...And Never Let HerGo

Daniels what they talked about during the two hours they were in the Panorama, or even
if
they had talked. The woman had tried to smile at her when she approached the table, but it seemed an effort.
    The man? She could remember nothing special about him more than his glasses, which had a tint to them that virtually hid his eyes. Daniels showed Jacqueline Dansak a photograph of Anne Marie; he didn’t have a picture of Tom. She said that she recognized her as the woman who had eaten there Thursday night.
    So far, Tom Capano’s story of that Thursday evening seemed to be completely accurate. The doggie bags in Anne Marie’s refrigerator were from the Ristorante Panorama, and one had contained a scarcely touched portion of swordfish. The cotton dress with flowers on it sounded like the dress the detectives had seen in her apartment. Everything indicated that she had come home from Philadelphia, gone up to her apartment with Tom, who had carried the doggie bags and the gift from Talbot’s upstairs for her, and then left. She had taken her dress off, but had half folded it and tossed it over a settee instead of hanging it up as she routinely did.
    It didn’t sound as if the evening had been a happy one, however. Even a waitress who didn’t know them had wondered why Anne Marie and Tom had seemed glum and had only picked at their meals. She was quite sure, though, that they weren’t having an argument; they just seemed to be at an impasse, bored, or even silently angry. But that evening was becoming more and more important to investigate, since Jacqueline Dansak appeared to be the last person—other than Capano—to have seen Anne Marie before she vanished.
    On Tuesday morning, July 2, with Anne Marie still missing, the Wilmington paper noted that she had last been seen in an unidentified Philadelphia restaurant on Thursday night and added quotes from her brothers. “This is very odd . . . very confusing for everybody,” Robert told reporters. “It’s so unlike her to be out of touch for more than an afternoon, let alone a whole weekend. She’s your normal, 30-year-old single girl with a lot of local friends and family.”
    Kathleen, Robert, Kevin, Mark, and Brian were spending most of their time at Anne Marie’s apartment. Mark moved in so that someone would be there constantly. He was the brother she had agonized over, loving him so much that she wept for him. Now, she was gone—and Mark would have done anything to get Annie back. They all would.
    The police asked Kathleen to inventory everything in Anne Marie’s apartment to see what might be missing. She did, and the only things she could be sure of were Anne Marie’s keys, her Walkman, and the blue topaz ring that Paul Columbus had given her. Anne Marie had worn that ring with the cotton dress they’d found flung over her settee; it matched the little blue flowers in the pattern. But now it was missing, along with Anne Marie. And by the end of the day, rumors were already circulating that she had last been seen dining with a “prominent Wilmington attorney” in Philadelphia just before she vanished.
    D EBBY M AC I NTYRE was only peripherally aware that a woman was missing in Wilmington. In retrospect, she remembered that she had seen the picture of a pretty woman on the front page of the paper and read the headline. It didn’t seem to touch her world, and she rarely read crime news. She had heard the rumor but thought nothing of it. Wilmington was filled with attorneys, many of whom could be described as prominent.
    Sometime on that Tuesday, Debby got a phone call at work from Tom. “I have something very shocking to tell you,” he began. “You’d better sit down.”
    Automatically, Debby sank to her chair, ready for what must surely be bad news.
    “Do you recall reading about a woman who is missing who had gone to dinner with a prominent attorney?”
    “I think I saw something in the paper . . .”
    “You heard that she was last seen having dinner with a prominent attorney?”
    Debby waited, her heart suddenly thudding.
    “That was me.”
    “Oh, no,” she breathed.
    “I’m a suspect in her disappearance,” Tom said. “I’ve hired Charlie Oberly to represent me. I wanted to call you now because I’m going down to Stone Harbor a day early for the Fourth.”
    “Who is this woman?” Debby asked, puzzled.
    “Her name’s Anne Marie Fahey. I’ll call you later tonight and we’ll talk about it.”
    Debby was stunned. What had Tom