Kate Conway has been having quite a hard time of it lately. First, she and her husband separate after many years of marriage because he's fallen in love with someone else. Before she can fully adjust to her new almost single status, her husband is found dead. On top of all that, his mistress wants to be her new best friend. This is all just a bit too much to take in.
Her husband's death may or may not have been murder and she just can't let that go. In the middle of all this, she gets offered a new television show called Missing Persons. It's a show that lets Kate do what she does best: interview people left behind after a loved one disappears. Her first show is built around a missing girl named Theresa. She walked out of her door one day and just never returned. After missing for a year, there have been no clues as to what became of her. It's Kate's job to interview her family, friends and ex-lovers to see just what may have become of Theresa.
Getting to the bottom of her husband's death has become very important to Kate, but everyone around her is acting odd. So it may take a bit longer to figure it all out, especially if she ends up sitting in jail as a suspect. There are too many questions to be answered for her to be trapped in that way.
Simultaneously, Kate finds herself more and more intrigued by Theresa's story, especially the more people she meets that show a different side of Theresa. With an overbearing and over protective mother, violent brother, a rather indifferent boyfriend and a stalker ex-boyfriend looming over her, could she have just walked away from everyone? One thing is clear, Theresa was a different person to friends than she was to family.
As Kate tries to unravel these two mysteries, she becomes a target herself. She must figure out which case her threats are tied to if she's going to make it through alive.
Clare O'Donohue also writes the Someday Quilt Mysteries but the Kate Conway Mysteries are a bit less "cozy." However, these books grab you and don't let go until the final page. I can't recommend MISSING PERSONS enough! It feels as if you're backstage at the production of a show, which is exactly what you're doing when you read this book. Everything ties together nicely so you're left with no loose ends, but there are plenty of surprises along the way.
The cause of death is "undetermined," but the cops peg
Chicago television producer, Kate Conway, as the main
suspect when her husband, Frank is found dead in the midst
of their most painful divorce. To make matters worse--and
weirder--Frank's girlfriend suddenly wants to be friends.
Happy for the distraction, Kate throws herself into a new
work assignment: the story of Theresa Moretti, a seemingly
angelic young woman who disappeared a year earlier. All
Kate wants is a cliched story and twenty-two minutes of
footage, but when the two cases appear to overlap, Kate
needs to work fast before another body turns up -- her own.
One
"I want you to tell me about the day your husband was murdered."
The woman glanced toward the camera before returning her eyes to me. Then, in a quiet tone, she launched into the story. It was one she must have told a hundred times in the last three yearsβto police, family, friends, prosecutors, and now, to me.
Her husband had managed one of those excessively cheerful chain restaurants in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Heβd recently started putting in a lot of hours because the couple was saving for their first home and planning a family. Heβd wanted, as the woman now told me, to give them a secure future. But it wasnβt to be. One night, after heβd closed the restaurant and let the rest of the employees go home, he stayed to send some e-mails to the corporate office. While he worked, two men broke into the restaurant, one of them an ex-employee. Fearing identification, the men shot the husband in the face. His last words, apparently, were, "Tell my wife I love her." The killers were caught six hours later, having stolen only forty dollars. The rest of the dayβs take had already been deposited at the bank by the assistant manager.
"Forty dollars," the woman repeated, still struggling to believe that her husband had been murdered, and her future shattered, for so paltry a sum.
She told the story beautifully, and with remarkable composure. But as I listened, nodding my head empathetically, my eyes glistening as if on the verge of tears, all I could think wasβthis would be so much better if she cried.
When she finished, she leaned back and looked, as they all do, for my approval. I gave it. I was her friend, after all. Though weβd only spoken once before today and Iβd met her only two hours ago, I was now her best friend. That was what I needed her to feel so that she would trust me, tell me things in confidence, forget that a cameraman and audio guy were just a few feet away, recording everything she said for the cable television show I worked for. Caught! was one of dozens of true-crime shows littering up television and yet we never ran out of new murders to profile.
I leaned forward in my chair. We were sitting with our knees only inches apart but I needed to get even closer to block out everything but me.
"You did a great job with that," I said. "It was really hard, I know, but you did better than anyone Iβve interviewed."
I could hear the sincerity in my voice. I could imitate sincerity so well that even I believed it. I glanced toward the photo of her husband, strategically placed behind her left shoulder.
"Doug was a very special man."
As they all do, she turned to see what I was looking at and saw the photo of her husband on their wedding day. She kept her eyes there, reluctant to turn her back on him.
"He had such wonderful dreams for you both," I continued. "I can imagine it was something you talked about a lot."
"It was." Her voice cracked.
"He must have wanted to give you everything."
"He did."
"I guess thatβs why he was working so late."
That was it. Tears came down her face. She began to shake. I reached over and placed my hand on hers. She turned her eyes back to me. She was so vulnerable, in so much pain. It would look great on camera.
I leaned back and spoke gently. "I want to go over the last question one more time. I know this is difficult, but tell me again about the day your husband was murdered."
She barely got through the story.
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