She scanned the little she could see of the front hall. Everything seemed to be in place. A whiff of something reminiscent of oranges filtered out. It was the fragrant smell of orange oil. Had Elizabeth recently polished her furniture? Mixed with the aroma of oranges was the smell of yeasty dough. Houses have their own unique atmospheres created by their owners—cooking smells, cleaning products, old books, baby powder, dog kibble. Lucky had always thought one could tell a lot about the inhabitants of a house if one simply inhaled. She called once more, although now she was certain the house was empty.
She descended the porch stairs and followed the paving stones to the driveway. Elizabeth’s car was gone. In the summer, she always left her car outside on the drive. Wherever she had gone, she had driven. Only in the coldest days of winter would she use her garage. Lucky walked the length of the driveway and peeked in the side window of the garage. Empty. No car.
She heard a small mewing sound from the kitchen door. She walked up the back steps to the kitchen door. It was Charlie. His kitty door was closed. He was locked inside and probably hadn’t been fed. How long had it been since anyone had seen Elizabeth? Three days?
“Hang on, Charlie,” she whispered at the door. She hurried to the garage and pulled open one of the wooden doors. Even the garage was as neat as a pin. Gardening implements hung in the cabinet and small household tools were displayed above a corner workbench. Lucky opened the cabinet and felt in back on the left side for the house key she knew Elizabeth kept hidden there. She returned to the kitchen door and unlocked it. Charlie rushed at her legs. She dropped her purse and kneeled down to hug the cat. He climbed onto her lap, meowing and purring, thrilled that someone had come home. “Oh, poor Charlie. You poor thing. You must be starving.” Elizabeth’s cat was a sweet-tempered gray-striped tiger cat with huge paws. Elizabeth babied him to death.
“It’s all right now, Charlie,” she murmured to the cat as she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a can that was almost full. She scooped a large chunk of wet food into a clean dish. Fortunately, Charlie still had a good-sized bowl of dry food, but Lucky added more pellets just in case and gave him fresh water with an ice cube in it to keep the water cool.
The house had high ceilings and eaves that kept the temperature moderate even on the hottest days, so Charlie hadn’t been suffering from the weather. Elizabeth usually kept him inside during the day while she was at the office, and let him come and go at will when she was home. At night, she closed the kitty door to keep Charlie safe from raccoons. Lucky knew Elizabeth worried about him when she was at work. She would never have left Charlie on his own. She would have asked someone—Lucky, a neighbor, someone—to keep an eye on Charlie and feed him.
Charlie hunkered down and made loud slurping sounds in his bowl. Lucky picked her purse up off the floor and dropped it in a kitchen chair. Maybe there was something here that could tell her where Elizabeth had gone. She walked out to the front hall and opened the door. She scooped up the magazines and flyer and the two bills that lay inside on the floor and placed them on the library table in the hallway. She walked through the small parlor and dining room, checked the hall closet and then climbed the stairs to the second story. Elizabeth’s house was warm and charming, nothing out of place. No dust had accumulated. The bed was covered with a crocheted spread that Elizabeth had made herself. A sprinkling of gray Charlie hairs at the foot of the bed indicated his favorite place to nap.
Elizabeth used the second bedroom as a combination office and guest room. Everything looked completely normal and undisturbed. The daybed was neat, its cushions perfectly placed. Lucky checked the calendar above the desk. No appointments had been marked for today, yesterday or the day before. The light on the answering machine was blinking. Lucky hit the button and listened to messages from Jessie, sounding more and more worried, her own voice messages and finally one from Marjorie at the Off Broadway ladies’ clothing store, reminding Elizabeth that her order had arrived.
Lucky slumped into the desk chair and looked around. Nothing terrible had happened to Elizabeth here. Everything was in order, as if she had just prepared for work, made her bed and washed her breakfast dishes before she left for the office. She had just never arrived.
Where could she be?
Lucky dialed Nate’s number at the station. It rang twice before Bradley picked up.
“Snowflake Police. Deputy Moffitt.”
“Bradley, it’s Lucky Jamieson. I have to speak to Nate right away. It’s important.”
She heard a slight poof of air through the telephone, as if Bradley considered her call an annoyance.
“It’s very important.”
“Just a minute,” he replied in an officious tone. Lucky bit her tongue. One of these days she would march to the police station and personally throttle Bradley. Nate could arrest her but it would be justifiable homicide and she could prove it. She amused herself with the vision of Bradley gasping for air on the floor of the Snowflake Police Station until she heard Nate’s voice.
“Chief Edgerton.”
Lucky snapped out of her homicidal fantasy. “Nate, it’s me. Lucky. I’m at Elizabeth Dove’s house. Something’s really wrong.” Lucky tried to keep the panic out of her voice. Nate never responded well to an excess of emotion.
“Just got a call from Jessie at her office. Did you tell her to call me?”
“Yes. I’m terribly worried.”
“Now what makes you think she’s missing, and not just out somewhere?”
“I haven’t seen her for the last three days. She hasn’t been to her office and her assistant has no idea where she is. Her car’s gone and she left her cat with no one to feed him.”
Nate took a deep breath. “She could have just gone out of town for a day or two.”
“Without telling her secretary? Without someone taking care of her cat? That’s not like her Nate and you know it. What if she’s had an accident on the road?”
Nate was silent a moment, all too aware of what Lucky had gone through with her parents’ car crash. His voice was slightly warmer. “Okay. You’re right, that doesn’t sound like Elizabeth. Tell you what, I’ll go over to her office and I’ll make inquiries about her car. But I doubt there’s been an accident. If there had been, I would have been contacted about any car registered in Snowflake. Do you know the year, make and license plate?”
“Hang on. Her files are right here. I know it’s a dark blue Toyota sedan, probably about six years old, I’m guessing.” Lucky pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet and riffled through the folders. She wasn’t sure what Elizabeth’s filing system was. “Don’t hang up, Nate. Just give me a minute.” She rested the phone on the desk and opened the second drawer of the cabinet. She found what she was looking for. Balancing the file on her lap, she opened it. Several papers slipped to the floor before she could grab them. Her hands were shaking slightly as she tried to quell her growing fear. “Here it is—her plate number is on her auto policy. It’s 501293. Nate, I am really worried about her.”
“I know you are. But there could be a logical explanation. In the meantime, I’ll call over to the hospital in Lincoln Falls and check out her car license with the police there. I can send Bradley out to drive around and look for her car.”
“Is there anything else you can do?”
“Lucky . . . look . . . I’m not minimizing this, but I have a murder investigation going on right now. If you’re right about Elizabeth, that something might have happened to her, I’ll get the State Police on it. Just give me a couple of hours to try everything else, okay? And try not to panic.”
“Okay. Thanks, Nate.” Lucky took a deep breath and replaced the receiver, not feeling the least bit better. She picked up the papers that had fallen to the floor and returned them to the folder, setting it neatly in the filing cabinet. She took a last look around and trudged downstairs. She double-checked that the lamp in the front room was still on its timer, as Elizabeth always left it.
Char
lie was now purring and circling her legs. She picked him up and carried him back to the kitchen. His bowl was empty. She dished out another smaller bowl of wet food in case he grew hungry later. Charlie showed no interest in the additional food but sat next to his dish and meowed. Lucky knew he expected a treat. Elizabeth always gave him one after feeding him. She found the bag of treats in a kitchen drawer and doled out two. Charlie snapped them up. She turned on the radio that sat on the kitchen counter and found an easy listening station, setting the volume low. It might keep Charlie company. She took a last look around the kitchen. A bowl and a cup, freshly washed, sat in the dish strainer. If there was a clue here as to where Elizabeth had gone, she hadn’t found it.
She leaned down to pat Charlie. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning to check on you.”
“Elizabeth, where are you?” she whispered softly to herself as she slipped out the door.
Chapter 17
“IS THERE ANYONE she’s close to? A relative maybe we could call?” Sophie asked as she reached over to pour another glass of wine. She was seated cross-legged on a large cushion on the floor of Lucky’s living room.
“More?” she asked, holding the bottle over Lucky’s glass.
Lucky shook her head to indicate no. Sophie ignored her and poured another full glass. “Drink up. There’s nothing else you can do right now. You need to relax.”
Sophie had knocked on the door of Lucky’s apartment unexpectedly a half hour before, a bottle of wine in her hand. She had come, no doubt, because she knew Lucky was worried sick about Elizabeth. She claimed that Sage was busy tonight and she had popped over because she thought a girls’ night would be a great idea.
“Relax? How can I relax? It’s just too weird, Sophie. People don’t just vanish . . . or do they?”
“You’ve done everything you can. You’ve notified Nate and now it’s in his hands. Look—tomorrow I’ll go over to her house with you. We’ll search everywhere. I can knock on her neighbors’ doors and see if they’ve seen her or seen anything. We’ll stay in touch with Nate and find out what he’s doing about the situation. Someone must know something. Someone must have seen something.”
“Talking to the neighbors is a good idea. Maybe they saw her leave the house. Maybe they noticed if she was with someone. And to answer your earlier question, no. Her family is gone. She has no brothers or sisters. No one. She was closest to my Mom and Dad . . . and me and Jack. That’s why I’m sure something’s happened to her. She would never have gone away without at the very least letting me or Jack know—not to mention Jessie, her assistant.”
“How do you know she left in the morning? She could have gone out at night.”
“I don’t. I’m just guessing. There was a cup and a bowl in the strainer. Like she might have had breakfast before heading to her office.”
“Hate to say this, but it doesn’t really prove anything, Lucky. She could just as easily have had a cup of tea and a bowl of soup at night. She could have gone out anytime. When was the last time you actually spoke to her?”
“The day of the demonstration. There was a lot of yelling and carrying on at the construction site and then the bones were discovered. Elizabeth was trying to calm everyone down but they were pressing in on her. They were shouting at her as if she were responsible for how the town council voted.”
Lucky glanced around her small living room. Everything she had now she owed to Elizabeth—the apartment she rented in the building that Elizabeth owned, the car Elizabeth had given her. Even most of her furnishings had come from Elizabeth’s hand-me-downs.
“What happened then?”
“Edward Embry came over and Elizabeth introduced us. We chatted for a bit and then she and I walked back to the Spoonful. Oh, and we ran into Cordelia Rank, who was going on about the DAR and that’s it.”
“And you haven’t talked to her since?”
“No,” Lucky moaned. “Not once. The next day I was pretty busy. I didn’t expect to see her. And then Jack discovered Harry in his shop and you know the rest. I thought I’d talk to her after that, even the next day, but I didn’t hear from her. I called a few times but just got her machine. I knew she’d be very upset about what happened to Harry. I thought she’d certainly want to talk to Jack or me. It seems that’s all anyone wants to talk about anyway . . .” Lucky trailed off. “Well, you know what I’m saying.” Lucky took a sip of the unwanted wine. “Sophie, do you think her disappearance could have something to do with Harry’s murder?”
“What makes you say that?” Sophie furrowed her brow.
“No reason. It’s just too coincidental for my taste. And speaking of Harry, I told Nate about what happened at the church the morning we were there unloading drinks.”
“Refresh my memory. What happened at the church?” Sophie looked blank. “Oh, that’s right. I remember now. You said you overheard Harry confessing something to Pastor Wilson. You really think that might have had something to do with his murder?”
“It’s unusual. Harry never talked to anyone. We’ve all been sitting around trying to figure out who knew Harry best, and even though everybody knew him, we really didn’t know anything about his life. Who his friends were. Who he had a beer with. Nothing. Probably Guy Bessette knew more about Harry than anyone and even he admits he didn’t know him very well. He was here, in this town, his whole life, and it’s as if he was invisible, living under the radar. He doesn’t seem to have had any deep connections with anyone.”
“I know you told me what you heard at the church, but tell me again.”
“I’ve done my best to recall.” Lucky cast her mind back. “I was standing in the corridor near the door to Pastor Wilson’s office. It sounded like someone was sobbing and then I heard Harry say, ‘I just had to tell someone.’ Pastor Wilson said, ‘You did the right thing. We can talk again . . . whenever you’re ready.’”
“Look, I’m not pooh-poohing your intuition. Couldn’t they have been talking about anything? Maybe Harry was concerned about something to do with the demonstration. Maybe you heard something that just sounded like crying.”
“I could be wrong, I admit. It’s hard to describe the feeling. It was something . . . There was an emotional charge in the air. It was obvious the Pastor was trying to soothe and encourage Harry to come back and talk again. Maybe he hadn’t made up his mind. That’s what I felt. The Pastor said, ‘Whenever you’re ready’ as if Harry had to prepare to talk to the Pastor again. It felt like Harry had a secret, something he wanted to get off his chest.”
Sophie leaned back against the arm of the chair, staring into her wineglass. “Too bad he didn’t get it off his chest sooner. If you’re right, I’d be willing to bet it’s what got him killed.”
Chapter 18
LUCKY LOOKED UP from the counter. Two tall figures were dark shadows against the sunlight. The Spoonful was packed with morning customers and so noisy she hadn’t heard the bell over the door jingle. Nate stood with another man in a State Police uniform. A frisson of fear ran up her spine and her throat caught. Had they found Elizabeth? Were they here to deliver bad news? Her hands started to shake. She placed the dishes she was holding on the counter and watched as the men headed in Jack’s direction where he sat on his stool behind the cash register. Lucky couldn’t hear what they were saying over the din of the restaurant. It was obvious they wanted a quiet place to talk. She signaled to Sage that she was heading for the office and called Meg over to take care of the counter. Jack spoke to Nate and the other man and then pointed in her direction. She stood at the doorway to the corridor, and when they reached her, she led them down the hall to the office. She offered them seats on the other side of the desk. When she closed the door behind her, the room was almost completely quiet.
“Lucky, this is Sergeant Woczinski of the State Police. He’s based in Bennington, but he’s very familiar with this area and has had a lot of experience in missing person cases.”
The man nodded without smiling. “Call me Steve.” He
was in his midthirties with a ruddy complexion and blond hair cropped so close to his skull, he appeared to be bald at first glance.
Lucky shook the Sergeant’s hand and took a seat in the cracked leather chair, her Dad’s chair, behind the desk. “No news?”
Nate shook his head. “That’s maybe a good thing, Lucky. I wanted the Sergeant to meet you and Jack, and try to gather all the information he can. He’s already spoken to Jessie at Elizabeth’s office. We’re heading back to her office again to try and locate anyone else who’s around who might know something we don’t already know.”
“Sophie’s knocking on doors on Elizabeth’s street this morning. She promised to ask all the neighbors if anyone had seen Elizabeth, or seen anything unusual.”
“Great. We’ll talk to her too. And question the neighbors ourselves. You never know what information a few nosy neighbors can give you,” the Sergeant agreed. “So, let’s start at the beginning. When was the last time you saw Elizabeth Dove?”
“The day of the demonstration. That was . . .” Lucky quickly checked the desk calendar. “August tenth—we walked back to the Spoonful together. She had a quick lunch at the counter and said she was heading back to her office.”
A Broth of Betrayal Page 10
