OUT ON A LIMB (21 page)

“Looking for my cat,” I called in a neighborly fashion.

“I do not care for cats in my yard. I am hoping that the purple martins will nest here this year.”

“I’m sure they will.” I ducked my face and hurried on. Two more backyards and I was looking at a rusty chain-link fence covered with some sort of vine that had yet to begin to bloom. A car was parked in the garage, indicating that Sheila was on foot, sound asleep inside the house, or merely too caught up in a neurotic fantasy to bother to answer the phone. I glanced both ways, assessed the potential handholds, and managed to scramble over the fence and fall onto a pile of soggy leaves. When nothing much happened, I stood up and hurried to the back porch. Still no voices ordering me to stop, no sounds of weapons being cocked, no barking of ferocious dogs about to be loosed on my person.

The door was locked. For a second, I wished I’d taken away Arnie’s handy-dandy screwdriver, then gave the knob a good shake. It obliged me.

“Sheila?” I called as I stepped into a kitchen of sorts. The sink was filled with dishes, and the linoleum on the floor was brown with grime. The refrigerator was significantly older than I was. Cereal was scattered on the counter. Two empty milk cartons, wadded paper napkins, and a half-melted stick of butter cluttered the surface of a breakfast table. The herbs in pots on the windowsill above the sink were yellow, most likely brittle. I could understand why Sheila limited her forays into the kitchen to pouring vodka.

I continued into the living room, prepared to find her snoring on the sofa or passed out on the floor. Still calling her name, I went upstairs and quickly searched the two bedrooms and antiquated bathroom. All were as unappealing as the kitchen but unoccupied as well. I came back downstairs, went to the window, and eased back the curtain. The nondescript car was no longer parked across the street. I had no idea what I would say if she were to come through the front door; it would be hard to sell my runaway cat story, even to someone as harebrained as she. Cats are seldom accused of picking locks, even those in mystery fiction with the ability to tapdance on keyboards to provide clues to their witless caregivers.

There were several photo albums piled sloppily on the coffee table. I considered the idea of snatching them up and exiting through the back door, but I was aware that Sheila might be too emotionally fragile to deal wife their disappearance. Life was surely perplexing for her at the moment, with her ex-husband murdered, her daughter arrested, and her alimony checks imperiled.

I sat down on the sofa and opened the top album. Sheila, dressed in an ankle-length white dress, with daisies in her hair. Anthony, less bulky, perhaps less tense. In that I’d never met the man, it was hard to tell. An asymmetrical wedding cake that Sheila must have made herself. Guests in embroidered shirts. A band composed of three drummers and a ponytailed guitar player. Jugs of wine. A retro wedding, I thought, shaking my head.

I flipped though pages with photographs of runnynosed children and glazed adults. Depictions of Daphne in a receiving blanket, and later in a bathing suit in a wading pool. Anthony, washing a car. Sheila, mugging at the camera. Daphne, in an Easter dress and straw hat. Anthony and Sheila on the deck of a cabin. Daphne, in a tutu, her hair pinned up and her smile taut.

There was nothing in the album that suggested cash on demand. I set it aside and opened another, which seemed to focus on Anthony’s successes in civic affairs and his propensity for posing with heavy machinery. Cutting a ribbon at an apartment complex. Standing in front of a fountain. Shaking hands with what I supposed was the mayor or a councilman. Accepting a golf trophy. Standing on a pier beside a large fish. Sheila was rarely at his side.

I wasn’t sure how far away the grocery store or liquor store might be, but I figured the clock was ticking. I picked up a third album and opened it. The photographs were much older, and after a bit of squinting, I determined that they were of Sheila’s family. Most of the people in the earliest black-and-white compositions were rigid and expressionless. Their clothes were durable, no doubt, but uninspired. A ramshackle barn in the distance looked as though a heavy rain might send it sliding down the hillside, taking a mule and several chickens with it. A few pages later, I found a wedding picture, the groom in an olive drab uniform, the bride in a knee-length beige dress with a lace jacket. When Sheila began to appear, first as an impish child and then as a teenager, the backgrounds were filled with station wagons and barbecue grills. Her parents had achieved middle-class nirvana in the form of three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, and a tiny patio.

But where, I asked myself, was anything that suggested there was a buried treasure in the backyard, so to speak? No one was holding up a prototype of an electric lightbulb or a printing press. The mule had not gone on to win the Kentucky Derby. The barbecue grills would not set any records at an antiques appraisal show on PBS. Relatives, friends, memories. Valuable to those who cared, but hardly marketable.

I let myself out the back door, conscientiously locking it behind me, and walked down the alley.

“Find your cat?” the elderly woman shouted.

“No luck,” I answered with appropriate despondency. “He must have run off with a Siamese that lives next door.”

“Foreigners. Can’t trust them.”

“No kidding,” I said. “The next thing you know, they’ll be giving out the Nobel Peace Prize in Sweden.” When I arrived in the library parking lot, I checked the time. I still had an hour before Caron and Inez would be thrust back into the complexity. Skyler was at the mall with Luanne, Adrienne was having her hair done, Peter was threatening his underlings with double shifts if they didn’t find Daphne, Arnie was spending my twenty dollars at some sleazy bar, Miss Parchester was settling her account with Howie, Sheila was staggering home from shopping, Jessica was powdering her nose in preparation for the next late-breaking story, the weatherman was eyeing the low front coming our way, and Finnigan Baybergen was annoying a large class of undergraduates who wanted nothing more than a passing grade and an opportunity to nap. Busy, busy people.

I had an hour of free time.

And, it occurred to me as I walked up the steps to the library, I might be able to use it wisely. I stopped at the reference desk and asked a young woman how I might find newspaper stories from a year ago.

She peered at me almost suspiciously. “On-line, of course. The archives go back forty-three years thus far.”

“I don’t know how to find the archives,” I whispered, as one was taught to do in such sacred institutions.

She pulled off her glasses. “Please wait while I find Marian.”

“The lady librarian?”

“She will not find that amusing. Just sit down at that desk and try not to touch anything until we return.”

I did as ordered. The computer in front of me appeared to be no more alien than the one in my office that I used infrequently, to my accountant’s chagrin. I did not doubt, however, that with an imprudent touch I could erase the entire inventory of the library, and possibly that of the Library of Congress as well. I tend to overestimate my as yet undefined supernatural powers, but one never knows.

Marian proved to be a woman of my age. She was not horrified at my ignorance, and carefully led me through a series of commands until I was looking at the archives of the local newspaper.

“Do you have a particular date, or do we need to search by subject?”

“Subject,” I said. “The Oakland Heights condominium development.”

She stopped smiling. “I suppose you’re wanting to find articles about the fire last year. A terrible thing it was. My niece’s former roommate was living there. The poor girl miscarried the day after. But let me find it for you.” She typed rapidly, then stopped as an article appeared on the screen. “Just click on that button to see related articles. When you’re done, click on this.”

I setded back to read about the fire. No one had been killed, and the damage had been limited to three units. One of them had belonged to Finnigan’s sister, Kendra Baybergen, who’d collapsed behind the building. In an adjoining unit, a retired couple had barely escaped, both snflferihg second-degree burns. The husband had also fractured his shoulder in a fall. The third unit had involved a couple in their twenties; the wife had been transported to intensive care. Marian’s niece’s roommate.

The subsequent investigation had determined the fire to be an accident. The ground had shifted, rupturing gas lines. Sparks set off fires in the utility rooms. The smoke detectors had performed according to specifications. Ultimately, Mother Nature received the blame. Anthony Armstrong had issued a statement to that effect, adding that he was saddened by the event and offering his sympathy to those who had been harmed. Alternative housing would be provided at no cost until the structural damage was repaired and the interiors cleaned and repainted.

Residents in other units had nothing to contribute except anecdotes of gathering in horrified huddles and doing what they could to provide first aid until the paramedics arrived. Randy and Jillian Scarpo had not been among those who were interviewed.

I logged off, nodded at the young woman at the reference desk, and left the tranquil confines of the library, where harmony and clarity came from the quintessence of the Dewey decimal system. If only I could classify individuals as neatly,

I drove up Willow Street, noting that the inconspicuous car was once more parked across the street from Sheila Armstrong’s house, indicating that she was home. She could have had a phone call from Daphne and arranged to meet her somewhere between the Absolut and the Popov, but she’d left the store alone (and not necessarily empty-handed).

When I got to the Book Depot, I unlocked the door, removed the Closed sign, and tried to think where Daphne might have taken refuge. Not at her mother’s house, and certainly not at the faux villa, where she would be greeted as warmly as a pimple on Adrienne’s nose. The skyboxes were no longer a haven. Arnie was likely to be at the Tickled Pink Club, although I doubted the cabdriver had seen more than a glimpse of my twenty-dollar bill.

When the bell above the door jangled, I looked up, hoping to see a customer but expecting to see Caron and Inez. Three strikes, and it looked as though I might be out.

“Peter,” I said with a flimsy attempt at a smile. “Luanne told me earlier that you were looking for me. As you can see, here I am.”

He stopped in front of the counter. “Where is Daphne Armstrong?”

“I have no idea. I saw on the news that she managed to escape from the courthouse this morning. I solemnly swear I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Jorgeson can testify on my behalf. After that, I went to find out if Miss Parchester was doing well. She’s spent four nights in the tree, and at her age—”

“Don’t play games with me, Claire. I want to know where she is.”

“She’s on a platform in an oak tree. I thought you knew that, Peter.”

He failed to appreciate my wit. “Daphne Armstrong.”

I frowned. “I just told you that I have no idea. You’re welcome to search the office. Watch out for brown recluse spiders if you crawl behind the boiler. Their bites can be nasty.”

“So can mine,” he said. “The chief has been bawling me out for the last hour. I’m liable to be back in a patrol car if we don’t find her. Think how the police department looks right now. That reporter, the one with the hair and—”

“Jessica Princeton?”

“Yes, that one. She damn near tackled me on the courthouse steps, and if a camera hadn’t been in my face, I don’t know what I would have done. You may see me foaming at the mouth on the six o’clock news.” He took a deep breath. “Please tell me where Daphne is. We’re not saying publicly that she’s armed and dangerous, but we don’t know for sure because we haven’t found the weapon. Do you happen to have it in the drawer beneath the cash register?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Did you check the wooded area between the Armstrongs’ house and Oakland Heights? She probably threw it as hard as she could, but she doesn’t look like she has an abundance of muscles.”

“A dozen men swept the area three times with metal detectors and found only a few rusty beer cans, coins, and spent shotgun shells. Daphne had the weapon in her possession when she drove away. She may have tossed it out the car window, or she may have hidden it before she was arrested. For all we know, she may be planning to commit suicide.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” I began, then stopped. She’d sounded concerned about Skyler, but also resigned to losing him after she’d been arrested, and, at least in her mind, convicted and sent to prison. Could she have been thinking about suicide when she’d chosen to follow the directions on Arnie’s note—or even four days ago, when she’d left Skyler on my front porch?

“Why not?” demanded Peter.

I was not pleased to be back in the middle of the mine-field, where a single misstep was potential disaster. “Because she said she didn’t kill her father. I believed her.”

“Why would she confess to a stranger? You did tell me you didn’t know her, didn’t you?”

Left foot, right foot. “I didn’t know who she was until I saw her being escorted into the police station.”

“And you haven’t seen her since your little interview yesterday?”

“No, I have not.”

He looked at me for a moment. “And you don’t know anything about what happened at the courthouse?”

“I knew nothing whatsoever until I saw it on KFAR at noon,” I said virtuously. “Has her mother heard from her?”

“If she has, she won’t admit it. The only thing she will admit is that she’s been channeling Nostradamus and he warned her that the revamped Volkswagen Beetle will lead to global destruction. Jorgeson is nervous, since that’s what his wife drives.”

I was casting about for a retort when Caron skidded into the store, almost colliding with the rack of cookbooks.

“Mother! Did you hear about—” she started, then gurgled to a halt as she saw Peter.

“Is something wrong at the high school?” he asked.

Inez popped up from behind the yellow study guides. “No, Lieutenant Rosen. Well, a toilet in the girls’ restroom on the second floor got stopped up and made a horrible stench. The vice principal says that—”