‘Can you be a little more specific?’ Howie asked.
‘It turns out that the van used to abduct the Peterson boy was stolen by a kid only a little older than Frank Peterson himself. The kid’s name is Merlin Cassidy. He was running away from an abusive stepfather. In the course of his run between New York and south Texas, where he was finally arrested, he stole a number of vehicles. He dumped the van in Dayton, Ohio, in April. Marcy – Mrs Maitland – you and your family were in Dayton in April.’
Marcy had been raising her cup for another sip, but now she set it down with a bang. ‘Oh, no. You’re not putting that on Terry. We flew both ways, and except for when Terry went to visit his dad, we were together the whole time. End of story, and I think it’s time for you to leave.’
‘Whoa,’ Ralph said. ‘We knew it was a family trip, and that you went by air, almost from the time Terry became a person of interest. It’s just that … can’t you see how weird it is? The van is there when your family is there, then it turns up here. Terry told me he never saw it, let alone stole it. I want to believe that. We have his fingerprints all over the damn thing, but I still want to. And almost can.’
‘I doubt it,’ Howie said. ‘Stop trying to suck us in.’
‘Would it help you to believe me, maybe even trust me a little, if I told you we now have physical evidence that Terry was in Cap City? His fingerprints on a book from the hotel newsstand? Testimony that has him leaving those prints at approximately the same time the Peterson boy was abducted?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Alec Pelley asked. He sounded almost shocked.
‘No.’ Even with the case as effectively dead as Terry himself, Bill Samuels would be furious if he found out Ralph had told Marcy and Marcy’s lawyer about A Pictorial History of Flint County, Douree County, and Canning Township, but he was determined not to let this meeting end without getting some answers.
Alec whistled. ‘Holy shit.’
‘So you know he was there!’ Marcy cried. Red spots were burning in her cheeks. ‘You have to know it!’
But Ralph didn’t want to go there; he had spent too much time there already. ‘Terry mentioned the Dayton trip the last time I talked to him. He said he wanted to visit his father, but he said wanted with a funny kind of grimace. And when I asked him if his dad lived there, he said, “If you can call what he’s doing these days living.” So what’s the deal with that?’
‘The deal is Peter Maitland is suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease,’ Marcy said. ‘He’s in the Heisman Memory Unit. It’s part of the Kindred Hospital complex.’
‘So. Tough for Terry to go see him, I guess.’
‘Very tough,’ Marcy agreed. She was warming up a little now. Ralph was glad to discover he hadn’t lost all of his skills, but this wasn’t like being in an interrogation room with a suspect. Both Howie and Alec Pelley were on high alert, ready to stop her if they sensed her foot coming down on a hidden mine. ‘But not just because Peter didn’t know Terry any longer. They hadn’t had much of a relationship for a long time.’
‘Why not?’
‘How is this relevant, Detective?’ Howie asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. But since we’re not in court, counselor, how about you let her answer the damn question?’
Howie looked at Marcy and shrugged. Up to you.
‘Terry was Peter and Melinda’s only child,’ Marcy said. ‘He grew up here in Flint City, as you know, and lived here all his life, except for four years at OSU.’
‘Where you met him?’ Ralph asked.
‘That’s right. Anyway, Peter Maitland worked for the Cheery Petroleum Company, back in the days when this area was still producing a fair amount of oil. He fell in love with his secretary and divorced his wife. There was a lot of rancor, and Terry took his mother’s side. Terry … he was all about loyalty, even as a boy. He saw his father as a cheat, which he was, of course, and all of Peter’s justifications only made things worse. Long story short, Peter married the secretary – Dolores was her name – and asked for a transfer to the company headquarters.’
‘Which were in Dayton?’
‘Correct. Peter didn’t try for joint custody or anything like that. He understood Terry had made his choice. But Melinda insisted that Terry go to see him from time to time, claiming that a boy needed to know his father. Terry went, but only to please his mom. He never stopped seeing his father as the rat who ran away.’
Howie said, ‘That fits the Terry I knew.’
‘Melinda died in 2006. Heart attack. Peter’s second wife died two years later, of lung cancer. Terry kept on going to Dayton once or twice a year, to honor his mother, and kept on reasonably civil terms with his father. For the same reason, I suppose. In 2011 – I think it was – Peter began to get forgetful. Shoes in the shower instead of under the bed, car keys in the refrigerator, stuff like that. Because Terry is – was – his only close living relative, it was Terry who arranged to get him into the Heisman Memory Unit. That was in 2014.’
‘Places like that are expensive,’ Alec said. ‘Who pays?’
‘Insurance. Peter Maitland had very good insurance. Dolores insisted. Peter was a heavy smoker all his life, and she probably thought she’d inherit a bundle when he went. But she went first. Probably from his secondhand smoke.’
‘You speak as if Peter Maitland is dead,’ Ralph said. ‘Is that the case?’
‘No, he’s still alive.’ Then, in a deliberate echo of her husband: ‘If you want to call that living. He’s even stopped smoking. It’s not allowed in the HMU.’
‘How long were you in Dayton on your last visit?’
‘Five days. Terry visited his father three times while we were there.’
‘You and the girls never went with him?’
‘No. Terry didn’t want that, and neither did I. It wasn’t as if Peter could have been grandfatherly to Sarah and Grace, and Grace wouldn’t have understood.’
‘What did you do while he was visiting?’
Marcy smiled. ‘You speak as though Terry spent huge wallops of time with his father, and that wasn’t the case. His visits were short, no more than an hour or two. Mostly the four of us were together. When Terry was at the Heisman, we hung out at the hotel, and the girls swam in the indoor pool. One day the three of us went to the Art Institute, and one afternoon I took the girls to a Disney matinee. There was a cinema complex close to the hotel. We hit two or maybe three other movies, but that was the whole family. We went to the air force museum as a family, and to the Boonshoft, which is a science museum. The girls loved that. It was your basic family vacation, Detective Anderson, with Terry taking a few hours away to do his filial duty.’
And maybe to steal a van, Ralph thought.
It was possible, Merlin Cassidy and the Maitland family certainly could have been in Dayton at the same time, but it seemed farfetched. Even if that had happened, there was the question of how Terry had gotten the van back to Flint City. Or why he would have bothered. There were plenty of vehicles to be stolen in the FC metro area; Barbara Nearing’s Subaru was a case in point.
‘Probably ate out a few times, didn’t you?’ Ralph asked.
Howie sat forward at that, but said nothing for the moment.
‘We had a fair amount of room service, Sarah and Grace loved it, but sure, we ate out. Assuming the hotel restaurant counts as out.’
‘Did you happen to eat at a place called Tommy and Tuppence?’
‘No. I’d remember a restaurant with a name like that. We ate at IHOP one night, and I think twice at Cracker Barrel. Why?’
‘No reason,’ Ralph said.
Howie gave him a smile that said he knew better, but settled back. Alec sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his face expressionless.
‘Is that everything?’ Marcy asked. ‘Because I’m tired of this. And I’m tired of you.’