by Sandra Balzo
My phone was ringing and Frank was barking as I climbed the steps of my front porch.
At the sound of my key sliding into the lock, both sounds stopped and Frank let out a doggy version of ‘huh?’ before making for the door. Well-versed in things ‘Frank’, I waited for him to run full tilt headfirst into the door and bounce back before I peered in.
He was sitting back on this haunches looking dazed and a little betrayed.
‘You OK?’ I asked as I stepped in.
Skirting the offending door with a suspicious look, Frank greeted me with great enthusiasm and a fair amount of drool, the latter of which I managed to dodge.
‘So did you take a message?’ I asked, scratching him behind what felt like an ear as I leaned over to hit the ‘Play’ button on the answering machine.
‘Maggy, this is Jake,’ the tape said. ‘Things have been crazy here and I’ve been running all day. Would you be terribly disappointed if I picked up takeout and we ate in?’
I sighed and picked up the phone.
After the events of the afternoon, I’d really been looking forward to a nice evening to put the world right again. To think about me and Pavlik, not about Rachel and Ted. Or Ted and . . . whoever the ‘her’ was this time.
I knew all too well how Rachel was feeling, because I’d felt it, too, despite my attempts to explain it away to myself.
Ted had been different. Often distant, but then inexplicably overly charming. I’d thought maybe it was the business. He’d stopped talking to me about it, but I knew the dental practice didn’t seem to be bringing in the money it had been. Expenses – Rachel’s upkeep, as it turned out – were outpacing income, and every time I pressed him to talk about it, he’d get angry.
I knew something was wrong and I fully expected the other shoe to drop at some point. I just didn’t realize that shoe would have a five-inch stiletto heel capable of piercing my heart.
Pavlik answered on the first ring. ‘Jake Pavlik.’
‘Hello, sheriff,’ I said in my most seductive tone.
‘Maggy, is that you? Do you need to cancel? It sounds like you have a cold.’
I was just so incredibly bad at this. Did anybody ask Mae West if that come-hither voice was the result of the sniffles? Or Kathleen Turner if that fine sheen of seductive sweat in Body Heat was caused by a fever?
I cleared my throat. ‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Good,’ Pavlik said, ‘because I’m really looking forward to seeing you tonight.’
Now that was more promising. ‘Me, too, and takeout is good. Would you like me to pick it up, though, if you’re pressed for time?’
‘Nope. I need to run home to let Muffin out, anyway, and the restaurant is between our house and yours.’
Muffin is a pit bull that Pavlik rescued from a dog-fighting ring. Pudgy and devoid of teeth, Muffin was my greatest rival for Pavlik’s affection. Even so, I loved the toothless little tub.
Muffin’s dad sounded distracted and I could hear him shuffling through papers. ‘Is there anything in particular you want?’ he asked.
Yes, sheriff. Put down those papers and do me. But then I couldn’t say that. ‘You pick it,’ I said instead.
‘I’ll see you in an hour.’
As often happens, lowered expectations led to higher rewards.
Pavlik arrived with two big bags of Asian fusion food. I didn’t know if it was Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese or Laotian, but it all looked fabulous.
‘This is like a treasure hunt,’ I said, eagerly opening cardboard box after cardboard box. ‘Each one looks better than the last.’
Pavlik shook his head. ‘If only I’d known the way to your heart was Asian food.’
He was smiling and his eyes looked cornflower blue. This was both a good sign and a bad sign. It meant he was happy, since Pavlik’s eyes turned stormy as his emotions got stronger. Anger turned them dark gray, but then so did desire. At least I thought so, from the glimpses I’d gotten before the love train was derailed each time.
‘Believe me, sheriff,’ I said, picking up another box, ‘this is only one way to my heart. Oooh, Kung Pao Chicken!’
Pavlik took the box away from me and set it on the coffee table. Then he pulled me closer to him on the couch. ‘You know, I have other ways of making you squeal with delight.’
I snuggled in. He smelled of soap and aftershave. It was even better than Kung Pao Chicken. ‘You do?’
‘Yup, and I think I know where we’ve gone wrong.’ He lifted my hair and kissed the back of my neck.
I gave a little quiver. ‘Ohhhh . . . how?’
‘Each time we have dinner and then, after dinner, just about when we get to this point –’ Pavlik’s lips moved down to that little notch by the collarbone – ‘something happens.’ He slid his hands up under my shirt, laying them flat against my stomach to pull me against him.
Something was happening all right. But I thought Pavlik meant something happened to prevent something from happening.
‘It does,’ I managed softly in his ear. ‘So what do we do to fix that?’ I nuzzled the lock of dark hair that fell over the top of his ear.
He lifted his head to look at me. His eyes were nearly black. ‘We start with dessert.’
I love dessert.
At midnight we reheated the food.
‘Where did we put the Kung Pao Chicken?’ I asked as Frank padded into the kitchen.
The sheepdog burped.
‘The coffee table,’ Pavlik said, looking at Frank.
‘Frank level,’ I said sadly. ‘Think he ate all of it?’
‘Please don’t tell me you’re suggesting we finish off the rest,’ Pavlik said, giving me a kiss on the nose. ‘Even you can’t love Kung Pao Chicken that much.’
‘Actually, I was trying to gauge whether it would be wise to put him outside.’
Frank farted and then looked around to see who had done it.
‘Whoa.’ Pavlik waved his hand in front of his nose. ‘That’s ripe. I think outside and away from open flames is the way to go.’
‘Agreed.’ I tapped Frank on the head. ‘Guess who’s sleeping out tonight?’
Frank farted again and followed me to the front porch. The poor thing looked embarrassed.
When I came back in, Pavlik was spooning food from my mismatched microwave-safe dishes on to our plates. He looked positively domestic, except for the fact he was wearing nothing but his skivvies.
I snuck in between Pavlik and the kitchen counter, wrapped my arms around him and laid my head on his chest. He rested his head on the top of mine. ‘I have an idea,’ he murmured into my hair. ‘Why don’t we have dinner and then . . .’
‘Dessert?’ I supplied.
‘Oh, yeah.’
The next morning was Sunday – heavens be praised.
There was a handsome man in my bed, a sheepdog on my porch, a Sunday newspaper at my front door and coffee brewing in the kitchen.
It was perfect.
Too perfect.
Pavlik’s phone rang.
He kissed me before he flipped it open. We had been lying in bed, waiting for the coffee to finish before we made our way into the kitchen for sustenance.
‘Pavlik.’
I watched as he listened, all business now. I couldn’t make anything out from his eyes. In fact, they seemed to go blank. He glanced once toward me, then away again.
Something was wrong.
‘So how long has it been?’ he asked.
I could hear a voice on the other end, but couldn’t make out any of the words, damn it.
‘Not enough to be considered missing,’ Pavlik was saying. ‘But given the . . .’ Listening again.
‘OK, I’ll meet you in the office in twenty minutes so you can brief me.’
He hung up and gave me a regretful look. ‘I’m sorry. I have to―’
I put my hand over his mouth. ‘You don’t have to apologize. It sounded serious.’
Pavlik looked at me, considering. ‘I guess
I can tell you since you’ll likely find out soon anyway. I understand the media already has been called.’
‘About what?’ I pulled the sheet up around me, suddenly cold, and not just because I’d been deprived of Pavlik’s warmth.
He was up now, pulling on his clothes. ‘About your ex-husband’s new wife, Rachel Slattery. She didn’t come home last night.’
Pavlik let Frank in as he left. As the front door closed, the sheepdog jumped up on the bed. He looked around and nosed under the pillow to make sure no one was hiding there. Then he settled down on to the bed, throwing me a reproachful look for allowing an interloper to besmirch ‘our’ bed.
‘Sorry, boy,’ I said, giving him a scratch. ‘But God knows, it doesn’t happen often.’
Frank farted.
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Off!’ I pointed at the ground. Frank licked my finger, but didn’t move.
No matter. I had bigger problems than a farting sheepdog.
Like a husband – excuse me, ex-husband – who was cheating on his new wife. And whose said wife was now missing. And to compound things even further, Rachel must have disappeared just hours after telling both me and her brother that she intended to prove Ted was cheating and then divorce him.
That couldn’t bode well for Ted.
‘But then, I’m not Ted,’ I asserted.
Frank opened one eye and looked at me. Apparently agreeing, he went back to sleep.
This wasn’t my problem, so why did I feel so awful?
I mean, besides the fact that I had started to like Rachel in a grudging kind of way.
The phone rang. The caller ID said ‘X’, my code for Ted.
‘Can you come over here?’ Ted asked before I had time to even say ‘hello’. ‘Something awful has happened. Rachel is missing.’
‘I know,’ I said automatically and then paused to censor myself. Did I really want Ted to know Pavlik had slept over?
Yes. ‘I was with the sheriff when the call came in.’ In bed. Naked.
No reaction.
‘I’m sorry to be calling you,’ Ted said. ‘But I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t have anybody but Rachel. And Eric, of course, but I can’t call him.’ He sounded frantic. He sounded like he was going to cry.
The only time I’d seen Ted cry was when his dad died. I felt badly for him now, as I had then. But I was his ex-wife. His cheated upon ex-wife. ‘Why don’t you call your mother?’ I suggested.
‘She’s in Berlin. Or maybe London.’
Martine Thorsen had become a bit of a jet-setter since her husband had died. The first trip was within two weeks of his death and I’d always had the sneaking suspicion that she hadn’t considered her husband Thor, Ted’s father, much of a loss. I wondered if Thor had been as much of a tomcat as his son was. Or is.
‘Please, Maggy,’ Ted pleaded. ‘I really need you. The sheriff’s department was here.’
The implication was that I had more experience in dealing with them than he did, and therefore should hop out of my warm bed and come to his aid.
I felt an overpowering urge to do just that, but I didn’t think it was for Ted’s sake or even for Rachel. No, I was willing to leave my warm bed because I was curious.
‘Curiosity killed the tomcat,’ I said out loud.
‘What?’ Ted asked on the other end. I didn’t answer. I was too busy thinking. What could have happened last night? Despite what she’d told me, had Rachel decided to confront Ted with what she knew and leave? But Pavlik said she never came home.
I dislodged Frank. ‘I’m on my way. Who else is there?’
‘No one. I’m alone.’
‘Shouldn’t you call Rachel’s family?’
‘Her mother and father were here, but they left after they talked to the deputies. I think they’re putting together some sort of reward.’
‘What about Stephen?’
There was a hesitation. ‘Stephen? You mean Rachel’s brother? How do you know him?’
‘We just met,’ I said honestly, but didn’t elaborate. ‘Does he know about Rachel?’
‘I talked to him on the phone. He sounded funny,’ Ted said. ‘It was like he thought I had something to do with Rachel’s being gone. That’s nuts.’
My mind might have been running a hundred miles an hour, but apparently my mouth wasn’t quick enough for Ted.
‘That’s nuts, right?’ he repeated.
‘Right.’ Unless Ted found out that Rachel knew he was cheating on her.
Ted was still yammering, but I wasn’t listening to him in real-time. I was playing back the conversation I’d had with him yesterday. The one when I’d told him Rachel and I had talked. And that she’d said Ted had been ‘busy’.
Busy. An innocuous word, but maybe not so innocuous if you were the ‘busy’ one and feeling guilty.
Had Ted gone home and asked Rachel about what she’d said to me?
Worse, had there been an argument, maybe a violent one?
Worst, had I caused all this?
Chapter Five
By the time I reached Ted and Rachel’s home on Wildwood Drive, I’d calmed down a bit.
Fact was, I was just guessing at all this. I didn’t have any proof that Ted was cheating on Rachel, much less that he’d been cheating on me with anyone besides Rachel. She couldn’t have had any solid evidence either, or she wouldn’t have come to see me yesterday.
I also had no way of knowing what Rachel had told Ted last night. In fact, I didn’t even know if Rachel had seen Ted last night. She’d been on her way to a meeting at The Hamilton when she’d left Stephen’s office. Had she made it there? Had she gone home after that?
I assumed that Stephen would tell the authorities – whether it was Pavlik or someone else – about my visiting his office with Rachel. What I didn’t know was how much detail he would give them. It put me in an awkward position. The last thing I wanted to do was get tangled up in another one of Pavlik’s investigations. Especially when things were finally heating up between us.
I edged my Escape past a dark blue Miata parked to the side on the driveway and stopped near the house. As I had the two or three other times I’d come here to pick up Eric, I tried not to compare the pink brick mini-mansion with my post-divorce mini- . . . well, just mini. And as if Ted and Rachel’s house wasn’t already big enough, it looked like the brush to one side had been being cleared for an addition of some sort.
As I trudged up the driveway toward the front door, it opened and a yapping chihuahua came squirting out.
Finally, one area where mine was bigger than theirs. Frank could have sat on ChiChi the chihuahua and not even noticed. Not that Frank was exactly Princess and the Pea material. Once I’d found him sound asleep on the front steps, rump on the porch, head on the sidewalk below. I guess when you’re tired, you’re tired.
ChiChi didn’t look like she got tired. She was dancing around in circles like a crazed wind-up toy. Ted followed her out.
My ex-husband was wearing gray sweatpants and a Bucky Badger sweatshirt from the University of Wisconsin, our alma mater. His hair was more bedhead than the artfully unstyled look he’d sported since Rachel had gotten hold of him and introduced him to gel. Or it would have looked like bedhead, if I thought for a moment he had gone to sleep. His nose was red, his eyes sunken.
If this was an act, it was a really good one.
But then, I reminded myself as I mounted the steps to the big front door, a man who juggles two or maybe three women for two years better be pretty damn good at lying.
‘Any word?’ I asked as I reached him.
Ted shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He stepped back through the doorway, whistling for ChiChi. The chihuahua and I padded in after him.
I closed the door and paused to look around. The house was as I remembered it. Unlike the Slattery Arms with its heavy brocades and jewel tones, Rachel and Ted’s house was light and airy. Both the foyer and the living room beyond were painted that mustardy color – Amy would know the na
me of it – that rightfully should look awful but managed to achieve charming and sophisticated.
Rachel’s touch, no doubt. If she weren’t missing, I’d probably have to hate her for being so good at something I had no talent for. Now I could only feel guilty. Not only for being jealous of her, but for what I might have done that may have contributed to her disappearance.
I hadn’t said much to Ted the afternoon before, but if he already was wary of being caught cheating, it might have been enough to alert him that Rachel was on to him.
I found Ted in his chair in the living room. I knew that it was his chair, because it had lived in my house for many years. Ted had built the sling chair of stained two-by-fours in college. The sling between the head and foot of the chair held two cushions. They were covered in flowered chintz now, but in college it had been Wisconsin Badger red. I’d sewed them myself and Ted and I had filled them with foam stuffing as we watched Badger football on TV.
We usually lost back then, but at the end of each game the marching band would take the field and the students would leap up and stomp to the music, making the upper deck of the stadium sway. Then, finally, the players would burst back out of the locker room to dance with the band.
Win or lose.
Good times or bad.
That was youth.
That was resiliency.
And probably a whole lot of beer.
I looked at Ted, who had his head in his hands. ‘Something to drink?’
He sighed. ‘I want a beer, but I’ll have coffee.’
‘Coffee it is.’ Coffee I could do. I was good at coffee. And I really needed a cup myself. I hadn’t thought to grab a cup on the way out of the house.
No worries. Rachel had one of those great single-cup brewing pots, where you slip in the pouch filled with coffee, flavored or not, and voila, you have coffee. If we had a couple of them in the store, we could just hand customers their individual packets when they walked in and have them brew their own.
Might work. People went to restaurants, picked out their steaks and grilled them themselves, for God’s sake. Pretty soon they’d be paying extra for the privilege of butchering the steer.
As I waited for the cup to fill, I looked around Rachel’s kitchen. I was feeling guilty for being there. I wasn’t sure why. Much as I had hated her for ‘stealing Ted’, as I had thought of it, I’d tried to take the high road. Which meant I thought really horrible things, but didn’t say them. At least to her.
