“It’s okay,” I said, reaching across the table and taking her hand. I let Eric’s call go to voicemail.
“It’s not though. I feel like I’m drowning, Cass. I try to put on a brave front. I try not to feel sorry for myself. I feel guilty because I can’t even grieve for my husband. People forget about that. They all just think I killed him. But I miss him. And I need him.”
My phone started ringing again.
“You should take that,” she said. Before I could stop her, she rose and walked over to the door.
“Katy …”
She called for the guard. Katy put on a fake smile as she was led back out of the room. Feeling a little despondent myself, I answered the call.
“Please tell me you’ve got good news. Please tell me you found Sugar Bear. Katy wasn’t much help today.”
Eric sighed. “I’m not surprised, unfortunately. Well, I’ve got partial good news. I didn’t find Sugar Bear, but I found Sister Bear. I just got off the phone with her. It’ll be a little bit of a hike, but she agreed to meet with us tomorrow morning.”
Chapter 10
Eric’s leadtook us to a suburb just outside of Cleveland. Along the way, he shared what he’d learned from his former counterpart at the Detroit Police Department.
“It took some digging, but this woman actually tagged herself in one of the photos where she showed up at a station fundraiser,” he said. “And it sounds like this woman made her way through almost all the on-air talent at WDTN over a period of five years. First, this guy, Bill Bryant. That’s who she was fixated on when she showed up at this fundraiser. I was up all night looking through WDTN’s Facebook photos over the last decade. Made my eyes bleed. Then she moved on to Tom. She moved on to the guy who replaced Loomis after he moved to Delphi for a while. But then she pivoted back to Tom.”
“Maisy Carmichael,” I read Eric’s notes.
“Sugar Bear herself,” Eric said.
“Did the cops ever get the sense she was dangerous?”
Eric put his blinker on as we neared our exit. His GPS indicated we’d arrive at “Sister Bear’s” house in five minutes. Her name was Daphne. Maisy was her older sister.
“Not really. Just persistent. She showed up at most of the station’s events. Telethons. A Toys for Tots fundraiser. Always dressed in a costume.”
I turned the page of the report. It was a grainy, poor-quality photocopy of Sugar Bear/Maisy dressed up like Wonder Woman and posing with Gloria Blaine and Bill Bryant.
“The part that prompted the station to take it more seriously happened not long after Tom left. His replacement was a guy named Asher Davis.”
There was a photo of him too in the file. A publicity shot of a devilishly handsome African American man in a blue sport coat with the station logo. He spun a basketball on his index finger, perfectly balanced.
“Asher’s mother died a few months after he started at the station. Maisy showed up at the funeral home. Asher was mentioned in the obituary, which of course listed the time and place of the services.”
“How awful,” I said. “That would freak me out too. Did they arrest her?”
“No. There were a few off-duty cops, friends of another of Asher’s family members, in attendance. They escorted her out and managed to scare her away. Then, after the station formalized things, field ops paid her a visit at her home. She went pretty quiet after that.”
I closedthe file.
“Until she started emailing Tom again a year ago.”
Eric turned down a tree-lined street in a neighborhood with a familiar character. Clearly built just after World War II, the homes were similar. Sturdy, brick, and boxy. I could pretty much guarantee everyone had a standard tri-level floor plan with three bedrooms on the top level, a kitchen and living room on the ground level, and a basement. My maternal grandparents lived in one. My father always complained that you had to either go up or downstairs to get to a bathroom.
Eric pulled into the driveway of the third house on the left. A dark-haired woman stood in the driveway holding some kind of Schnauzer mix. She waved as Eric cut the engine.
“Sister Bear, I presume,” I said.
We stepped out. Daphne Carmichael gave us a pleasant smile and invited us into her home. The layout was exactly as I had imagined. It looked like Daphne had freshened up the kitchen, but kept the original tile floor and orange Formica countertops.
“I really appreciate your willingness to talk to us,” I said after we made our introductions and Daphne offered us something to drink. We both declined.
“It’s no problem,” she said. “I’m just afraid you made such a long drive for very little. As I told Detective Wray on the phone, I haven’t seen my sister in a good long while.”
