The Missing Hour

by Dawn Stewardson

  “I’d have begged off,” she said, “but they’re up-set enough as it is. If I’d broken with tradition…’’

  He reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. I’m starving. So, as long as lunch is good, I’ll be happy.”

  They climbed out of the Mustang and followed Niebuhr and Angela to the front door.

  She slid her key into the lock, then murmured, “Oh, no.”

  “What’s wrong?” Niebuhr demanded.

  ‘‘It isn’t locked,” she said, her face pale. “And I know I locked it when I left.”

  “You’re positive?” Beth asked.

  “Oh, dear, you know that’s one thing I never forget.”

  “Like Larisa,” Niebuhr said quietly.

  “She’s right, she’s very careful about the doors,” Beth told Cole, looking frightened.

  “You three stay here.” He drew his gun. “I’ll make sure there’s nobody still inside.”

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Niebuhr asked.

  “Let me have a look first—in case she did just forget. There’s no point wasting their time on a false alarm.”

  “Be careful,” Beth whispered.

  He opened the door and stepped into the foyer, then quietly reclosed it and stood listening. The house was silent.

  Adrenaline pumping, he made himself wait for a full minute before starting cautiously forward.

  Nothing seemed to be disturbed—unusual if there’d actually been a break-in. The living room looked as if a cleaning lady had just finished with it, and none of the drawers in the dining room were open.

  He walked through to the kitchen, then into the family room beyond. There was a VCR on the shelf beneath the TV and a video camera sitting on an end table. Both were items that any self-respecting thief would have grabbed.

  He’d almost decided that Angela had simply for-gotten to lock up when he checked the sliding glass door leading out to the patio.

  It, too, was unlocked, which blew that theory. Possibly, she’d missed locking one door. But if it was something she never forgot to do, she hadn’t gone out and left two unlocked. Someone must have been in the house.

  Retracing his steps along the center hall, he headed upstairs. The story was the same there. None of the rooms had been tossed, nothing was conspicuously out of place, and there were a couple of loose twenty-dollar bills sitting on the dresser in the master bed-room.

  So what was the deal? It must have been someone who was only interested in something specific.

  He headed back downstairs to have a look in the basement, although he doubted there’d be anything disturbed there, either. There were the standard furnace and laundry areas, plus a rec room with a couple of ground-level windows that looked out onto the driveway. Wandering over, he checked that both were locked, then slowly gazed around.

  The dust on the furniture told him Angela didn’t use the room much. But it looked as if she’d been down here sorting through her books. A couple of freestanding wooden bookcases—heavy ones that he’d guess were fifty or sixty years old—almost covered one wall. And several shelves of books had been taken down and were stacked on the floor.

  She’d been doing the sorting recently, he decided on further inspection. There was no dust on the empty shelves.

  After a final glance around, he headed back upstairs and along to the front door. When he opened it, the others eyed him expectantly.

  “There’s nobody inside,’’he told them. “And you were lucky,” he added to Angela. “A lot of houses get trashed when there’s a break-in, but there was nothing like that here. I have no idea what’s missing, though. You’ll have to figure it out.”

  “We’ve already figured out how he got in,” Beth said.

  “Oh?”

  “Remember the other night? How Mom’s message said I should use the spare key if I wanted to stay here?”

  “He found it?” Cole said.

  Angela nodded. “I hide it under a rock in the garden and it’s gone. We just checked.”

  BETH DIDN’T THINK THAT either of the two uniformed officers who responded to their call looked old enough to be cops, but they arrived in a cruiser and she could see badges on their uniforms as they headed up the walk.

  Cole opened the door to them, introducing her as Mrs. Gregory’s daughter and himself simply as a friend of the family and the one who’d called to re-port the break-in. The officers proved to be consta-bles Paul Gostick and Rosemary Westbury.

  That established, Cole led the way down to the basement, where Beth’s mother and Mark were waiting—under strict orders from Cole not to touch a thing.

  After they got through the rest of the introductions, Paul took a notebook from his pocket and looked expectantly at Beth’s mother.

  She gestured toward the stacks of books. “Those are the only things that seem to have been touched. I was down here yesterday, doing a load of wash, and they were on the shelves then. But when we came home today…”

  The officers exchanged a glance; Beth could hardly blame them. What kind of nutcase broke into a house and did nothing but take a bunch of books off their shelves?

  “So all that’s missing are some books?” Paul said.

  “Actually, as far as I can tell, there aren’t any gone. Somebody just piled these ones on the floor.”

  “You mean nothing is missing? And nothing’s been disturbed in the rest of the house?”

  When her mother shook her head, Cole said, “She may notice, later, that things are missing.”

  “Yeah…of course,” Paul said, not looking any less puzzled.

  As he took a couple of steps forward, reaching toward one of the top books, Cole said, “Wait. Before you touch any of those, I should mention that the four of us were shot at this morning.”

  “Really?” Rosemary said. “You mean here, or…?”

  “No, not here, and it’s been reported. In fact, it was when we arrived here from Sixty-one Division that we discovered someone had been in the house. But under the circumstances, you might want to have somebody dust those books for prints.”

  Paul eyed Cole for a moment, as if tempted to ask who he thought he was, but finally just said, “He’s right, Rosemary. Why don’t you go put in a call for somebody.”

  “I was thinking there might have been some rare books among the others,” Mark said as she headed for the stairs. “But Angela doesn’t think there were.”

  She shook her head again. “If any of them were valuable, I never realized it. I don’t think they’d have fetched more than a quarter each at a garage sale. And most of them have been sitting here for years. Beth and I bought those bookcases at an auction when she was only twelve or thirteen, and it didn’t take long for them to fill up.”

  “And you’ve never hidden anything in the books?” Paul asked. “People sometimes hide money between the pages.”

  “I never have.”

  He glanced at Cole. “Could you tell how the intruder got in?”

  “There was a front door key hidden in the garden. It’s missing, and the door was unlocked when we got here.”

  Paul focused on Beth’ s mother once more. “And who knew where the key was hidden?”

  “Nobody. I mean, nobody except my daughter. Oh, and I guess you knew, didn’t you, Mark? I’ve used the same place forever, so Larisa probably mentioned it to you.”

  “If she did, I’d forgotten, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she had.”

  “And you’re certain there’s nobody else?” Paul said to Angela.

  “Yes. The next-door neighbors have a key, but I’ve never told them there was another one hidden.”

  “And you said you’ve been hiding it in the same place forever?” Cole asked.

  “Uh-huh. Ever since we moved into the house, when Beth was just a toddler.”

  “Back when your ex-husband was living here.”

  Beth looked at Cole, wondering what on earth the point of that remark was. Her father might have known where the key was
hidden, but what would he want with some old books?

  “Mrs. Gregory,” Paul said, “I assume you won’t be hiding a spare key in the future? And that you’ll change the front door lock immediately?”

  “Yes, Cole already called a locksmith for me.”

  “Good. Now, none of you saw any sign of the intruder when you arrived?”

  “No. But I have a feeling he saw us,” Cole offered.

  “Oh?”

  He gestured toward one of the windows. “That’s Mrs. Gregory’s car you can see in the driveway. So if someone was going through these books when she pulled in, he’d have spotted her.”

  “And taken off,” Paul concluded.

  Cole nodded. “Given the way the books are neatly stacked, I’d say he was intending to put them back on the shelves before he left—and probably put the key back, too. If he had, nobody would have realized he’d been here.

  “But when we showed up, he left fast. There’s a family room at the back of the main floor, and its door was unlocked, too. So while we were heading for the front door, he was probably going out the back.”

  “You should be a detective,” Paul said.

  “I am,” Cole told him.

  AFTER COLE PARKED in front of Beth’s building, the way he carefully looked around made her nervous. But once they got out of the Mustang he took her hand, making her feel a lot better.

  In fact, it seemed so right to be walking hand in hand with him that she couldn’t help smiling. The way she’d come to feel about him made her certain she’d never really been in love with Brian. She’d never even been in the neighborhood.

  “What are you smiling at?” Cole asked as they started up the front steps.

  “Oh, just thinking about how your face dropped when my Mom finally served lunch.”

  He grinned. “You thought that was funny, eh? Well you’ve got a warped sense of humor, because I’m still starving.”

  “You could have eaten more.”

  “Beth, I don’t consider a platter of raw fish edible.”

  “Not raw fish. Sushi.”

  “I know what it’s called. But it still looks like something you should bait a hook with. And escargots?” he added as she unlocked the building’s front door and they headed across to the elevator. “Real men don’t eat snails, you know.”

  “Mark does. He loves them.”

  “Well he can have them. I mean, maybe I shouldn’t be criticizing your mother’s menu, but raw fish and snails and all those raw vegetables, and—”

  “Crudites.”

  “What?”

  “Served like that, they’re called crudites.”

  “Yeah? I’d have thought they were called rabbit food.”

  “I told you she’s a fitness nut And she believes in healthy eating. But just to make it up to you, I’ve got a couple of steaks in the freezer. How does that sound for dinner?”

  “I’d kill for a steak.”

  Beth winced. “Let’s not talk about killing.”

  “Good idea.”

  The elevator’s door opened and they stepped inside.

  “Can we talk about fries, though?” he asked. “Fries with the steaks?”

  “Absolutely. Unless I could interest you in a baked potato smothered in sour cream.’’

  “Thank heavens you didn’t inherit your mother’s approach to eating.” Cole gently brushed her hair back from her face while the door slid shut. A moment later he was kissing her—a long, deep kiss full of promise.

  It made her knees weak and her insides melt. And made her suspect that, starving or not, he’d want to wait a while before they got around to dinner. Which was just fine with her.

  “This elevator isn’t slow enough,” he murmured, releasing her when the door opened on the fourth floor.

  “Rumor says it’s the slowest elevator in the entire city,” she teased.

  He wrapped his arm around her waist and they walked down the hallway to her door.

  As she unlocked it, he glanced at his watch. “It’s only a couple of minutes until six. If there’ ve been any developments about our shooting, they’ll make the news.”

  They hurried through the office and into the living area. While Bogey and Bacall complained loudly about the lack of attention, Beth opened the armoire and switched on the television.

  “Channel Nine okay?” Cole said, tossing his jacket and tie onto a chair and grabbing the remote.

  That made her smile. Whenever she watched the news, she tuned in Channel Nine. And if their both liking the same news program—plus preferring steaks to sushi—wasn’t an omen, she didn’t know what was.

  When he switched channels and got the start of a commercial, she said, “There must be time for me to feed the cats. If I don’t, we’ll hear more caterwauling than news.”

  Racing to the kitchen, she spooned out some food in record time and made it back to the living room before commercial number two was finished.

  Cole patted the space on the couch beside him, then reached for her hand.

  “I don’t know why you’d want anything to do with a hand that looks like it’s been holding a dozen leaky pens,” she said, sinking down next to him.

  The cops who’d come to dust the books had taken her prints, along with her mother’s. Elimination prints, they’d called them. And fingerprint ink, she’d discovered, didn’t just wash off with soap and water.

  “You have the nicest ink-stained hands I’ve ever seen.” He drew one to his lips and gave her fingers a sensuous nibble.

  That made her insides melt again, but just as he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close, the news logo appeared on the screen.

  “Let’s hold this thought for a minute,” he said, lightly kissing her cheek, then focusing on the set.

  A moment later the news anchor was saying, “In our top story of the day, Lesmill Cemetery was the scene of a drive-by shooting this morning. And our camera crew was there.”

  Cole’s arm tightened around her, and she wondered if he was feeling the same tension she was. Being with him made her feel so good that she kept almost forgetting someone was trying to kill her. But this was a definite reminder.

  “He called it a drive-by,” she pointed out. “The police must not have said anything about treating it as attempted murder.”

  “They always keep things from the media.”

  On the screen, the anchor’s face was replaced by announcer Karen Daily’s. She was positioned at the side of the road, with Larisa’s grave in the background of the camera’s shot. The area directly surrounding it was roped off by yellow police tape.

  “I’m standing in Toronto’s Lesmill Cemetery,” she began. “Behind me is the grave of Larisa Nie-buhr, a woman who, twenty-two years ago today, was brutally murdered in her home on Tranby Avenue.”

  Karen paused while the camera zoomed in on the monument’s inscription.

  “This morning, tragedy nearly struck on the anniversary of her death. Four visitors to Mrs. Nie-buhr’s grave were almost gunned down in a drive-by shooting.

  “The gunman was driving a late-model, dark blue Chevrolet. Anyone who saw a car matching that description in the vicinity of the cemetery at approximately ten o’clock this morning is asked to contact police at this number.”

  A telephone number appeared in the top corner of the screen, and the camera began to pan downward from the inscription.

  “Fortunately,” Karen continued, “the only damage done was to this marble dove that once graced the gravestone.”

  The camera came to rest on the dove, lying in the grass beside the monument.

  “It fell to earth in a hail of bullets,” Karen said softly.

  “For Pete’s sake,” Cole muttered. “It’s a lifeless hunk of stone.”

  “The police are refusing to release the names of those who were shot at,” Karen continued. “But from other sources we’ve learned that each year three people visit the grave together on this day. They are the murdered woman’s widower, her siste
r and a niece. After twenty-two years, these three still come to the graveside to pay their respects to Larisa Nie-buhr.”

  The camera panned downward again, this time focusing in on the three bunches of roses.

  “We should all hope to be so lovingly remembered,” Karen said quietly. “Reporting from Lesmill Cemetery, I’m Karen Daily.”

  “In other news…” the anchor said, reappearing on the screen.

  “Do you want to watch the rest of this?” Cole asked.

  “Not unless you do.”

  He hit the remote, turning off the set, then pulled her close. She rested her head against his chest, breathing in his enticing scent.

  “Beth,” he whispered, “I’m not going to let any-thing happen to you, you know.”

  “I know,” she whispered back. “You can leap tall buildings in a single bound. You’ve saved me from speeding bullets twice, so you’re obviously faster than they are. And today my ankle didn’t even get twisted in the process.”

  When he shifted so he could see her face, his smile sent her pulse racing.

  “You have a warped sense of humor,” he said.

  His breath, warm against her cheek, almost made her forget about bullets and cemeteries and mysteri-ous break-ins. When he was this near, it was hard to think about anything except him…and her…together.

  Slowly, he trailed his knuckles down her cheek, then threaded his fingers through her hair. His touch made her want him to kiss her. And mind reader that he was, he did just that, cupping her chin in his hand and bringing his mouth to hers.

  He kissed her softly at first, making her feel as if a warm, smoky haze was filling her body. Then the kiss grew deeper and more urgent, and her response was so strong it almost frightened her.

  The smoky haze became a brush fire in her bloodstream, and she could feel his kiss everywhere. It made her breasts ache to be touched and her belly throb with desire.

  Kissing him made her want so much more than mere kisses that when he eased her down onto the couch, stretching out so the lengths of their bodies were touching, a small, breathless whisper of desire rose in the back of her throat and escaped before she could even try to stop it.