally went to bed, and Nessa still needed to work on her personal inventory. But first, she wanted to go through the snaps she took of Detective Dirksen’s file folder. While she waited for the photos to download to her laptop, she made a pot of tea and got out her vapor pen. She was so exhausted she thought about waiting until tomorrow, but dread and curiosity got the better of her.
She sat on the couch, poured a cup of jasmine tea, and opened the first image.
Disappointment washed over her as she tried to read the blurry, off--center typewritten report pages. She clicked through the all--but--unreadable text pages until she got to the first photo.
It was a side view of the copper--colored pickup truck. She couldn’t immediately discern what the next one was, until she’d looked at it for a moment. It was a close--up of one of the interior sides of the truck bed. She puzzled over this, looked at every inch, but couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to see. The next image seemed to be the same thing but must have been the opposite interior side of the bed, along with drawn circles, arrows, and handwriting. The next photo was a close--up of the same area with what looked like two metal rivets in it surrounded by irregular patterns of splintering, again circled.