Glue, Baby, Gone

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  “Spry?” Such a quaint sounding word. I couldn’t help but get hung up on it.

  “Right. In this case, spry means active, unchanged, not tired, the whole nine yards. If this poor dude hasn’t been in a relationship before, it might take him a while to put two and two together. But if this information is correct,” and Hadcho waved the evidence bag, “we’re looking at a guy who already is a dad. He’s been through this before. He’ll realize Jana Higgins, or whoever she is, is lying to him. I’m thinking that if we publicize this abduction, this dude is likely to stop by a police station and casually ask a few questions. Might even turn his partner in.”

  Kiki nodded. “I’m going to ask Margit to go through all our transactions for the date of that class. Even though Jana paid cash, there’s a chance she signed up for our newsletter or even for another tutorial. Maybe she left behind her real name or contact information.”

  “I sure hope so,” said Hadcho, getting to his feet. “I’ve got plenty to do. Detweiler messaged me from the station. He’s waiting for the results of tests on the liquid left inside the Vanilla Coke can, and he needs a ride home. It’s already five o’clock.”

  “Let me see how Margit is doing, closing up for the night, and if she can look over the transactions this evening from home,” Kiki said.

  “No wonder I’m so tired,” I told Ty as he fluttered his long lashes at me. “I’ve been up since four a.m. I’m ready to hit the sack. How about you, little boy?”

  “Okay, Margit’s taking home the paperwork so she can look it over. She’s offered to give me a ride, even though we’re the opposite way.” Kiki walked to the lights panel and started switching things to a night time mode.

  “Don’t do that. Let me give you and Ty a ride home. There’s a Drury Inn not far from you,” I continued to rock Ty in my arms while she grabbed her things.

  “Cara, would you reconsider staying at our house? We’ve got plenty of room. The guest bedroom is all ready for a visitor. I know Anya would love to spend some time with you. I think it would reassure her. She needs to see that some parts of our lives haven’t changed very much at all.”

  “I don’t want to be a bother, and I had planned to stay at a Drury Inn.” I handed over her sweet little bundle, grabbed my outerwear, and picked up my purse.

  “I can understand you wanting your privacy,” my friend said.

  That made me laugh. “Kiki, I live on a scarcely populated island all by myself! Down in Florida, I have scads of privacy. I’m hesitant to take you up on your invitation because I don’t want to create more work for you or to put you out.”

  “I get it. It’s not a bother. Really it’s not. Brawny is a great labor-saving device.” She blinked back tears.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  “No, no, I’m not. I’m not myself. I can’t explain it. I feel disconnected. Numb.”

  “Maybe you’re just tired?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Here’s the deal, I’ll agree to come and be your guest as long as I’m not an inconvenience. If it seems that I’m in the way, I’ll get a room. How’s that?”

  “Perfect.” She text-messaged Brawny, explaining that I’d drive us home.

  “What about a car seat?”

  “I keep one here. Since we’re always switching kids around, we bought an extra for the store,” she explained while transferring the baby to me. “What’s more, this one turns into a stroller. When Ty gets fussy, I can load him up and walk him around the shelf units until he falls asleep. Tell you what. Let’s put him in it now, and go see if Margit has any news for us.”

  Reaching to the side of her bookcase, she pulled out a folded contraption. With a quick motion of her wrist, the stroller clicked into its upright position. I gently set Ty down so he could finish his nap, and then we left the office and headed for the front counter.

  A clipboard next to the cash register announced: Upcoming Classes. Margit was busily waiting on a customer, so she shook her head at us, a signal that she hadn’t had the chance to look over the signup sheet. I grabbed it and skimmed through the names listed while Kiki moved the stroller back and forth.

  “Remind me the date of the class.”

  “January 10.”

  I flipped back to that signup sheet and read off the folks who’d requested being added to the newsletter.

  “I know most of those women,” said Kiki. “Jana, or whoever she is, isn’t in that batch.”

  She slumped down on the stool beside the counter. “Want to know what’s totally weird about this?”

  “What?”

  “I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the person who took Bonnie’s baby was Bernice Stottlemeyer.”

  I put the clipboard away. “Yeah, I can see why you’d think that.”

  The Stottlemeyers often patronized our family business, a restaurant my parents had named after me. Bernice was such a pill that our servers would fight over who had to wait on her. If her husband,Wesley, came in alone, they fought over waiting on him, because he was such a nice guy and a good tipper. But Bernice was nasty, mean, and hateful. She constantly found fault. Nothing was up to her standards. She reveled in humiliating our wait staff, once telling a young woman, “Do you really think all those holes in your face are attractive? I have news for you, they aren’t. You look stupid.”

  “Given all the threats she made and how determined she was to have a child at any costs, I would have bet money she was behind this.”

  “I can see why you want to believe that Bernice was involved. But do you have any real proof? Anything to suggest she was anywhere near Bonnie earlier today?” I asked.

  “None. I know I’m being silly. It’s just that she’s such a horrible person, and you weren’t here to see the evil look she gave my belly. I’m sure she was every bit as envious of Bonnie’s pregnancy. Cara, I swear, that woman was purely evil. It’s too convenient that Bonnie gives birth and, right away, her baby goes missing.”

  “How would Bernice have known? Who would have told her that Bonnie had given birth? And she couldn’t have known which hospital, right?”

  “Right. At least, I guess you’re right. Maybe I just want it to be Bernice because she was so hateful.

  CHAPTER 15

  The guest bedroom at the Detweiler house reflected the taste of Leighton Haversham’s mother, because she had always hoped to have a daughter. Consequently, she’d appointed the room in grand style with a white French provincial four-poster bed, matching dresser, and make-up table. She’d chosen pink and green and white as the colors. The unabashedly feminine decorating scheme took me back to my teenage years.

  After escorting me to my room, Kiki did a slow circle, taking in the room’s ambience, as if this was all new to her. “I rarely come in here. Brawny keeps all this clean and ready for guests. But this? This decorating scheme definitely has to go. Sorry about how juvenile it looks. All you need is a stack of Barbara Cartland romance novels and you’re all set.”

  “I actually love Barbara Cartland novels.” I ran my hand over the curved footboard. “I wish my friend Skye Blue was here with us. She’d have this transformed in nothing flat.”

  “By hauling it to Goodwill?”

  “No.” I sat on the mattress and pulled away a pillow so I could get a better look at the headboard. “She would saw off these posts. That would give you a more modern silhouette. Then she would stretch thick foam over the headboard and staple it down on the wrong side. With a glue gun, she’d cover the foam. Finally, she’d attach nail head trim or a thick braided ribbon.”

  Kiki sat down next to me. “You sound pretty confident. I remember a Cara Mia Delgatto who didn’t consider herself a crafter.”

  “Amazing what you can do when your back is up against the wall. At first, I left all the crafting to Skye. But that didn’t work, because she’s full-time at the deli across the street. I needed to get up to speed fast because I hadn’t lined up vendors—and I needed to fill my store with merchandise. Out of necessi
ty, I picked up a paint brush and started stenciling furniture. I’ve never looked back.”

  “What colors would you use?” Kiki cocked her head and studied the fussy pink room with its rosebud wallpaper. The place was cloyingly sweet.

  “Eggplant, tan, and aqua.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. The pink and green are nice, I guess, but I’d make this wall behind the bed a dark eggplant. I’d paint tan and cream stripes on the other three walls. For an accent, I’d use aqua pillows, an aqua comforter, and I’d spray paint the base of this lamp aqua, too. Then I’d recover that stuffed chair in tan and cream. I’d also replace this ugly light fixture with a small chandelier. Since that’s bound to leave a big hole in the ceiling, I’d hide it by gluing fake flowers in a circle, trimming the circle with a thick flat braid, and then spray painting all that cream to match the ceiling. No, wait. I’d cut the flowers out of thick cardstock. I’d cover them with Elmer’s Wood Putty to make them 3-D, and then I’d glue them to a cardstock oval. Trim that out. Spray it cream and glue it to the ceiling.”

  She didn’t say a word.

  I waited, even though I was pretty pumped up. I could imagine installing mirrored tiles to the closet doors. That would reflect the headboard, the new color scheme, and act as a floor to ceiling mirror, while adding more space and light.

  “You’ve really blossomed,” she said at last. “I’d love for you to makeover this room.”

  “Since it’s freezing outside, I’ll take a pass for right now,” I said, as I laughed, “but I’ll come back in the spring or summer, and we’ll do it together. How’s that sound?”

  “Just grand,” she said, and then she smiled. For the first time since my visit, she looked like my old friend, Kiki Lowenstein.

  CHAPTER 16

  Shortly after midnight, I roused enough to grab my cell phone. Footsteps on the stairs suggested the detective was home. For a guy who needed to heal up after taking a bullet, Detweiler was working a lot. Maybe even too much. He and Kiki were both looking drained, and I had a hunch it wasn’t just because of Ty.

  Like all classic over-achievers, Detweiler and Kiki found it nearly impossible to slow down. Through the soft fog of sleep, I recalled a stress test that had floated around years ago. It assigned point values to moving, taking on a big mortgage, getting married, having a child, changing jobs, and so on. Although I couldn’t recall the numbers, I knew that Detweiler and Kiki were poster children for high achievers on that test.

  And that was the sort of test were a high score was not a good outcome at all.

  I was nearly asleep when I heard one word: What?

  Followed by: You are kidding me!

  Whatever Detweiler had shared with his wife, it must have been a doozy. Otherwise, why would she have been so shocked? Kiki had practically yelped in surprise.

  Ty must have thought so, too, because a mewling cry rose out of the night, like a bat flies through the darkness. I pulled the covers up tightly around my neck. Kiki or Brawny had thoughtfully made the bed with a multiple of layers, including a wool blanket between softer sheets. In the chill of the night, with unfamiliar sounds coming from the bedroom down the hall, I snuggled back into the cocoon of warmth and quickly fell back to sleep.

  The next morning the wonderful smell of bacon and coffee nudged me awake, so I dressed hurriedly, pulling on jeans, a tee, and an old gray cashmere sweater that had once belonged to my father. He’d gifted it to me after I accidently washed it in hot water. Even though I’d washed it since then, I could still smell Dad’s aftershave, the spice and the moss of it. Or at least, I thought I could, and it warmed my heart even as I shivered my way down the stairs to the Detweilers’ kitchen.

  What a wuss I’d become. This normal Missouri weather felt like torture to my joints. I gave myself a good mental slap: Okay, the ocean would still be there when I got back to Florida. Meanwhile, I would be “in the moment,” and enjoy my time here with friends. The scent of fresh coffee wafted up the stairs, promising warmth and a hazelnut treat.

  Detweiler stood over the frying pan, turning crispy bacon with a long-handled fork. Anya leapt up to give me a huge hug. “How’s Florida?”

  “I love it,” I said as I smiled first at her and then at the solemn boy sitting next to her. Noting his beautiful brown eyes and caramel-colored skin, I offered my hand for a shake. “Hello, my name is Cara. You’re Erik, right?”

  At first he ducked his head shyly, but encouragement from Anya worked its magic as he extended his small, plump hand for a shake. We studied each other. His curly red hair surrounded his face in a cherubic cap. His bright eyes indicated an alert mind. This boy was an old soul, as my father would say, because behind that intelligence was a sadness, a sense of loss.

  “I have a boy at home, too,” I said. “Except he’s at college most of the time. His name is Tommy. He loves animals. Do you?”

  “We haff a donkey named Monroe,” said Erik. “Want to see?

  “Yes, I would love to see Monroe. Can it wait until after breakfast? I’d like to eat first. Is that toast good?”

  He nodded vigorously. “We gots bacon, too.”

  “I think she might have already noticed the bacon.” Anya gave him a smug smile.

  Gracie wandered over and regarded me lovingly, her brown eyes searching mine as she leaned against my leg. “Hi, sweet girl.” I rubbed her head.

  “Did we wake you up last night?” Detweiler gave me a concerned grin. His hair stuck out in five different directions. He was sensibly attired in brightly plaid flannel sleep pants and a sweatshirt.

  “Not really. I heard you, but that’s because I’m accustomed to living alone. It roused me, but I didn’t really wake up, if you know what I mean.” I helped myself to a cup of coffee from the coffee maker.

  “Yummy.” I took a seat between Erik and Anya. Detweiler slid a plate of food in front of me. As enticing as it was, first I am fueled by coffee in the mornings and I’d already finished half of what I’d poured, so I got up and refreshed the cup for myself. Just as I scooted back into my chair, the back door flew open and Hadcho came stomping into the kitchen. His entrance admitted a blast of air so cold it took the wind out of me. Gracie jumped to her feet, recognized the intruder as a friend and stuck her head under Erik’s chair to grab up a small piece of bacon.

  “Any news?” Detweiler stopped his partner in his tracks.

  “It’s her. Her husband—soon to be ex-husband—was totally beside himself. He has an airtight alibi. Out with a girlfriend at the Ladue Country Club. All the best names saw him. He had brought the girlfriend home with him when they found…her.” His recitation complete Hadcho helped himself to a big cup of coffee before pulling out the chair next to mine.

  Detweiler cracked two eggs and scrambled them in a bowl. Without looking at his friend, he said, “There’s sourdough bread in the refrigerator. Brawny bought it yesterday.”

  “The man knows how I like my food,” Hadcho said with a nod of appreciation as he found the bread and popped slices in the toaster.

  I was dying to know what the men were talking about. My curiosity must have shown on my face. Detweiler turned away from the burner where he was cooking the eggs and explained, “Bernice Stottlemeyer turned up late last night. Dead. Half in and half out of her car. Parked in the last row in long term parking at Lambert Field.”

  My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. “You have to be kidding me.”

  “No, he’s not,” Hadcho confirmed. “The call came in right before we knocked off work. Two more minutes and we would have been out of the station.”

  “That’s what you might have heard last night when I got home,” Detweiler explained. “I told Kiki we had a tentative ID. The dental records confirmed who it was.”

  “How’d she die?”

  “Gunshot wound,” Hadcho said as he buttered his toast.

  “Dad-D gots shot by a gun. So did Hay-cho.” Erik put a chubby hand on my arm. “I saws it. It was scary. I wette
d my pants.”

  Although I wanted to hug him, I restrained myself. “Did you really? That must have been scary. I think I would have wet my pants, too.”

  “I wasn’t that scared.” Anya drew herself up to her full height. “I helped Mom by getting Erik to safety. We hid in Monroe’s shed. The attacker came after us, but we—”

  “Anya?” Detweiler interrupted her and cast a nervous eye toward his son. “Anya? Are you all ready for school?”

  At first, she looked put out, but a slow realization changed her expression to one of understanding. She looked from Detweiler to Erik and back to the cop. “Uh, mainly.”

  “Better hop to it.” Detweiler slid the eggs onto Hadcho’s plate. “Brawny will drop you off. Erik? You’re done there, pal. Go with your sister.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The kids left, and Kiki joined us. Like me, she’d bundled herself in a sweater and leggings. Under her eyes were dark circles, and her hair stuck out like dandelion seeds. I hugged her good morning and dug into my food while she made another pot of coffee. Detweiler told Kiki that the body had been confirmed as one Bernice Stottlemeyer.

  “Here’s what’s weird,” Detweiler said. “She had moved out of that house she shared with Wesley two months ago, but last week, Wesley Stottlemeyer found her inside the house. He had changed all the locks, but he forgot to get back his garage door opener. Using that, she walked in through the garage, opened the back door from the garage into the house. She was standing in the middle of the room they’d planned to use for a nursery, painting it blue.”

  I about choked on my coffee.

  “What did he do?” Kiki’s eyes were wide.

  “He politely asked her to leave. She told him that she was pregnant, and they could get back together again. Everything would be fine, according to Bernice. Wesley didn’t buy that. Evidently, he was with a woman he’s started dating. She wisely waited downstairs, out of sight.”