Southern Storm

by Terri Blackstock

  “And I told you point-blank that I had seen him coming out of Cricket’s.”

  She grunted. “You didn’t say anything about a woman.”

  “Well, I didn’t think it was relevant at the time.”

  Baby laughter came from the living room, then a ball rolled into the kitchen and Caleb came running after it. Jonathan laughed and scooped the ball up, then rolled it back across the floor. Caleb screamed in delight, and Morgan followed him.

  But Blair’s eyes pinned Jonathan. What was wrong with them? Didn’t they understand how serious this was? “I need more specifics, Jonathan. Did he look like he was just talking to her in passing or did she look like somebody he knew? Were they deep in conversation? Were they headed out to her car or his?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Blair. You know me. I was busy, and I don’t have time to sit around watching the movements of every guy that comes out of Cricket’s. I had passengers on my boat.”

  “He’s your best friend, Jonathan. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be interested if you saw him with a woman.”

  “Then I guess that means I didn’t consider her to be any kind of love interest. He just looked like he was talking to her. He had a real serious look on his face. I saw them walk around Cricket’s, but I didn’t see what car they got into.”

  She sighed and turned to Morgan, who had caught Caleb and was handing him a cookie. “We’ve got to find out who that woman was,” she said.

  Morgan put the toddler down. “I think so,” she agreed. “Someone must know.”

  Blair grabbed up her keys. “I’m outta here. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  As Blair went back to her car and pulled away from the family home that had become everyone else’s family home, she thought of some petite, big-haired woman with Cade. Had he gone off with her? Did she have anything to do with his disappearance? Frustrated beyond measure, she drove back to Cricket’s. His truck still hadn’t been moved.

  That night, Blair had trouble sleeping again. She tossed and turned, and twice she got up and called Cade’s voicemail again. He still was not answering. She lay in bed, wondering what on earth could have happened to him. Who was the woman Jonathan had seen him with? If he was seeing a woman, Blair would have known it. He wouldn’t have kept it secret.

  Maybe this woman did have something to do with the case. But why would he just vanish like that after meeting with her? Had he been a victim of some kind of foul play?

  Did it have anything to do with the man he’d hit?

  By morning she called the station again. There’d still been no word from him, and they admitted their concern. She drove over to Cricket’s, noting the irony that today the sky was cloudless and blue, and the sun shone so brightly that the water glistened like a bed of diamonds. It felt like it should be storming until Cade turned up.

  Cade’s truck still sat in the parking lot. She almost ran into her brother-in-law as he came out of the rickety restaurant. “Jonathan!”

  “Still looking for Cade?” he asked.

  She grabbed his flannel shirt. “Jonathan, he hasn’t been heard from since yesterday morning when he was here at Cricket’s. Where do you think he could be?”

  Jonathan’s eyes squinted in the morning sun. “I don’t know, but I’m getting a little worried myself.”

  That was all Blair needed. “Jonathan, let’s go to his house. We have to get inside somehow and see if there’s a clue.”

  “We can’t break into his house! He’s the chief of police. You don’t think he’d arrest us? I have firsthand knowledge that Cade puts the law over friendship.”

  “It wouldn’t be like breaking in,” she said. “I just want to see if there’s anything wrong. He could be dead in there, for all we know.”

  Jonathan jerked his arm back. “Come on, Blair. He’s not dead.”

  “Well, how do you know? It’s not like him to do this. Something has happened!”

  Jonathan looked out at his boat. So far no tourists had shown up for his tour, and his deckhand sat in a rusty folded chair, looking like he’d rather be in bed.

  He turned back to Blair. “I’ll tell you what. I know where Cade keeps a key. We’ll go in and see if everything is all right. But we’re not going to snoop around through his stuff. He deserves his privacy.”

  “Fine! That’s good enough for me.”

  He told his deckhand to board any passengers who showed up, then Blair drove him over to Cade’s house. She followed Jonathan around to the backyard and waited as he went into a utility room to look for Cade’s extra key.

  She stood in Cade’s backyard and noted that the grass needed cutting. She crossed it and went to his patio, where a green iron table stood with four chairs. One of the chairs sat back away from the table, and a pair of mud-caked work boots stood in it.

  She sat down and leaned forward, her eyes scanning the crepe myrtles that weren’t yet in bloom, the azalea bushes that were, and the hodgepodge of untended and unidentifiable plants.

  Something at her feet startled her, and she looked down to see Cade’s big black cat. It looked up at her and let out an urgent meow. “Hey, kitty.” She reached down and picked it up. “Come here.” Cradling the cat, she began to stroke it.

  Jonathan came back out. “Found it.”

  Blair looked up at him. “I didn’t know Cade had a cat.”

  “Oh, yeah. His name’s Oswald.”

  “After the assassin?”

  Jonathan grinned. “No, after the theologian, Oswald Chambers.”

  The cat purred as she stroked it, then meowed again and jumped down, rushed to the door as Jonathan went toward it.

  Jonathan opened the door, revealing the small laundry room, and the cat darted inside and headed straight to his empty bowls on the floor beside the dryer.

  “He’s hungry,” Blair said. “See there? Cade wouldn’t leave his cat to starve.”

  Jonathan scooped some food out of the Cat Chow bag and dropped it into the bowl, and the cat devoured it.

  “See? That cat hasn’t eaten today.”

  Jonathan seemed to turn that over in his mind.

  As he got the cat some water, Blair stepped into the small kitchen, with its round little table and four chairs, and looked beyond it to the living room she had never been in before. All these years she had considered Cade a close friend. It seemed strange now that she’d never had cause to be in his house.

  Jonathan went in and turned the light on. It looked different than she would have imagined, had she ever given Cade’s living quarters a thought. The couch and love seat were brown leather, and a beige recliner sat opposite the love seat. A big beige ottoman served as a coffee table and footrest.

  The decorating style spoke of masculine comfort, but it was neat.

  She walked through the kitchen, saw that nothing seemed out of place. A lone coffee cup sat inside the dishwasher. The coffee pot sat half full and cold.

  “Bed’s made up,” Jonathan called.

  Blair went to the bedroom, saw the queen-size bed draped over with a gold and brown comforter that matched the curtains. There was no way to tell if he’d been home since yesterday.

  “Man, he’s neat,” Jonathan said. “We used to really butt heads when we roomed together in college. I don’t remember a day when he didn’t make up his bed. I went weeks without making up mine. Drove him crazy.”

  Blair crossed Cade’s room and went to the walk-in closet. She turned on the light and stepped inside, trying to determine whether he had packed or left in a hurry. Three suitcases lay on the top shelf.

  “Do you think a bachelor would have more than three suitcases?” she asked.

  He followed her in. “I doubt it.”

  “So he didn’t pack.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t think so, either. As neat as he is, it seems like there’d be a space on the shelf for a missing suitcase if he’d taken one.”

  Blair turned back to him. “Okay, so what does that tell us?�
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  “Well, it tells us that he didn’t plan to be going on a long trip. And the fact that he left his truck at Cricket’s would sure be an indication that whatever happened wasn’t planned.”

  She turned off the closet light and walked around his bedroom, saw the Bible and another book open on his bed table. It was just like Cade, she thought. In the midst of his worrying—probably after a sleepless night—he had gotten up and read his Bible.

  Jonathan picked it up. “Oh, man. Numbers 35. He was reading about the cities of refuge.”

  “What are those?”

  He put the Bible back down. “They were a provision God made for someone who had accidentally killed. There was a death sentence for taking someone’s life. The family of the person you killed had the right and obligation to kill you.”

  “Obligation? Legally?”

  “Yes, because God said that bloodguilt polluted the land. But in case the death was an accident, the Lord set up six cities of refuge. Every city in Israel was less than thirty miles from one, and the roads were smooth and well maintained, so someone who’d accidentally killed could get there within hours before the avenger could overtake him. The family of the dead man couldn’t avenge the death if he was in a city of refuge. He was safe there until he could stand trial before the congregation.”

  She looked down at the Numbers passage. “Does Cade consider himself to have bloodguilt?”

  “Probably,” Jonathan said. “You know Cade. He doesn’t let himself off the hook for anything.”

  “But none of this applies today. That was Old Testament stuff.”

  “Everything in the Old Testament is a picture of something in the New. Cade knows that. And besides, the city of refuge probably gave him comfort. It probably reminded him that God makes provision for accidents.”

  “What did he do? Run off to some modern city of refuge?”

  Jonathan frowned. “Cape Refuge was practically named for that whole concept. No, Cade wouldn’t go off looking for that city. He knows where his real refuge is found.”

  Jonathan looked at the other book, My Utmost for His Highest, and pointed to the author’s name at the top of the page it was opened to. “Oswald’s namesake.”

  Blair took the book, careful not to lose Cade’s place. Keeping her finger there, she looked just inside the cover. “I thought so.” She showed Jonathan the inscription there. “Pop gave him this.”

  Jonathan swallowed. “I remember.”

  She opened to the page he’d been reading from. “It’s yesterday’s reading. Which means he hasn’t been home to read today’s.”

  “Not necessarily. But it sure doesn’t look like he has.” With troubled eyes, he looked around the room and sighed. “Well, I can’t say that breaking into his house has enlightened us any.”

  She went up the hall, looked into the second bedroom where Cade had a desk and computer. It was turned off.

  Going back into the living room, she looked down at the phone, saw the light blinking. “He has voice mail. Do you know how to get it?”

  “Of course not,” Jonathan said. “Besides, it’s probably us. I’ve left at least three messages myself.”

  She looked down at the caller ID and clicked the arrow key to scroll through his calls. Her own number came up several times, along with that of the police station, Hanover House, and several of the television stations in the area. She scrolled through until she came to a name she didn’t recognize.

  “William Clark. Do you know who that is?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “It’s a Savannah number. Probably a reporter.”

  Frustrated, she abandoned the caller ID. “Where could he be? I can’t imagine him vanishing unless something happened.”

  “Me either,” Jonathan said, “but let’s not jump to conclusions. There might be a perfectly good explanation for where he is.”

  “I sure wish he’d let us in on it.”

  Satisfied that there were no clues here, they took the cat outside, along with its bowls, and locked the door. Blair went back to Cricket’s, hoping to get some more information about what Cade had done in there yesterday, whom he had been talking to, where he had gone. She finally hit pay dirt when Creflo King, who owned most of the parking lots in town, told her he had seen Cade talking to a pretty woman yesterday.

  Again, Blair bristled. “Who was she, do you know?”

  Creflo sucked on the toothpick in his mouth and leaned on the counter. “Never seen her before. Nobody from around here, and she wasn’t dressed like a tourist. She had on a dress like she was going to church. I just figured she might have been kin to that man Cade killed, they were talking so serious and all, and Cade had this whipped look on his face like he was about to bust into tears or something.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. Blair turned that over in her mind. He must have had someone come forward about the body.

  “Did he leave here with her?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, sure did.” Creflo took off his cap and scratched at the bald spot on his scraggly head. “In fact, I walked out behind them. He got into a blue PT Cruiser with her and they took off.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “He got into her car?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t see the license tag, did you?”

  “Of course not. It did have a Hertz sticker, though, so the car might have been rented. I didn’t see no reason to be suspicious. Cade’s a cop. He knows what he’s doin’. And he has the right to go off with any woman he wants.”

  Blair wasn’t sure why that statement stung her.

  When she realized she had gotten all the information she was going to get out of him, she headed to the police station, and found Joe McCormick sitting at Cade’s desk with a pile of reports in front of him. He looked up at her with weary eyes and ran his hand across his closely shaved head. “What you got, Blair?”

  “Joe, I talked to Creflo King at Cricket’s and he said that he saw Cade getting into a blue PT Cruiser with a woman yesterday morning before he disappeared.”

  “Yeah, what else is new?” He went back to writing. “I found that out yesterday.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

  He grunted. “Why should I tell you? You’re not a member of this police department. I don’t have to share classified information with you.”

  “Well, why is it classified?” she asked. “Come on! For heaven’s sake, I was calling all over the place yesterday trying to find him.”

  “Well, we didn’t know where he was,” Joe said, “and we still don’t. We don’t know who the woman is, and we don’t know any thing about the blue PT Cruiser or where they went.” He dropped his pencil and leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “I’m beginning to get concerned, Blair.”

  She sat down in front of him, her eyes locked on his face. “Define ‘concerned.’”

  Joe gave her a smirk. “Concerned, meaning that something’s not right. Besides his wanting to find out who he ran over, we might have a murder case on our hands—that man had been shot. Cade would be here working on this case. I mean, it’s possible that Cade just took off with a girlfriend, but I just can’t see that happening.”

  “No, me either. Besides, Cade doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

  Joe got up, went to the window. “He was too worried about the identity of the man. He had us all hopping the day of the accident. He wouldn’t just vanish the next day.”

  “So who is the woman?”

  “We’re trying to find out.” He turned back to her. “But there are a lot of unknowns right now. If we could determine the identity of the dead man, then maybe we could figure out who she was.”

  “Then you think she was connected to the man who was killed?”

  “It’s just a guess, but it’s as good as any other.”

  When Blair left the station, she sat behind the wheel of her Volvo, trying to think. Joe’s concerns only validated her own. Something had, indeed, happened to Cade.
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  Fear churned in the pit of her stomach. What if he wasn’t all right?

  She drove home, pulled into the parking lot between her house and the library. She didn’t feel like working today, but she supposed she had no choice. She went to the library next door and unlocked it. It felt cold and barren in here today, even though outside it was nearing eighty degrees already.

  She thought of the petite woman with the blue PT Cruiser. Was it even possible that she was Cade’s girlfriend? That he’d been so traumatized over killing the man, that he’d gone off with her without telling anyone?

  No, it wasn’t possible, she told herself. That was ludicrous and completely out of character for Cade. She was thinking like Creflo King, not like an intelligent woman who knew Cade well.

  Cade was in trouble. But she didn’t have a clue how to help him.

  CHAPTER 8

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Blair’s restlessness overcame her, and she decided to go back to the police station to see if there had been any news. As she pulled into the parking lot, she saw Joe burst out of the police station and head to his car.

  “Joe,” she called through her car window. “Has anything happened?”

  He glanced back at her as he got into his unmarked car. “Somebody just reported finding an abandoned car.”

  “Where?”

  “In the woods over by Hampton’s Place.” He slammed his door and started his car.

  Hampton’s Place was a condominium complex about a half mile from South Beach, where the man had been killed. Was it his car they had found? Would it have his identification? Would it provide any clues about Cade? Blair turned her car around and followed him.

  When they got to the parking lot of Hampton’s Place, Joe got out of his car and stalked toward her. “Are you crazy?” He flung her door open. “Following me like that! I’m on police business, Blair. I ought to ticket you.”