Read Unknown for Free Online

it involve you or Ben for that matter?”
    She sighed and absently stroked the head of Dixie, the dog nearest her, an affectionate lab mix who loved everybody. “We went down there yesterday and I told the detective everything I saw Monday morning. How Frank’s truck was in the driveway while we were getting ready to leave with the puppy.”
    “Wow, he got here earlier than usual.”
    “That’s what we thought, too. Buck even remarked on it. I thought it was odd he was here and it was just barely light. I also thought it was strange that he was talking to somebody on the driveway and they seemed to be having a bit of an argument.”
    “Oh? What else did you tell the detective?” I felt a little light-headed and queasy, anticipating what I prayed Dot wasn’t going to say.
    “I told him about the person that Frank was talking to. It was a man, definitely, but he had his back to us. I knew it wasn’t Darnell, because whoever it was talking to Frank, he was a head taller than Frank, and much thinner.”
    Darnell might be fairly tall and weedy, but he was definitely not that much taller than his boss. “You couldn’t tell who it was, though?”
    “Not really. But I had to tell the detective the truth—that the man I saw seemed young, and tall and was wearing shorts and a dark, hooded sweatshirt.”
    “Just like Ben’s,” I said, thinking back to that same garment, the one I’d pulled off the living-room chair to put on and go outside and talk to the detective Monday. It had been tossed on the chair as if somebody had come into the house and flung it off the moment they got in the door.
    “Just like Ben’s,” Dot echoed, her lower lip still trembling. “Gracie Lee, I really thought he’d gone back to school Sunday night when we had all gone to bed. If I had realized he was still home, I probably wouldn’t have told the detective what I saw.”
    “No, you were right to tell the truth,” I told her. If anybody was wrong, it was Detective Fernandez for thinking that the person Dot saw could possibly be Ben. Now how was I going to convince him of that?

Chapter Four

    G oing to see Fernandez with Ben was about the only thing that took precedence over work, so I called Maria. She sounded very understanding about the whole thing. In fact, by what she said I had to assume that she hadn’t expected me to come in at all today. I made the drive to school in record time and got to Ben’s dorm, where he was pacing around the bedroom in the suite that he shared with a young man named Ted from Minnesota, who I hadn’t seen much of in the semester they’d been roommates. Today was no different; Ben was there, Ted wasn’t. He either had an amazing amount of classes or quite a social life.
    I hugged my son and discovered that he was shaking. “Hey, maybe the detective just wanted to scare you into coming in on his schedule,” I told him. I wasn’t so sure that was the case, especially after what Dot had told me, but Ben looked so nervous that I wanted to calm him down. Besides, I wanted what I said to be true.
    “Come on, let’s get this over with,” I told him. I made sure he locked his dorm room behind him and we headed to the car.
    “Did you call a lawyer?” he asked once we were on the way. “Is somebody meeting us there?”
    “Not yet. I want to see what’s going on first. Is there anything else about that morning that you need to tell me before we get there?” I used the same line, as nonthreatening and unaccusing as possible, that I’d used all through his teenage years. I’d always found that it worked better than “Hey, what did you do?”
    With that same line I’d gotten information about dings in a car, a crumpled package of cigarettes hidden way down in a trash can when he was fourteen—a one-time experience, I was told—and various other teen happenings both good and bad. This time there was a lot of silence.
    “Not really, Mom. Honest. I don’t know anything about how the guy died. I