Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (8 page)

“Oh?”

I shrugged, tore the card in half and tossed it into the trash. “I guess you had to be there. Give the devil his due, he sure knows how to get to me. I knew I should have refused to accept those flowers. I need to get back to my cake.”

But as soon as I got a chance, I was going to give Paula the third degree. I was going to find out why she’d faked her death at the age of two and why roses frightened her.

***

I didn’t get the chance before we left work. Customers were around, Zach was around, and then she and Zach left to go home. When I pulled into my own driveway, there was no sign of either of them
in the house next door. They could be inside behind those closed curtains, down at the park where she often took him to play, or they could have taken a fast plane to Mexico.

King Henry was waiting on my porch. I’d thought he might leave for his old home or even for someplace new while I was gone, but he was still there. He strolled to the edge of the porch to meet me and wound himself around my legs. Cats must have very flexible bones.

I set the flowers on the porch while I unlocked my door, and Henry sniffed them suspiciously.

“They’re from the disgusting man who was here yesterday.” I wasn’t going to lie to him. “But we can pretend I picked them on the way home, if that’s all right with you.”

He looked pretty disdainful. I could tell he wasn’t into
pretend
.

I lay down for my customary afternoon nap. It was the only way I could deal with getting up at three in the morning. I couldn’t go to bed at eight o’clock in the evening
, so I slept a split shift.

I woke a couple of hours later, went downstairs and poked through the pantry. My pickings were getting a bit slim. Opening a can of sardines would seriously compromise the fragrance of the roses
, and I just didn’t feel like another peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I found a coupon for buy one pizza, get one free. I could invite Paula and Zach to join me. Ply her with pepperoni then give her the third degree.

She didn’t answer h
er phone until the fourth ring, and then it sounded as if she dropped the receiver and fumbled with it before finally getting it to her mouth. “Hello?” Her voice was breathless and confused.

“Hi, it’s me. You okay?”

“Who is this?” Her words were slightly slurred. Had Paula been drinking? She refused to even have a margarita with me, saying she had to be alert to take care of Zach. “Paula, it’s Lindsay. What’s wrong?”

“Lindsay.” She drew in a loud, shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I must have fallen asleep on the sofa. My head’s really fuzzy.”

“Well, wake up. I just ordered a pizza. It’ll be here in thirty minutes. You and Zach want to come over?”

“Thanks, but I don’t think so. I’m really tired. We went to the park after work, and now I think we’ll stay in the rest of the night.”

“Okay. I’ll bring my pizza to your house.”

There was a moment of silence, then she laughed. “Have you ever heard the word
pushy
?” It was the first time I’d heard her laugh since yesterday morning.

“As in
pushy broad
? That’s what they put under my picture in my high school annual, and I was just a novice in those days. I like to think I’ve perfected the art since then.”

She laughed again. “You have. All right, we’ll come over to your house as soon as I wash my face and get Zach up. He must be asleep, too. He isn’t trying to climb out of his playpen.”

“See you in a little while, then.”

I started to hang up when she screamed, “Lindsay!”

“What?”

“He’s gone! Zach’s not in his playpen!”

“So he’s learned to climb out. He’s probably been doing it a long time and just crawls back in so you’ll think you have him corralled. Where’s he going to go with that maximum security system you have on all the doors and windows?”

“The door’s open!”

“I’ll be right over.”

Chapter
Six

While Paula dashed up and down the stairs and
back and forth through the rooms in complete panic, I shoved aside my own rising fears and methodically searched the house and yard. When I came in from the back, she ran to meet me, her eyes wide with terror, questions and hope.

I shook my head. “He’s not out there.”

She turned to charge off again, but I grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to stop and look at me. “You’ve got to calm down,” I admonished, trying to convince myself at the same time. “There’s no need to worry. Zach probably woke up, saw you were asleep and made good his escape. I don’t see his orange truck anywhere. I’ll bet he took that with him, wandered over to Fred’s house and right now he’s got Fred down on the floor rolling that truck around and making dumb noises.”

She bit her lip, and I could see she really wanted to believe that
scenario. “But Fred would have phoned me if Zach wandered over.”

I knew she wanted me to find a logical refutation for that, but I couldn’t. I had to settle for a diversionary tactic. “You call him while I go check my house to see if Zach’s there.”

She nodded and headed for the phone, so easily taking my directions, assuming I knew what I was talking about, that I knew what to do in this kind of a circumstance.

I didn’t, and was, in fact, almost as panic-stricken as Paula. This situation had a bad feel to it.

I went home and searched my house. I didn’t find Zach, but I did notice Adam Trent’s card lying on my nightstand. I picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of my cut-offs.

I was outside
on my hands and knees, peering under my porch when Fred came over.

His normally unreadable expression was readable. He was worried, too. That made me more worried. “Paula called,” he said.

“What do you make of it?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to believe she left the door open. I’ve seen
maximum security prisons that weren’t locked up the way she locks that house.”

I nodded, filing away for later reference the fact that he’d seen
maximum security prisons. “But there’s no way Zach could have turned that deadbolt even if he could have reached it.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Fred agreed. “Which means she must have left the door open.”

“I suppose it’s possible. She’s been pretty stressed since that visit from the cops.”

We hurried to Paula’s house and, as we ran onto the porch, a sudden chill darted down my spine and a shadow seemed to fall over the place. I wondered if King Henry would treat Paula’s porch with the same disdain and fear he’d had for the porch across the street yesterday.

And that thought recalled the hole through the hedge with the perfect view of Paula’s house.

My own panic climbed another notch.

Paula burst through the door. “Did you find him? We need to search the neighborhood! He’s got to be around somewhere!”

“We need to call 911,” I said.

After yesterday’s reaction to the cops, I wasn’t surprised when her terror escalated. “No! He’s just wandered off. He’s only a little boy. He can’t have gone far. We’ll find him any minute. There’s no reason to call the police!”

“They have people trained to search for missing kids.”

Fred moved closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We’re going to find him. All kids like to play hide and seek.” I looked at Fred in amazement at this purported knowledge of the activities of
all kids.
Before he met Zach, he believed we were born as adults, and all those little people were an alien race. Sometimes he still acted like he wasn’t quite sure.

He gave me a slight shrug and a helpless look, and I could tell he was winging it the same way I was.

He propelled Paula back into the house, and I followed.

I went straight to the phone beside the sofa. “They’ll want pictures of Zach,” I said as I dialed 911. “Can you find some recent ones?”

Paula hesitated as if considering the possibility of telling me again not to call 911, but then nodded and left the room.

I gave t
he operator the information, concluding by asking her to contact Adam Trent and relay everything to him.

“Why did you do that?” Paula demanded. She’d come back into the room clutching a photo album just in time to hear my request. “We don’t need that detective back here. Zach doesn’t have any connection to Lester Mackey. Why did you ask them to send that man?”

I wasn’t completely sure why I’d done it…the hole through the hedge, the way Henry had acted on the back porch of that vacant house, that chill down my spine as I stepped onto Paula’s porch.

“He already has an interest in you,” I said. “He’s met Zach. That should give us an edge. Anyway, the more cops we get over here to search, the sooner you’ll have Zach back home with you.”

Within ten minutes Paula’s house and the entire neighborhood were swarming with our boys in blue. Like I said, Pleasant Grove’s a quiet place. Apparently no one on the force was busy fighting crime or even issuing speeding tickets, so the entire department turned out to locate one little boy. I never thought I’d be happy to see cops.

Donald
Creighton was among the first to arrive. I was even happier to see a familiar face, especially since I remembered how he’d stooped down to talk to Zach and admire his truck. Finding the boy would, I thought, be more than just a job to him.

He took the pictures Paula gave him and passed them around to the officers then had her describe the clothes Zach was wearing and the orange truck.

I was pretty impressed with the way he handled things, but Paula became more agitated with every movement he made, every word out of his mouth. I expected her to burst into tears at any minute. I was close myself. At the same time, knowing her the way I did, I suspected she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, allow herself that loss of control.

When Creighton instructed the officers to search the house, I thought she’d implode. “I’ve been through the house a dozen times. Lindsay’s been through the house. We can’t waste time here! We need to be out looking for him!”

Creighton took her arm and gently guided her to the sofa. “We’ve got officers combing the neighborhood, but searching the house first is standard procedure. We know you did a thorough job, but we have to do it again just so we can put it in our official report.”

Fred and I, huddled together in one corner of the room in an effort to stay out of the way, exchanged glances. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was, that another standard procedure said that parents were always the first suspects in the case of missing children.

We crossed the room to stand behind the sofa as if we could somehow support Paula by being back there.

“Now,” Creighton said, taking out a small notepad and a pen, “I want you to tell me every detail of what happened from the time you last saw your son until I walked in that door.”

He had a very soothing manner, but Paula wasn’t soothed. She sat stoically rigid, her fingers pleating and unpleating the fabric of her long skirt, and repeated in a monotone what she’d already told me. “I was so sure I locked the door. I always lock the door.”

“She does,” I verified. “She’s a fanatic about locking her doors.”

Even as the words left my mouth, I realized I was probably making it sound as if Paula had something to fear.

“Very safety-conscious,” I explained. “Always wears her seat belt. Checks the batteries in her smoke detector. Looks both ways, twice, before crossing the street.”

Fred kicked my shin before I could make things any worse with my babbling.

“You’re the next door neighbor, right?” Creighton asked.

“Right. I’m Lindsay Powell. And this is Fred Sommers. He’s her neighbor, too.” I felt a bit like I was presiding at a tea, introducing everybody, but Creighton merely nodded. “I’ll want to talk to you both in a few minutes.”

About that time the door flew open
, and Adam Trent strode in wearing faded jeans with a denim shirt. Tonight he looked more like a human being and less like a cop. He was big and solid and exuded dependability and self-confidence. I admit, I was even happier to see him than I’d been to see Donald Creighton. Right now we could use somebody who was dependable and confident.

He looked around the room, those dark, woodsy eyes missing nothing. When he saw me, he lifted an eyebrow. “What’s going on?” he asked Creighton.

“Missing boy,” he said and filled him in on the details.

Trent nodded curtly as Creighton finished. “Any signs of forced entry?”

Forced entry?

“No
thing readily apparent on the front door. Fletcher’s checking the back now.”

He turned his attention to Paula, and she flinched visibly. If Creighton’s soothing manner had failed to calm her,
Trent’s abrasive manner could only make things worse. “Could the boy’s father have taken him?”

I was very interested in hearing the answer to that question.