“You’ve never talked about it recently?”
“No. I... I don’t want to sound crass, but quite frankly I’d sort of forgotten about it. I’ve had my own shit going on. In the last ten years, I got married, got divorced, started a business and watched Candiss’s mother die a slow death from Alzheimer’s.”
“When’s the last time that you saw Alice?”
“Fourth of July. We had a picnic at my house.”
Fairly recently. Was that when Alice had remembered the Antler case? Had they talked about it there? “Who was at the picnic?” Rena asked.
“Me. Her. Candiss. A few friends that we’ve all known for years.”
“Their names?” Rena asked.
“Is this really necessary?” Melissa asked.
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t,” Rena said, pen in hand.
“This is just getting ridiculous,” Melissa said, shaking her head.
Rena said nothing.
“Maggie Simmons. Patrice Candle. Ben Wallace. Patrice and Ben live next door. Maggie is Patrice’s sister.”
“Do you have contact information on all of them?”
Melissa pulled it up on her phone and Rena copied it down. “Thank you,” Rena said. She got up and had her hand on the break room door when Melissa suddenly stood up.
“My sister loves those kids. Fuck. Loves them more than their parents do. That’s who you should be looking at. Emma’s parents. Alice has said stuff about them. Stuff that sure as hell isn’t going to get them nominated for parents of the year.”
“What stuff?” Rena asked.
Melissa stared at her. “Just pay attention to the parents, okay?” She brushed past Rena. “I have to get back to work. Show yourself out, Detective.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Rena was parked in front of Patrice Candle and Ben Wallace’s house. She’d not yet had time to get out of her car when a Honda rounded the corner and pulled into the driveway. A woman was driving. The garage door went up, then down. Rena counted to thirty before opening her door. She knocked and the front door opened.
“Patrice Candle?” Rena asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Detective Morgan from the Baywood Police Department.” Rena waited for a hint of recognition. After all, she figured Melissa Wayne had called her friend and neighbor. Rena flipped out her badge.
Patrice studied it, then looked up at Rena. “What can I do for you, Officer?”
“I want to ask you a few questions about your neighbor, Melissa Wayne?”
“Oh my God. Is she okay? Did something happen?”
“You haven’t talked to her or heard from her today?” Rena asked.
“No. I...well, maybe she tried to call but I’ve sworn off my cell phone for thirty days. To prove a point to my husband.”
Rena resisted the urge to smile. “May I come in?” She really didn’t want to have this conversation on the sidewalk.
“Of course,” Patrice said. She opened the door.
“Your husband isn’t home?” Rena asked.
“He coaches fall soccer. They practice on Saturday mornings. It’s a pain but he loves it.”
She’d have preferred to talk to both of them but she didn’t feel inclined to wait around for Ben Wallace to come home. “How long have you lived in this house?”
“Six years last May.”
After the Antler kidnapping. “Did you have another home in Dover before that?”
“No. We moved here from Billings, Montana, when Ben got his teaching job.”
“Are you aware that a child disappeared in Dover about ten years ago? Her name was Corrine Antler.”
“Ben had one of the Antler boys in his social studies class last year. He’s...well, I guess you could say that he’s got some issues. Acts up in class. Disturbs other kids. Ben works with a team of teachers and when they were discussing the kid’s performance, one of the other teachers told him the story. It doesn’t excuse how the kid is acting but that’s a hell of a thing to happen to a family.”
“I understand that you attended a party hosted by Melissa Wayne in July. Do you recall who was there?”
“Sure. It wasn’t a big thing, just a cookout. It was Ben and me. And Melissa and Candiss. My sister, Maggie. Oh, and I think Melissa’s sister Alice was also there.”
Matched exactly what Melissa Wayne had told her. “Do you recall, was there any discussion at this cookout about Corrine Antler or the Antler family in general?”
Patrice shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Ben doesn’t discuss the kids in his school with anybody but me. He got burned years ago when he did that and somebody in the group was the kid’s uncle. It got ugly.” She stopped. Gave Rena a smile.
This was going nowhere fast. She should probably just admit defeat and go back to Baywood. “Thank you for your—”
“We might have talked about the foundation,” Patrice said.
“Foundation?” Rena repeated.
“The Corrine Antler Foundation. I guess when Corrine went missing, donations poured in. The family set up a foundation with the money. On the fifth year of Corrine’s disappearance, they paid for a new playground at the local park. Just recently, when it was the tenth anniversary, they donated money so that ten high school kids, kids who were in Corrine’s kindergarten class, could go on a field trip to Washington, DC.”
Rena could almost feel her blood pressure go up. “And you think this was discussed at Melissa Wayne’s cookout.”
“I think so. I can’t remember the specifics but it was a pretty impressive thing for the Antler family to do.”
“Can you recall anything specifically that Alice Quest might have said?”
“Somebody said that it was a cool thing for the family to do in that nobody would have known if they’d taken the money for a nice long family vacation. That might have been Alice.” She shrugged apologetically. “We had some wine. Things can get a little fuzzy.”
It was enough to know that Alice Quest had been in Dover in July and that there had been some conversation about Corrine Antler. Rena had her hand on the door when she turned.
“Does your husband like teaching?” she asked.
“Uh...yeah. I think so. I mean, it’s all he’s ever done.”
“My husband is going back to school to become a teacher,” Rena said, feeling as if she owed the woman an explanation. “After fifteen years in another career. That he didn’t hate,” she added.