“Elaine, do you know where Joe is now?” Eric asked.

“I haven’t heard from him in years. But I heard a rumor he’s living in Milwaukee with a divorcee and her two kids. She gets big alimony payments; that’s right up his alley.”

Lisa noted the source of the rumor and asked Elaine for a photo of her daughter.

“We won’t take up any more of your time.” Lisa handed Elaine her card. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

They made an unscheduled stop in Elm Grove, an upscale area north of Brookfield. They turned onto a street lined with stately homes, not quite mansions, but brick and elegant, with mature trees and professional landscaping. The house they stopped at had a curved brick pathway leading to a heavy stone step in front of an oak door with windows of leaded glass.

A tall brunette wearing gray sweats opened the door to them. She panted, out of breath. “What can I do for you?”

Lisa said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but we’re looking for anyone who knows the whereabouts of Deanna Knowles.”

She exclaimed, “Whereabouts? I’m Deanna Knowles. Who’s looking for me?”

In an effort to finesse their way back to the car as quickly as possible, Lisa said, “I’m writing a book on women who’ve gone missing. Your name came up on our list. I’m sorry. There must have been a mistake.”

Deanna Knowles frowned, her mouth pressed into a straight line. A tense moment passed. “My husband and I had some problems in our marriage a couple years ago. I stayed with my sister in California for a few months while I decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was gone for about two weeks before I called my husband.”

Eric and Lisa thanked her, apologized again for interrupting her workout, and returned to the car.

“One down,” Eric said, moving ahead of Lisa to open the car.

She turned to face him. “Not really. Did you notice her neck?”

“I didn’t. Women wearing sweats don’t have much appeal to the male eye. Sorry.”

Lisa gave him a sharp look. “She had a nearly healed bruise below her jaw line and another above her collarbone. There’s still a crack in that marriage.”

A few minutes of silence passed.

Eric asked, “We have an hour till the next appointment. Do you mind if we stop at the showroom? I’ll give you a free, three-dollar tour.”

17             

Eric’s business remained Kristy’s Classics, its name since the seventies when George Kristofferson opened it with six cars badly in need of repair and a dream of making classic car sales profitable. For a small admission, the public could visit the showroom.

The old cars, showroom new, dazzled Lisa as their bright colors gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Eric explained the muscle cars from the sixties and seventies were the most popular and most lucrative models. Lisa decided they weren’t her favorites; she loved the old coupes from the thirties. They reminded her of the black-and-white gangster movies she liked. She could visualize Al Capone leaning out a window, machine-gun in hand.

Quite a few people milled about the showroom, among them a striking young woman being shown the cars by a man who appeared to be giving her a sales pitch for an old sports car Lisa couldn’t identify.

The woman, resplendent in tight, chocolate-brown jeans, low-cut orange sweater, and impossibly high heels, called out, “Eric! I’m so glad you’re here.” She did a little teeter-shuffle toward Eric, probably all she could do in her ice pick heels.

“Hello, Danielle. Glad to see you came back for a second look.” Eric turned to Lisa. “Excuse me for minute. I need to take care of this.”

Terrence Young, Eric’s general manager, a tall, slim man with silver hair and a faint European accent, came over to Lisa and continued her tour while Eric and the young woman laughed in the background.

Peeved at being set aside, Lisa thought the woman didn’t look more than thirty years old, and she was obviously putting the moves on Eric. He wasn’t exactly batting her off with a dipstick. But then, it wasn’t any of her business what the man did. She couldn’t point fingers after all—Tyler was much nearer her daughter’s age than her own.

By the time Eric tore himself away Lisa had grown seriously angry. They’d only come here at her agreement, and he’d rolled her aside like an old tire. She’d noticed he’d even taken time to light up a cigar in his office before joining her again. From the look of things, they’d be late for their one o’clock appointment.

“Sorry about that, Lisa. But I had to get a sale lined up.”

Before Lisa could stop herself, she muttered, “Yeah, it looked like she had something to sell.”

After leaving the showroom, Eric and Lisa arrived at their meeting in Oconomowoc fifteen minutes late. Helen Mueller, the woman Lisa had talked to on Thursday, was the mother of an Emma Fischer, who‘d disappeared about a year ago. Helen lived in a small, ranch-style house located a few blocks off the lake close to the downtown area. The house looked well maintained and had an arrangement of pumpkins on the porch. A late model SUV sat in the driveway in front of an attached garage.

Helen Mueller greeted them with a strained smile as she invited them in. They turned down her offer of refreshments, but the coffee table in the center of the tiny living room held a plate of cookies. Lisa noticed Eric grab one as he sat down in a chair at the far end of the room. Helen chatted about Halloween and the weather, while Lisa wondered at the change in her manner since she’d spoken to her the other night.

She was about to remind Helen of the point of the meeting, when a man entered the room. Short-statured, he had thick reddish-brown hair and narrow, lizard-like, green eyes that took in everything without noticeably scanning the room.

“This is my son-in-law, Steven Fischer. He came over to help me with the windows. When I told him about your visit, he offered to be here, too.”

“Mom says you’re writing a book about missing women.”

“Yes,” Lisa said, “abused women.” Like all the women on their list, Emma Fischer had a 911 call on record. Fischer ignored the comment.

Something about Steven Fischer set off Lisa’s warning bells. “Right now we’re trying to establish how many abused women reported missing are truly missing. Have either of you heard from Emma since she disappeared?”

Steven answered. “No, and we don’t expect to. Emma cleaned out her checking and savings accounts before she left and took her coin collection. There’d been signs she’d been seeing another man. I couldn’t get her to talk to me about it, and then one day she disappeared.”

Lisa had been watching Helen’s face during his speech, and it was oddly expressionless, her eyes examining the carpet.

The son-in-law, in khaki pants and a green polo shirt with sleeves stretched tight to accommodate muscular arms, looked like he spent a lot of time working out. Small Man Syndrome, Lisa thought. Odd, he was dressed to play golf, yet supposedly here to help with storm windows. Also strange that Helen, who’d been so eager to talk to Lisa when she’d called her, now had nothing to say.

Lisa stood. “Well, thank you for seeing us. Sorry to have intruded on your afternoon.” Lisa handed Helen her card and asked her to let her know if anything changed, making eye contact with Helen on the word ”anything.” Helen walked them to the door. When they were out of range of Steven’s reptilian eyes, Helen pulled a photo of Emma out of her pocket and slipped it to Lisa.

As they drove away, Eric said, “It wouldn’t be too hard to make it look like Emma Fischer took her money with her.”

“That man sent up red flags for me. It was strange he didn’t comment on the abuse, or at least make light of the 911 call.”