Gone (5 page)

Clare shook her head, shook off the despair. Relaxing her grip on the steering wheel, she renewed her determination and slid her foot to the gas pedal again.

Connie may not know where Katie went, but Katie’s husband might. She’d proceed as planned to Katie’s house, though this time, to speak with her sister’s husband.

She glanced at the dashboard clock. Coming up on noon. Unless Katie’s husband didn’t work mornings, or knocked off work early for the day, it wasn’t likely that he’d be at home at this time. No matter. She’d camp out on his doorstep until he returned.

Clare drove on. A sign proclaimed the next street she came to as Bridge Road. A creek flowed slowly below. Two men in floppy hats sat beneath a Live Oak, lowering fishing poles into the still water. After sundown, Clare imagined a breeze would blow in off the water. If the heat didn’t let up, she just might go there and find out.

She found Bridge Road on the diagram. Daisy Lane was one street south of that.

The houses on Daisy Lane were small, single-story dwellings that showed pride of ownership with well-tended lawns and paint that shone on eaves troughs, porches, and doors. Katie’s place was no exception. Clare parked her car by the curb, and leaning forward in the driver’s seat, got her first look at Katie’s house.

All visible trim was painted white. Even in the unforgiving glare of sunlight, the white was as bright and chaste as new fallen snow, making a lie of the old adage that white was hard to maintain. The lawn looked as fresh and lush as a golf green. A row of thriving petunias lined the edge of a painted wooden porch.

Clare smiled. Unlike herself, Katie had a green thumb. Unable to resist a closer look at her sister’s home, she braced herself against the heat, and left the car.

A freesia bush bloomed with pink petals. The sweet scent hung in the still air. Upon closer observation, Clare noticed that the bush was carefully trimmed so that its branches were aligned. The petunias were evenly spaced. That prompted another smile. Katie must have a sense of order that Clare herself didn’t possess, in addition to that green thumb.

A decade-old green sedan was parked on one side of the driveway. If that was the only car the Ryders owned, Clare figured it was likely to be parked in the center of the driveway. Again, she considered that it was unlikely Katie’s husband would be at home on a week day, at the noon hour, but there was a car in the drive and she climbed the steps to the porch and rang the doorbell, just in case. As she suspected, no one answered her call.

A gate led to a backyard. She would be trespassing if she wandered through it, invading Katie’s privacy. She held herself back, just barely, from going into the yard, so hungry was she for details about Katie’s life.

She was about to return to her car and wait out the return of Katie’s husband when a white pickup turned into the driveway. The window was rolled down.

The man behind the wheel wore his sandy hair cut military short. It suited his features. He parked, then left the vehicle. On the driveway he stood in place facing her, his blue gaze unwavering. He appeared to be taking her measure, Clare thought, though his expression didn’t alter. She expected some degree of surprise in his eyes, but there was none, and the lack made her think he’d been expecting her.

Clare met his gaze. “Hello. I’m looking for Dean Ryder.”

“You must be the woman my sister called about.”

So this was Katie’s husband. She tried a smile. “I’m Clare Marshall.”

Ryder didn’t acknowledge the introduction. “You do resemble my wife. Her sister, that who you told Connie and our mama you were?”

So much for the pleasant greeting Clare had planned. Expecting a warm welcome for Katie’s relative might have been naive, having learned what she had about Katie leaving him for another man.

“Yes, I’m Ka- ah—Beth’s sister.” Clare was going to have to start thinking of Katie as Beth.

The temperature had to be over one hundred degrees. Ryder’s tan suit jacket was buttoned. A tie was cinched at his throat. He appeared unaffected by the heat. Unlike herself. Clare could feel perspiration trickling down her neck.

“So my sister said.” Ryder nodded. “You’re going to give Gladys quite a turn.”

Clare saw no point in withholding the truth from him. “Hank Linney is not my father or Beth’s. Beth was adopted. She was born Kathleen Marshall.”

His lips pursed. “She never told me about an adoption.”

He appeared angered by that, and Clare rushed to defend Beth. “She might not have known. She was an infant when the adoption took place.” Clare took a deep breath and reigned in her own anger, which wouldn’t be productive in getting any information from Ryder. “Your sister mentioned that Beth is no longer in town. Mr. Ryder—Dean, I’m trying to find her. I’d like to ask you some questions—”

“I got nothin’ to tell you.”

Ryder walked by Clare up the porch steps.

“Did she tell you where she was going?” Clare asked.

Ryder stuck his key in the door lock.

“Did you try to find her?” Clare called out.

Ryder stopped. Without turning around, he said, “She doesn’t want me. I don’t want her.”

He went into the house.

She’d been dismissed. Clare took a deep breath to cool the anger that had increased her body temperature and headed up the steps to the front door. While she sympathized with Ryder’s hurt over Beth leaving him, his feelings ran a distant second to her search for her sister.

He had left the wooden door open behind the screen door, and the glass on that one was raised. Clare took up a position on the welcome mat. She leaned on the doorbell for a few seconds, then waited for the chime to stop.

“If you don’t speak with me, Dean, I’ll get my answers elsewhere,” she said loudly enough to carry into the house. “I’ll speak with every person in Farley if I have to, to find out what I need to know. I’m not going away.”

Clare didn’t know Ryder and couldn’t gauge his feelings about the town’s reaction to Beth leaving him. Was he basking in the sympathy of the town as the poor jilted husband or had his pride taken a hit and all he really wanted was to put the incident behind him? If the dust was just beginning to settle on the gossip, she supposed it was unlikely he would take kindly to the prospect of having it stirred up again. Not her problem. At this point, Clare had nothing to lose. Though she had no wish to cause him more hurt, she didn’t have the time to get to know him, to ingratiate herself to him, if it were possible to do so, in order to enlist his cooperation.

She waited a little longer but Ryder didn’t come to the door.

She went back to her car. Behind the wheel, with the air conditioning on high blowing cool air across her face, she considered her next step. She knew the names of Beth’s adoptive parents. Hank and Gladys Linney might still be in town. Their daughter may have confided in them.

If she’d had her laptop with her, she could log onto the Bureau’s database and find out if the couple still resided in Farley. She hadn’t brought it with her, however. She’d planned a reunion, not an investigation.

Clare consulted the diagram of Farley and located Main Street, which she assumed would be like most other towns and house the business district.

Main Street was wide with a row of shops on the east side and a tidy park on the west. A bronze statue on a pedestal presided over an assortment of bushes and lush flowers in a manicured garden. The plaque beneath the statue identified it as town founder Walter Farley.

Driving slowly, Clare read the signs above the shops in passing.
Potter and Sons Pharmacy.
Main Street Diner
.
The Pizza Place.
Main Street Hardware and Bait. Farley Army Surplus.
There wasn’t much activity. A man sat on a bench, fanning himself with a newspaper. Two preteen boys stood beneath the striped canopy of the army surplus, taking turns looking through a pair of binoculars. Though the residents were undoubtedly accustomed to the heat, apparently they had the good sense to stay out of it.

She was looking for a gas station and came to one across from an intersection. And it had a telephone booth. Clare flipped through the directory there looking for Hank or Gladys Linney. She came up empty and went back over the names. It was possible that the parents were deceased, but what about nephews or nieces or other relatives? There were no listings for anyone named Linney.

County records would reveal if the Linneys had died. The county seat was a forty-minute drive out of town. Clare figured it could be faster to visit the local churches and speak with the resident pastors about the Linneys. In a town the size of Farley, how many churches could there be?

Two were listed in the phone book, and both located on a street called July Road. One was Lutheran and the other Methodist. The listing for the Lutheran house of worship also featured a map. Clare tore the page out of the directory.

She reached the Methodist church first. Small residences had been built around it. Two young girls spun a skipping rope on the sidewalk while a shaggy dog leaped beside them.

Clare entered the small structure. There wasn’t anyone inside. She went to the house next door that had been built on the church property, thinking it might be the pastor’s residence and rang the bell. No one came to the door. She rang again. Moments later when there was still no response, she drove on, down the street.

An old station wagon was parked in the gravel drive of the rectory built beside the Lutheran church. Clare parked and walked to it. A round woman answered Clare’s knock. Spectacles dangled from a silver chain around her neck. She lifted them to her eyes and they widened for an instant. The look she gave Clare wasn’t friendly.

Clare attributed the woman’s hostility to her resemblance to her sister, and ignored it. “I’d like to speak with the pastor. Is he available, please?”

The woman nodded once briskly. “Come inside.”

“Thank you.”

The woman ushered Clare into a kitchen. Tea bags, lemon slices, sugar—the makings for what looked like iced tea—were spread across the counter.

Two tall fans stood on the tile floor at opposite ends of the kitchen. Clare made her way to one of them as a man entered the room. He was slim and stoop-shouldered. The woman hadn’t returned with him.

“I’m Reverend Shannon,” the man said. “You wish to speak with me?”

His tone was frosty, as was the glint in his pale blue eyes.

“I’m Clare Marshall,” Clare said. “I’m trying to locate two people who may be parishioners of yours, Hank and Gladys Linney.”

Reverend Shannon nodded. “Yes, Hank and Gladys worshiped here.”