Slumbered to Death (7 page)

“I want you to tell me how I got from the hospital to here last night,” he said.

“Hal and Mary helped,” she said.

He seemed mollified by that until a new thought occurred to him. “Who is this Hal guy? Is he your boyfriend?”

“No, Dad. He’s a friend. Believe it or not, I can get within a hundred feet of a man and not fall in love with him.”

“That figures—I actually liked this one. Far be it for you to date a man I like.”

“I married a man you adored, Dad,” she pointed out. That had been the one thing her parents agreed on—they had both liked Kai.

“Wrong. I didn’t like or trust him. But your mom liked him and she was dying. For once, I deferred to her, and look where that got us.”

“Rest assured that Kai is out of my life forever,” Sadie said. As long as she didn’t watch professional football or the sports channel, she hardly thought about her ex-husband anymore.

“He’s having a good season,” Gideon grudgingly admitted.

“Good for him,” Sadie said. She couldn’t have cared less if he won the super bowl. She had moved on.

“You should have gotten a better settlement from him. You supported him all through college, and you were married during the draft. I’m not saying you should have gotten rich off him, but you should have gotten enough to last until you got settled and found something else.”

“I just wanted it to be over; I wanted him gone,” Sadie said. By the time her marriage to Kai ended, money had been the least of her concerns.

“It doesn’t seem right, him being a multi-millionaire and you not having a job, having to live off Abby’s charity,” Gideon said.

Sadie supposed she should feel cheered that her father was taking her side for once, but she was annoyed. “I’m not living off Abby’s charity. I pay for most of the food in the house, and I do all the cooking. And I do have a job. I happen to have a paying client.”

“Leftover Salisbury steak does not count as payment,” Gideon said.

“No, this one is paying real money.”

“To do what?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

“To help him figure out some nightmares he’s been having.”

“You be careful, Sadie. Only nutjobs pay someone to do something like that,” Gideon warned. “Especially someone who looks like you.”

She threw up her hands in frustration. “First you slam me for using my looks to get ahead, and then you say people are going to prey on me because I’m pretty. I can’t win with you, Dad. If I were an accountant with a steady income, I think you would still find a way to be disappointed in me.”

“Try it and see,” Gideon said. “Now go away. Those pills you gave me are making me drowsy.”

She had given him nothing more than pain reliever, but she was too happy to oblige his command. “Fine. Goodbye, Dad. Call my cell if you need anything.”

“I can take care of myself just fine,” he said, a claim which would have been easier to accept if her weren’t curled in the fetal position with his eyes closed, orange juice rimming his upper lip.

There was a small part of her that was tempted to stay, but if she did, they would no doubt come to bloodshed, especially in his current mood. Promising herself to check on him later, she eased out the door, remembering to lock it behind her.

Abby was waiting on her when she arrived back at the house. “Are we ready to do some detecting?” Abby asked.

“Yes. Let’s go prove our client isn’t a murderer,” Sadie said. She didn’t exactly believe they would resolve the case that day, but they needed to find some answers and closure for Ben.

“Sadie, be careful,” Luke admonished. He hovered in the background, his hands in the pockets of his jogging pants. His expression was such an endearing combination of worry and exasperation that Sadie had the mad desire to kiss him again.

She refrained and waved instead. “Abby and I will be together. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“That’s a question sure to give me nightmares for a while,” Luke said. He walked them to the door and lingered on the porch, watching as they drove away.

“Luke’s worried about us,” Abby said.

“Luke wouldn’t be Luke if he didn’t worry about something, but I suppose he has a point. Things could get dangerous.” Sadie glanced at Abby. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Abby.”

“Are you kidding? Ever since getting out of that home, I have a new lease on life. I’m like a pound puppy that’s been rescued from being euthanized. I intend to make the most of the time I have left. Now where are we going?”

“There are three missing people, and all of them have been missing since before June thirteenth—that’s the date Ben woke up with blood on his hands. One is a fifteen-year-old girl, one is a thirty-five-year-old man, and the other is a twenty-eight-year-old woman. We’re going to start with the teenager. For a missing teen not to be getting a lot of press is telling. I think there’s more going on behind the scenes; I think it’s likely she really is a runaway, and I would like to discount her first.”

She turned into a shabby housing development that was literally on the other side of the tracks from Abby’s grand mansion. Abby clucked her tongue with disapproval. “I remember when they built this place. My father rallied against it. Someone called him a bourgeois snob. But the proletariat had their way, and this is what we get—ramshackle slums. My father wanted to build nice brick houses. They cost a little more up front, but we wouldn’t have had any of this peeling paint or collapsing siding. Would anybody listen? No.” 

Sadie listened with amusement. Sometimes it was difficult for her to fathom the way Abby’s life had been. Her family founded the town. At one point that had meant something, and Abby had been akin to a princess. Now she was just another face in the crowd. Sadie thought the most difficult aspect of Abby’s life now was simply being normal after being special for so long.

“That’s a pretty sweater,” Abby commented as they stood on the crumbling front stoop and rang the bell.

“Thank you. It’s a holdover from my days as a reporter.”

The door was yanked open. “Reporters? Y’all are reporters?” A woman stood on the other side, boxlike in form and booming in temperament. She radiated anger and bitterness. Sadie was good at reading people, and she had the uncanny sense that this woman would not take kindly to the fact that they were investigators.

“Sadie Cooper.” She thrust her hand at the woman and they shook.

“You got any ID or something?” the woman asked.

Sadie fished in her purse and pulled out her old press pass, keeping her thumb over the part that identified her station in Nebraska.

The woman’s eyes narrowed on Abby. “Who’s she?”

“She’s my photographer.”

Abby pulled out her phone and took a picture—of herself. She had always had trouble with the more technical aspects of her phone. “We’re here. Begin documentation.” She turned the camera around and took a picture of the woman.

“She’s a photographer?” the woman said.

“You know those pictures of babies in flower pots?” Sadie said.

“Yeah,” the woman replied. She eyed Abby with keener interest.

“She didn’t take any of those. May we come in?”

“I suppose,” the woman replied, scratching her cheek in confusion. They followed her into a tiny living room that, though dumpy, was clean and free of clutter. They took the couch while the woman sank into a puffy recliner.

“We’re here to ask you about your daughter, Alana,” Sadie said. “I assume that you’re her mother, Mrs. Firestone.”

“I’m Adele Firestone,” the woman confirmed. “How come there’s this sudden interest in Alana when she’s been missing since May?”

“There should always be interest in a missing child, don’t you think?” Sadie hedged. She was very good at hedging.

“I suppose,” Adele said. “The police sure don’t seem to care.”

“Do you have any idea where Alana might be?” Sadie asked. She knew from the police files that the mother suspected she was with her boyfriend.

“I thought she was with her boyfriend, but she’s been gone a long time. Alana loved school. I can’t imagine her missing so many days like this. I never liked that boyfriend of hers. He’s eighteen, and that’s illegal. I threatened to have him arrested, and the next day she was gone. What’s a mother to do?”

Abby opened her mouth, probably to respond to the question. She was one of those people who believed she had all the answers for parents, despite never having had children herself. Sadie rushed on before she could tell Adele all the ways she was failing as a parent. “That must be very hard. What did Alana take with her when she left?”

Alana had left her purse, her cell phone, and all her personal information behind. Either she was smart enough not to want to be tracked or she hadn’t gone willingly. “Had there been any strange or unfamiliar men lurking in the area?” Sadie asked.

“Around here there are always strange men lurking. I looked it up on the computer and found out there are five registered sex offenders living on our street.
Five
. And yet I’m the bad guy when I try to keep my kid home and out of trouble.” She shook her head in disgust.

Though she had all the pertinent information from the police report, Sadie wrote down the boyfriend’s name—Jeremy Sheridan—along with his address. Mrs. Firestone was adamant in her hatred of the boy.

“When is this going to be on TV?” she asked when the interview was over.

“Ah, well, there’s always the chance that it won’t,” Sadie said. “Producers, and directors, and…” she trailed off and Abby picked up.

“Men,” Abby fumed. “Men control everything.”

Adele nodded her agreement as she walked them to the door. They thanked her for her time and made their escape before she could ask any more sticky questions about their job.

“I did not like that woman,” Abby said. She buckled her seat belt with a click.

“I’ll admit she seemed harsh,” Sadie said.

“Harsh isn’t the right word. You know I believe firmly that children should be seen and not heard, but there was something off about that woman’s answers, something more than a concerned mother and a disobedient child. My guess is that if Alana ran away, it was because of her overbearing mother.”

Sadie hadn’t detected anything sinister in the mother, but she had learned not to distrust Abby’s gut instincts about people. She was able to read people fairly well, but Abby was the master. “I need to talk to the investigating officer to get his take on things.” There had to be a reason the cops weren’t doing much follow up on the case. Was it because they thought Alana was a runaway?

“What’s next on our agenda?”

“Edmond Hankins. We’re going to talk to his wife and see if we can learn the circumstances surrounding his disappearance,” Sadie said.

The second house wasn’t much better than the first. Though they were a few miles apart, the neighborhoods looked the same.

“Do poor people often go missing like this?” Abby asked. “People of my acquaintance don’t simply disappear.”

“I’m not sure disappearing can be linked to one’s social status,” Sadie said.

“I suppose that’s true,” Abby agreed. “Though when the rich go missing, there’s usually ransom involved. I used to daydream that I was kidnapped by a handsome Robin Hood type.”

“Sounds like you were a little girl yearning for adventure,” Sadie said.

“What are you talking about? This was last week. Where’s Errol Flynn when I need him?”

Sadie was laughing when they rang the bell, but her laughter quickly faded.

“Who is it?” an unfriendly female voice called through the door.

“I have some questions about Edmond Hankins,” Sadie said.

The door flew open. An irate little woman stood on the other side. “Yeah? You look about like his type—blond and stupid. What have you and my husband been up to?” She hurled an epithet as she lunged across the threshold.

Sadie sidestepped the arms that were reaching for her throat. “Pray, sister,” she said.

Abby put her hands together and began murmuring reverently under her breath. The woman stopped short and stared at them, her arms dangling listlessly in midair. “Who are you?”

“I’m Sister Mary Sledge, and this is Mother Rose Theresa. We’re from the church of St. Patrick the Pontificator. Edmond hasn’t shown up for his weekly meetings in quite some time, and we’ve been worried.”

“Meetings? What meetings?”

“We can’t divulge. Confidentiality, you know. Let’s just say he was on step three of twelve when he disappeared,” Sadie said.

The woman blinked a few times, shoving her bangs out of her eyes to get a better look. “Who are you again?”

“Sister Sledge and Mother Theresa,” Sadie replied. “May we come in and talk to you a few minutes?”

“I guess.” The woman, Mrs. Hankins presumably, begrudgingly moved aside to make way for them. Her living room was messier than the one they had just left, strewn with toys, clothes, and cereal. Two toddlers and a baby played on the floor near the largest pile of toys. The baby squealed out a delighted greeting to the newcomers and began to crawl toward them. Abby lifted her legs and curled her lip in horror. Sadie pasted on a smile and picked up the baby. She had no idea if she was holding it correctly, but she was fairly certain that nuns were supposed to like children.

“Cute baby,” she remarked. Was it a boy or a girl? She had no idea. After what she deemed an appropriate time for admiration, she set it down and shook a toy in its face to distract it. “What can you tell us about Edmond?”

“I could ask you the same thing. I didn’t know he was going to AA.”

“Seeking help is never an easy thing,” Sadie said. “Do you believe he met with foul play, or do you believe he went missing of his own volition?”

The woman’s shoulders went slack with defeat. “I don’t know what to think anymore. When he didn’t come home that first day, I was frantic. But now…Things weren’t going well after the baby. I stopped sleeping. She cried a lot. The noise and mess got on Ed’s nerves. He started disappearing at odd hours, acting all cagey-like, buying new clothes, taking secret calls. I was so tried, I turned a blind eye. Then he went missing. The police made me wait awhile before they’d take a formal report. When I was leaving the station, the kids were melting down. I heard one of the officers say, ‘I would leave, too, if I had to come home to that every night.’ And it was like it hit me all at once: nothing happened to Ed. He just left, probably for whatever other woman he had been sneaking around with. After the shock abated, I was so angry. But you said Ed was getting help. Maybe he wasn’t cheating. Maybe he wants to change. Maybe he’ll come back.”

The knife of guilt twisted in Sadie’s middle. The last thing she wanted to do was provide false hope to this beleaguered woman.

“Don’t distrust your instinct,” Abby said. “If you believe he was cheating, he probably was. It’s up to you whether or not you decide to forgive him, but don’t make him a saint when he wasn’t.”

“He definitely wasn’t, but I love him.”

Abby leaned forward and clasped her hand. “You deserve to be loved in return. You deserve better than a man who darts when times get tough. Focus on your kids and yourself. Maybe someday something better will come along, but don’t live and die waiting for it.”

Mrs. Hankins brushed at her eyes and sniffed, nodding.

There wasn’t much to say after that, and they took their leave soon after, not wanting to inflict further distress. “Scoundrel,” Abby said when they were closeted in the car.

“How can someone leave that way? As bad as things were between my parents, Gideon never would have shirked his responsibilities.”

“Some men don’t deserve to be called such,” Abby said. “What bothers me more are the women lining up to be treated like dogs.”

“Sometimes it happens so subtly that you don’t see it coming,” Sadie said.

“I wasn’t talking about you, Sadie. You were a child, you got out as soon as you could, and you certainly won’t fall prey again now that you know what to look for.”

“I don’t know, Abby. I think I’m still pretty stupid when it comes to men. My last boyfriend wasn’t abusive, but he was as shallow as a drip of water. I’m afraid I let the only good one get away.”