The Obsession

by Nora Roberts

  able to walk clear around the house barefoot.”

  “You’re killing me, Lelo.”

  They circled to the back, where he set his hands on his skinny hips and looked up the deck steps, out to the narrow ribbon of scrubby lawn to the stone wall.

  “You’ve got a basement, right?”

  “A big one. Storage and utility. It’s not finished. I don’t need the room.”

  “Might want it when you have kids. And you’d want to build up that wall more when you do. For now, you might want to put some hemlock over there, naturalize some daffodils, give you a foresty feel on that far side. And some shrubs fronting the wall. Keep them low ’cause you don’t want anything blocking the view. When you ever decide to finish the basement, you do yourself a walk-out, and you’ve got a nice shady patio area under the decks, then a sunny little backyard.”

  “I wanted to put some herbs, some vegetables in. Not a huge space, but enough for a kitchen garden.”

  “You could do that.” Nodding, he walked up the short steps to the first-floor deck. “It’s a ways from your kitchen, but you could do that. Or you could have yourself a container garden up here. You got the sun, you got the room on a deck this size. Build them out of the same wood as the house, make them look built-in, you know? Do yourself herbs, some cherry tomatoes, maybe some Romas, some peppers, whatever. Containers are easy to maintain.”

  “And steps away from the kitchen.” More practical, she thought, more efficient. And pretty. “You know what you’re doing, Lelo.”

  “Well, I’ve been working the business since I was about six.”

  “It’s a lot of work.”

  “Whatever you do, you can do some here, some there, some down the road.”

  “But you can draw it up, give me an estimate—on each section?”

  “Sure. And there’s this other thing.”

  “Am I going to have to sell the family jewels?”

  He grinned, shook his head, and shot out raindrops. “Maybe you could take pictures of the work—you know, before, during, after. We could use them in the business. Like a trade.”

  Bartering again, she thought. The popular commerce of Sunrise Cove.

  “That’s a smart idea.”

  “I can’t claim it. It’s my dad’s. I haven’t seen what-all you sent to Dave yesterday. I’m swinging by his place after he gets off work—may be able to mooch dinner, too. But my dad took a look at your website, and he came up with it.”

  She’d want pictures in any case, she thought. She’d been documenting the progress on the house, for herself, for Mason and her uncles and grandparents.

  “We’ll work that deal.”

  “Solid.” They fist-bumped on it. “I’ll get you some drawings and some figures. You’re really pretty.”

  “Ah . . . thank you.”

  “I’m not hitting on you or anything. Xander’s like my brother. It’s just you’re really pretty. And I like what you’re doing with the house. Like I said, I used to hang up here sometimes with Dikes. Even though I used to think working in the business was bogus, I’d end up planting stuff in my head.”

  “Now you’ll plant it for real.”

  “That’s something, isn’t it? I should book. Xander’s on my ass about the muffler. I guess I’ll take it in, let him fix the damn thing. I’ll come by when I’ve got everything worked up.”

  “Thanks, Lelo.”

  “Sure thing. You be good.” He rubbed the wet dog. “Later,” he said, and jogged down and away.

  —

  Xander stood under an aging Camry, replacing brake pads that should’ve been replaced ten thousand miles earlier. Some people just didn’t maintain. It needed an oil change and an all-around tune-up, but its owner—his ninth-grade American history teacher—still didn’t believe he knew what he was doing. About any damn thing.

  And never let him forget he’d been suspended for hooking school.

  Something that made no sense to him then or now. Suspension for hooking was like a damn reward.

  Speaking of suspension, her shocks were about shot—but she wouldn’t listen there either. She’d wait, drive the car into the ground until he ended up towing it in.

  He had a transmission job after this and had given a clutch replacement to one of his crew, a simple tire rotation to another.

  He had two cars out in the lot, towed in from a wreck on rain-slick roads the night before—a call that had pulled him out of Naomi’s bed at two in the morning.

  The drivers got off with mostly bumps, bruises, some cuts—though one of them ended up being taken in by the deputy when he didn’t pass the Breathalyzer.

  Once the insurance companies finished wrangling, he’d have plenty of bodywork to deal with.

  But he’d missed waking up with Naomi and the dog, having breakfast.

  He’d gotten used to those sunrises. Funny how fast he’d gotten used to them, and unused to sleeping and waking alone in his own space.

  Even now he had a low-grade urge to see her, to hear her voice—to catch a drift of her scent. That wasn’t like him. He just wasn’t the sort who needed constant contact—calling, texting, checking in, dropping by. But he’d caught himself thinking up excuses to do any of that, and had to order himself to knock it off.

  He had work—and later in the afternoon a quick meeting with Loo about the bar. He had books to read, sports to watch, friends to hang with.

  And the paperwork he should’ve done Sunday night to clear up.

  Xander shook his head when he heard the unmistakable cough and rattle of Lelo’s shitty muffler.

  “Get that thing out of here!” Xander shouted. “It’s bad for business.”

  “I’m bringing you business, man. And half a jumbo Diablo sub.”

  Xander paused long enough to glance over as Lelo, dripping rain, walked in. “Diablo?”

  “I went by, saw your chick, and she is hot. She is smoking hot. Made me want some hot.”

  “You went up to Naomi’s?”

  “Still think of it as the old Parkerson place. Not for long if she hires us. Trade you the sub for a Mountain Dew.”

  “Two minutes.” Xander went back to the brake pads. “So you went up, took a look at the yard?”

  “I’ve been dreaming about that place since I sat up there smoking dope with Dikes. Now I find your smoking-hot chick’s pretty open and flexible about landscaping. She listens. She’s got the vision, man, just like with the photos.”

  Lelo boosted himself up to sit on a workbench, unwrapped the sub. “We get a job like that? That place is a landmark—sad one these last few years, but still. Showing how we can turn it around’s got my parents doing the bebopping boogie. Going to try to work a deal for pictures we can use for promotion, keep her outlay down some. How come you let Denny play that country shit in here?”

  “It’s all right, and it keeps him happy.” Finished, Xander walked over to the soda machine, plugged in coins for a Mountain Dew and a ginger ale.

  He grabbed paper napkins—Diablos were hot, and messy—then joined Lelo on the bench.

  “Is that Mrs. Wobaugh’s Camry?”

  “Yeah, she’s driving it into the ground.”

  “I had her for American history.”

  “Me, too.”

  “About bored me brainless.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Who said that shit about history repeating itself?”

  “There are a lot of people who said that shit,” Xander told him. “A favorite is: ‘History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page.’ That’s Byron.”

  “Cool. So, why do we have to study it, be bored brainless, if it’s got one page?”

  “We keep thinking if we do, we’ll change the next page. Not so much,” Xander decided. “But as somebody else said, hope springs. So high school kids get bored brainless.”

  “Guess that’s it.”

  They ate in the easy, companionable silence of old friends.

  “Saw you got a couple banged
up good in the lot.”

  “Wreck last night on 119. Driver of the Honda blew a one-point-one.”

  “D-W-fricking-I. Hurt bad?”

  “Busted up some, and the other driver, too. Didn’t sound major. Cars have it worse.”

  “Cha-ching for you.”

  “Should be.” As he ate, Xander studied Lelo’s truck. “Are you bringing that piece of shit in here for me to fix?”

  “Yeah. I can leave it if you can’t get to it, hitch a ride home.”

  “I can get to it. I bought the damn muffler a month ago, figuring you’d come to your senses eventually. I can shuffle you in next.”

  “Dude. Gratitude. The chief stopped me this morning on my way out of town—let me off when I told him I was coming back here after some business, and you were taking care of it.”

  Unsurprised, Xander washed down fire-hot Diablo with ice-cold ginger ale. An excellent combo. “That’s one way to come to your senses.”

  “I’m going to kind of miss the noise.”

  “Only you, Lelo.”

  “The chief told me they haven’t found Marla.”

  Xander paused with the can of ginger ale halfway to his mouth. “She’s not back?”

  “Nope, not back, nobody’s seen or heard from her. Since he had me pulled over, he asked if I had, if I noticed her with anybody Friday night. Saw anybody go out after her. It’s gotten serious, Xan. It’s like she poofed.”

  “People don’t poof.”

  “They run off—I tried that when I was pissed at my mother over something. Packed up my backpack and set off to walk to my grandparents’. I figured it only took about five minutes to get there—by car—and being eight I didn’t calculate the difference on foot so well. I got halfway there when my mother drove up. I figured I was in for it big-time, but she got out and cried all over me.”

  He took a hefty bite of his sub. “Not the same, though, I guess.”

  “We can hope it is. She took off on a mad, and she’s sitting somewhere sulking.” But the odds of that now, Xander thought, weren’t good. “It’s too long for that. Too damn long for that.”

  “People are thinking she got taken by somebody.”

  “People?”

  “They were talking about it in Rinaldo’s when I got the sub. Local cops are talking to everybody now, from what I can see. Seems she hasn’t used her credit card since Friday either. And she didn’t take her car, any clothes. They had Chip and Patti look at that, to see if they could tell if she grabbed up some clothes. Everybody there saw her walk out of the bar, and that’s it.

  “I can’t say I like her. I know I had sex with her a couple times, but Jesus, she has a mean streak. But it’s scary, man, thinking something really happened to her. A lot of people are fucked-up, you know? And do fucked-up things. I don’t like thinking about it.”

  Neither did Xander.

  But he couldn’t put it away. By the time he had Lelo’s truck on the lift—and Lelo, with a yen for ice cream, had wandered off to get some—he had a twist in his belly.

  He got a clear picture of the look she’d tossed him when she’d come out of the bathroom—where Patti had dragged her on Friday night. The look she’d shot him, full of hot fury, before she shot up her middle finger and stormed out.

  That was his last image of her—a girl he’d known since high school. One he’d had sex with because she was available. One he’d blown off countless times since because, like Lelo, he didn’t really like her.

  She could have walked home in under five minutes, he calculated. And at the pace she’d stormed out, more like three. A dark road, he considered, even with some streetlights. A quiet road that time of night with nearly anybody out and about in the bar for the music and the company.

  He tried to see the houses on the route she’d have taken, the shops if she’d cut across Water Street. Shops closed. People would have been awake—or some of them—but those at home most likely sitting and watching TV, playing on the computer. Not looking out the window after eleven at night.

  Had somebody come along, offered her a ride? Would she have been stupid enough to get in the car?

  Three-to-five-minute walk, why get into a stranger’s car?

  Didn’t have to be a stranger, he admitted, which tightened the twist in his belly. And there, she’d have hopped right in, glad to have an ear to vent her temper to.

  Nearly two thousand people made their home in the Cove, in town and around it. Small town by any measure, but no one knew everyone.

  And a pissed-off, drunk woman made an easy target.

  Had someone followed her out? He hadn’t seen anyone, but he’d shrugged and looked away after she’d shot him the look and the finger.

  He couldn’t be sure.

  Even people you knew had secrets.

  Hadn’t he found black lace panties in the Honda of the very married Rick Graft—whose wife wouldn’t have been able to wish herself into panties that small—when he’d detailed the interior?

  Graft came off as a happily married father of three, who coached basketball for nine- and ten-year-olds and managed the local hardware store.

  Xander had tossed the panties, figuring it was better all around that way. But he couldn’t toss away the knowledge.

  Or how Mrs. Ensen had smelled of weed and cheap wine, and the mints and spray cologne she’d used to try to mask it, when he’d answered the breakdown call and gone out to change her tire.

  And she a grandmother, for Christ’s sake.

  No, you couldn’t know everyone, and even when you did, you didn’t.

  But he knew Marla wouldn’t sulk alone for going on four days.

  He was very much afraid that when they found her, it would be too late.

  Eighteen

  Having a houseful of men had some advantages. Xander and Kevin carted out her shipping boxes and the smaller box of prints she’d framed for potential sale locally.

  It left her free to carry her camera bag.

  “Thanks. I’ll get these shipped off this morning.”

  “You’re heading to New York, Xan.”

  “Weird,” was his thought on it. “Gotta go.” He tapped Naomi’s camera bag. “Going to work, too?”

  “I am. I’ll take an hour or two before I head to town.”

  “Where?” When her eyebrows raised, he kept it casual. “Just wondering.”

  “Down below the bluff. We’ll see if the rain washed in anything interesting. And pretty spring morning. Boats should be out.”

  “Good luck with that.” He yanked her in for a kiss, gave the dog a quick rub. “See you later.”

  She’d be within sight of the house, he thought as he swung onto his bike. And he’d already had a short, private conversation with Kevin about keeping an eye out.

  Best he could do, but he wouldn’t be altogether easy until they found out what happened to Marla.

  —

  Naomi considered taking the car. She could drive nearly a half a mile closer, then take a track down through the woods—since she wanted shots there first—make her way down to the shoreline.