It was Leslie who never lost faith in him. He never told anyone but he used to spend afternoons with her and the baby. Between her housework, baby care and helping with lake business, she was overwhelmed. He got good at diaper changing. And Leslie used to listen to him bellyache about his brother, about how he didn’t know what to do with his life.
After the storm and Leslie went missing, Frank told Sheriff Chazen that he didn’t believe that damned note she supposedly left behind. He didn’t believe she had a lover. “I was at her house one or two afternoons a week,” Frank said. “She wouldn’t—”
“Are you telling me you were one of her lovers?” the sheriff said.
“No! I never touched her. I helped with the baby.”
Chazen sneered. “Unless you want me to tell people you’re involved in this, I suggest you get the hell out of here.”
Frank didn’t walk out the door, he ran. It was the most cowardly moment of his life and he’d regretted it every day since.
Wanting to overcome his cowardice of that moment, needing to take away the shame he felt, had been the driving force of his life. He’d thought that if he became the sheriff, he would have the resources to investigate Leslie’s disappearance.
He put himself up as a candidate for election, gave gung ho pep talk speeches, and he won.
Within a month he’d found out that a small-town sheriff had little power—at least not the kind he needed. He couldn’t get a federal investigation going, couldn’t get the Big Boys with all their money and tech equipment to get involved.
Frank had done the second-best thing. He’d started gathering local info. He interviewed people who’d known Leslie, people who could have seen something that night. He went through old newspapers and collected data.
As the years went on, he started spreading out to include people Leslie’s disappearance had affected. Namely, Terri.
One year she’d had trouble with a couple of boys at school. As sheriff, Frank had stepped in. It wasn’t really his job but Terri was like a daughter to him. Unfortunately, she was as stubborn as her father was. She refused to tell Frank everything that had happened with those boys. He had an idea but without Terri’s word on it, he could do nothing. “You’d lock them up?” she’d asked. “Put them in jail?”
“I’d enjoy doing it,” Frank answered.
Terri clammed up and said nothing. He knew she was protecting the boys. An early indictment could affect their entire lives.
Terri never complained about the harassing she received in school and in town that he knew was aimed at her. When she broke up with Billy Thorndyke at the end of high school, she’d refused to tell anyone what had happened. Maybe if Elaine had been there then, Terri would have confided, but she wasn’t.
When Jake died unexpectedly right after Terri graduated from college, Frank had gone into full battle mode. He told Brody he could not—NOT!—let Terri give up her life to help out at the lake.
“Let her have some fun!” Frank had shouted. “Give her some freedom. Let her travel. Let her meet some guy who didn’t grow up in this town.” Frank never mentioned that Terri needed to get away from Leslie’s reputation hanging over her head, but they both knew what he meant.
But to keep Terri from returning, Brody would have had to order her to stay away. And he couldn’t do that. Terri was all he had left and he missed her fiercely.
Through all the years, Frank kept investigating Leslie’s disappearance. It wasn’t as though Summer Hill was a hotbed of crime and he had too much other work to do. When he got nowhere, he tried to solve the mystery of the Thorndyke family’s abrupt move out of town. He even called the family in Oregon, but all Mr. Thorndyke would say was that he’d received a job offer from his brother and had taken it.
Frank had even swallowed his pride and once a month he’d listened to Della Kissel’s hateful gossip. He’d drink tea in her cluttered little house and sit through endless hours of her heavy-handed flirting. “I’ve always liked sheriffs,” she’d purr.
Frank would act as though he was having trouble holding himself back. While it was true that her snooping had helped him solve several petty crimes, he felt that he’d paid a heavy price to get the information.
Everything Frank learned, did, heard, he recorded and