A Tangled Web Read online

  It is a tragic irony that the kindest people are most easily manipulated by those with dark intentions. Cari had probably never thought about that and what it might mean for her. She was certainly not worrying about it on the morning of Tuesday, November 13. She got up very early with Dave because he had to be at work by 6:30, and she immediately fired up her computer and started working on the coding that her bosses expected her to complete soon.

  Six years later, Dave still remembers his last glimpse of Cari that morning. “She was on the couch in her pajamas, with her laptop out. She had all of her work-related stuff surrounding her on the couch.” Cari was focused on something on her computer screen. “She showed it to me, but I didn’t understand it,” he says, remembering how impressed he was by her ability to grasp the complexities of computer coding.

  Dave went out the door, headed to Hyatt Tire, at around 6:25, telling Cari he’d see her that night. She seemed as happy and carefree as always, and he was looking forward to the end of his workday, so they could spend the evening together. If anyone had told him right then and there that he would soon come to detest her, he wouldn’t have believed it. And neither would those who loved her.

  * * *

  When Cari Farver didn’t show up for work on November 13, her supervisor, Colleen Whitner, was puzzled. Cari was one of West Corp’s most reliable employees, and she always alerted them if she was going to be delayed. Colleen discovered that Cari had called in at 6:15 A.M. with an update on the coding she was writing. Cari was to verify the accuracy of her work upon her arrival, and her coworkers were counting on her. Her input was crucial if they were to make the deadline for the next step of production.

  Cari had not made an appearance by mid-morning, so Colleen called her but got her voice mail. Where was she? Had she fallen back to sleep after making the early morning call? Had she gotten sick? If so, why hadn’t she called? Colleen left a message and continued to phone her throughout the day, but there was no response.

  Cari’s devices left a trail of digital footprints that morning. Her laptop logged onto Facebook early and logged off at 6:42 A.M. At 9:54, her phone logged onto Facebook, and an odd action was taken. David Kroupa was unfriended. In other words, he was deleted from Cari’s Facebook friends’ list.

  About twenty minutes later, he received a text. He recognized Cari’s number and was startled by the message. “She was asking if we should move in with each other. She already knew I didn’t want that! I said, ‘No.’ Within twenty seconds, I got a text back that said, ‘Fine. Fuck you. I’m seeing somebody else. Don’t contact me again. I hate you. Go away.’ That sort of thing. I had no idea how to feel about it at the time. It was out of left field, and I was very busy at work, so I didn’t have time to contemplate it. I put my phone down.”

  When Dave returned to his apartment that night, he was apprehensive. Would Cari be there? He glanced around. It was so quiet. The only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator, and the rooms felt emptier than ever. There was no trace of her. It was almost as if she had never been there, almost as if she had been nothing more than a pleasant daydream.

  He wasn’t really surprised to find no sign of her because she wasn’t in the habit of leaving things behind even when she planned to return. Unlike Liz who left her toothbrush next to his, her clothes hanging in his closet, and her pots and pans in his cupboards, Cari always carefully packed everything up and took it away with her in her rolling luggage. “When she left, everything went with her. She didn’t leave a bobby pin.”

  Cari’s abrupt breakup with him was disturbing. How could she have changed so completely? How could she be so mellow, so reasonable, and so optimistic when he went out the door that morning and then turn so crazy and hostile four hours later? Determined not to let it bring him down, he decided to be philosophical about it. “I thought, ‘Whew! I dodged a bullet. I exchanged stories with guys at work about similar situations that they’ve had. So, I was just happy it didn’t drag on any longer.”

  “Happy” was probably too cheerful of a word for how he felt. More accurately, he was relieved that he hadn’t been swept up into unwelcome drama. The fact that this promising relationship had imploded so quickly proved to him that he had been right to swear off commitment and the big stinking mess that often came with it. Though he tried not to show it, the breakup stung. He forced himself to consider the bright side. It was over, and it kind of hurt, but he would never have to think about her again.

  If only it were that simple.

  Someone else was becoming increasingly concerned about Cari’s seemingly erratic behavior. Her mother. Nancy Raney knew her better than anyone in the world. Though she normally talked to her every day, two days had gone by with no word from her except for a puzzling text. On the same day that Cari’s supervisor was bewildered by her absence and Dave had received the weird breakup message, Nancy also got a text. She glanced at her phone and saw it had come from Cari’s number. “It said she was going to take a new job. That shocked me, because I thought she was happy with the job she had.” When Cari had last discussed her job with her mother, she’d told her she loved it but was extremely busy with a work project she was racing to finish, so she could enjoy her brother John’s wedding in the upcoming weekend.

  John was actually Cari’s half-brother, the son of Nancy’s first husband, Dennis Farver, but none of them thought in terms of half or full. They were all family. Even Dennis and Nancy, both remarried, got along splendidly and sometimes celebrated holidays together. Everyone was looking forward to the wedding. Maxwell had been invited to be an usher, and Cari was so proud her handsome son was going to be in his uncle’s wedding. But she knew it would be bittersweet. Her father was dying of stomach cancer, and Dennis was declining so rapidly that the wedding date had been moved, so he could be there. John and Hillary had wanted a summertime wedding, but it was more important to them to have John’s father there. Dennis was in hospice and not expected to live long.

  Cari and her father were very close, and it hurt her to see him so sick. She took Max to see his grandfather as often as possible, and they put on cheerful faces to make the visits pleasant for the dying man. Everyone knew that this wedding could be the last time the family was together.

  After the Tuesday text announcement about Cari changing jobs, there was no more word from her. Nancy repeatedly tried to call her. “We needed to know when she was going to pick up Max.” Cari and Max had planned to drive to Des Moines, Iowa, for the wedding. They were to go to the rehearsal dinner Friday, spend the night in the hotel Cari had reserved, and attend the wedding on Saturday. “I was getting really concerned,” Nancy says. “Friday came, and we hadn’t heard from her.”

  While Cari’s father made it to the rehearsal dinner, he was too sick to attend the wedding. Both Dennis and Cari’s absences were disturbing to the family. Dennis’s absence they understood, but Cari’s made no sense. Where was she? Had she been in an accident? Max was especially troubled, and throughout the wedding and reception, he found himself repeatedly turning to look at the door, willing his mother to walk through with a reasonable explanation as to why she was so late and why she hadn’t been in touch.

  Not only did Cari miss the wedding, she didn’t show up for a baby shower she was expected to host and failed to alert the expectant mother, her close friend, Amber Jones. She’d said nothing to Amber about postponing or canceling the shower. All that week, Nancy waited near her phone. Surely, she would hear from Cari any minute. But the minutes dragged on, melting into hours and then days. “I had feelings all that week that something was terribly wrong. By Friday, I decided something was definitely wrong, and we reported her missing.”

  An officer from the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office came to Nancy’s house and took down the information, but it was obvious he didn’t share her sense of urgency. The fact Cari had missed a baby shower and wedding and hadn’t talked to her mother for a few days didn’t register as serious as far as he was concerned. He poi
nted out she was a grown woman and didn’t need to check in with her mother. If Cari chose to take a trip without telling anyone, then that was her choice. Nancy told him that of course she knew Cari had a right to take off, but she hadn’t done that. “It was really frustrating,” Nancy stresses. “I knew something had happened to my daughter, but the police wouldn’t believe me.”

  While maternal instinct is the most powerful of intuitions, it’s not unusual for a mother’s concerns to be ignored. Cari’s mother was not the first woman in the throes of panic to be politely dismissed by those in a position to help. Nancy could tell by the way the officer’s eyes glazed over that he thought she was paranoid, and maybe a bit of a nut. She wished it were true. She would have given anything to be proven wrong.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT WOULD BE A VERY LONG TIME before investigators seriously considered Nancy’s fears, and a very long time before they scrutinized Cari’s Facebook activity and became aware of the significance of the message exchange between the missing woman and Sam Carter’s pages. In the interim, the conversation might as well have taken place in a vacuum. It unfolded in private mailboxes and couldn’t be viewed by Facebook “friends.”

  At first glance, it appeared so ordinary it sounded like a million other Facebook exchanges. In answer to Cari’s November 12 question asking if she knew him, Sam Carter’s message two days later explained they’d attended Iowa Western Community College together. The response from Cari’s page said simply, I remember you. Despite his alleged college education, Sam’s reply contained a blatant grammar error: You still as pretty.

  His spelling was as bad as his grammar, investigators would note when they saw the misspelling of Macedonia. Detectives would also notice that Cari had rejected a friend request from someone named Amber Mildo, just a week before Sam’s request was accepted. Amber’s profile photo depicted a slender blonde, about age thirty, with her eyes hidden behind oversized shades.

  Why had Sam’s request been accepted but Amber’s rejected? According to their Facebook pages, both had ties to Macedonia, and oddly both had spelled it wrong. Mecedonia instead of Macedonia. The misspelling of the town’s name wasn’t the only thing that made the interaction with Amber suspect. One hour after Cari Farver rejected her, Amber posted that she “was partying it up in Mecedonia [sic].” Residents would laugh at that, but not because of the spelling error. “Party and Macedonia” is an oxymoron, for Macedonia is “small-town family life” at its tamest.

  Macedonians are proud of their Main Street of tenderly cared-for historic buildings that house a few shops, a restaurant, a community theater, a museum, the Post Office, and City Hall. Everybody in Macedonia knows everybody else, and nobody there knew Amber Mildo or saw her “partying it up” on November 7 or any other day. While Amber Mildo was unknown, everyone in Macedonia was familiar with Cari. Her roots in the town wend back generations, most notably through the Bisbee line. Nancy, a Bisbee by birth, grew up in Macedonia, and so did her parents, her grandparents, and some of her great-grandparents.

  The blood of those who came before us flows through our veins, and in Cari’s case, we can look at family history and see certain traits passed on, generation after generation. While intelligence and physical attractiveness are among the family’s obvious traits, their compassion is the most endearing. Kind hearts run in the Bisbee family.

  Is kindness inherited?

  Apparently so, according to the findings of a recent study. In November 2011, The Huffington Post reported on an international study conducted by researchers from a number of colleges, including the University of California at Berkeley. The results of the intense genetic analysis revealed that a gene variation does indeed appear to be linked to caring. Whether or not empathy is inherited or learned, the genesis of Cari’s kind heart can be traced back to her great-great grandmother, Anna Sophia Meyer Reichstein. Anna, born in October 1871 in Strawberry Point, Iowa, was known for her generosity.

  Anna’s German born uncle, Henry Meyer, was only nine when he became ill and developed a fever so high it caused permanent brain damage. His intellect stunted, Henry never learned to speak English or to read or write. Uncle Henry was childlike, and Anna felt protective of him. He couldn’t live on his own, so when his parents died, she took him in. He was thirty-six years older than his niece, but he called her Mama.

  Anna and her husband, Frank Reichstein, married in 1891 and lived on a big farm in Grove Township, Iowa. They had eight children—nine counting Uncle Henry! Three babies were born within their first four years of marriage: Lillie, Amiel, and Lonnie. The rest of the children arrived with at least three years between them: Gail, Henry “Scoop,” Mabel, Etta, and Beulah.

  The sixth child, Mabel Marie Reichstein Bisbee, was Nancy’s grandmother. Many years ago, Mabel shared her memories via tape recorder and marveled at how devoted her mother had been to all of the people she cared for. Mabel recalled that Uncle Henry liked to sit by the stove as “Mama” worked in the kitchen. Uncle Henry “always carried the wood, and we always had plenty. But the trouble was that he always sat right there by the stove, and when Mama was baking, she had to watch him like a hawk. He’d put in too much fuel and burn it up.”

  Mabel, too, was fond of the elderly man, and she remembered how he’d sing the babies to sleep, crooning in German, as he held them and swayed in the old wicker rocking chair. He continued with the tradition long after Mabel felt she was too old for it, but she went along with it, so she wouldn’t hurt his feelings. Everyone could see that Henry wanted to be helpful, but it was difficult for him to communicate, so “Mama was about the only one who could talk to him.”

  Kind-hearted Anna also welcomed a homeless man—an out-of-work carpenter who Frank had hired to run the threshing machine. When the harvest season was over, he asked Frank if he could stay. “Well Gee-whiz,” Mabel recalled, “Mama had a house full of kids! Papa said, ‘You’ll have to go ask my wife.’ He went in and asked Mama, and she wouldn’t turn him out.” The man stayed for seventeen years, and though it felt crowded at times, the Reichsteins were good to him and treated him like family.

  Mabel inherited her parents’ compassion, and she, too, developed a reputation for her generosity. She fell in love with Bret Beem Bisbee, a man every bit as kind as she was. They married in February 1923 when she was twenty and Bret was twenty-one. They were living on the south side of Macedonia near the railroad tracks when The Great Depression hit. Hobos rode the rails, stowaways in empty boxcars, and a steady stream of them hopped off on the south side of Macedonia. From there, they walked to town where they could spend a night in jail and get a free meal.

  Word soon got out that a nice lady who lived near the railroad tracks never turned away a hungry person who knocked on her door. It was Mabel, of course. She and Bret had their own cows, and they were happy to share the milk. Mabel handed each man a thick slice of home-baked bread with sugar and a glass of milk. So many vagrants showed up that sometimes it seemed there wouldn’t be enough food to go around, but Mabel somehow always managed to feed everyone.

  Mabel and Bret had four children, including Nancy’s father, Max. They eventually moved away from the house by the tracks and bought a home closer to town. The new Bisbee house would stay in the family for decades. It would one day be Cari’s house, and she loved the fact that Mabel’s old dresser held a place of honor in her bedroom.

  Nancy wished that Cari could have met her Great-Grandpa Bret. He died at age seventy before Cari was born. “Grandpa had rheumatic fever when he was a kid and had an enlarged heart. I don’t believe his childhood was as loving and caring as my grandmother’s. As he was getting better, his father made him work on the farm, even though he probably shouldn’t have been working so hard. It affected his health for the rest of his life.”

  Mabel, however, lived till she was ninety-six, nearly three decades without Bret. Cari had twenty-four years to bond with her great-grandmother Mabel, and the two were close. Mabel could expertly twist Cari’s fine bl
ond hair into a magnificent French braid, something Nancy admits that she could never master. “Grandma had a way with all of her grandkids. In all of my life, I never heard her say anything cross or bad about anyone. She never raised her voice. She was a very special lady.”

  Though Cari had not met Great-Grandpa Bret, she heard lots of stories about him from her mother. Nancy looked up to him and was so proud to share a Fourth of July birthday with her grandfather. “My grandpa loved kids. He was a bus driver the entire time I was in school here. All the kids loved riding on his bus,” she says, emphasizing it was easy for him to keep the peace because the kids respected him too much to misbehave.

  While Cari inherited the Bisbee heart of gold, she got her musical talent from her Grandma Ella Luanne Clark, who always went by Luanne and became a Bisbee when she married Max. Not only could Luanne sing, she played the piano. She studied vocal performance at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, and mesmerized audiences with her beautiful soprano voice. While she sometimes performed in public arenas, her stage was most often Macedonia’s Methodist Church where she was frequently called upon to sing at special events.

  Her talent was actually passed down daughter to daughter—from Luanne to Nancy to Cari. From the time Cari was a tiny girl, she and her mom would sing along with tapes of their favorite musicians, Billy Joel, Emmylou Harris, and Ricky Lee Jones. “We would dance around the house singing, and when we listened to music in the car, we sang at the top of our lungs!” They harmonized beautifully and knew they sounded good. They were talented singers and actresses, and though neither pursued careers in the arts, they were active in their community theater. Nancy performed there recently, playing a nun in Sister Act, and Cari also performed there over the years. A framed 1985 photograph hanging in the theater shows Cari, at age eleven, among the costumed cast members of The Miracle Worker. “She played one of Helen Keller’s friends,” Nancy recalls. “When she was in fifth or sixth grade, she played the wicked stepmother in Cinderella. She was a really good wicked stepmother!”