Wife Wanted in Dry Creek (7 page)

“I have nothing to hide,” Katrina said. “You’re welcome to take a blood sample from me.”

The sheriff nodded. “I’ll do that. I have a kit in the car. I’m inclined to believe you for now, though. Mostly because of the boys. They gave me a pretty thorough accounting of when you left this morning. They didn’t mention you going back to the house afterward and boys like that would notice a broken window.”

“But what’s going to happen?” Katrina asked. “You need to be looking for Leanne. She wouldn’t have just disappeared. The boys and I were supposed to be home by five o’clock. She was making chicken for dinner. I saw her take it out of the freezer.”

“We’re already looking for her,” the sheriff said.

“You and the boys will stay with me at my uncle’s house,” Conrad said as he stepped forward. “Just as long as you need to until this works out.”

“Like I said, we’ll know more soon, I’m sure. It helps that we know where your sister’s car is,” the sheriff said.

Katrina looked at the lawman. “She must have taken my car. A beige Lexus with a moon roof. I got the model with extra horsepower. Maybe if she’s in the car, she’s running for help.”

The sheriff took a notepad out of his pocket. “There were no vehicles at the site. Give me the description and I will pass it along to highway patrol.”

Katrina nodded. She began with the license plate number and finished up with the decal she had in the window saying she was a member of the Huntington Rose Society. She’d joined before she got cancer and never had planted the rose bush she’d meant to.

“Leanne knew we were coming down I-90 this way. Maybe if we put something out on the road she’d know to take this exit if she drove by looking for us.”

“I have an old piece of plywood. I can put a sign out with the boys’ first names on it,” Conrad offered.

“Sounds good,” the sheriff said as he finished with his notes. There was nothing more to say.

“Why don’t I take you over to my uncle’s house,” Conrad said, then looked at the sheriff.

The lawman nodded. “Just be sure—” He stopped to sigh. “Well, you know the drill.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said as he took her arm again.

Katrina was content to be led. If her sister was in danger, she felt as though she should be doing something, but what could she do? She and her sister had seen their share of tragedy as children and she’d never been sure if that drew them closer together or pushed them further apart. Whichever it had done, it had intensified their relationship. What pained her sister, hurt Katrina. That’s part of the reason she hadn’t been able to be too close when her sister married Walker. She didn’t want to feel the distress she knew was coming when Leanne became unhappy living on the reservation.

The cold rain hit Katrina in the face when she left the sheltered area around the gas station pumps. She moved closer to Conrad’s warmth. Her sister accused her of shying away from strong emotions. She willingly admitted it. Her emotions were too messy. She had to stay away from them—it’s what kept her in balance.

“You forgot your Closed sign,” she murmured to Conrad as he put an arm around her shoulder. “People won’t know you’re not here.”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Conrad said. They came to the end of the concrete and he moved his arm away from her. She didn’t have time to miss it, though, because then he lifted her effortlessly as he had done before and settled her against his chest. He carried her through the rain to
a white picket fence. The gate opened easily and he walked up to a plain two-story house with dormant rose bushes on each side of the front porch. They reminded her of the Huntington roses she hadn’t planted.

And then she suddenly realized the condition she was in. “I can’t go to your aunt’s. I don’t have any shoes on—no clean ones anyway.”

Conrad gave a soft laugh. “My aunt Edith is perfectly able to cope with missing shoes.”

“But the sheriff—”

“She can cope with that, too.”

He knocked on the door and moments later Edith opened it with a smile. Warm air and the smell of ginger welcomed them inside.

“It feels like home,” Katrina said with a sigh. She felt hope for the first time in hours. Maybe things would turn out all right. If only the sheriff could find her sister. And Conrad would continue being nice to her. And Edith turned out to be everything her smile promised.

I
t was four o’clock before the sheriff came to the door. By that time, Katrina had stood at the kitchen counter in hand-knitted slippers and squeezed out scrolls of yellow frosting hair on thirty-seven gingerbread men who were lined up on a white dish towel. Once Edith found out she was from Los Angeles, the older woman suggested they make their cookies into beach surfer men. Katrina had to admit they were cute. Edith had even made gingerbread surfboards for them to carry and the two women had giggled together as they frosted them in beach colors.

The ring of the doorbell changed all that, though. Edith dried her hands on her apron to go answer the door, but then they could both hear the door open without her. Conrad had been working, but he apparently closed his gas station early because he was walking in with the sheriff. The voices of both men could be heard as they came through the living room.

Katrina felt her stomach knot up. “I suppose they’ve heard something about that blood.”

“You’ll be fine.” Edith reached out to hold Katrina’s hand. “I know you told the sheriff everything you knew, but it’s not too late to say you want to have a lawyer with you.”

Katrina squeezed the older woman’s hand. Sitting in this kitchen had made Katrina miss her mother. She’d been twelve when both her parents died. Before that, they had always been too busy with church work to spend much time with anything domestic. She’d never made gingerbread men or sat and discussed what kind of curtains someone should make for their dining room. Maybe, she thought to herself, she was really missing the mother she’d always wanted to have.

“I’m fine without a lawyer,” Katrina said and then added shyly, “But I’d like you to sit with me.”

Edith’s eyes brightened and she blinked. “Of course, dear.”

Then she took off her apron. “We’ll go sit in the dining room.”

There were no curtains on the windows, but the shades were drawn so it was darker than the other rooms. Edith switched on an overhead light and the room was filled with a warm glow. A large mahogany table sat in the middle of the room with six matching chairs arranged around it. A natural lace runner ran the length of the table and a vase stood in the middle with blue plastic flowers. Along the left wall, there was a glass-topped buffet and on the right a large photo of a
young blonde girl Edith had said earlier was her daughter, Doris, taken some forty years ago.

Edith had no sooner turned on the light than the sheriff and Conrad came through the archway leading from the living room. The sheriff took off his Stetson and Conrad started taking off his jacket.

The lawman looked serious so Katrina figured this was not a good report.

“Please, have a seat,” Edith said to everyone.

The sheriff sat on one side of the table and Katrina was pleased that Conrad sat on the side with her and Edith. He sat to her left; Edith to her right. Katrina took a deep breath. Her nephews were upstairs watching a cartoon video with Charley so she didn’t need to worry about them. She was not surprised when Edith reached out and took a hand, but then when Conrad took her other hand she almost burst into tears.

The lawman took her cell phone out of his pocket and handed it back to her.

He didn’t say anything, though.

Everyone was silent for a few moments.

“Do you mind if we pray first?” Edith asked the sheriff and then looked at Katrina with a worried face. “I won’t if you’d rather not, but—”

“No, it’s fine,” Katrina mumbled. She didn’t think it would make any difference, but if it made Edith feel as if she was doing everything she could, Katrina would not stop her. She barely got her eyes closed before the older woman began.

“Our Father,” Edith said with so much intimate
warmth in her voice Katrina almost opened her eyes to see if someone had entered the small room. “We need Your help for our beloved Katrina and her sister and brother-in-law. We pray for Your protection to surround them, Father, wherever they are today. Give the sheriff and his colleagues what they need to know to unravel the troubles at the Rain Tree household. Be with us all as only You can be. In the name of Jesus, Our Precious Lord and Savior, amen.”

No one said anything as they opened their eyes and settled back into where they were.

Finally, the sheriff cleared his throat. “They ran the tests on the blood from the doorjamb. It’s not yours.” He looked at Katrina. “And it doesn’t seem to match either Leanne’s or Walker’s, either.”

Katrina took a deep breath. “So I’m cleared?”

“Let’s just say you are continuing to be less of a person of interest in the case—if there is a case,” the sheriff said with a small smile. “We’re not any closer to figuring out what happened, though.”

“There haven’t been any reports on my car?” Katrina asked. “I have a feeling if we find the car we will find Leanne.”

“I put up that sign we talked about,” Conrad said. “Right by the Dry Creek exit. But no one strange has driven into town.”

“And it takes time to locate a car using an all-points bulletin,” the sheriff said.

“Not around here it doesn’t,” Katrina muttered. “When I drove Leanne’s car into Dry Creek, these
people were all over it. It can’t have been reported stolen for more than a few hours at that time.”

“Well, not every town has a neighborhood watch like those men at the hardware store,” the sheriff said with a quick grin before turning serious again. “I wish they did. In the meantime, I’m wondering if you’d let me look in Leanne’s car. Maybe there’s a clue there. Even something as simple as a gas receipt might help.”

Katrina nodded. “Of course. The keys are at Conrad’s station where he keeps the keys of the cars he’s working on. There’s a yellow disc at the top of the key chain that advertises some hotel.”

“Maybe—” the sheriff began.

But Katrina was already shaking her head. “That hotel is in Texas and the key chain is old. Leanne would have told me if she was going that far away. There’s really nothing else in the car except for Zach’s car seat.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Well, it was worth a try.”

Conrad cleared his throat. “I’ll look in the glove compartment when I go over to the station. Sometimes people keep old receipts there. Is the department treating this as a missing person’s case then?”

“Yes, but the problem is that we can only suggest actions to the tribal authorities and, so far, all we have is a breaking and entering with a possible stolen vehicle. They’re busy with other things, they say.”

“They need to make it a priority.” Edith had a small frown on her wrinkled face. “We’ll need to add this to our church prayer bulletin if that’s okay.”

“My sister would like that,” Katrina said. Leanne
had handled their parents’ deaths differently than she had. She might even still believe in prayer, even if she hadn’t gone to church for some time.

Katrina faced the sheriff. “You’ll let me know if you find anything about Leanne. Good or bad, I want to know.”

“I’ll tell you what I can,” the lawman said. “If you had any idea of where she might go, it would be helpful for us to know.”

“I wish I knew.”

The sheriff nodded and rose up from the chair. “I better check back with the tribal police.” He looked at her again. “Try not to worry.”

Katrina waited for the lawman to leave the room and Conrad and his aunt waited with her. Finally, they heard the sound of the door closing.

“I need to go see my sister’s house,” Katrina said. “Maybe there’s something I will notice that the police haven’t.”

Conrad squeezed her hand and she realized he still held it.

“I understand how you feel, but you have your nephews to think of. You’re their only tie to their mother. They’ll need someone to be here to comfort them if—” Conrad stopped.

Katrina gasped. “It wouldn’t make any difference. There could be a hundred people here and if something has happened to their parents, it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.”

“Oh, dear,” Edith said as she put her hand over the
one Katrina had lying on the table. “Did something happen to your parents when you were a child?”

She was going to say she couldn’t talk about it, but then she looked at Conrad. She couldn’t just keep saying everything was too private. And the truth was, she wouldn’t mind if these two new friends knew. She wasn’t quite sure why that was, but she didn’t have time to question it.

“I was twelve,” she began. She didn’t want to look at anyone so she stared across the table at the picture of the girl, Doris. “Maybe about her age. My sister was about five years younger. Our parents were Christians, always busy in the church. Then one year they decided they were going to go for six months to work on a mission project in Africa. They were excited, showing us pictures of the babies and the families they were going to help. They’d never done anything like that before. They said they were going to help save the souls of those people. Leanne and I were going to stay with our aunt Bertha while they were gone. She smelled like cats. She had lots of cats.”

Katrina felt hoarse, as if her throat was clogged with unshed tears even though it was completely dry. “Anyway, my parents went and there was a plane crash and they died in a country we couldn’t even find on Aunt Bertha’s maps. We looked and looked, but no one knew where it was.”

“We didn’t know what to do. Aunt Bertha kept telling us that we should be happy our parents had been doing God’s will when they died.”

She didn’t have the courage to ask the question when she was twelve, but it had burned in her ever since. “How could that be? Didn’t God care about Leanne and me?”

“Oh, you poor dear,” Edith murmured as she put her hand on Katrina’s arm. “He cares very much about you. It was an accident.”

“If He cared, He would have stopped it.”

Everything was silent and then Conrad moved his chair close and pulled Katrina to him in a hug. “I know how that feels.”

“It’s all right. You don’t have to say that.”

“No,” he said softly. “I
know
how that feels. My mother died when I was five and my father might as well have. I felt abandoned, too.”

Katrina took a deep breath. It felt good to have told someone who understood. She looked to the other side of her and saw that Edith had gone back into the kitchen, leaving her alone with Conrad. She settled back into his arms.

They just sat there for the longest time.

Then Conrad felt the rubber band inside him loosen. “I never did want to talk about my parents, either. I don’t think I even understood what I was feeling. I was so young.”

Katrina nodded. “It was worse for Leanne. All we had for family was Aunt Bertha and she didn’t really want us. When we were first staying there, after our parents had just left, she kept saying she couldn’t wait for them to come back. Leanne started crying a lot, but
when we heard about our parents she stopped. Maybe she knew no one was going to come rescue us then. We were stuck with Aunt Bertha and she was stuck with us. It was awful.”

Conrad started to rub Katrina’s neck. He could feel the tension in her. “I suppose that’s why you never go into churches?”

She nodded. “I vowed I’d never set foot in a church again. How could God care so much about those people in Africa and not me and Leanne? We were right in front of His face in that church.” She smiled slightly and looked up at him. “Back then my geography wasn’t so good. I somehow thought if God was looking down on us in Ohio, He couldn’t even see the people in Africa. And the other way around, too.”

“I suppose we all think that when we’re kids. Everything seems so far away.”

“Leanne ended up on the Crow Indian reservation because she’d found some short-term mission project just like our parents had done. Fortunately, she didn’t have to fly anywhere or I’d have tried to stop her. But the reservation was close and I thought she might find some peace in what she was doing. Instead, she met Walker and—” She looked up at him again. “I was just so mad that she was letting that project change her life that I said some awful things about her and Walker and the reservation where they were going to live.”

“I’m sure she’ll forgive you if you say you’re sorry,” Conrad said.

Katrina laughed. “You don’t know Leanne. She’ll want drama.”

“Well, we’ll give it to her then,” Conrad said and then caught himself. “I mean, you’ll give it to her.”

Katrina was silent for a moment and then she said, “I hope we find her so I can.”

Suddenly, there was a clatter of noise and the two boys burst into the dining room. Charley trailed behind them.

“We ran out of cookies,” Ryan said as he held up a plate with some crumbs on it.

“How many cookies have you had?” Katrina said as she stood and walked over to them.

When she got to the boys, she forgot about cookies. She knelt down and looked each of them in the eye. “I want you both to know I care about you. We haven’t had much time together, but if anything ever happened I would love you and keep you and—”

“Give us more cookies?” Zach asked hopefully.

Katrina gave a choked laugh. “Well, no, I wouldn’t give you more cookies. But that’s only because it’s for your own good not to have them.”

“Awhhh,” Ryan said.

“Don’t worry,” Zach whispered loudly to his brother. “Mrs. Edith will give us some.”

“You won’t want to be too full to eat one of my aunt’s dinners. They’re even better than cookies,” Conrad said.

The boys looked at him in disbelief.

“Besides, I think I remember where there are Lincoln Logs upstairs that can make a mountain.”

“Can we crash the mountain?” Ryan asked.

“If you help build it,” Conrad said, taking the boys away to show them the logs.

A half hour later, Conrad walked into his aunt’s kitchen. She was washing dishes and Katrina was at the counter slicing carrots.

“I was wondering,” he said to his aunt as he walked over to the sink and picked up a dish towel. “Did you keep those tables I had? You know the ones—”

His aunt looked up and nodded. “I don’t know why you kept those things, but Charley put them in the desk in the spare room.”

Conrad took a plate from the dish drainer and began to dry it. “I spent the whole summer on those tables when I was ten.” He looked over at Katrina who glanced up from the carrots. “They were actuary tables and showed how likely people were to die at various ages.”