“Now that I think would be nice,” Aimee says, feeling a bit guilty for her impatience. But she needs to see the kids off and get back to the house. “I’m sure she’d really appreciate it. I should have thought of it myself.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have a lot on your plate.”
You have no idea, Aimee thinks. The bus pulls up, and all the kids pile on board.
“Do her kids have food allergies or preferences? Is gluten okay? What about dairy?”
“Who cares, Gabby? I’m sure anything you make is fine. Don’t overthink it.” Allergies and food preferences seem so petty compared to what she and Gwen are dealing with. A dead husband. A missing one.
Gabby stares at her in shock.
Aimee backs away, offering an apologetic smile, and then turns and speed walks back to her house. Inside, she pours a large mug of coffee and picks up her phone. She is afraid of being dismissed, of appearing hysterical. Instead of calling the police she decides to re-call all the hospitals first. But there are no patients named Scott Crowder at Sibley, at Suburban, or at any of the other local hospitals.
Sometimes husbands don’t come home.
But not hers. Not Scott. Scott always comes home. She can count on one hand the nights they’ve slept apart. Occasionally Scott travels for work, but not more than a few times a year. Maybe some husbands take off, but not Scott.
Finally, she calls the police.
As soon as she explains to the sergeant on the line why she is calling, she feels like she’s been plunged into Kafka-esque nightmare, restating the same information as last night and in return receiving the identical responses.No,he’s not at any of the hospitals. No, he doesn’t have a history of mental illness.The sergeantchecks the car’s license plate number against traffic accidents in the area, but there’s no match.
“Sometimes people need to get away from their families for a day or two. They usually turn up,” the sergeant says. “Has there been any tension in his life recently? A fight?”
“No, nothing like that,” Aimee says. But there has been tension, hasn’t there? One hundred thousand dollars’ worth of tension. Not to mention Anton’s murder. The police were poking around, asking Scott questions. You could definitely call that tension. Yet if she mentions the missing money to the police, she knows how it will look. Like he took off. They’ll never take it seriously that he might be hurt somewhere. They’ll chalk his disappearance up to marital strife. She gets off the phone and immediately texts Tim that she won’t be able to meet him today at a job site. He texts back saying he will handle it, and she feels some relief knowing at least one thing in her life is under control.
Alone in the house, the panic builds within her until her heart is beating so fast she thinks she might pass out. She can’t do this all alone, but she doesn’t want to burden anyone else. Besides, what help could anyone else offer her? She hunts down the business card left by the detective who visited them.
“Hello, Detective Salazar? This is Aimee Stern. Scott Crowder’s wife? I need your help. Scott is missing.”
It takes him less than twenty minutes to pull up in his sedan. Aimee notes with some irony that seeing this same car outside Gwen’s house on Saturday morning was the first sign that something was amiss on Nassau Court. Back then, she considered for a brief moment that Gwen and Anton had been in some kind of domestic fight. Is that what other neighbors will think now, of her and Scott? She opens the front door and greets the detective.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he says once they are both seated in the living room. “You say your husband left the house to pick up your daughter?”
Aimee leans forward, desperate for help. “Yes. Around six-fifteen. Noa, that’s my daughter, was visiting a family friend in Potomac.” She stops herself. “She’s a client of mine, I run a landscape design business, but she’s become a friend.”
“And what’s this woman’s name and address?”
Aimee reels off Cathy’s address, which she knows by heart. “But he never showed up.”
“When did you realize he was missing?”
“Around seven-thirty maybe? Cathy brought Noa home and said Scott had never shown up. And his phone had been turned off, because when I called, it went straight to voicemail.”
Salazar pulls at his chin. “Six-fifteen to seven-thirty. That’s an hour and fifteen minutes. You didn’t become concerned that it was taking so long to get to Potomac and back?”
Aimee straightens up, rebuked. “I was preoccupied with something here. Otherwise, I would have noticed.”
“I see. And you haven’t heard from him? No texts or phone calls.”
“No,” Aimee says. “Like I said, his phone is off.”
“We can try to track it. Has your husband ever done anything like this before? Stayed out late, maybe had a few too many, slept at a friend’s?”
“No, nothing like that. He’s not like that. He’s a good man. He’s a good father. He would never not contact me and leave me worrying like this. That’s how I know something is wrong.” She searches the detective’s face for some sign of understanding but sees none. “We have twins, and a girl. Neither of us would just leave the other with the kids.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Wow, three kids. That’s a lot.” He gives her a sympathetic shrug. “I’ve got a newborn at home, and sometimes just the one feels like more than I can handle.”
Aimee bristles. “You’re not getting it. Something’s happened. I know it.”