Under Cover of Darkness Read online

  Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. The minister raised his hands, then lowered them, instructing the crowd to sit. A quiet shuffle filled the church as two hundred guests lowered themselves into oak pews. When all was quiet, the minister raised his voice and asked, “Who gives this bride?”

  The question echoed against Gothic stone arches.

  Her father swallowed hard. “Her mother and I do.”

  Andie could barely recognize the shaky voice. He lifted her veil and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you,” she whispered.

  He couldn’t speak. He turned and walked to the front pew, taking the seat beside his wife.

  Andie climbed the two marble steps. The groom reached for her hand. She turned away, however, and faced the guests. She drew a deep breath, then spoke with self-assurance. “I know this is unorthodox. But before we get started, I want to thank some people.”

  The guests seemed confused. Her parents looked at one another. Nobody moved.

  Andie continued, “First, I want to thank my parents. Mom, Dad. I love you both very much. I want to thank Reverend Jenkins, who has known me since I was a gangly teenager and who has been looking forward to this day probably more than anyone. I also want to thank each and every one of you for coming today. It means so much to have your friendship, your support.” Her voice trailed off. She averted her eyes, then drew a deep breath and looked squarely at the clock in the back of the church. “But most of all,” she said, her voice shaking, “I want to thank Linda, my lovely sister and maid of honor.” She glared to her right.

  “For sleeping with the groom last night.”

  The crowd gasped. Andie whirled and hit the groom squarely in the chest with her bouquet. Anger and embarrassment rushed through her veins. She hiked her long white wedding dress and ran for the side exit.

  “You son of a bitch!” her father cried, charging toward the groom. The best man jumped forward to restrain the old man but knocked him flat in an accident that looked like a sucker punch.

  “My back!” He was groaning, sprawled on the tile floor. The best man towered over him, Mike Tyson versus Red Buttons.

  “He pasted her father!” someone shouted.

  It was like the cheap shot heard ’round the world, as a dozen other men leaped from their pews, some to help the fallen father of the bride, others to take up the attack. Rick’s buddies came to the defense. Shouting led to shoving, and in a matter of seconds a black-and-white pile of thrashing men in tuxedos was rolling toward the altar. A shrill scream rose above the uproar as the horrified maid of honor raced for the exit.

  “Get her!” shouted the flower girl.

  The crowd scattered. Women screamed. Fists were flying. A groomsman was suddenly airborne, slamming into the lectern.

  “People, please!” shouted Reverend Jenkins. “Not in the house of the Lord!”

  Andie didn’t stop running. She burst through the exit and headed down the hall. It sounded like a soccer stadium riot behind her. She hoped no one would follow. She needed to be alone. She ducked into an empty office and quickly locked the door.

  She was out of breath, shoulders heaving. Part of her felt like crying, but she fought back the emotions. He wasn’t worth crying over. He wasn’t worth marrying.

  A tear ran down her cheek. She quickly brushed it away. Just one tear. That much she would allow. As she leaned against the wall, her shoulder blade inadvertently hit the light switch behind her and cut off the light. The room went black. She smiled weakly, recalling her grandpa’s dying words.

  “Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” she repeated softly.

  The thin smile faded, and she was alone in the darkness.

  Two

  Sundays were Gus Wheatley’s favorite workday. Monday to Friday was always a nonstop chain of conference calls and meetings in and out of the law firm. Saturdays too brought only interruptions. Ambitious young lawyers would drop by his corner office to impress the managing partner, just to let him know they weren’t spending the weekend on the tennis court. Sunday was his one day to crank up the stereo and clear his desk.

  For a workaholic, Gus was an impressive physical specimen, due largely to the typical overdo-it fashion in which he had heeded a doctor’s warnings about his family’s history of heart disease. He usually jogged or cycled before sunrise. Conference calls were often handled on the tread-mill in the small fitness room adjacent to his office. He rarely drank at business dinners or cocktail parties, preferring always to keep his mind sharp. His confident good looks commanded attention in any setting. At forty-one, he was the youngest lawyer ever to serve as managing partner of Preston & Coolidge, Seattle’s premier law firm. He’d spent his entire legal career there, having passed up a Supreme Court clerkship after graduation from Stanford Law. For some, a year at the nation’s highest court would have been the ultimate experience. For Gus, drafting appellate opinions was simply too academic. From his first day of law school his goal had been to head up one of the nation’s leading law firms. Preston & Coolidge allowed him to live his dream. Night and day. Seven days a week.

  The firm technically had a five-member executive committee, but no one disputed that it was Gus who really ran things, the benign dictator who controlled the fate of two hundred attorneys. Gus loved the control, though it took the skill of a consummate politician to build consensus among partners whose egos could barely fit inside the building. It took passion to run a law firm and still find time to schmooze new clients and even practice a little law. He did have help, of course. Two of the firm’s best secretaries kept his life in order. Also at his disposal were two gofers, loyal young men who did everything from picking up clients at the airport to shining their boss’s shoes. For more substantive matters, an international lawyer, Martha Goldstein, was his anointed managerial assistant. That was a rather unimpressive title for such a coveted position, as it was widely assumed that Gus was grooming Martha to replace him. It would be years before that would happen. In the meantime, she had the brains and charisma to impress clients when Gus couldn’t be there, and she was handling an increasing number of intra-firm administrative matters Gus hated to deal with. It might have been borderline sexism, but it was still a fact that older male partners screamed less about their annual bonus when it was presented by an attractive thirty-six-year-old woman.

  Gus tapped his pencil on the accounting summaries before him, keeping time with the music blaring from his stereo. Only Sinatra could add pizzazz to his obligatory review of the firm’s eleven million dollars in monthly billings. The speakers on his rosewood credenza were beginning to rattle. Too much “New York, New York.” He leaned back and lowered the volume.

  “Care to order out for Chinese?”

  The woman’s voice in the doorway caught him by surprise. It was Martha.

  He checked his Rolex, not realizing it was dinnertime. “Yeah, sure,” he said with a smile. “Wanna bill it to your client or mine?”

  She knew he was kidding. Martha had just lost a major international bank as a client after sending out a bill that included “laundry service” charges that one of her associates had slipped onto the statement. It wasn’t for money laundering. He’d actually sent his shirts to the hotel cleaners and billed the client.

  “Not funny, Gus.”

  The desk phone rang. He hit the speaker button. “Hello.”

  “Mr. Wheatley?” the woman replied.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Mrs. Volpe at the Youth Center.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m the instructor in the tumbling class for six-to eight-year-olds. Your daughter participates every Sunday afternoon.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, knowing absolutely nothing about it. “Morgan loves that tumbling.”

  “Actually, she’s still quite timid about it. That’s not why I’m calling, though. She told me not to bother you at work, but she’s been waiting on a ride home for over two hours. It’s almost six o’clock. Everyone’s gone. We’re ready to close
up.”

  “Thank you for calling, but Morgan’s mother takes care of the car rides.”

  “Yes, she usually does. But no one has seen your wife all day. We can’t reach her by phone.”

  Gus glanced at Martha, who could overhear the conversation on the speaker. She whispered, “Just send a cab.”

  His eyes brightened, as if Martha were a genius. “Mrs. Volpe, if you can wait just a few more minutes, I’ll send a taxi right over.”

  There was a pause on the line. “I’m sorry, sir. But the only people who can pick up children under the age of twelve from the youth center are parents or designated chaperones whose photographs and signatures are on file with the front office. We don’t send children home with strangers.”

  “Oh. Of course.” He ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “Are you sure you can’t reach my wife?”

  “I’ve been trying for two hours.”

  “All right,” he said with exasperation. “I’ll try to find her. One of us will be there as soon as we can.” He hung up, then quickly punched out his wife’s cell phone number. After four rings he got the recorded message announcing that the customer was unavailable.

  “Damn it, Beth. Turn your stupid phone on.” He looked at Martha, obviously annoyed. “I’ll take a rain check on dinner. Looks like I have to go play chauffeur.”

  “Where’s Beth?”

  “Who the hell knows.”

  “She do this often? Just forget to pick up the kid?”

  He crossed the room and grabbed his overcoat from the hook behind the door. “It’s always some damn thing with her.”

  “Sounds like she could use a good smack on the back of the legs.”

  Gus shot a look.

  Martha said, “Just a figure of speech. I heard one of my British clients say that the other day.”

  “Hopefully not about his wife.”

  “Lighten up. I wasn’t being literal.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He headed down the hall. An electronic access card allowed him through the metal gate that secured the firm’s dramatic three-story lobby on weekends. He punched the button on the panel to call for the elevator. It would take a minute or two for a car to reach the forty-ninth floor. While waiting, he was thinking about Martha’s comment. A crack like that was pretty awkward, given the state of his marriage. His fifteen years with Beth had had its share of rumors and allegations. It just wasn’t anything to joke about. Or maybe he was just more sensitive lately, more aware of how unsettled his own feelings still were.

  At times it seemed a miracle he stayed married to Beth.

  Three

  Gus and his daughter sat up watching The Lion King video. It was way past her Sunday night bedtime, but Gus thought he’d take her mind off her worries with extended television privileges. It didn’t work.

  “When’s Mommy coming home?” She must have asked that question every fifteen minutes. Gus had come up with just about every excuse he could think of. Traffic. Running late. By ten o’clock he was out of explanations. He put Morgan to bed, which was an ordeal. He read to her, sat with her, and finally crawled in bed with her. Anything to ease her mind. She was clearly sensing his own anxieties.

  Finally, she was asleep.

  He sank into the leather recliner and channel-surfed with the TV remote, stopping on the local news. The usual review of weekend crime sent his mind adrift until the broadcast shifted to a late-breaking live report of a fatal traffic accident on I–5. A tangled mess of metal appeared on the screen, the remnants of two cars and a dump truck. He leaned forward, then relaxed. The victims were male, no women involved in the crash.

  He chided himself for getting his pulse up. Of course it wasn’t Beth. Her car was still in the garage.

  That, however, was part of his confusion.

  He knew she had dropped off Morgan at the youth center at two o’clock. Morgan had confirmed that much. Gus had gone over it with his daughter several times, but she just couldn’t remember if Mommy had said she would be back at four, or if she had said Daddy would pick her up. He racked his brain, trying to recall if Beth had told him she was going somewhere and had asked him to pick up Morgan. Maybe he’d just forgotten about it. That had to be it. Over the past few months they’d become the world’s worst communicators. She’d probably mumbled something to him three days ago on his way out the door. Typical Beth.

  Gus rose from his chair and went to the kitchen. The breakfast nook in their hillside mansion was built like a hexagonal glass jewel box, its floor-to-ceiling windows taking in a two-hundred-seventy-degree vista. The night view was his favorite. It was the only one he really knew. He was always gone before dawn, home after dusk. The Wheatleys lived north of downtown in the more upscale section of Magnolia, where new dream homes and magnificent century-old estates offered both city and water views. Glass and stone office towers lit up the skyline to the southeast. Tonight, as on many nights, the tops of the tallest buildings were cut off by low-hanging clouds. His own office sat right at the cloud line, a perpetually lighted cubicle in the sky. To the west was Puget Sound, the huge north-south finger of water that separated the port city of Seattle from the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas. It took some imagination, but if you thought of northwest Washington as a big right-hand mitten, it was the thumb-like peninsulas and Olympic Mountains to the west that kept the Pacific Ocean from ravaging Puget Sound and Seattle to the east. The Sound was dark now, only some shipping lights visible. A few more twinkling signs of life dotted Bainbridge Island. Gus focused on the faintest light in the distance, somewhere in the night.

  Where the hell is Beth? he wondered.

  Monday morning was anything but routine. Gus had been up all night. At six a.m. he felt the programmed urge to make the usual spate of calls to his East Coast clients, all of whom were three hours ahead of him. The urge, however, was not compelling. It came as somewhat of a surprise, an affront to the priorities of a man consumed by his profession. But his heart and mind were elsewhere. Morgan would be awake in thirty minutes. She’d want to know where Mommy was.

  He wanted to know where her mommy was.

  Gus poured himself a cup of black coffee and sat alone at the kitchen table. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer lay rolled up and un-read on the counter. The rain pattered lightly against the kitchen window. The sun had not yet risen. A thick pre-dawn fog robbed him of any view out the window, no moon, no stars, no downtown city lights. It was still early, but he needed some answers before his daughter woke. Since Morgan’s birth Beth had kept a list of phone numbers taped to the refrigerator, people to call in case of emergencies. He dialed the top number and braced himself for a battle.

  The fourth ring was followed by a raspy “Hello.”

  “Carla, it’s Gus. Sorry to wake you.”

  She didn’t reply. For a second Gus thought she might hang up. Carla was his younger sister, but that was secondary. First and foremost, she was his wife’s best friend. Growing up, they had never been close. Marrying Beth and effectively coming between her and her best friend had only made things worse. Whenever Beth had a complaint about Gus, Carla was on her side. Sometimes it seemed as though Carla was even leading the charge. Through it all, however, they had managed a level of civility. A low level.

  “It’s twenty after six,” she said, groaning. “What do you want?”

  “I’m a little concerned about Beth.”

  Her voice took on urgency. “What did you do to her?”

  The accusatory tone angered him. God only knew what Beth had been telling Carla. “I didn’t do anything to her. Can you please just answer a simple question for me? When’s the last time you talked to Beth?”

  “We went out for brunch yesterday. Why?”

  “Did she say she was going anywhere—going away?”

  “You mean, like a vacation?”

  “Anything at all. In town, out of town. It doesn’t matter.”

  “The
only thing she mentioned was that she had to take Morgan over to the youth center at two. Why are you asking me all this?”

  He sighed, then said, “Beth dropped Morgan off, but she never picked her up. I had to get Morgan myself. Beth never came home last night. I don’t know where she is.”

  “She’s not here with me, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I wasn’t implying anything. I’m just trying to locate my wife. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  “No. But I can speculate.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Has it occurred to you that perhaps Beth has finally seen the light and found the courage to leave you?”

  She sounded so smug, he wanted to tell her to go to hell. But he knew Carla’s theory wasn’t out of the question. “If that was the case, don’t you think she could have found a better way to do it than to leave her six-year-old daughter stranded at the youth center with no ride home? Does a reasonably intelligent woman do something like that?”

  “If she’s confused enough, maybe she does. Beth was very unhappy. You have no idea how unhappy she was.”

  “That doesn’t explain everything. I’ve been through her closet, her drawers. All her clothes are still there. Her shoes. Her photo albums and collectibles. Nothing seems to be missing. It just doesn’t look like she was planning an escape. Even her car is still in the garage.”

  “She doesn’t have to drive to leave you.”

  “I’ve been making phone calls since four A.M. I’ve checked with every cab company in the city. None of them picked up Beth from our house yesterday. I’ve called every hotel between here and White Pass. No Beth Wheatley. I even called highway patrol to see if there were any accidents.”

  “Did you try Sea-Tac?”

  “The airlines won’t give out passenger information.”