Джеффри Дивер - Captivated

The businessman looked down. His chopsticks were no longer utensils but instead had become fidget sticks. He twirled one between the blunt thumb and the equally blunt index finger of his right hand.

“It’s not quite what I was telling you. Which I guess you picked up on. I just wanted somebody to get fired up enough to find her. I thought if you believed she’d been kidnapped, you’d really get on board.” A wan smile. “I’m a salesman by trade. We spin stories to close the deal.”

“What do you really think happened?”

“I haven’t been the best husband. Oh, not like that . I’m not abusive or anything. I’ve got a temper — my employees’ll tell you that. But I never shouted. Never hurt her. Wouldn’t even think of it. Ever. What I did was, I wasn’t honest with Evie.”

“Go on.”

“We met at a gala for the art museum in town. I was a benefactor, she was a volunteer. She came up to me and was all What’s a handsome guy like you doing in an old folks’ home like this? Because, yeah, everybody else was about eighty. We hooked up and started dating. It was so good. Great, at first. She was smart. Funny. And so beautiful. And the... between us... You know...” His voice faded.

Shaw knew he was seeking a euphemism for their fine times in bed. He knew too Matthews would never finish the sentence.

“She was so captivating ...” A sigh. “I was, like, hypnotized. Naturally, I’d go to gallery openings and museums with her. I’d send her off to Paris or Florence so she could paint where all the famous painters from the past had. I’d go meet her and she was all Monet painted here, Gauguin painted there . But the fact is, I don’t get art, frankly.” Then in a whisper, as if she might actually hear: “I don’t even like it. I was involved in the museum for the tax write-offs. I could fake it for only so long and then started coming up with excuses for not going with her. It got worse when I had to work nights and weekends to keep the company afloat.

“I’m going crazy, Colter, I miss her so much. I’ve lost twenty pounds this last month.” He tapped his ring. “I had to move it to this finger. It kept falling off.”

He stared at the gaudy piece of jewelry — a class ring, it seemed.

“Salesman, I was saying? Well, you can’t seal the deal if you don’t give your buyer what you told him you would. I didn’t give Evie what I promised.” His voice cracked. A deep breath wheezed between his narrow lips. He masked blotting away a tear by scratching his nose. “I want a chance to pitch my case again. I can sell myself, I can sell our marriage. I know I can.”

Colter Shaw had seen many an offeror break down in front of him. Rewards are offered when a portion of the heart has vanished and there’s absolutely no balm for the pain except replacing the missing piece.

“I should’ve told you all that up front.”

In his decade of making his living seeking rewards Shaw had learned that how offerors described a situation was sometimes very different from what that situation actually was. He’d become a savvy interpreter and didn’t take such fabrication — sometimes intended, sometimes not — personally.

“I’ll help you,” Shaw said.

Matthews smiled once more, deeper this time, with appreciation. “Thank you. Now, what’s the arrangement?”

“I’ll ask you some questions and then try to find Evelyn. That’s it.”

He seemed confused, then asked, “Expenses?”

“No expenses. That comes out of my pocket. If I find her you pay me the ten K. If I don’t I swallow the costs. If a neighbor calls you and tells you where she is, even if I’m on my way to her hotel room, it’s his money.”

The nature of seeking rewards. Financial risks... as well as, often, physical risks.

“Well, okay. Now, questions?”

From his computer bag, sitting next to him, Shaw removed a five-by-seven bound notebook of thirty-two blank, unlined pages. From his inside sports coat pocket he retrieved a Delta Titanio Galassia fountain pen, black with three orange rings around the barrel, and uncapped it.

He opened to the first page and for the next fifteen minutes Shaw asked, and Matthews answered, dozens of questions, the responses recorded in elegant script as small as the tracks of a sparrow, the words perfectly horizontal despite the absence of lines on the paper. Matthews stared at the man’s handwriting. Many people commented on it. He didn’t.

Finally, Shaw believed he had enough to get started. Matthews rose, shook Shaw’s hand, more warmly than when they’d met. He began to speak, but emotion again intruded and he inhaled deeply, a hedge against tears. “Please. Help me, if you can.” He hurried out the door, climbed into the sleek black Mercedes, and a moment later the car sped out of view.

Colter Shaw had driven to Indianapolis in his thirty-foot Cambria Winnebago camper, in which he’d clocked 132,000 miles in the past year and half. He didn’t care for hotels and he hated to fly. The camper was perfect for both transportation and as living quarters. The boatlike vehicle, however, was cumbersome for tooling about town during an investigation itself, and his get-around wheels — a Yamaha YZ450FX dirt bike — made a questionable impression on offerors and disinclined potential interviewees from agreeing to talk to him.

Avis and Hertz were the solution and on jobs he rented a lot of unassuming sedans. Rearview cameras, satellite radios, good mileage. He’d also found people tended to trust you when you showed up in a Ford Escape or a Kia.

After leaving the restaurant, he found a trailer court with inexpensive hookups and clean showers, then he Ubered to a nearby Avis, where he collected a Toyota sedan.

He returned to the court and parked beside the Winnebago. In the RV he printed out the emails of material Matthews had promised to send: a list of Fontaine’s family members, friends, acquaintances and coworkers; galleries where her work was on display and/or for sale; and Matthews’s own phone and travel records around the time that his wife disappeared, the days before and after. The man hadn’t been offended that Shaw considered him a suspect, which was standard operating procedure on a missing spouse job; several times husbands had offered substantial rewards, to flag their innocence, when they themselves had dispatched their wives.

Shaw then called his own private investigator. Mack — an exception to the caveat about the limitations on permissible PI behavior — would conduct criminal background and weapons records checks on both principals in the job. Some of this information wasn’t in the public domain but Mack was unique in the world of private investigation: what was unavailable to most was rarely unavailable to Mack.

Shaw himself followed up on Matthews’s whereabouts on the days around the time Fontaine disappeared, after the workshop in Schaumburg. The records tentatively confirmed that Matthews was in Indianapolis on those days. And while that wasn’t conclusive, for the time being he ebbed as a suspect.

Shaw turned again to the entries in his notebook.

Date: August 30

Offeror: Ronald Matthews, 52, resident of Indiana, 2094 Shady Grove Lane, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Missing individual: Evelyn Maude Fontaine, 29, resident of Indiana, wife of 13 months.

EF: Employed part-time as professor of sketching and painting technique, Indiana Concord College for the Arts, Indianapolis. Fine artist

EF has passport but no overseas contacts; out-of-country travel unlikely.

EF’s sister is in Dayton, Ohio, but the two are not close. Sister claims EF has not contacted her re disappearance.

EF’s funds: unknown. She sells paintings occasionally, though doesn’t make much. Some income from teaching. RM gives her money but less in the past year, owing to financial difficulties. Probably not a large amount saved up.