St. Patrick's Day Murder (13 page)

Frank stood a moment, glaring at him, then capitulated. “Okay, but it’s your funeral,” he said, sitting back down on the bench.

“My funeral if she loses the part,” muttered Dylan, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and heading outside.

Lucy and her friends overheard him as he marched past, and they had a good laugh together.

“I think I’ll call home and see how Sara’s making out,” said Lucy, pulling out her cell phone. She couldn’t get a clear signal, so she began walking around the room, even trying the stage, where she found Brian on his hands and knees, hammering studs together.

“Forget it,” he said. “This building’s in a dead zone or something. You might have better luck outside.”

Lucy looked out the window, where the snow was falling thicker than ever. “I guess I’ll pass,” she said, pocketing the phone. “How’s the scenery coming?”

He rolled his eyes. “Dylan there thinks we can whip up Irish countryside and rural Missitucky, complete with a babbling brook and bridge, in four weeks and with a budget of five hundred bucks.” He shrugged. “You know the price of wood. It can’t be done.”

“No, it can’t,” she agreed. “Has he got the same attitude about the Bilge renovations?”

“I gotta hand it to your husband,” said Brian, with an admiring nod. “He’s got a way with him. He’s got Dylan thinking it’s a privilege to write checks to him.”

“Well,” said Lucy, “he is a fine craftsman.”

“That he is. I’m learning a lot from him.” He sat back on his heels. “Looks like Frank isn’t getting along any better with Dylan than he did with his brother,” he said.

This was news to Lucy. “Frank didn’t like Old Dan?” she asked.

“They had their moments,” he said, chuckling. “They had a big fight one night, and Old Dan kicked him out.”

“Not an unusual occurrence at the Bilge,” said Lucy. “At least not from what I’ve heard.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, there was usually some sort of fight most nights—but not with Old Dan. He was off-limits. But not to Frank. He hauled off and socked him, gave the old guy a black eye.”

“What was it about?” asked Lucy.

“To tell the truth, I’m not sure. Frank gets a bit touchy when he drinks too much.”

“Touchy enough to kill Old Dan?”

Brian’s eyebrows shot up. “Frank? Kill somebody? No way.”

Lucy wasn’t quite so willing to dismiss Frank as a suspect. He had a mean streak; she’d seen it in the way he taunted Moira. And after years as a reporter covering local tragedies, she believed that almost anyone, given the right circumstances, could resort to violence. Battered wives finally turned on their abusive husbands, husbands with financial problems or a mistress killed the wife and kids rather than confess, old folks who could no longer manage their senile spouses found a drug overdose or a pillow could provide a quick solution, and old feuds that had simmered for years sometimes boiled over into fisticuffs or worse. She was thinking along these lines when she was interrupted by another piano chord.

“Okay, girls and boys, it’s time to get back to work,” announced Frank. “There’s plenty we can do while our leading lady gets over her hissy fit.” He flipped through the score. “I know. Let’s do ‘The Begat.’ That’s a nice rousing number. Chorus! Senator Rawkins! Places, please.”

“The Begat” was indeed a rousing number, and Lucy was humming it when Rachel dropped her off at home a couple of hours later. An inch or two of wet snow had fallen, and the roads hadn’t been cleared yet, making the going rather tricky even for an experienced Maine driver like Rachel. Lucy hoped Moira’s first stop after leaving the rehearsal was to fetch Deirdre and take her home. She didn’t like to think of Moira attempting it now on the slippery roads.

But when she went into the house, stamping the snow off her boots and calling out that she was home, there was no answer. The house had that quiet, empty feeling that meant no one was home, not even the dog.

A couple of empty mugs with the dregs of hot chocolate in the bottom sat on the kitchen table, an encouraging sign that Sara had taken her child-minding responsibilities seriously. Lucy assumed she had taken everyone out for a walk in the snow and sat down on the bench by the kitchen door to unlace her boots. She hadn’t really expected Sara to do anything so ambitious, but perhaps she’d got tired of being cooped up in the house all morning with the younger girls. Or perhaps Deirdre had begged to go out in the snow, which was a novelty to her. Or maybe Bill had come home from work early and taken them all sliding, as he sometimes did. Whatever the reason for this blissful peace, she decided she was going to take advantage of it and stretch out on the couch with a book. She only got through a few pages, however, before she dozed off and the book dropped to the floor.

It was there that Sara, and Libby, found her about twenty minutes later.

“Mom! Wake up!”

Sara was shaking her shoulder, and Libby was licking her face. “Whuh?” was all she could manage to say.

Sara was leaning over her. “Did Deirdre’s mom come? Did she take Zoe, too?”

“What do you mean?” asked Lucy, suddenly alert.

“The girls were here when I left. I only went out for a minute to put the dog in her run, but she slipped out and she ran off before I could catch her. I was afraid she’d get lost in the snow, so I followed her, and it took longer than I thought. But when I left, the girls were sitting at the table, drinking hot chocolate.”

“I dunno,” said Lucy. “They weren’t here when I got home. Maybe Moira came while you were gone.”

“I don’t think so, Mom,” said Sara. “I wasn’t that far from the house. I heard your car, but that’s all.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw tire tracks in the driveway,” said Lucy, standing up.

“Not anymore. It’s stopped snowing,” said Sara, pointing toward the window. “It’s been raining for at least fifteen minutes.”

It was true. The snow was melting fast, falling off the trees in great wet plops of slush, and the driveway was a soupy sea of slush. Remembering Moira’s frame of mind when she left the rehearsal, Lucy considered the possibility that she might have gone off on her own, deciding to take some time to soothe her ruffled spirits. “If Moira didn’t pick them up, what do you think happened? Do you think they went out on their own?”

Sara bit her lip. “I don’t think so, Mom. I gave them strict orders not to, and besides, they’d been playing outside earlier, and their coats and mittens and snow pants were soaking wet. I put them in the dryer, and it was still running when I went after the dog.”

Lucy hurried through the dining room and kitchen, into the laundry room, and yanked open the dryer door. There was nothing there except a crumpled sheet of fabric softener. Lucy picked it up and fingered it, trying not to panic. “They’re gone,” she said, struggling to control the fear—and guilt—that threatened to overwhelm her. “We have to find them.”

Chapter Ten

L
ucy’s hands shook as she zipped her parka and pulled the hood over her head. She tried to calm herself, tried to believe she was overreacting, but one look at Sara’s white face and enormous, fear-filled eyes sent her dashing for the door. Sara handed her the dog’s leash, and Libby sprang out through the barely open door, pulling her right across the porch and sending her flying down the stairs. All of a sudden she was flat on the ground, her hands and face in the cold, wet muck. Her knees and elbows hurt, but she ignored them, scrambling to her feet and hanging on to the leash as Libby dragged her through the slippery mush.

“Zoe! Deirdre! Zoe!” yelled Lucy, but there was no answer from the glistening black trunks of the fir trees, no reply from the slick, lichen-covered boulders or the blank white sky. The sleety rain continued to fall, soaking through her “guaranteed waterproof” parka, but she didn’t feel it as she sloshed through the icy mess, desperately searching for any footprints, any sign of the girls.

It was all this nonsense about fairies and the snow transforming the woods into fairyland, she thought as the dog dragged her deeper into the woods, slipping and sliding with every step. But why hadn’t they come back to the house when it started to rain? Had they found some sort of shelter? A hut built by kids, maybe, or a tarp erected by one of the homeless wanderers who occasionally took up residence by the pond? Or had they had some sort of accident?

Perhaps they had slipped and fallen, breaking bones. Or a heavy branch had broken off a tree and pinned them to the ground. But even Lucy, deranged with worry as she was, had to admit it was unlikely that they both would have been hurt, and she couldn’t understand why the unhurt girl wouldn’t have come back to the house for help. And lurking in the back of her mind was the resentful conviction that whatever had happened, it was probably Deirdre’s doing. That child was too flighty, too caught up in make-believe, and she never should have let Zoe spend so much time with her.

Lucy checked her pocket for her cell phone and made sure it was working so Sara, who was back at the house, could call if they showed up there. It was fully charged but remained stubbornly silent, so she plowed on to Blueberry Pond, a frequent scene of winter tragedy as eager skaters often ventured out onto ice that was too thin to support them, or snowmobilers dared each other to race across and didn’t make it. But there was no sign of the girls at the pond, where the frozen surface was smooth and unbroken beneath a thin, translucent layer of rainwater.

No sign of the girls anywhere. Standing there under the white sky in the bleak, empty landscape, Lucy was beginning to think the unthinkable: that they had been abducted.

Squeezing the cell phone tight with her wet gloved hand, she checked in with Sara at the house. “Maybe they went to Toby’s?” suggested Sara.

“Of course,” exclaimed Lucy, seizing on the idea. Zoe adored Toby and Molly’s little house on Prudence Path. The girls might have sought shelter there; they might have just gone for a visit.

But when Molly opened the door, with a puzzled expression on her face, Lucy knew they weren’t there.

“What’s the matter?” asked Molly, seeing her worried face and taking in her soaking wet clothes and the exhausted, panting dog.

“Zoe and her friend Deirdre are missing,” said Lucy. “Have you seen them?”

Molly shook her head. “Are you sure they’re not in the house? Why would they be out in this weather?”

“We think they might be hunting for fairies,” said Lucy. “Deirdre’s obsessive about fairies, and she thinks they like snow. I’m afraid they went out and got lost or had some sort of accident.”

Molly’s eyes widened, and her hand went to her bulging tummy. “The pond!”

“I checked.”

Molly let out a sigh of relief. “Lucy, you’re soaking wet. Come in and call the neighbors. They might’ve gone to one of them.”

She tried to coax Lucy out of her wet clothes, but Lucy refused, saying she couldn’t give up the search. Molly settled for toweling off Libby and giving her a bowl of water while Lucy called the neighbors. There were four other houses on Prudence Path, but only Renee LaChance and Willie Westwood were home. Neither one had seen the girls. “Not hide nor hair,” said Willie, whose husband was a vet. “Call me if you need help searching,” she added. “I can cover a lot of ground on horseback.”

“I hope it won’t come to that,” said Lucy, resigned to returning home without the girls. As she slipped and slid along the slushy path to home, hanging on to the dog with one hand and holding the other out for balance, she almost managed to convince herself that she had somehow missed the girls in her frantic search of the house. Maybe they’d gone down to the cellar or up to the attic; maybe they were playing hide-and-seek. But as soon as she stepped back into the silent house, she knew it was a delusion. She slipped off her soaking parka, and she and Sara and Libby searched, anyway, even using flashlights to peer under beds and into closets, just to make sure. But Lucy knew in her heart that they weren’t there.

She was just about to pick up the phone to call Bill when there was a loud knocking at the door. She ran to answer, her heart pounding, certain it was the girls. Her hopes plummeted when she realized it was Dylan.

“Good day to you,” he said in his hearty Irish brogue. “My good wife left me a note instructing me to pick up our wee colleen here at exactly half past one.” He tapped his wristwatch and winked. “And as you can see, I am exactly on time.”

Lucy didn’t know how to begin. How do you tell a father that you’ve accidentally mislaid his child?

“I see from your expression that there’s some problem,” he said, stepping inside and removing his tweed cap. “Is it that I got the time wrong?”

Lucy shook her head, still mute.

“Well, what is it then, woman? The house seems mighty quiet, considering my Deirdre always causes a bit of commotion.”

“They’re not here.” Lucy finally got the words out.

“Well, where are they, then?”

“I don’t know.”

Dylan’s fleshy face flushed red. “
YOU DON’T KNOW
?” he thundered. “
WHY NOT
?”

Lucy jumped, startled by his yelling, and tried to explain with a trembling voice. “My older daughter Sara was minding them so I could go to the rehearsal. Moira knew, of course, and it was fine with her. But at some point in the afternoon, the dog got out and Sara gave chase, and when she got back to the house, the girls were missing. We’ve looked all over, but there’s no sign of them.”

“That’s right,” said Sara, who had heard Dylan’s bellow and came to explain. “They were sitting right there at the table, having some hot chocolate, when I left. I only thought I’d be gone for a minute, but the dog ran over to my brother’s house—they give her treats—and when I got back, the girls were gone.”

“I think your wife must have picked them up,” suggested Lucy.

“But why would she leave me instructions to do it?” asked Dylan. “You were there, so you know how upset she was at the rehearsal, all due to that unprofessional ignoramus. She left a note saying she was going to go for a walk to cool off and would I please pick up Deirdre.”

“And even if she changed her mind, why would she take Zoe, too?” asked Lucy. “It doesn’t make sense.”