Missing in Cherry Hills

by Paige Sleuth

  “She wouldn’t have left her door wide open,” Lucy said. “And she certainly wouldn’t have left Bubbles.”

  “That is cause for concern,” Andrew agreed.

  Nobody said a word as Andrew started circling the room. Kat found herself praying that his trained detective’s eye spotted some crucial clue she had missed.

  But after a minute Andrew came to a halt, looking none the wiser. “There’s no sign of a struggle. If she was taken, it’s possible she knows whoever is responsible and voluntarily opened the door for him or her.”

  Lucy nodded. “That’s what we were thinking.”

  Andrew fixed his gaze on Kat. “You were, were you?”

  Kat offered him a sheepish grin. Fortunately, she was saved from having to answer when Janice’s cell phone belted out a dance number.

  Andrew and Kat both turned toward the iPhone. The name ‘Dorothy Fairchild’ was lit up on the screen.

  Kat frowned. She knew Dorothy Fairchild from her volunteer work with Furry Friends Foster Families, a local animal rescue. Dorothy, who preferred to be called Lady Fairchild, was a staunch supporter of 4F. The wealthy, older woman often made generous donations to not only 4F but other local charities as well.

  But why would Lady Fairchild be calling Janice? Kat wasn’t aware that the two even knew each other.

  Before she could dwell more over the call, Bubbles broke free from Lucy and rushed into the room. He shoved his nose against the ringing cell phone, sending it sliding across the coffee table. The bark he let out when it fell to the floor broke Kat’s heart. It was as if he thought Janice might be calling and no one was bothering to pick up.

  The phone fell silent after another ring. So did Bubbles. But the dog did circle around the coffee table and sit down next to the iPhone as if he expected the caller to try again soon.

  Andrew pointed at Bubbles. “Does this guy have anywhere to go?”

  Lucy and Kat exchanged looks. As Janice’s neighbors, Kat figured it was up to them to watch over Bubbles. Yet between Matty and Tom and Lucy’s cat Tabitha, keeping him in one of their apartments didn’t seem like a viable option.

  She supposed she could try to track down a 4F foster family who had room to take in one more dog. But she hesitated to overstep her boundaries by phoning volunteers so late in the evening.

  “He can stay with me,” Kat said, making a snap decision. “I’ll keep him in my bedroom, away from the cats.”

  Andrew nodded, as if he’d already predicted her answer.

  “Why don’t I take him for a walk first?” Lucy said. “Who knows when he’s been out last.”

  Andrew swept his arm toward Bubbles. “Be my guest.”

  Lucy grabbed the leash by the door and shook it at Bubbles. “Come on, buddy.”

  The dog’s ears pricked. He sprinted over to Lucy, his tail wagging. Lucy snapped the leash to his collar and led him out of the apartment.

  Larry backed away from the door. “Well, I oughta be heading back downstairs, let you do your detecting.”

  “You going to be home all evening?” Andrew asked.

  “Yep. You can find me in 1B, right downstairs.” Larry folded his hands in front of him. “And you come get me if I can do anything to help locate Janice. That gal is a good kid. I hate to think something bad’s happened to her.”

  “I’ll do that,” Andrew promised.

  Larry left, leaving Kat and Andrew alone. She faced him, wishing he weren’t working and she could turn to him for comfort. Oh, why not, she thought, slipping her arms around his waist and resting her head against his shoulder.

  Andrew kissed her forehead as he returned the hug. “Looks like I got to see you on your birthday after all.”

  “Given the circumstances, I’d rather you hadn’t.”

  Andrew pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. “Try not to worry too much, okay, Kat? I’m going to do everything in my power to find Janice.”

  Kat knew he wasn’t making an empty promise. Andrew took his job seriously, and Kat had never known him to shy away from a difficult case.

  But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t fail despite his best efforts.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kat’s heavy heart weighed her down as she exited Janice’s apartment. She kept her fingers crossed that Andrew would find something to lead them to her neighbor’s location. The sooner they tracked her down, the better.

  Kat took the elevator downstairs and crossed through the building lobby to the main entrance. The clear, June night was pleasant, but Kat was too preoccupied to enjoy it.

  She found Lucy and Bubbles standing in a well-lit grassy area off to one side. Bubbles barked when he saw her.

  “Janice’s car is still here,” Lucy said.

  Kat exhaled. The kidnapping scenario was looking more and more likely.

  Lucy turned her back on the parking lot as if she preferred not to have further evidence of their neighbor’s troubling situation directly in her line of sight. Kat couldn’t blame her. Things were not looking good.

  “How is Bubbles holding up?” Kat asked.

  “Okay.” Lucy scratched the dog’s head. “Do you think he knows what’s going on?”

  “I’m sure he knows something’s not right, even if he’s fuzzy on the details.” Kat could have said the same thing about herself. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that someone had taken Janice. Who would do such a thing?

  “What are you doing with Bubbles?” a male voice asked.

  Lucy whirled around so quickly it was a miracle she didn’t lose her footing. “Ryan! What are you doing here?”

  His brow furrowed. “I live here.”

  “But where did you come from?”

  “I guess you didn’t hear me drive up. You look like you have a lot on your mind.”

  “I do.” Lucy eyed him warily. “Where were you just now?”

  “I . . . I went to the park.”

  “At this time of night?”

  Ryan looked at the giant watch strapped to his wrist. “It’s barely ten o’clock. The sun only set an hour ago.”

  Kat regarded the second-floor resident. Somewhere in his late twenties with thick, brown hair, Ryan Pollack was a construction worker and had the build to boot. Kat had never found his size intimidating before, but running into him now, after they had just learned of Janice’s disappearance, forced her to view him in a different light. And the fact of the matter was that Ryan was big—certainly big enough to carry a woman out of her apartment.

  “What are you doing with Bubbles?” Ryan asked again.

  “Janice is missing.” There was a harshness to Lucy’s tone that sounded almost accusatory. Apparently Kat wasn’t the only one evaluating Ryan’s ability to kidnap a woman.

  “Missing?” Ryan repeated.

  “Gone, MIA, vanished into thin air.”

  Ryan stared at Lucy, a dumbfounded look on his face.

  “We think somebody abducted her from her apartment,” Kat told him.

  “Wow,” Ryan said. “That’s . . . something.”

  “Did Janice happen to say anything to you about who she might be meeting tonight?” Kat asked.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Really?” Hope surged through Kat. “Who did she say she was meeting?”

  Ryan scratched his head. “Well, she said she was meeting you two.”

  Kat deflated. Of course Janice would have said as much. After all, she had planned to meet with Kat and Lucy.

  “She told me that a couple days ago when I asked her if she maybe wanted to . . .” Ryan glanced at Lucy, then averted his eyes.

  “Wanted to what?” Kat prompted.

  “You know.” He stared at the ground. “Grab a bite or something.”

  “You asked her out on a date,” Lucy said.

  Ryan’s nod was almost imperceptible. “But I guess she didn’t want to go so she made up that story about having plans with you.”

  “She didn’t make it up,” Kat told him.
>
  “Oh.” He straightened, a smile spreading across his face.

  Lucy shot Kat a withering look. Evidently Kat had made a blunder by reviving the man’s hopes.

  “So she’s really missing?” Ryan said.

  Kat nodded.

  “Are you sure she isn’t just out with her boyfriend?” Ryan asked.

  “Her boyfriend?” Lucy scrunched up her nose. “Janice doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Sure she does. I heard her arguing with him when I was leaving.”

  Ryan’s words knocked the air out of Kat’s lungs. “Janice was arguing with someone when you left your apartment tonight?”

  “Yeah. It was a real heated exchange, too.”

  “Could you hear what they were saying?”

  “Janice sounded like she was crying, so her words were kind of muffled. But I did catch her saying something about being in permanent pain.”

  A fist wrapped itself around Kat’s chest. That didn’t sound good.

  “She’s been saying that a lot recently,” Ryan added, his tone full of sorrow.

  Lucy set one hand on her hip. “You’ve eavesdropped on her before?”

  “Oh, no. I wasn’t listening on purpose. I would never do that. It’s just that voices carry here, and sometimes, when I’m outside my apartment, I can hear her across the hall.”

  “The insulation in this building isn’t very good,” Kat agreed, hoping he’d keep talking.

  “Yeah.” Ryan’s forehead creased. “The weird thing is I never heard Janice’s boyfriend talking.”

  “Maybe she was speaking to him on the phone,” Kat proposed.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Did Janice have a secret boyfriend? Kat wondered. Since Lucy hadn’t known about him Kat had to figure he was a fairly new development.

  Then again, it sounded as though Janice and this mystery man had already reached a point where heated discussions were the norm. In Kat’s experience that typically didn’t happen during the ‘getting to know you’ stage. Usually that only occurred after a couple had been together for a while, when enough time had passed for little quirks to become huge annoyances.

  Kat looked at Ryan. “Did you ever hear Janice mention this man’s name?”

  He shook his head. “Like I said, I didn’t listen in on purpose.”

  “But you’re sure he was here tonight?”

  “Yeah. Unless she had him on the phone like you said.” His eyes brightened. “Maybe she was breaking up with him. Maybe that’s what they were arguing about.”

  “Maybe.” And if that were the case, Janice might be in grave danger if this man hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer.

  “I hope she dumped him,” Ryan said. “I thought about going over there and clocking him a few times, but my mama says it’s never a good idea to get involved in other people’s relationships. So I just kept asking Janice out so she’d see there are good guys out there too. A woman like Janice, she needs a man who will worship her, somebody who will treat her like a princess. She shouldn’t have to settle for someone who causes her pain all the time. The man she ends up with should cherish her like the angel she is.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes at Kat. Ryan didn’t seem to notice, and Kat almost felt sorry for the guy.

  Bubbles must have felt some sympathy for Ryan as well. He stepped closer and shoved his nose into Ryan’s palm.

  Ryan looked at Lucy as he rubbed the dog’s ears. “You deserve somebody who will treat you like a princess, too, Lucy. You know, I’m not doing anything tomorrow night, if you want to hang out for a while.”

  Lucy regarded him, steel in her gaze. “I’m not interested, Ryan. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “Ryan,” Kat interjected, wanting to stay on topic, “what time did you hear Janice arguing with her boyfriend tonight?”

  “It would have been when I left the apartment,” he replied. “So, just before seven.”

  “Seven?” Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been at the park for three hours?”

  Ryan shifted his feet. “It was a nice day. And then it started getting late, so I stayed to watch the sun set.”

  “What were you doing before the sun set?” Lucy demanded.

  “I was . . . walking around.”

  His halting speech and the way he avoided eye contact gave Kat the impression he was lying. And Lucy’s questions had made it clear that she didn’t believe his story either.

  Kat pictured Ryan slinging Janice over his shoulders and carrying her away like a sheet of drywall. He certainly would have had the opportunity to kidnap Janice if he wanted to. Janice wouldn’t have thought anything of opening her door for a neighbor, even one she didn’t particularly care for.

  And Kat couldn’t deny he had motive. Not only was Janice an attractive woman who, according to Lucy, had repeatedly rebuffed his advances, but Ryan also resented how her boyfriend was treating her. He could have deluded himself into thinking he was doing the noble thing by physically removing her from a toxic situation. Then he’d made up that tale about watching the sun set because he obviously couldn’t confess to spending the past three hours looking for a place to stash his rescued princess.

  Kat jolted as she cast her gaze down. Ryan’s shoes looked awfully dressy for someone who had supposedly gone for a walk in the park.

  So what had Ryan Pollack really been doing this evening?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I’ll bet you my next paycheck Ryan took Janice,” Lucy said, storming into Kat’s apartment.

  Bubbles whimpered and shifted closer to Kat. Kat gave the dog what she hoped was a reassuring pat before stepping over the threshold. When Bubbles didn’t follow, she held her hands out to him and wiggled her fingers. He sat down in the corridor, refusing to budge.

  Lucy spun around. Her jaw was clenched and her nostrils were flared, but her expression softened when she saw Bubbles outside the door.

  “Poor baby.” Lucy breezed back into the hallway, looped the end of the leash around her wrist, and cradled the dog’s head in her hands. “Don’t you worry, Bubbles. We’re going to find your mama and get her back home where she belongs. You know I would arrest Ryan right now if it were up to me.”

  “We don’t know that Ryan is involved,” Kat said. Despite her own doubts, she wanted to maintain an open mind.

  Lucy scowled. “Of course he’s involved. He’s Mr. Desperate, remember? You heard all that jabbering about princesses and good men. I bet when Janice didn’t respond to his advances he decided he would take her by brute force.”

  “He never tried to take you, did he?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean anything. I mean, think about it. Ryan had the most opportunity of anyone, being right across the hall from her.”

  Tom came running from the kitchen. He meowed a greeting, then froze when he saw the big, brown dog sitting just outside the apartment.

  The sight of Tom seemed to give Bubbles the impetus he needed to come inside. He barked, his tail swinging back and forth as he inched forward to inspect the cat.

  Lucy tugged on the leash. “Hey now, Bubbles. Let’s give Tom some space.”

  Bubbles didn’t pay her any heed. He kept moving farther inside, his eyes trained on Tom.

  Tom crawled forward at an equally slow pace. The animals met near the coffee table, both of their noses working overtime as they attempted to sniff out whether the other one was friend or foe.

  “They seem okay with each other,” Lucy said.

  “It’s possible Tom has been around dogs before. I don’t really know.” Like many rescues, Tom had a past that was cloaked in mystery.

  Bubbles nuzzled Tom’s side, spurring the cat to twist around and lick the dog’s nose.

  Lucy set one palm over her heart. “Aw, look at that.”

  But the moment didn’t last long. Two seconds after that loving lick, Tom reached out and smacked Bubbles across the face. Kat thought Tom might be trying to entice Bubbles to play with him, but the Irish setter
didn’t see it that way. He lowered himself to the floor and laid his head on his paws.

  Watching the animals reminded Kat of what Ryan had said about Janice’s heated arguments behind closed doors. “Do you think Janice could be in an abusive relationship?”

  “No,” Lucy said shortly. “Ryan made up that whole boyfriend story so we wouldn’t suspect him of taking her. I guarantee it.”

  Kat couldn’t deny it was a valid possibility.

  “Trust me,” Lucy said. “If Janice had a boyfriend she would have mentioned him before now. She and I are always lamenting over the lack of decent men in this town. It’s one of the reasons we get along so well. If Janice had found someone it would be a miracle. And she wouldn’t have kept such big news to herself.”

  As Kat considered Lucy’s words, she became aware of a low growling sound. It was only then that she noticed Matty hunkered down on the back of one of the sofas, an intense expression on her face. Judging from the way the fur on Matty’s gray-striped tail had started to stand on end, the tortoiseshell wasn’t happy about having a dog inside her apartment.

  Kat reached for the leash in Lucy’s hand. “I’d better put Bubbles in my bedroom before the cats gang up on him.”

  Lucy handed over the leash, but when Kat started toward her bedroom Bubbles dug his feet into the carpet. He evidently didn’t recognize Matty’s arched back and bared teeth as a warning that he’d better make himself scarce if he didn’t want to end up with claw marks in his hide.

  With some effort, Kat managed to drag Bubbles through the living room. Once he could no longer see Matty and Tom she had an easier time coaxing him into her bedroom. She found an empty Tupperware container in the bathroom, filled it with water, and left it in the bedroom for him.

  Matty had joined Tom on the floor while Kat was getting Bubbles situated. By the time Kat returned to the living room, the tortoiseshell was busy licking Tom’s head. She seemed to need to reassure herself that her brother was okay after enduring such a harrowing encounter with an enemy species. In contrast, Tom seemed to have already forgotten about the dog. He closed his eyes, savoring the attention.