Divas and Dead Rebels (29 page)

When I reached the landing on the second floor, I heard Bitty scolding Chen Ling about trying to eat old food. I smiled. Having Chitling along kept Bitty busy and not as freaked out as earlier, so I began to think it’d been a good idea after all.

No lights were on in the upstairs. Not even Catherine’s bedroom light. It didn’t make much sense that an abductor would stop to turn out lights, unless there’d been a struggle of some kind. And if police had found her, and if she was dead, there would be a chalk outline on the floor, I was pretty sure. I braced myself, just in case, as I stepped into Catherine’s master bedroom.

A king-size bed anchored the middle of the room, flanked by nightstands, and the heavy draperies over the windows were closed. I flipped on the overhead light, and a ceiling fan came on as well. It whisked cool air over me, and I shivered as I crossed to the far wall and an open door that I was sure was the master bath. I don’t know what I expected to see. A chalk outline, sign of struggle, bullet holes in the door, maybe the door jamb loose or broken, but I never expected to see nothing.

Nothing was out of place. No sign of the door being forced, no indication that a gun had been fired, and no matter how closely I searched, I found no evidence that a woman had taken armed refuge in the spacious bathroom. A huge garden tub took up one wall, the toilet and vanity were clean and neat, no towels out of place, not even the rug on the tile floor rumpled. The small stained glass window that let in light was clean with no bullet holes, no glass on the floor—nothing. Clean as a whistle. Whatever that means.

I was baffled. I had heard someone beating on the door, a crash and a gunshot. I knew I had. Catherine had screamed, and the line went dead. There should be some sign of a struggle in the bathroom where she’d barricaded herself. Why wasn’t there? Did her abductor allow her to clean up first? Had the man, presumably Breck Hartford, tidied up to hide the evidence that he’d taken her?

Maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe she’d been in the downstairs bathroom. I’d look there after checking out two other bedrooms on the upper floor. One was obviously a guest room, with a neatly made bed, pristine dresser, and family photographs placed on the nightstand as well as on the wall. I paused to look at a photo of Catherine with a young boy who must have been her son. They were both laughing into the camera, and she had her arms around him from behind. Obviously a loving relationship. It had to be terribly hard for her to come to terms with his death.

I knew at once that my guess was right when I opened the door to the next bedroom. It had been her son’s, left as he must have left it on the last day of his life. The bed was unmade, covers thrown back as if he’d just risen, and his laptop sat open on a small desk, waiting for his return. A few clothes were scattered about, a shirt hung over a chair, a few textbooks open on the foot of the bed. The full attached bath was as clean and undisturbed as Catherine’s own, and I stepped back into Monty’s bedroom.

I could almost feel Catherine’s grief. It hung in the room, a dense, impenetrable cloud. I quietly shut the door and went downstairs.

Bitty made noise in the kitchen, opening and shutting cabinet doors for some reason, so I went ahead and checked out the downstairs bathroom. As with the other two, it was clean. It was smaller, only a toilet, a custom washstand with the vessel sink atop an ornate chest with cabriole legs, and no evidence of any kind of struggle.

I went into the kitchen. Bitty had obviously dumped the plastic mop bucket since the contents gazed balefully up at me from the floor. I blinked first, as usual, and Chitling looked smug.

“Did you look in the garage?” I asked as I went toward the door leading to it.

Bitty paused in peering into a glass-front cabinet. “No. I’m just checking to see if anything expensive is missing.”

I looked at her. “How would you know?”

“Oh, Cat’s always bragged about inheriting her mother’s china and silver. I can’t resist checking to see if it’s really as old as she claims.”

“So this isn’t really about Catherine, it’s about you,” I said sarcastically, but Bitty just nodded and “hmm-ed” me. I rolled my eyes and opened the door to the garage. “See if you can find out what that smell is,” I said as I stepped into the shadowed, stuffy area. I looked around, not surprised that Catherine’s late-model Lexus was gone. If she’d been abducted, no doubt the criminal took her car and her with it. If she’d just gone out shopping—which I doubted—the police would end up looking for her vehicle anyway if she didn’t return in a reasonable time.

None of this made any sense to me. The police were right. There wasn’t a thing to suggest Catherine Moore had been taken from the house against her will. No bashed-in doors, no bullet holes, not even the front door mat out of place.

Yet, I had distinctly heard the panic in her voice and a gunshot. And I had heard a crashing noise as if a door was being forcibly opened. I hadn’t imagined it, I knew I hadn’t. Kit had been there with me, so I knew it wasn’t my overly active imagination.

So—where was Catherine?

I was still mulling over this question when I walked back into the kitchen and found Bitty sitting on top of a marble countertop. Dishes sat around her, blue and white and green, a couple different patterns.

“What are you doing now?” I couldn’t help asking even though I was pretty sure I’d regret it.

“I told you. Checking Cat’s truth-o-meter. She was pretty truthful. This really is Worcester bone china. See these marks? Seventeen hundreds. Late, I’d say, since this is a piece by Flight and Barr. Very lovely.”

Sometimes I forget that Bitty is an antiques hound. I nodded pleasantly and said, “Very interesting, but we need to focus on other things right now. Did you find the source of that dreadful smell?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Bitty slid down from the counter and began putting the dishes back into the glass-front cabinet. “Apparently she left some chicken in the oven. It has little crawly things all over it.” She shuddered as she said the last.

I pondered that for a moment.
How long does it take for meat to get maggots in an oven,
I wondered. I didn’t realize I’d said that aloud until Bitty answered me.

“Maggots? Ewww! Are you sure she was here when she called you?”

“Well . . . no, I’m not. She used her cell phone. I guess she could have been anywhere.”

Bitty nodded. “Maybe she went to her cabin.”

“She has a cabin?”

“Of course.”

“Not everyone has more than one house, you know,” I reminded my cousin a bit tartly. “You could have said something earlier.”

“It didn’t occur to me. For heaven’s sake, Trinket, you’re the one who’s been BFF with Cat lately, not me.”

“BFF?”

“Best Friends Forever. Don’t you do email?”

“I don’t even do regular mail. When would I have time? I’m too busy running around like a headless chicken these days.”

“Really, I think you need to go to the spa for a day. Or a week. You’re always so tense and irritable. Armando gives wonderful massages that just take away all the stress like magic.”

I rolled my eyes, but Bitty didn’t see me. She was too busy putting away the china and poking her nose where it didn’t belong.

“A lot of help you are,” I muttered, confirming her assessment of my irritability. “I don’t suppose you know the location of Catherine’s cabin?”

“Why, I do. It’s in Pott’s Camp not that far from here, back toward Holly Springs. Are you suggesting—”

“No, I’m saying plainly that should be our next stop.”

“Well, I’m not wearing these dreadful clothes a minute longer than I have to,” she said, “so let’s take them back first. If someone sees me in this uniform, I’ll just die. And we didn’t even need to rent them since not one neighbor has so much as said
boo
to us, much less ask what we’re doing here.”

As if conjured up by her precipitate assessment, the front doorbell jangled. We looked at each other, momentarily struck dumb. After the doorbell jangled again, I was able to say, “I’ll get it. Stay in here and act like you’re cleaning.”

Bitty gave me a blank look, the doorbell rang again, and I threw my hands up in the air. “Fake it, Barbie,” I said over my shoulder. “Pretend you know how to use a dishrag.”

When I opened the front door, an elderly woman looked at me suspiciously. She had white curly hair and wore designer sunglasses. “Who are you?” she demanded before I could get out a greeting. “I’ve never seen you before.”

“We’re substituting for the regular cleaning service,” I said as calmly as I could. My heartbeat had escalated, and my face felt flushed. “Didn’t Mrs. Moore tell you?”

“It was late when she left. She usually has me get her mail and newspapers.”

“So you talked to her yesterday?”

“No, but I did get her papers this morning. Catherine didn’t tell me anything about a new cleaning service.”

“It was a last-minute substitution,” I lied, feeling myself get deeper and deeper in a sticky web of deception. “I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it when she sees you.”

“Hmph,” said the still-suspicious neighbor, and peered at me over the rim of her sunglasses. “I don’t see your van in the driveway.”

“We came on the bus.” Sweat started to bead on my forehead. My armpits felt hot and damp. I’m not as practiced at lying as Bitty. I get too nervous. Bitty can do it without breaking a sweat, while I look like I’ve stood under a showerhead. If Chen Ling barked or made any doggy sound, my goose was cooked. The police would be called, and there’s no telling what would happen then. I was sure it would involve squad cars and handcuffs, however, so I crossed my mental fingers that this alert visitor would accept my explanation without calling the law.

After another pause, during which she squinted behind me at the living room, she gave a curt nod of her head. “If anything’s missing, Catherine will tell me about it, you know.”

“I should hope so,” I said. It wasn’t until she’d turned and crossed the driveway back to her own house that I could breathe easily. I sagged briefly against the door jamb, then stepped back and closed the door.

When I went back into the kitchen there was no sign of Bitty or the pug. I blinked my eyes to be sure she just wasn’t under my radar somehow, but nope—no Bitty. “Hey,” I called softly. “Where are you?”

The door to the garage cracked about two inches, then Bitty stuck her head in. “All clear?”

“Yes, Joan of Arc, you can come out of hiding now.”

Bitty blinked at me. “Didn’t they cancel that TV show years ago?”

“No, that was
Joan of Arcadia
. Joan of Arc was—oh, never mind. If I have to explain it to you then it isn’t worth it. Let’s get out of here.”

“It couldn’t be too soon for me.” Bitty tucked Chen Ling under her arm and headed for the living room. “And I know who Joan of Arc was, so don’t underestimate me.”

“Hold it, Professor Hollandale,” I said. “You forgot her bucket.”

“No, I didn’t. We’re done, so let’s just leave.”

“I’d like to have a bit of a head start, you know. We don’t need to have the police called on us before we can get out of town.”

Bitty mumbled and grumbled, but Chitling ended up in the bucket and we left, locking the door behind us. I put the key back where it belonged, and we walked back to the car.

“You know,” I said once we’d returned the costumes and were on our way toward Pott’s Camp, “Catherine must have taken the time to tell her neighbor she was going to be out of town, or she wouldn’t be getting her mail and newspapers.”

“True.”

“So if she’s okay, she’s probably at her cabin, don’t you think?”

“Well, we can hope.”

I thought about all the possibilities as Bitty took Highway 7 out of Oxford. All I could do was hope that Catherine had taken refuge in her cabin and was just fine. It’d be such a relief if she’d been startled by a visitor and the gunshot was just a door slamming.

“But she must have left home quickly,” I murmured aloud, “or she’d have taken the chicken out of the oven. No one wants to come home to that kind of mess. Someone must have frightened her badly enough that she’d take off like that.”

“Or maybe she just wanted to go off to the wilderness,” said Bitty. “It happens.”

“Wilderness?” I shuddered. “Let’s hope not.”

That’s how we found ourselves in a desolate spot on the Tippah River, far from a town or even a neighbor, in a heavily wooded area that brought to mind every horror film I’d ever been coerced into watching. Catherine’s car sat behind a story and a half house built of logs and roofed with cedar shakes. A deck ran along the backside and around to the front. From where we sat in the blacktop driveway, I could see a pier jutting into the tumbling water that ran past the house. The only sign of life was a buzzard roosting in a tree on the hill overlooking the river. I couldn’t help another shudder.

“I’m having second thoughts,” I said, and Bitty nodded her head.

“Me, too.”

We sat there for another moment in silence. Then I took a deep breath. “We came all this way. We might as well see if she’s all right.”

“Yes. We should.”