The lights in the room were dim, small hanging lamps barely lighting the top of each table. I sat waiting at our usual back booth, clinking the empty wine glass in front of me with freshly manicured nails. My watch, illuminated in the dark booth, read half past eight making Este almost two hours late.
“Another glass of Chardonnay, Tess?” the waiter asked, approaching the table.
“No thank you, Avery,” I replied, reaching behind me for my purse. “I think I’ll just take the check now.”
Avery nodded with a smile, disappearing around the corner. Avery had been serving the two women since they had started coming to Olive Garden two years ago. He was now a junior in college, a communications major interning during summers with the St. Louis Blues. Hockey wasn’t his favorite sport in the world, but he wanted his own ESPN show and it was the best he could do. Talking to this 20-something twig, made their regular Tuesday night dinners even better.
I checked my phone again, trying both her cell phone and house phone for the fifth time tonight with no answer but the machine. It wasn’t like Este to leave me hanging for this long without hearing a word from her, let alone stand me up entirely.
When Avery returned with the bill, I laid down a twenty dollar bill and made a beeline for the parking lot, telling him to keep the change on my way out. Este’s house was just a few blocks from the restaurant, maybe something had happened at home that had prevented her from being able to communicate. Maybe something really bad had happened.
“I think my husband’s cheating on me.”
“And a howdy do to you too!” I returned, watching Este place her jacket in the booth before sliding across the black, vinyl seat.
“I’m sorry to just thrust this on you,” she apologized, running shaky fingers through her long blonde hair. “But I just got the credit card bill for this month, and there’s a $2,000 charge for jewelry that isn’t mine.”
Este slapped a piece of paper onto the table and pointed to the very top. There, just below a charge for dog food, right at the beginning of the month, was a charge at Braxton Jewelers. “Who knew Ricky even sold that type of jewelry. I honestly assumed it was all fake.”
With a nod, she slid the paper back into her bag and ordered a glass of wine and a shot. She downed the tequila in one gulp and sent Avery back to the bar with an empty glass. The Merlot she sipped on more gently.
“I don’t know what to do,” she continued. “He always smells like cheap booze and box wine, like it’s 2005 again and we’re back in high school. There are lipstick and foundation stains on his collar in the most hideous color you could imagine. I can’t even enjoy how hysterically cliche it is, because it’s my marriage that’s falling apart!”
“Have you thought about talking to him?”
“So he can just deny it all and hold the accusation over my head?”
“I know,” I replied sullenly, completely at a loss for how to help. “It sounded stupid as I was saying it.”
Every light in the house was on when I pulled up across the street from Este’s 1950’s, two bedroom starter home. There were so many things she was still waiting to do with the house. The pale yellow siding was dingy with mold. Two of the windows were missing shutters and screens. Each gutter was overflowing with leaves to the point that not a single drain pipe still worked. This was supposed to be her fixer upper, a side project she discovered watching HGTV, but it had been two years, and the outside was only looking worse.
I killed the engine and rolled down the windows, letting in the cool night air. No movement could be seen through any of the curtains or open windows and no cars sat in the driveway. Bright lights flashed down the road, and I slid down in my seat in a panic. Through the passenger’s window, I watched Este’s husband, Eddie, pull his brand new douche truck into the driveway. There was no other car in the garage.
Eddie hopped down from the driver’s seat and walked into the house, closing the garage door as he went. One by one, lights began turning off throughout the house until only the glow of the tv could be seen through the white linen living room curtains. The minute the garage door finished closing, I jammed my keys back into the ignition and took off down the street.
Thirty minutes later, as I pulled into my drive, I realized that Eddie’s truck hadn’t been spotless. Instead, there had been a thick ring of mud around the entire trimming of his truck. Both the front bumper and tailgate were coated, along with the wheel wells and undercarriage. The only part of the truck that hadn’t been covered was the tires. Those were pitch black and brand new.
I tried Este’s cell once more. This time it went straight to voicemail.
“Edgar has already filed a missing persons report.”
Somehow I couldn’t picture that. “Did he take his girlfriend to the station?”
Darren shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. “And how should I know that. It’s not my place. I’m only responsible for calling home when an employee doesn’t show.”
I paced behind Darren as he continued his work, wringing my hands and pulling the ends of my curls. It had been a week, 120 hours past the 48 hour deadline they give for people making it home alive, and 144 hours past the time they ask you to wait before reporting. I’ve been counting every single minute of every single hour for the past seven days. Even the seconds have deafened me waiting for something, anything. And all the while, I’ve driven past Este’s house watching as Eddie’s girlfriend has slowly moved into Este’s bed.
“I should’ve never let her go home by herself that night. She had no business confronting him by herself. He was probably drunk, he probably flew off the handle at her accusation, at the truth behind it. He’s always prided himself on being smart and stealthy, and there she was accusing him of something he probably thought there was no way she could’ve known. The agony she must have been in as he --”
Alana grabbed my arm and spun me around. “You have got to calm down. You can’t get away with thinking like that, let alone saying any of it outloud.”
She let go of my arms and backed away. I sank into the chair behind me and sighed. I missed my best friend, and it was difficult seeing her blonde hair and gray eyes every single day on her sister, never knowing if I would ever see her again. “Too bad you two aren’t identical twins. We could really give Eddie a scare.”
Alana smiled at me and returned to her work. I rose from my chair and made my way to the door. “Any way you could vouch for me tonight?”
My heart raced as I walked the familiar path to my best friend’s front door. I could hear the pounding in my skull, louder than the thoughts running through my mind. With shaky hands, I reached for the doorknob and waited for the inevitable. Seconds later, the door swung open to reveal Eddie in a bathrobe and boxer briefs clutching a Budweiser for dear life.
He stared hard through the screen door before realization struck. “What the heck are you doing here?”
“Funny that you should ask that,” I replied with a tilt of my head. “Your wife goes missing, you file a report with the police, and her best friend comes over as inconsolable as you, and the first thing you think to ask is that?”
He really was going to make this easy.
“What do you want?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and coaxed a few tears to my eyes. “I want a few of my best friend’s things. I miss her, and I want to feel close to her again.”
“Too bad,” he sniffed, taking a long swig of his beer. “It’s all gone. She must’ve taken it when she ran off.”
“When she what? I thought you filed a missing persons report. I thought the police were looking into it.”
Standing in the doorway, Eddie came across as intimidating but stupid. His six foot frame took up almost all of the opening, and he cast a shadow across me and the stairs, blocking every ounce of light from the house. I couldn’t see anything past the dining room directly behind him.
“Can I at least come in and see what she left behind?” I coaxed, when he wouldn’t budge. “There’s no way she took everything.”
“Look, I can’t help you. Now, if you don’t get off my property, I’m gonna be forced to call the police, and I don’t wanna go causing any trouble.”
A crooked smile formed across my face, and Eddie took a step back into the house. “Oh, I would definitely call the police if I were you.”
The clock on the dresser read 8:56 a.m. when the banging began. Groggily, I rose from the bed and shuffled towards the door, tying the small white sash around my bathrobe. I pulled my hair up into a bun and opened the door, mouth half cocked in a yawn.
“Good morning, ma’am,” an officer bagan, flashing me his badge. Another cop stood just behind him, their patrol car parked to our left in the rock driveway. “We are with the Coahoma Police Department. We just wanted to ask you a few questions about Tuesday night.”
“How can I help you officer’s?” I yawned again and apologized for my appearance. I explained that I had been at my best friend’s sister’s house the past couple of nights, consoling her over the loss of her beloved sister, Este Taylor. The two officer’s nodded their consent and apologized for our loss. That case was still open.
“Would you like to come in?” I asked, opening the door even further and stepping back to allow them room to move through. “If you don’t mind, I’m gonna find something a little more suitable for the occasion, and then I can make up some coffee, perhaps.”
Minutes later, I emerged again fully clothed and made my way into the kitchen. The two officers rose from the couch and followed suit, setting up at the counter as I placed a K - cup into my Keurig. I offered the two men the basket of coffee and pulled three mugs down while they chose. “You were saying earlier that you had some questions about Tuesday?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the first cop responded, leaning into the counter with the backs of his forearms. He was roguishly handsome like most cops in tv and movies, too handsome to actually exist outside of La La Land. His partner, a younger cop with a military style haircut, sat back on his stool with one arm resting on the back. “Your friend’s husband was reported missing two nights ago by his girlfriend. We didn’t have any leads until someone called the station last night with an anonymous tip. His body was found early this morning in Moon Lake over in Lula. We just wanted to know if you knew anything.”
I paused for a moment, my mouth held slightly agape. When I looked at the officers again, there were tears in my eyes. “I haven’t heard a thing. Do you think this could possibly be related to Este’s disappearance? Have you found her yet?!?”
Both faces fell, and the lead cop shook his head. The radio on military head’s belt went off, and the cops took their leave. “If you hear anything, just give us a call.”
I watched from the doorway as the patrol car pulled out of the driveway and sped off down the road. The phone rang shortly after I closed the door. Alana Taylor was on the other line. “The cops were just here.”
“Same here. What did they want from you?”
“To know where I was. To know where you were.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told the truth,” she replied after a short pause. “‘She was with me, dude.’”
“And all of that happened in the span of a month?”
“Yeah,” I replied, leaning into the microphone. It had been years since my best friend’s disappearance, and we were all convinced it was a murder. “His mistress was taken into custody a few days later. I don’t know if anyone even thought she was guilty, but she had taken such a large amount of insurance out on him just before the accident there was nothing left to save her. Except maybe the fact that he had gotten drunk and drowned in the lake.”
The podcast host shook her head with a laugh. We were coming to the end of an hour-long session on unsolved mysteries, and I had been invited on as a guest to tell Este’s story. Even years after the fact, it was a case I knew like the back of my hand.
“And that’s all the time we have for today murder junkies! We’ll be back next week with another unsolved mystery all the way from Seattle, Washington. Until then, I’m Carrie, your Murder Junkie host signing off with a big shout out to.”
“Danielle Este Taylor,” who did kill her husband.