Page 13 of Pieces of Perfect
Excitement raced through her. “Why? Did you talk to Mitch?”
“I did,” he responded. “I was in Illinois while you were in Tennessee.”
“You didn’t say anything about that when we spoke on the phone.”
“You were dealing with enough already. I figured if it didn’t amount to anything, I’d just put it in my weekly email.”
“But itdidamount to something.”
“Ithink so.”
Rutledge never overstated anything, which imbued his words with more meaning than she would otherwise ascribe to them. “What did you learn?”
“He claims he had no idea Sarah was murdered, let alone that someone had left you to wander the streets. Told me Sarah moved to Florida after they split. He’s never even been there.”
“Can you prove otherwise?”
“I don’t know about that yet. There’s still a lot of work to be done. But I ran across something that makes me believe we’re on the right track.”
Lorelei caught her breath. This waswaymore than she’d expected. “What was that?”
“Most murders are committed by someone close to the victim. In an investigation, you look at every person connected to the deceased and try to rule them out, which was why I was so eager to find Mitch.”
“Wasn’t he out of the country when the murder occurred?”
“That’s whathesays. But I’m hoping to prove otherwise—because it’s a strange coincidence that his second wife went missing under very mysterious circumstances. He was and still is a suspect in her disappearance, but the Chicago police haven’t been able to prove anything.”
“He may have killedanotherwoman?”
“Yes. She disappeared fifteen years ago. No one’s heard from her since. Her family claims she’d never just drive off into the sunset and leave her two children, which she had from a prior marriage. But her body has never been found, which makes it hard for the police to build a case against him.”
“Wow,” she said on a long exhalation.
“Not only that, but I’ve spoken to two other women who’ve been romantically involved with Mitch.”
“And?”
“They both say he was controlling and sometimes violent and abusive. They were afraid of him.”
“He killed Sarah.”
“That’s my guess. From what I’m hearing, he’s not a man who takes kindly to rejection. One woman told me she had to move out of state in order to feel safe after she broke up with him.”
“She might’ve gotten lucky,” Lorelei said.
“I agree.”
“But…in Sarah’s case, would he leave the two-year-old child he’d adopted to wander around on her own?”
“A man that narcissistic could do anything,” he replied. “He certainly couldn’t have taken you with him even if he felt bad about it.”
“True.” Lorelei combed her fingers through her hair while trying to think. “This blows me away. Will-will we ever be able to prove it?”
“That, I can’t promise. But even if we can’t prove he killed Sarah, we might be able to prove he killed his second wife. There’s a lot more evidence in that case. I know it wouldn’t be quite the same, but it would put him away for good. That’s what’s important.”
She didn’t know what to say. She was struggling to take it all in.
“Lorelei?”
