Michelle and Sean exchanged another glance.
“Okay, cutting to the chase. Do we have the evil stepmother syndrome going on here?” asked Sean.
Tyler’s face turned nearly as red as his hair. “I’m not saying she’s evil. She just doesn’t have a clue. She’s a lot younger than my dad. I don’t know why he even married her.”
“What happened to your mom?” asked Michelle gently.
Tyler fiddled with the label on his water bottle, peeling it off and piling the scraps of paper on the table in front of him.
“She got sick and died. Four years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” said Michelle.
“How long ago did your dad remarry?” asked Sean.
“What does that matter?” Tyler blurted out. “I just want to find out what happened to him. This other stuff is just crap. It has nothing to do with anything.”
He had raised his voice, and the pretty brunette glanced over with a worried look.
Tyler caught her eye, looked embarrassed, and stared down at the paper pile in front of him.
Michelle put a hand on his shoulder. “I know this
is really hard, Tyler. I lost a parent unexpectedly too. But the more we know about things, the more ideas we can come up with. That’s why we’re asking these questions that don’t seem important right now. On a case, you don’t know what will end up being important or not. You can see that, right?”
Tyler licked his chapped lips and took another swig of water. “They got married about a year ago. They didn’t have a wedding. They went to a judge or something. My dad didn’t even tell me until it was over. I didn’t even really know her. And they hadn’t been seeing each other very long. And she’s like fifteen years younger than him. It was weird.”
“I can see why that might make things awkward,” commented Sean.
“Yeah,” said Tyler. “Like real awkward.”
Michelle said, “Was your dad career Army?”
Tyler shook his head. “He was in the Army for a long time, then he went into the reserves. Then he got called up. He’d been over there twice before on deployment when he was regular Army. Then he came back home. I thought he was going to stay home for good but he had to go back again as a reservist.”
Sean took out a small notebook and started jotting some things down. Michelle gave him a grateful look.
“How old was your father?” he asked.
“Forty-five.”
“Tough to make a transition back into combat at that age.”
“I guess, for some guys. But my dad is really jacked. He ran and lifted weights and he knows karate too. He’s like a triple black belt. And he would swim with me. It got to the point where he couldn’t really keep up with me, but he was tons better than most guys his age. He even did some triathlons.”
Sean said, “I doubt I could do one lap in the pool. Sounds like your dad was really an iron man.”
“Yeah, he is.” Tyler bit his lower lip and his eyes glimmered.
Sean asked quickly, “What did he do before he was called up?”
“Um, he worked at a company called DTI in Reston. He was a salesman. Nothing real exciting.”
“What was your dad’s position in the Army?”
“He’s a sergeant.”
“You’re sure?”