Familiar Friend

by Cristina Sumners

  “You heard me. Where the hell is my sister?”

  “Flora, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “We always talk on Sundays. It was her turn to call this past Sunday and she didn’t. I waited in all afternoon and when she didn’t call me I finally called her. She didn’t answer. So I called her again on Monday. I called her three times, at nine in the morning and at twelve-thirty and at three-thirty in the afternoon and she didn’t answer any of those times. So I called again Tuesday, four times. No answer. So I called again yesterday, all day. I lost count of how many times I called. She still didn’t answer. Is she in the hospital? If something’s wrong with Louise, Tom, I expect you to tell me. What’s going on?”

  A hollow feeling had opened in the pit of Tom’s stomach. And his mouth had gone dry.

  “Flora,” he managed to say, “I’m not sure. I, uh, I haven’t seen Louise in days, but that’s not unusual when I’m working a homicide because I get home at midnight and leave the house at dawn, you know.” Suddenly he became aware of how feeble this sounded. “I’ll go home right now and check up, see what’s uh, happening. I’ll give you a call right away and let you know. O.K.?”

  “You do that,” Flora replied with a snap and banged down the phone.

  Tom jumped out of his chair and was out of his office in half a second. “I have to go home,” he shouted to his astonished subordinates. “Family emergency. Be right back.”

  He took one of the squad cars and used the siren, because Flora’s phone call had summoned to his conscious mind something that had been sitting buried, unheeded, at the bottom of it.

  He had been enjoying his Louise-free days, that was true, but still, he did share a house with her, and he was a trained observer. Although they no longer shared a bedroom, they shared a bathroom. His wife left the bathmat askew; she left the top off the toothpaste; these were the invariable signs of her presence. And the signs had been missing, he now realized, for days.

  He came screeching up to the curb in front of his home, killed the siren, and ran up the walk. He burst into the front door shouting, “Louise! Louise! Are you here?”

  Receiving no answer, he looked quickly through the living room, dining room, and kitchen before dashing upstairs to check the two small bedrooms—his and hers—and the bathroom. There was no one there. And the cap was on the toothpaste. He swore at his own stupidity. He looked in the hall closet; Louise owned only two suitcases and they were both there. A nightmarish case of déjà vu came over him; one of his homicide investigations had begun when he had looked in the closet of a missing woman and discovered that none of her luggage was missing. A shiver went up his spine.

  Louise’s car had been in the garage when he had taken his out the night before. He went pelting down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back door, and into the garage. There was Louise’s car.

  Tom went back into the kitchen, wondering what the hell to do next, and that’s when he saw Louise’s purse sitting on the kitchen table, which was where she always left it. It had been sitting there every night when he’d come in, of course, and every morning when he’d left. He was trying to figure out if he should have noticed if it hadn’t changed position in several days when the phone rang and startled him so much, he jumped.

  “Hello?”

  “Tom? Where is she?”

  “Flora, I don’t know. She isn’t here. Her purse is here, her car’s here, but she’s nowhere in sight.”

  “Oh, great! My sister’s been missing for four days and my brother-in-law the cop doesn’t even notice!”

  “Flora, calm down, I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for this,” said Tom, wondering what on earth it could possibly be.

  “Now you listen to me, Tom Holder. If something has happened to my baby sister, I am going to hold you personally responsible. Now you call the police and you find her, you hear me?” She hung up.

  “I am the police, you old bird,” Tom grumbled to the dead receiver before placing it back on the hook.

  He thought a minute. Sunday afternoon. O.K., assuming Louise wasn’t home Sunday afternoon, when had she gone? The last time he’d seen her was at supper on Thursday night, before he’d been called out to look at the body of Mason Blaine. Had Louise been at church Sunday morning? Tom didn’t know; he’d been working.

  He picked up the phone again and started to punch a number he didn’t have to look up. In the middle of it, however, he stopped and put the receiver back on the hook. Who was he going to talk to? Not the Rector, that was for damn sure! Not after that run-in last week. Not the Associate Rector, either, Tom thought. Bob Tucker was all right, but he was unlikely to respond well to a request for an odd favor with no explanation. The Assistant to the Rector, that was who he needed. He picked up the phone, punched the number, greeted the secretary politely and asked for Maggie Nicholas.

  “Maggie! Tom Holder. How are you?”

  “I’m great, Tom. Missed you on Sunday. I assume you were solving this murder of ours?”

  “Trying to. Listen, Maggie, I need a big favor, and it’s going to sound really weird, and I’m afraid I haven’t got time to explain why I need it. Could you just do something for me and not ask why and I’ll explain later?”

  “Sounds intriguing. Sure, what is it?”

  “Did you see Louise in church on Sunday?”

  “Hang on a minute. Yeah. Come to think of it, I administered the chalice to her. Why? Oh, sorry, you said you didn’t have time to explain. Is that all?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Can you go around and ask everybody you can find if they saw her, too? It’s important, otherwise I wouldn’t ask.”

  “You’re right, Tom, that is weird, but your wish is my command. I’m going to put you on hold.”

  About seven minutes later she was back. “O.K., Tom, here’s the report. The Rector was deep in conference with Amalie Prescott and God help anybody who interrupted, but Frances and Bob both say they saw Louise for sure, Ginger is almost certain she saw her, and Teddy kind of thinks he saw her. Will that do?”

  “That will do fine. Maggie, you’re terrific. I’ll tell you about it later. Thanks.” He hung up.

  So his wife had been at church on Sunday morning. Obviously, then, he had been correct in assuming that the reason he’d been enjoying spouse-free days up until then was simply because he’d been leaving the house at six every morning and getting home at midnight after she’d gone to bed. But then Flora had started calling on Sunday afternoon and Louise hadn’t been there to pick up the phone, and she should have been. And now the cap was on the toothpaste and the bathmat was straight and they’d been that way for days, and this was Thursday. Damn.

  He was going to have to file a missing persons report on his own wife. And he was going to have to admit that she had probably been missing since Sunday afternoon. And that he hadn’t been aware of it.

  Suddenly his lack of progress on the Mason Blaine homicide looked like a picnic in the park. He could just see Nick Silverman’s face, hear the prosecutor’s tone of voice: “Now, let me get this straight, Tom: Your wife’s been gone for four days and you’ve just decided to let us know?” A hot wave of embarrassment flooded Tom’s face as he contemplated what might prove a major hiccup in his career.

  But as soon as he had that thought, it was succeeded by a greater wave of guilt. His first concern should have been for Louise, not for his own humiliation. He knew why it hadn’t been: not because there was no love between them, but because there was a peculiar self-sufficiency behind Louise’s battiness. He found it hard to believe, despite the fact that she had apparently wandered off without her purse and without any visible means of transportation, that she was in any serious trouble.

  He pulled the purse over to him and opened it. Her wallet was still in it, and her car keys. He looked in the wallet and counted the bills. Seventy-three dollars. He had given her one hundred and fifty dollars for groceries and housekeeping money the previous Friday an
d he knew she’d spent some of it. He got up and looked in the refrigerator. Was that seventy-seven dollars worth of groceries? Or had she taken some cash with her? He sighed. He was putting off the inevitable.

  He left the house and drove back to the station and filed a missing persons report on one Louise Buchanan Holder. Just as he expected, this created an uproar that reached Trenton within thirty minutes, and sure enough, here came the expected call from Nick Silverman.

  At least he wasn’t being sarcastic. Or not the kind of cool, superior sarcasm Tom had been dreading.

  “Would you mind telling me how in the (unprintable) hell a police chief loses his wife for four days and doesn’t (unprintable) notice?”

  Tom had decided that the only way to handle it was to jump in the deep end. “One, homicide investigation, you get in at two A.M., you leave at dawn. Two, separate bedrooms. Three, take ten seconds and think about those two things put together before you start yelling again.”

  There followed a few seconds of silence.

  “Oh,” said the D.A. more quietly. “Well, I guess under those circumstances it becomes a little more understandable, but listen, Tom, you’re going to have to explain about the separate bedrooms to the media, you hear? Now, normally that would be your own private business, but they’re going to eat you alive unless you can explain why you didn’t notice she was gone, and—”

  “Yeah, Nick, I know. I already figured that out. I’ve been trying to write a statement, but it’s, well—”

  “That kind of thing can be tricky. Why don’t you let my people do it?”

  Tom hesitated. “Thanks, Nick. But I think I know somebody at this end who can help me with it.”

  “Well, O.K., but get on it right away. I want that statement in two hours, so we can have it at the same time we announce Louise’s disappearance. This would be big enough news, the wife of a police chief, but it’s going to be even bigger because you’re the one investigating this double homicide, you understand? The papers are going to have a field day with this, so we’ve got to do it right.”

  “Yes, Nick,” Tom sighed.

  He hung up the phone, scrambled for his St. Margaret’s directory, and punched Kathryn’s number.

  “I’m sorry, Tom,” said Mrs. Warburton. “She’s not here. She’s probably having lunch at the Seminary. Is it important? Would you like her cell number?”

  He would.

  “Sorry, Tom, could you speak up? It’s a madhouse here; I’m in the Seminary dining hall; what, now? If it’s urgent, of course; anything you say. My house in ten minutes.”

  Kathryn abandoned her lunch and her colleagues and headed home, agog with curiosity. Tom had previously invited himself over at teatime for conferences, but he had never hauled her away from whatever she was doing and called it a matter of urgency. Maybe he was actually going to tell her something.

  “Missing?”

  “Since Sunday.”

  “Sunday? But she was in church on Sunday morning. I gave her communion myself.”

  “Oh, yeah, about seventy-five people agree she was in church Sunday morning. It’s Sunday afternoon she went missing. Here I am, I’m a cop. My wife’s been gone for three and a half days and I didn’t know it. And this is why I didn’t know it,” Tom hastened on, as Kathryn’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “Louise and I have had separate bedrooms for fifteen years now. So we only see each other at breakfast and when I come home from work in the evening. And since Mason Blaine was killed, I’ve been coming home past midnight and leaving before Louise gets up for breakfast, so you see…” He trailed off.

  Kathryn saw. She also saw that Tom was acutely embarrassed. At this opportune moment Mrs. Warburton appeared to inform them that if they would seat themselves in the dining room, omelets would shortly arrive. Kathryn thanked her, and bustled Tom into the dining room informing him that he needed to eat and that he also needed to tell her how she could help him.

  This brought on another attack of embarrassment. “Well, I need to make a statement to the papers, you see, and it’s kind of—”

  She came to his rescue instantly. “Oh God, I can imagine! How horrible for you! Would you like me to help? I was an English major, you know, as an undergraduate; I used to be able to write a decent paragraph. Let me just grab some paper—” Here she vanished for a minute in the direction of her study at the back of the house.

  “Now, let’s see,” she said, returning with the requisite tools and seating herself next to him at the table, “first we do the straightforward bits, Tom Holder, Chief of Police of Harton, New Jersey, today announced the disappearance et cetera, et cetera. According to the evidence of Flora—what’s Flora’s last name?”

  “Miller.”

  “Flora Miller, Mrs. Holder’s sister, of—where?”

  “Zanesville, Ohio.”

  “Zanesville, Ohio. Mrs. Holder has not been answering the telephone at her home since Sunday. Chief Holder has not seen her since that date, either. Now, this is where we have to be careful. We have to make separate bedrooms sound normal, not salacious. You should not make this part of the statement, somebody else should. Who’s your superior?”

  “The D.A. in Trenton. Nick Silverman.”

  “Good. ‘The District Attorney, Nick Silverman, stated, “Chief Holder and his wife have not shared a bedroom for several years due to his wife’s ill health and the frequent necessity of a policeman to keep irregular hours. For the past week Chief Holder has returned home past midnight and left home before six each morning pursuing the investigation of the Mason Blaine homicide. Not wishing to disturb his wife’s sleep, he did not look into her bedroom. Accordingly, he is not aware at what time Mrs. Holder went missing from their home, and we are only guessing that it may have been Sunday because of the evidence of the unanswered telephone.’”

  Tom regarded her with awe. “Kathryn, you’re brilliant. That actually makes it sound like I might not be an idiot.”

  “Well, you’re not an idiot,” she responded crossly, digging into the omelet that was now growing cold on her plate. “What do you think’s happened to her?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea. I guess she’s just wandered off.”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “Oddly enough, I’m not. Or not much. Maybe if it was the dead of winter and freezing out there I would be, but the weather’s not bad. And I guess I’ve got this notion that she’s always been able to take care of herself. Obviously we’ll roll out all the usual drill, and we’ll find her, but just between you and me I’m not really gonna be worried sick until we do. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, it’s not that I don’t care what happens to her—”

  “It’s just that you don’t believe anything is going to happen to her.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Kathryn contemplated what she had observed in Louise Holder and tried to fit it into this picture of eccentric self-reliance that Tom had just drawn for her. It gave her a whole new slant on the lady, who she had always considered to have no strengths whatsoever.

  “Oh,” Tom said, remembering his manners, “How’s Tracy? Where’s Tracy?” There was a squad car out front, so presumably the girl was somewhere in the house.

  “She’s upstairs. Sleeping it off under the watchful eye of Patrick Cunningham. Good thing I’ve got a lot of guest rooms.”

  “I assume her boss gave her the day off.”

  “He gave her the week off. He’s a cupcake.”

  “Yeah, well, mine’s not. I’ve got to get this”—he waved the statement she had written—“over to the station right away, and do a lot of other stuff. But would it be O.K. if I came back over here this afternoon? I could use your input on some ideas.”

  “Sure. You know you’re always welcome.”

  He was always welcome. He left feeling a lot better than when he came.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was after five, back to their customary teatime consultation. But this time he had to be careful.


  “Are Patrick and Tracy here?” The squad car was still out front.

  “Tracy’s here; Patrick’s gone back to the Graduate College. Temporarily, anyway.”

  “Is there somewhere we can talk where we can be sure she can’t overhear us?”

  Kathryn was only fleetingly surprised by this question; of course, Tom would want to talk in private, and the living room was open to the front hall and from there to the stairs.

  She stood, picked up her cup of tea, and gestured for him to follow her. She led him out into the hall, turned left toward the back of the house, then opened a door under the stairs and led him into a small room lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “No, I haven’t read all of them. Here, sit down. That chair’s good.” She closed the door behind them and seated herself opposite Tom. “Now, talk to me.”

  Tom settled himself into the huge library chair, took a long swig of his Earl Grey, and considered how to begin. “You remember,” he said at last, “when I was talking about Question One and Question Two, why was the body moved and why was it moved to St. Margaret’s? And I wouldn’t tell you the answers and you were pissed off at me?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have been, I was out of line. I had—”

  “I’m ready to tell you the answers now.”

  “Oh.” Kathryn’s heart started beating faster.

  “I have to. Because I need your help. Well, on second thought I guess I don’t really have to but I’m going to. Because otherwise when I get to what I need to ask you, you might not take me seriously.” He took another sip of tea while Kathryn’s mind went into spasms of curiosity.

  “Questions One and Two go together. If Blaine’s body had been left in the place where he was killed, it might not have been discovered for hours. Possibly it might not have been discovered until the next morning. It was moved to St. Margaret’s because the killer knew that Tracy Newman walked through the St. Margaret’s driveway every Thursday night shortly after ten o’clock and that she would find it. That’s why Blaine was spread out on his stomach and a knife was stuck in his back, so Tracy would know she was looking at a body, a corpse, not a drunk, so she would come to the station and report it, not walk around it and keep going.”