by J A Whiting
“Where are you going?” Mills asked.
“I’d like to look around.”
“Why?”
“To get a sense of how your two properties intersect.” Angie was babbling anything she could think of. She felt that Violet wanted her to come to the out building.
“They don’t intersect,” Mills said. “They abut. We’re abutters.”
“What did you say you keep in the out buildings?” Angie asked.
“Tools and stuff.”
The door of the shed was open and Violet went inside. Angie’s heart pounded as she got closer.
“Can you show us your garden?” Finch attempted to deflect Mills’s attention from Angie.
“Yeah, sure, I guess. It’s this way.”
Violet came back to the door from inside the shed. She pushed something along the floor with her nose.
Angie bent to pick it up. It was a small wallet. She unsnapped it and pulled out a credit card, and her vision swam for a few seconds. The name on it was Rachel Princeton.
“Angie?” the chief called to her.
When she turned to him and held up the wallet, he hurried over to her.
Mills almost jogged across the grass to the shed. “What are you doing?”
“I saw this on the floor of the shed near the doorway. I thought it was yours. I thought you must have dropped it,” Angie told the man.
“It is mine.” Mills tried to grab it out of her hand.
Angie shook her head and handed the wallet to Chief Martin. “It’s Rachel’s. Her credit cards are inside.”
Courtney’s eyes went wide.
Chief Martin pinned his steely eyes onto the man. “I’d like you to come down to the station for questioning.”
“I found that in the bushes. I didn’t do anything to Rachel.” Mills’s tone was a mix of defiance and fear. “I was gonna give it to you after we talked.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Mr. Mills,” the chief explained. “But the discovery of the credit card holder could be important to the case. I’d appreciate it if you would cooperate and come down to the station for an interview.”
Mills exhaled loudly. “I want to tell my lawyer what’s going on.”
“You can certainly do that,” the chief said.
Mills moved away from them, pulled his phone from his pocket, and placed a call.
While Mills was busy, the chief talked with his consultants.
“I have to take Mills back to the station to get to the bottom of this. I’ll probably call a team here to go through his house. I made an appointment with the man Rachel was seeing. I told him that several consultants would be coming with me. Would you go talk to him? He’s supposed to meet us at the coffee shop in Silver Cove’s center.”
“We can do that,” Angie told him.
“How did you spot the credit card holder?” The chief kept his voice down.
“I saw Violet over here. She gave me a look. I knew she wanted me to come to the shed. She was pushing the holder with her nose.”
“It’s an important find. Where is she?”
“Right here beside me.” Angie touched her leg to indicate which side Violet was on.
“Good work, Violet,” the chief said softly.
The dog’s tail thumped the ground.
Chief Martin told the Roselands and Finch about who they were going to meet. “His name is Jason Field. He was dating Rachel. He said it was casual. I told him we wanted to ask some follow-up questions. See what you think of him. Will Violet go with you?”
“Yes,” Angie said. “No one can see her except us.”
“Okay, good. I’ll let you know what happens with Mills. Thanks for everything.” The chief waited for Mills to get off the phone.
Angie, Courtney, Mr. Finch, and Violet got into their car and headed for Silver Cove center.
“That was unexpected,” Courtney said shaking her head. “Did Mills have something to do with Rachel’s disappearance?”
“My first reaction is that he did have something to do with it,” Finch said, “but then I remembered that Miss Rachel was so frightened about something that she was looking for information on how to disappear. I don’t think she was frightened by Mr. Mills. I think she was annoyed and angry with him, but so frightened by him that she wanted to run away? I don’t think so.”
“Good points, Mr. Finch,” Courtney said. “So what did Mills do? Break in after Rachel was taken? That’s a pretty low thing to do.”
“The chief will let us know.”
Angie pulled the car into a small parking lot next to the coffee shop. “Here we are. Right on time, too. Let’s go find Jason Field.”
When they walked around to the front of the café, a tall, slender man with sandy blond hair was standing by the front door looking slightly uneasy.
“Jason? Jason Field?” Angie asked.
The man turned to them. “Yeah, that’s me.”
The three people introduced themselves.
“Thanks for meeting with us. Chief Martin couldn’t make it today. He had to attend an unexpected meeting. He sends his apologies,” Angie told him. “Shall we go inside?”
“I didn’t kill Rachel,” Jason blurted.
10
Angie was taken aback by the man’s statement, especially since Rachel was missing and hadn’t been found dead.
“Let’s get a table and then we can talk.” She opened the door for Courtney, Finch, Jason Field, and Violet.
Once they’d ordered and were settled in their seats, Angie made introductions. Violet sat off to the side listening, invisible to everyone but the Roselands and Finch.
“No one is accusing you of anything,” Angie pointed out. “That’s not why we’re here. We simply want to ask some follow-up questions.”
“Okay.” The man didn’t seem to want to make eye contact.
“Rachel is missing,” Courtney told him. “She hasn’t been found yet. No one is assuming she’s dead. Nothing points to such a thing.”
Jason’s cheeks flushed. “I only meant I didn’t do anything to her. She’s been gone for several days now. Even the police have to admit it doesn’t look good.”
“The police keep that information to themselves so we’re unable to confirm or deny that’s what they’re thinking,” Finch said kindly. “As far as we know, Miss Rachel’s case is that of a missing person.”
The waiter brought over the coffees and set them down.
“We understand you and Rachel were seeing each other,” Angie’s tone made the comment seem like a question.
“We went out some times.” Jason took his jacket off and hung it over the back of his chair. “It was a casual relationship.”
“How long had you been seeing each other?” Angie asked.
“About seven months or so.” The young man continued to seem uncomfortable with the questioning.
“Things were going well?”
“Sure.”
Jason’s brief answers made Angie worry that the whole interview would be like pulling teeth. “How did you meet?”
“At a friend’s house. He had a few people over. We talked, we hit it off.” Jason lifted the mug to his lips.
“Did you see each other every week?” Courtney was trying to get a feel for the relationship.
“Not every week. Rachel was busy, I’m busy. We’d text a few times a week even if we didn’t see each other.”
“What do you do for work, Mr. Field?” Finch smiled at the man to help put him at ease.
“I’m a park ranger over at the state park. I do photography, too. Nature stuff, landscapes, animals, things like that. Some of my work had been published in magazines.”
“That’s very impressive,” Finch praised him.
“Would you describe Rachel to us.” Angie held her mug in both hands.
Jason seemed surprised the by request. “Sure. Rachel was really smart.”
Angie noticed the use of the past tense again.
Jason went on
. “She was an architect. She wrote a book, taught college level classes, was always in demand. She had a ton of work.”
With a nod and a smile, Angie encouraged him to tell more.
“We both liked hiking, cycling, and being outdoors. We liked beer, went to breweries together.” He looked at the three people around the table.
“What was her personality like?” Courtney asked.
“Rachel was friendly, but she didn’t need to be the life of the party. She was easy to talk to. She was kind, thoughtful. She was also very driven in her work.” Jason shrugged. “It was very important to her.”
Angie asked, “Did she put work over relationships?”
“I wouldn’t say that. She made time for friends. She wasn’t a hermit or anything, but work was definitely a priority.”
“Did Rachel have any enemies?” Finch asked the young man. “Was she having trouble with anyone?”
Jason shook his head. “She didn’t mention anything to me.”
“Had she seemed herself the past couple of weeks?”
“Yeah, for the most part. Like I said, we didn’t see each other every day or anything.” As he paused, his brow furrowed. “She did seem a little weird that last time I saw her.”
“Weird how?” Courtney leaned slightly forward eager to hear the reply.
Jason shifted around. “I don’t know. She seemed off, kind of worried.”
“Did she say what was worrying her?”
“No, she didn’t. I asked her if everything was okay, and she brushed off my concern. She said things were fine, but I got the sense they weren’t. At first, I thought she was tired of me, but that wasn’t it. She seemed jumpy, distracted.”
“What did you do the last time you saw her?”
“I went to her house. I brought over pizza and salad. It was raining so we ate inside. She wasn’t her usual talkative self. I thought she probably had a lot on her mind from work, or maybe she was tired, or not feeling great.” Jason shook his head. “I didn’t know what it was about.”
“You didn’t see each other after that evening?”
“We texted the next day, but we didn’t see each other. She disappeared about four days later.”
“Did she have a new client?” Courtney questioned.
“I don’t know. She only talked in general terms about the work she was doing, never about specific clients.”
“Was Rachel teaching this semester?”
“She wasn’t. Rachel took the semester off. She told me she had too much to do to take on a teaching role this term.”
“Did anything happen at work that had her concerned?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about with friends? Any trouble with any of them?” Angie asked watching the man’s face as he answered.
“I think everything was fine. She went to visit an old friend not too long ago.” Jason’s face clouded. “Rachel did seem a little antsy when she came back.”
“What do you mean? How did she seem?”
“Really distracted. I asked about the visit, but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it so I dropped the subject. I wondered if Rachel and her friend had an argument or something, but I didn’t press her for answers.
“Where did she go? Where did the friend live?”
“Up in New Hampshire. The person she visited was an old friend from when Rachel lived there.”
“Do you know her name?” Mr. Finch asked.
“Yeah, it was Jessica … Jessica Hanson. She lived in the town where they grew up, in Hollis. It’s not far from the Massachusetts border. It’s near Nashua.”
Finch wrote the information in a small notebook.
Angie asked, “Did you mention to Chief Martin that Rachel was acting distracted and jumpy when you saw her last?”
Jason ran his hand over his face. “I might not have. I just remembered it while I was talking with you.”
“Did you mention Rachel’s friend to the chief? Did you tell him that Rachel had visited her?”
The young man shook his head. “I didn’t think it was important.”
“That’s okay,” Angie nodded. “We’ll pass the information on to the chief.” She looked over to Violet. The ghost dog sat like a statue watching and listening. Violet had passed away before Jason and Rachel began seeing each other. She seemed to be sizing him up.
After another twenty minutes of discussion, they thanked Jason for his time, and the man left.
Violet came closer to the table and Angie reached down to pat the dog.
“That was an interesting detail that almost didn’t come up.” Because the three of them were feeling hungry, Courtney had gone to the coffee shop counter and returned with three chocolate chip squares. “Rachel acted oddly after visiting her friend in New Hampshire.”
“Could Rachel have been upset about something that happened between her and her friend?” Angie speculated.
“Perhaps that was the cause of her concern.” Finch took a bite of the square.
“Maybe they had an argument or a falling out,” Angie thought out loud. “That could have been the reason that Rachel seemed off when Jason saw her. She probably didn’t want to talk about it with him.”
“Do you think Chief Martin knows about Rachel’s visit to her friend?” Courtney asked. “It sounds like she went to New Hampshire not long before she went missing.”
Angie took out her phone. “I’ll text him about it. I’ll ask if he’s talked to Jessica Hanson.”
The three talked about how the interview had gone pointing out how nervous the young man was throughout.
“He sure didn’t seem to relax while we discussed Rachel,” Courtney said. “Why is he so nervous? It isn’t unusual for law enforcement to speak to someone more than once in a case like this.”
Angie lowered her voice. “Did either of you pick up anything about Jason?”
“I felt his uneasiness and his anxiety in having to talk about Rachel,” Finch explained. “And the way he told us immediately after we said hello to him that he didn’t kill Rachel was quiet odd. But it doesn’t mean he’s guilty of the crime.”
Courtney smiled. “Whenever someone blurts out that they didn’t do something, I think right away that they did do it.”
Angie’s phone vibrated with an incoming text. She read it and then shared with Courtney and Finch what the chief had written.
“The chief says he found out Rachel went to New Hampshire to see her friend, but it wasn’t Jason Field who told him. The chief called Jessica Hanson the day after Rachel went missing. The woman was distraught when he spoke with her. She said they’d had a nice weekend together and she was sorry to see Rachel leave. Rachel’s sister called Jessica with the terrible news that Rachel went missing. Chief Martin has a meeting scheduled with Jessica in New Hampshire the day after tomorrow. He invites us to go if any of us are free.”
“I’m in charge of the candy shop that day,” Courtney said, “and Orla can’t watch Gigi and Libby that day so Mr. Finch has childcare duty while you and Jenna work.”
“I’d be happy to care for the girls all day if you and Jenna want to accompany Chief Martin to New Hampshire in the afternoon,” Finch said.
Angie squeezed the older man’s arm. “Thanks, Mr. Finch. I don’t know what we’d do without you. I’ll talk to Jenna about it.”
11
Josh, Angie, Jenna, Tom, Ellie, Courtney, and Mr. Finch sat in the family room eating a dinner of homemade pizza and salad. Euclid lay across Courtney’s lap snoozing while Circe cuddled next to Finch. Violet was resting on the rug in front of the fireplace and Libby and Gigi were playing with toys in the playpen.
“We need a night off from the missing person case and work and everything else,” Courtney announced.
“Shall we all watch a movie?” Finch asked as he reached for his napkin.
“I was thinking of something more active,” she told him.
“What do you have in mind?” Josh put another piece of pizz
a on his plate.
“I was thinking since it’s September already, we should go to the corn maze.”
“Right now? Tonight?” Tom asked.
“Sure, why not? It’s a beautiful night and it’s not cold,” Courtney tried to convince them. “And it will only get more crowded the closer we get to Halloween.”
“We did it last year,” Jenna noted. “It was a lot of fun.”
“It will take our minds off Rachel’s case and put us in the holiday spirit,” Courtney said. “It’s open until 11pm. We’d have plenty of time to do it.”
“I think it’s a fine idea,” Finch grinned. “Will we break into teams again like last year?”
“A little friendly competition wouldn’t hurt,” Josh agreed.
“I’m going to call Jack and ask him to come,” Ellie reached for her phone.
“Rufus is coming here in about fifteen minutes,” Courtney said. “I ran the idea past him earlier today and he’s onboard.”
“Miss Betty is in a training class this evening,” Finch said. “So without her the sides will be uneven. Oh, but the girls. I can stay home and watch them.”
“No, no, Mr. Finch, you need to come,” Courtney told them. “I talked to two of our candy shop employees today and they said they’d be glad to watch Libby and Gigi. One will stay here and the other one will go to Jenna and Tom’s house. By the time we leave, the kids will be in bed anyway. It will be easy babysitting duty.”
“But the sides will be uneven,” Finch protested.
“I thought about that,” Courtney said. “The teams will be the women against the men so it’s okay if you have one more team member than we do. You’ll need him,” she kidded.
“Jack’s on his way,” Ellie announced.
“Okay, it’s settled. I’ll call the babysitters and tell them what time to report for duty.” Courtney stood. “I’ll handle the dishes and cleanup while you all get ready.”
When they arrived at the corn maze, the lot was nearly full, but they were able to find places to park their two cars.
The half-moon shone bright overhead in a sky full of stars.
“Can you believe how many people are here?” Jenna looked around in amazement.
