by Joyce Lavene
I wasn’t as concerned with upsetting people now that it appeared my instincts about someone being in trouble were right. I didn’t know if I should trust Matthew—but I wasn’t in a position to restrain him in any way.
I decided I’d keep him close at hand in case it became apparent that he’d hurt Sandi in some way. I hoped my vision about her looking up and seeing a gun was not part of why she was missing. But if something had happened to her, Matthew was an obvious suspect.
“Excuse me!” I raised my voice in each room where parts of the group were gathered. “I’m looking for Sandi Foxx—mayor of Manteo. Has anyone seen her?”
People looked around like they always do, as though the person in question might be standing right next to them and they hadn’t noticed. Heads shook and stories were offered of when they’d seen her last. Everyone agreed that they hadn’t seen her since we’d left the ballroom during the storm.
Matthew stood at my side and shifted the expensive watch on his wrist, wiggled his feet, bit his lip and cracked his knuckles. He seemed guilty of something. The more people talked about her, the more nervous he got. He was a wreck.
Once we’d all agreed that no one had seen her, I enlisted the aid of several people I knew I could trust. Marissa got the master keys for the rooms after I assured her that Kevin wouldn’t fire her for helping me. She helped me lay out a room-by-room map of where everyone was staying.
“This is Sandi’s room,” she said. “It’s on the third floor.”
“What about his room?” I pointed to Matthew.
“He’s staying down the hall from her.”
It seemed likely to me that Sandi somehow got away from the group to look for her ring when the rest of us left the ballroom. When I presented that theory to Matthew, he broke down. “We went upstairs for a while. She thought it was funny being up there—doing it—you know? While everyone else was downstairs scared of the storm.”
“Wasn’t she scared of the storm?” I asked him. “Weren’t you scared?”
“I was terrified.” He glanced away, clearly scared now. “I didn’t want to go up there, but she insisted.”
And of course, he didn’t mind helping her out. He didn’t have to explain any more than that. She probably just didn’t come right back down after they were finished—and when she did come down, she went to find her ring.
I scrutinized Matthew with his wild hair and narrow face—what did Sandi see in him worth losing her job and her family? He was young, that was true. Maybe in his early to late twenties. Sandi was in her early forties. Maybe that was his charm.
He was lucky Sandi’s husband—a very large ex-marine from Charleston—wasn’t here to help look for her. I didn’t want to know how nervous Matthew would be in that case.
Nancy, Marissa and I walked up the dark stairs to the third floor—Matthew closely in tow where I could keep an eye on him. There were only small emergency lights to guide the way. We were kind of bunched together as we felt our way down the long hall.
I glanced out of the window on the third-floor landing. The dark, angry sea was detailed by moonlight as it slapped at the shore. Despite the bright moonlight, I wished it was morning. I wished someone besides me was leading this effort to look for Sandi too. But I was stuck with the night and the responsibility, at least for a while.
Matthew led us to Sandi’s room, but there was no answer when I knocked. Marissa unlocked the door—which said something to me about Sandi and Matthew’s relationship. He didn’t have a key.
Impatiently, I pushed into the large room, but there was no sign of Sandi. The bed was tumbled, pillows and blankets everywhere. Matthew hung his head when I looked at him. Marissa took a step back from him as though she was afraid of being too near.
Clothes were strewn around as though the storm had swept through the room. Sandi’s pocketbook with her driver’s license, credit cards and pictures of her family was still on her bedside table. She couldn’t be far away.
“Could she be in your room?” Nancy asked Matthew in a none-too-delicate tone.
“I suppose so,” he said. “She was in here when I left to go downstairs. I don’t know why she’d be in my room. It’s really small. She forgot to book it for me until right at the last minute.”
“Let’s take a look,” I suggested. “Maybe she wanted to surprise you.”
“Believe me—this trip has been one big surprise,” he commented in a bitter voice as he led the way down the hall. He opened the door as we got there. The room was empty.
“You weren’t kidding about this being small,” Nancy said. “I don’t know if I could fit on that bed.”
“It’s meant for a child,” Marissa explained. “It’s all we had left. I’m sorry. Mayor Foxx said it would be fine.”
“She would,” Matthew said. He glared at Marissa.
I could imagine Sandi hadn’t planned for him to spend much time here. I looked around the room anyway. It was as neat as Sandi’s was messy.
“She isn’t here,” he said in an obvious way. “I don’t know where she is.”
“But you seem to be the last person who saw her.” I didn’t add “alive,” but I tried to sound as intimidating as Chief Michaels would have in this situation. As I finished surveying the room, I noticed something on top of the tiny dresser—the other part of the broken key chain.
I felt the anger and frustration again—stronger this time—when I picked it up. But while the key belonged to Matthew, the energy left in the key chain was from Sandi. She’d thrown the key ring at him and the dolphin fob had shattered against the hitching post.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” he said, twisting his watch.
“You were breaking up with her, weren’t you?” It was just a guess, but an educated one. Why else would Sandi be that angry and frustrated with him?
I could see from the look on his face that I was right. I put the key chain in my pocket. I might need it later.
“She was so demanding,” he said. “You just don’t know what it was like. I told her I’d do this conference with her but I was leaving when we got back. She thought coming here together would make some big difference.”
“Demanding?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“She wanted to get married, okay?” He shook his head, his dark hair flopping around on his forehead. “I told her I wasn’t ready. She promised to help me get a good job with the government. Instead, I ended up being her lover and errand boy.”
“She was going to leave her kids and that gorgeous hunk of husband for you?” Nancy asked exactly what I was thinking.
“That’s what she told me,” he answered. “I don’t know why. I didn’t encourage her. I never thought it was that serious. I have plans of my own.”
I could hear Gramps saying this was motive. But I held that back—we didn’t know yet where Sandi was or if anything had really happened to her.
“So Sandi was up here and you came downstairs.” I tried to get back to finding our missing mayor.
“She said she wanted to clean up first, you know?” He shrugged. “I thought she came down after me and I just didn’t see her. There were a lot of people down there. She said something about looking for the ring she lost. She might still be looking for it.”
“All right.” I tried to decide what to do next. “I think we should go back downstairs for a minute. Matthew, you’re going to stay down there with a few of my friends. Don’t get any cute ideas about trying to leave.”
“I can’t anyway,” he snarled. “She lost my car key.”
“That must be the one you turned in, Dae,” Marissa added in an excited voice.
Thanks for the help, I thought, but said, “We’ll deal with that later.”
“Never mind all that,” Nancy said, grabbing Matthew’s arm in what appeared to be a painful grip. “I’ll take the little boy toy downstairs and let some of the guys keep an eye on him. He’s not going anywhere until we find Mayor Foxx. You guys start searc
hing the rooms up here. That must be the plan, right?”
I almost said, Yes, ma’am, but I didn’t want to undermine her authority. Besides, Nancy could be pretty tough when she chose to be. “That works. Thanks.”
“Look, I didn’t do anything wrong.” Matthew defended himself. “She wanted me. She just wanted me too much. She threatened not to give me a good job reference if I tried to leave. I was angry. We settled it later. You can ask her when we find her. Then I’m going to sue the whole town of Duck for false accusations.”
“No one is accusing you of anything—yet.” I dismissed him and turned to Marissa. “I guess we’ll have to go room by room. There doesn’t seem to be enough damage from the storm that she could be hurt somewhere up here. But she might’ve had a little too much to drink.”
“Maybe we should call the police, Dae,” Marissa said, her gaze fixed on Matthew. “They’ll know what to do.”
“I don’t want to call them away from this emergency to find Sandi,” I replied. “There are only thirty rooms in the inn. We can look through them, and if we don’t see her, then we’ll call someone. Okay?”
“The mayor can take over for the chief if necessary, you know. It’s in the town charter,” Nancy said. “I’ll take him downstairs and come back up to help.”
After Nancy went downstairs with Matthew, Marissa and I began to work our way down the third-floor hall. She opened every door while I came behind her and checked under every bed, in every bathroom, closet, and any other place an adult woman could fall asleep.
There was no sign of Sandi. I began feeling some tension in my neck and shoulders that had nothing to do with looking under beds. What if something really bad had happened to her? I hoped I was doing the right thing not calling the police.
We moved to the second floor and did the same thing. Sandi wasn’t in any of those rooms either. But we did find a few more wayward gulls who’d taken refuge from the storm. They’d flown in through the broken windows and weren’t in any hurry to leave. We used towels and bedclothes to try and scare them back outside. They squawked at us—finally giving up and vanishing into the night.
I stood by the window (at least where the window used to be) and watched the last one fly away. The moon was bright in the clear black sky. I hoped all of this would be over by morning. Cleaning up after a storm I could deal with—trying to make what could be life-and-death decisions about another human being was another story.
“Kevin’s gonna have a mess to clean up,” Marissa observed, waiting for me at the end of the second-story hall. “There’s a hole in the ceiling.”
I looked up where she pointed and saw the spot, about the size of a hatbox, right above our heads. “How did we miss that when we were upstairs?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy said as she joined us. “Maybe we missed Mayor Foxx too. We’re not professional rescue workers.”
“What now?” Marissa asked.
“I guess we search the rooms on the ground floor.” I was really beginning to worry. I didn’t want to call the chief in from storm detail—no telling what all had happened out there that needed his attention. And truthfully, the police wouldn’t even look for Sandi yet if she was reported missing.
On the other hand, what Matthew had said and the way he was acting were very suspicious. He might not have done anything, but his attitude made me feel less than charitable toward him. What if I waited and something worse happened?
Chapter 6
The problem was solved for me when Duck Police Officer Scott Randall greeted us at the bottom of the stairs. He’d been injured the week before, and his broken arm was keeping him from being much help on the roads picking up trash from the storm. He’d been assigned to checking on Duck citizens.
I’d never been so glad to see someone I was barely acquainted with!
“The chief said I should head over here and make sure everything is okay,” he said in his quiet, almost shy way.
I liked Scott. He wasn’t from Duck, but, like Kevin, he’d settled in so completely, it felt like he’d been here forever. I wanted to hug him at that moment but didn’t want him to take it the wrong way. He was a very serious, reserved young man.
“Thanks for coming.” I drew him into the kitchen and shooed some children out who were raiding the refrigerator. “How are things out there?”
He shook his head. “About the worst I’ve seen. The roads are impassable—all kinds of debris covering them. A few houses lost their roofs, a few more are flooded. There’s not much electricity anywhere on the island. To make matters worse, the bridges are closed.”
That sounded worse than I’d anticipated. “What happened to the bridges? They should’ve been able to withstand some feeder bands.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand the high winds impacted the bridges. Department of Transportation wants to make sure they’re safe—once they can get down here. They said to expect them to be closed for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
That was a worry in itself. No bridges meant no supplies for stores. With no power, food in freezers and refrigerators would go bad pretty quickly. That could also mean water shortages if the pumps weren’t working.
The only good thing was that it was October and the thousands of visitors who’d been here over the summer were now safely back in their own homes.
“Was there something you wanted me to do here?” Scott asked. “If not, I’m heading back out to do what I can.”
I could tell from the sound of his voice that he wanted to be back out on the streets. But we had our own crisis here—I explained everything that had happened—at least what we knew for sure. Gramps always taught me to repeat the facts and not the fears, as he called it. I kept myself from jumping to conclusions and waited to see what Scott had to say when I was finished.
He finally nodded. “You’ve done the right thing, Mayor. I’ll take over from here. Where did you say the man is who was with Mayor Foxx?”
We found Matthew being detained by Mayors Barker Whiteside and David Manning. They’d taken the liberty of raiding Kevin’s bar and were halfway through a bottle of his best scotch.
When Scott questioned Matthew again, the young man repeated everything he’d told us upstairs. But this time he was a little less antagonistic. Maybe the police uniform made a difference—or maybe he was beginning to understand that this was serious.
After hearing what Matthew had to say, Scott thanked the two mayors for keeping track of him and asked them if they would continue to do so. Barker and David were happy to continue sitting there with Matthew between them.
“So the only places you haven’t searched for Mayor Foxx are down here on the first floor, is that correct, Mayor O’Donnell?”
“That’s right,” I said without my customary admonishment to have him call me Dae. This wasn’t the time or the place. “I found Sandi’s ring in the ballroom. Shall we start there?”
I left Nancy with the others, but Marissa came with us. We searched all the closets, cupboards and pantries, even the walk-in freezers. We checked in the laundry room and in Kevin’s downstairs suite. But there was no sign of Sandi.
“She could’ve just left on her own,” Marissa said. “That man she came with made it plain he didn’t want to be with her. Maybe when they were done upstairs, she just left.”
“What time do you think that would’ve been, Miss Endy?” Scott asked her.
Marissa shrugged her shoulders and looked at me. “I don’t know. I think they took us out of the ballroom about nine thirty. I’m not sure how long we were in the lobby.”
“The first time I looked at the clock, it was around midnight.” I tried to help fill in the gaps.
“If Mayor Foxx went upstairs with Mr. Wright at nine thirty or around there, then came downstairs an hour or so later, the storm was pretty fierce right then. It didn’t really let up until about two A.M.” He looked at both of us to verify that.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I lost track of everythi
ng while we were all sitting around.”
“So we really don’t know,” Marissa said again. “She could be back home for all we know. Maybe we should give it a rest until we can contact someone in Manteo.”
“That’s a good idea,” Scott said. “I have a friend with a ham radio. He should be able to get through to the police in Manteo. They could check on Mayor Foxx and find out if she made it back okay.”
“There’s only one problem with that theory,” I said. “Sandi came in Matthew’s car. I can’t imagine her hot wiring a car or hitchhiking to get home.”
“I’ve hitched rides before when I was desperate to get home,” Marissa said. “Mayor Foxx might’ve been desperate after that confrontation with her boyfriend. If she put her whole heart on the line for him and he rejected her, she would’ve walked home if she had to.”
I couldn’t argue that logic. No matter what I felt from the ruby ring, there was no way to know what happened until we found Sandi.
Chapter 7
Of course, that meant waiting around to hear something after Scott left to ask his friend to call Manteo. I knew it could take hours—if we were lucky enough to get through to someone. And this wouldn’t be as much of a priority for the ham radio operators trying to help coordinate medical efforts for people who were injured.
The mayors and their families and associates were bored and restless. They wanted to know what was going on outside the inn. They wanted to talk to their families and find out if their houses were still standing.
I didn’t blame them. I wanted to know about my house too. And no matter how much debris was in the roads, I could’ve walked home easily. But someone had to keep everything together, and this was my town. I wanted everyone stranded here to remember that even though this experience had been bad, the people of Duck handled the situation in a calm, efficient manner.
The first thing I did was create a cleanup brigade for the areas where people were eating and sitting around waiting for news. I got another group into the kitchen to wash some dishes and get ready for a breakfast of some kind in the next few hours. It was almost four thirty A.M. I knew the late-night snack everyone had shared would be wearing off soon.
