“She’s going to have to work very hard at holding herself together through all this.”
“Personal problems can definitely ruin your career, ” Abby agreed.
“They can, if you let them. But if you survive them, they can make you stronger, more effective.”
“I know,” she muttered, staring at her wineglass. “I’m pretty sure I never would have left Richmond if it hadn’t been for what happened to Henna.”
Not long after I had taken office in Richmond, Abby’s sister, Henna, was murdered. The tragedy had brought Abby and me together professionally. We had become friends. Months later she had accepted the job at the Post.
“It still isn’t easy for me to come back here,” Abby said. “In fact, this is my first time since I moved. I even drove past my old house this morning and was halfway tempted to knock on the door, see if the current owners would let me in. I don’t know why. But I wanted to walk through it again, see if I could handle going upstairs to Henna’s room, replace that horrible last image of her with something harmless. It didn’t appear that anyone was home. And it probably was just as well. I don’t think I could have brought myself to do it.”
“When you’re truly ready, you’ll do it,” I said, and I wanted to tell her about my using the patio this evening, about how I had not been able to before now. But it sounded like such a small accomplishment, and Abby did not know about Mark.
“I talked to Fred Cheney’s father late this morning,” Abby said. “Then I went to see the Harvey’s.”
“When will your story run?”
“Probably not until the weekend edition. I’ve still got a lot of reporting to do. The paper wants a profile of Fred and Deborah and anything else I can come up with about the investigation-especially any connection to the other four couples.”
“How did the Harvey’s seem to you when you talked to them earlier today?”
“Well, I really didn’t talk to him, to Bob. As soon as I arrived, he left with his sons. Reporters are not his favorite people, and I have a feeling being ‘Pat Harvey’s husband’ gets to him. He never gives interviews.”
She pushed her half-eaten steak away and reached for her cigarettes. Her smoking was a lot worse than I remembered it. “I’m worried about Pat. She looks as if she’s aged ten years in the last week. And it was strange. I couldn’t shake the sensation she knows something, has already formulated her own theory about what’s happened to her daughter. I guess that’s what made me most curious. I’m wondering if she’s gotten a threat, a note, some sort of communication from whomever’s involved. And she’s refusing to tell anyone, including the police.”
“I can’t imagine she would be that unwise.”
“I can,” Abby said. “I think if she thought there was any chance Deborah might return home unharmed, Pat Harvey wouldn’t tell God what was going on.”
I got up to clear the table.
“I think you’d better make some coffee,” Abby said. “I don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel.”
“When do you need to head out?”
I asked, loading the dishwasher.
“Soon. I’ve got a couple of places to go before I drive back to Washington.”
I glanced over at her as I filled the coffee-pot with water.
She explained, “A Seven-Eleven where Deborah and Fred stopped after they left Richmond – ”
“How did you know about that?” I interrupted her.
“I managed to pry it out of the tow truck operator who hung around the rest stop, waiting to haul away the Jeep. He overheard the police discussing a receipt they found in a wadded-up paper bag. It required one hell of a lot of trouble, but I managed to figure out which Seven-Eleven and what clerk would have been working around the time Deborah and Fred would have stopped in. Someone named Ellen Jordan works the four-to-midnight shift Monday through Friday.”
I was so fond of Abby, it was easy for me to forget that she had won more than her share of investigative reporting awards for a very good reason.