Detective Sharp knew where I was, of course, although he hadn’t been too keen on the plan. Next, still using the iPhone, I swiped over to the audio app and pressed “record.”
Oh, the wonders of technology.
Chapter Forty-two
I waited patiently behind the desk.
A moment later, the door opened and a woman stepped inside. It was Lucy Gleason, and I was excited, although I didn’t show it.
“Samantha Moon?” she asked.
“You got her,” I said cheerfully.
“May I come in?”
“You may.”
She did so, closing the door behind her. A small woman, even smaller than myself. She was cute, too, until you remembered she had hid out in a women’s bathroom for five days.
She looked at me from just inside the door. I sat behind Knighthorse’s leather-tooled desk. It didn’t fit the ambiance of the bullet-riddled room, which was covered in pictures of Knighthorse himself, depicting him back in his college football days.
Lucy had big, round, baleful eyes, complete with half-moon shaped dark bags hanging underneath. “I assume you know who I am,” she said.
“Have a seat, Lucy.”
She did, picking the middle of three client chairs. I wondered when and if Knighthorse ever had three clients in here at one time. Ever the optimist, I suspected he would say.
“You did it,” she said.
“I did.”
“You flushed me out.”
“I can see that.”
“I had to come see you just so you would leave my family and friends alone.”
“How many knew of your disappearance?”
“Only one, my sister...and one friend.”
“Who drove the red SUV?”
“My sister.”
“Whose red SUV is it?”
“Her co-worker’s. She borrowed it for the day. Told them she was picking something up.”
“Boy, did she.”
“Yes,” said Lucy.
Dammit, I liked her. She had a calmness to her that I admired. A tranquility that I not only craved, but seemed elusive. At least to me. But she had it, except I doubted that she’d always had it.
She has it now, I thought. Now that she is free.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why Starbucks? Why at that moment and time?”
She looked over at my cell phone, which wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding itself behind the lamp. “I assume you’re recording this.”
“You assume correctly.”
She nodded. I was tempted to dip into her thoughts, but her aura was bright blue, which was the color I associated with honesty. Green would have been a different story. So, I waited, knowing I was going to at least hear some semblance of truth.
“I’ve wanted leave Henry for some time.”
“Most people do just that...leave,” I said. “Most don’t hide in a Starbucks’s bathroom.”
“I chose the location very carefully,” she said.
“Not a coffee fan?”
“You would think, but no. This Starbucks is unique in that it only has one main opening, no drive-thru, nor any open windows.”
I said, “And this was important to you, why?”
She shook her head. “You tell me, Samantha Moon. You’ve already figured out so much. Obviously, you sat through five days of tape.”
“Mostly on fast forward,” I said.
“And yet, you spotted me leaving.”
“I have good eyes.”
“Remarkable eyes,” she added.
“Don’t try to butter me up, missy. You’re still in hot water. And why do I suddenly sound like Dick Tracy?”
She laughed lightly at that. A high, refined laugh.
I laughed, too, not so high, and not so refined, and had I known her a little better, I might have thrown in a snort.
When we were done laughing, I considered her reasons for disappearing in this particular setting. I could cheat, of course, and dip into her mind. Except I didn’t feel like cheating. I did the next best thing: I puzzled it out aloud.
“For some reason, you chose a location with only one entrance and one rear exit. A location with no other obvious security cameras, except the one perched high in the parking lot.”
“Keep going.”
“Most important, you must have somehow come across the vent under the bathroom sink. Maybe you dropped your eyeliner—or a paper towel. You looked down and saw the vent partially open. You pulled it all the way open, and saw that, wonder of wonders, you could fit inside. At that point, you checked yourself in for some serious therapy.”
“Very funny, Ms. Moon. Continue.”
“Continuing. Now that you found a possible location to stage your disappearance, you would have come back and staked out the parking lot, perhaps under disguise and out of sight of the camera. Inside, you already noticed there were no cameras, which is what you would have wanted. You didn’t want to be recorded entering the premises.”
“Keep going, Ms. Moon. You’re doing wonderfully.”
I tapped my fingernails on the desk. Until I remembered that my nails looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie. I retracted my hands. Ever the freak. I said, “You wanted the exterior camera to document your disappearance. To prove you went in.”
“Very good.”
I bit my lip, thinking hard. “But you wanted to create the illusion of truly disappearing, which is why you waited five long days, thinking that was surely long enough for any normal person to quit watching the video feeds...and to give up looking for you.”
“Or so I thought,” said Lucy. “Which implies that you, my good lady, may not be normal.”
“You have no idea,” I said, and left it at that. “Moving on. Your disappearance, then, was well documented. Your reappearance, not so much. And it took some luck on my part to even notice you. Admittedly, at that point, I was close to giving up looking.”
“Your perseverance is admirable,” she said.
“Again, quit trying to get on my good side.”
“I’m only stating the facts, Ms. Moon. Continue, if you will. This is fun.”
“Your disappearance baffled everyone, including the police and the public at large. The police opened up a missing person’s case, although not a homicide case, because no body was found, and no one, really, had any clue what happened to you.”
“Keep going, Sam. You’re close.”
I felt it, too. This time, I tapped my nails on the desk’s drawer, near my leg, and out of sight of her eyes. “There were no suspects because no crime appeared to have been committed. Even your husband—and husbands are usually the first suspects—wasn’t really considered a suspect. At least, not after the initial questioning and viewing of the tape. Once your disappearance had been established, your husband was no longer deemed a suspect.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”