Nothing out of place.
Except for Jamison’s missing wife.
“Tell me,” he said, as Jamison waved him onto the sectional. “What happened?”
Jamison sank heavily into the cushions on the other end. “I wish I knew. This was supposed to be a weekend alone for Naomi and me. Our anniversary is next week, so we shuffled the girls off to her sister’s house—well, actually Naomi took them up to Charleston last night. It’s a three-day weekend for the kids—some kind of teacher in-service or something. I don’t really know. Naomi keeps track of all of that, the kids’ schedules and all.”
Pierce believed that. Jamison was nothing if not a workaholic. Many times when Pierce had worked late, he’d seen lights in Jamison’s office, and often, in the morning, Jamison was the first one in the department, after going for a morning run or hitting the gym.
Type A didn’t begin to describe Jamison Kittle.
But not this morning.
Today he was a mess, unshaven, his face drawn, dark circles under his eyes.
“Anyway,” he said after taking a swallow of coffee, “even with everything going on with the homicides, I agreed that we should spend time alone together. I suggested we go somewhere. Like, Bermuda or the Bahamas, really get away, but she didn’t want to do that.” He stared into his cup as if he could find answers in the dark liquid. “She said if we went away, we should take the girls, that we didn’t have that much time with them, as Lara would … Lara would graduate in a couple of years.” He thought for a second, lost in thought.
“So?” Pierce encouraged.
“So we decided to have a ‘staycation.’ Just stay home. I guess it’s a thing now.” He paused and sighed. “And, if I’m being completely honest, the time alone was for another reason. We wanted the privacy. The fact is that we’re trying for another baby.” His smile was without humor. “Hoping for a boy. An heir, I guess.”
When he saw Pierce’s raised eyebrow, he nodded. “Yeah, I know. It’s old school. Out of favor. I know it. Still, it’s the way my family has worked for generations. Don’t get me wrong. I love my daughters. I’d do anything for those girls. Anything. You know that. They’re the best. So don’t give me any grief about being a misogynist. It’s just myfamily tradition, and, the truth is, I’d really like a son. A boy. You know, someone I could toss a ball around with or take hunting and fishing.”
Pierce was about to argue that he could do just about anything with a girl that he could do with a boy, but he held his tongue, deciding to let the man talk and see where the conversation would lead.
There was a pause.
Pierce waited.
“There’s something else,” Jamison admitted, and by his tone, Pierce sensed something bad was coming.
“Yeah?”
“Naomi and I … have been struggling a bit. In the marriage. The usual midlife stuff, you know. She accused me of working too many hours, that it took away time from the family, and really, she’s right. So the baby was meant to fix things, put everything back on the right track.” His gaze met Pierce’s. “I know what it sounds like, but we both wanted it, so …” He got to his feet again and strode restlessly toward the windows. “So this weekend was supposed to be kind of a reset, I suppose. Anyway, I agreed that we would stay here, even though I figured she might have a honey-do list. I’m pretty sure she wanted me to tackle some of the projects I’d been ignoring …” His voice trailed off as he watched the sun inch upward, sending rays through the forest and over the grassland where cattle grazed. “She took the girls to her sister’s place in Charleston around six, and that was the last I heard from her. I called, of course, and talked to Roxanne.”
Roxanne, Pierce knew, was Naomi’s older sister, but he didn’t like this turn in the conversation.
Jamison went on, “Roxie told me Naomi had dropped them off just as planned. Around six. She stuck around for about half an hour, had a glass of wine, then left.”
“And then she was supposed to come back here?”
He glanced back at Pierce. “Eventually. She said something to me about meeting friends for a drink … I don’t really know. I was working late, and she was a little pissed about that but got over it.”
“What time did you get home?”
“Around ten.”
“And she wasn’t here.”
“Right. And didn’t check in.” He returned his gaze to the windows, his gaze seeming to hover over the tree line. “I waited until about ten-thirty or so and tried calling. But she didn’t pick up. Never responded.”
“Is that unusual?”
“If she’s busy, it might take an hour or two, but she always gets back to me.” He was still staring out the window, past the pool area. “Once in a while, it’s been overnight, just a couple of times, but that was because her phone wasn’t charged or she left the phone somewhere or somehow she missed the message.”
“Has this ever happened before? When she didn’t show up to where she was supposed to be?”
A beat.
