Genevieve wasn’t making the connection. She seemed to find nothing strange in the fact that I needed to go to her uninhabited, locked house in search of a recent picture of my husband.

“See you soon,” I said, which probably wasn’t true, and hung up.

chapter 8

The day Genevieve’s only child died, the two of us had enjoyed a particularly good day at work, a productive day. I remember that we were both in good spirits.

I’d given her a ride to work that morning, since her car was in the shop, and I was taking her home as well. Since I had to drive her there, Genevieve had said, I might as well stay for dinner. And Shiloh, we reasoned, might as well come with us. Shiloh had been buried in the analysis of evidence that back then nobody had believed was the trail of Annelise Eliot. He was reluctant to stop and go with us, but Genevieve and I had worn him down. Genevieve had been particularly winning in her pleas. She was worried about him and how hard he’d been working.

It was February, one of those days in which the Cities were swaddled in a low-hanging layer of cloud that actually made for more warmth than a bright, clear day. Earlier, fresh snow had fallen, covering up the soot-stained ridges that lined the streets from the first weeks of winter onward.

Only the last of the day’s business for Gen and me had been something of a waste of time: A missing-child report. We’d driven out to a small condominium complex in Edina to meet a young father whose six-year-old son had failed to come home on the big yellow bus.

The young man-“Call me Tom”-was a relative rarity, a divorced father who’d gotten custody of his child. “It’s been tough,” he said, leading us inside his condo, where boxes were stacked up in the living room.

“Did you just move here?” I asked him, but even as I did I sensed that these weren’t moving boxes; they were all uniform in size and shape.

“Nah,” he said. “Those are juicers. I sell them, and a herbal health and diet supplement, from here at home,” he said. “And I just got my fitness-trainer credential, so I’ve been trying to build up a clientele base. Things have been pretty hectic.”

It made sense. Tom had a compact but obviously well-built frame, and his brown gaze was intense but not personal, in the practiced way of a salesman.

Sometimes you just get the feeling, whatever the external circumstances of a disappearance, that nothing is seriously wrong. As Genevieve and I began our interviewing, I started getting that feeling right away.

Naturally, the ex-wife had been of most interest to us; abduction by noncustodial parents is far more common than stranger abduction. “Nah,” Tom said, shaking his head emphatically. “I already talked to Denise at work. Kinda freaked her out, but I told her to stay put for now, that I’d already called you guys.” He frowned. “She wouldn’t just up and take him, believe me. She can hardly be persuaded to spend enough time with Jordy as it is,” he said. “She’s got a new boyfriend, and besides, she’s an antiques freak. Half the time I pick Jordy up on Saturdays, he’s spent his day walking around behind her in stores, looking at Tiffany lampshades and delft tiles. Is that how you entertain a six-year-old?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I said, “What about other relatives?”

“What about them? You mean, would they take Jordy?” Tom looked puzzled. “I can’t imagine it. My family’s all in Wisconsin, and Denise’s-” He broke off. “Oh, no.”

Genevieve and I looked at each other. Eureka.

“What is it?” Gen said, cuing him.

“Oh, no,” he said again, reddening. I suspected the heat in his face wasn’t embarrassment but anger. “Hold on,” he said, jumping up and going to the phone.

Tom dialed and spoke to an unknown party on the other end. It was clear within a minute that Jordy was safe and sound. “Is he there? He is?” Tom said. “I’ll come get him.”

I looked at Genevieve and spoke quietly. “What do you think?” I asked. “Wife’s sister?”

She shook her head. “Mother-in-law. I’d almost guarantee it.”

We got most of the story in overheard, and increasingly vitriolic, sound bites.

“Well, you didn’t even tell me. God, I was worried as… No, I didn’t. I said I didn’t need you to take him for a haircut. No, I did not agree, I did not… You’re twisting what I said in order to… His hair is not… That’s how they all wear… You’re not listening!”

After a moment even unshakable Genevieve looked up at the opposite corner of the room and rubbed the side of her nose with one finger, the embarrassed way people do when they’re hearing a conversation they’d rather not. I stood up, in hopes of illustrating to Tom that Genevieve and I needed to leave, now that the situation had obviously resolved itself.

“Look, I gotta go,” Tom said. “I’ll come get him. No, I’ll come. Just stay there.”

He hung up and walked back to us, shaking his head darkly. “Denise’s mother,” he said. “I can’t believe it. No, I can believe it. It just kills her that I got custody. She can’t handle it.”

He filled us in on the details: he and his mother-in-law had recently had a debate about young Jordy’s hairstyle. From this debate, she had apparently incorrectly inferred that she had permission to drive up from Burnsville, where she lived, pick Jordy up after school, and take him to the barber. “I told her no, flat out, but of course she says I said yes,” Tom said.

I say that Tom told both Genevieve and me this story, but his behavior was interesting to observe. He’d started out by directing his comments to me. Maybe it was because I was closer to his age, maybe it was because I was more visibly the regular visitor to a gym and therefore some kind of kindred spirit, maybe it was simply my ringless finger. But as I gave no encouragement to his airing of grievances, he correctly began identifying Genevieve as the more sympathetic pair of ears, probably because she was at least nodding in the right places. Gradually his attention and eye contact shifted. It was to Genevieve that he told the backstory: a history of meddling by the former mother-in-law, unwanted advice, veiled jabs at his child-rearing skills.

Finally, when his attention seemed solely on my partner, I drifted out of his line of sight and looked out the window at the parking lot, where a trio of warmly dressed kids were practicing free throws on one of those freestanding basketball hoops with a weighted base you can buy at sporting-goods stores. They were sure going to learn an unpleasant lesson, I thought, when they started playing on a court with a regulation-height hoop.

“Gen, we really should go,” I said.

But Genevieve was a soft touch. “Listen,” she told Tom kindly, “I know you wouldn’t want to press any sort of charges, but it might be good if my partner and I had a talk with your mother-in-law about the seriousness of taking someone else’s child without explicit prior permission.”

Behind Tom’s back, I scowled at Genevieve and shook my head. Genevieve ignored me, but fortunately, her offer wasn’t accepted.

“Nah,” Tom said, shaking his head. “It won’t help. She’ll just insist I gave her permission. She’ll even tell you that she specified that she’d do it today and that I agreed. Thanks for the offer, though.”

I was relieved, but Tom wasn’t quite through with us yet. On our way out, he tried to sell Genevieve a home juice machine. Genevieve declined, but Tom pressed a card with his phone number on it into Gen’s hand, “in case you change your mind.”

As soon as Genevieve started the car, I said, “What did you think you were doing back there, volunteering the two of us to drive down to Burnsville to listen to the other end of that extremely tedious family squabble?”

Genevieve was unfazed. “It might have been interesting. Aren’t you the least bit curious about whether the grandmother was an old battle-ax, as described? What if we found her to be gracious and reasonable and entirely in the right?” She accelerated slightly to merge with the traffic on the road.