Enright Family Collection (146 page)

“Was there something early at school today? Maybe one of those parent breakfasts?”

“Ally and I are having breakfast together this morning. She’s right here with me.”

Georgia paused, as the significance set in.

“Laura always makes Ally’s breakfast.”

“That’s right.” Jody said, forcing calm to avoid frightening the child. “She does.”

“Ally hasn’t seen her mother this morning.” Georgia said flatly.

“That appears to be the case.”

“Jody, you know Tucker Moreland ...”

“Of course.”

“Maybe they went out to watch the sun rise.”

Georgia’s mind raced, seeking any logical explanation for her sister’s disappearance.

“Maybe they lost track of the time ...”

“Tucker’s in the dining room having breakfast with Gordon.”

Georgia fought back a rise of panic.

“Jody, I’m going to give you my number here. Will you give it to Tucker and ask him to call me right back?”

“Sure.”

Georgia waited for Jody to find a pencil and paper to write down the phone number at Pumpkin Hill.

“Tell him I’m waiting by the phone.”

“Consider it done.”

“And Ally ...?”

“Is fine for now. I’m getting her ready for school.”

“Go tell Tucker.”

“I’m on my way.”

Georgia paced waiting for the phone to ring, trying to think of a reasonable explanation. There was none. Laura would not—
would never
—go off and leave her daughter. Not ever. Not for any reason.

The phone rang and Georgia jumped in spite of the fact that she was standing next to it in anticipation.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she began, unaware that her words were tumbling out rapidly, “and it’s probably nothing, but I was wondering if you had seen Laura.”

“Not since last night,” he told her. “We sat on the front porch and talked for a while after Ally went to sleep.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to pry, but when did ...”

“She went in around midnight.”

“Tucker, I hate to impose on you, but would you mind walking down to the beach and just see if Laura is there.”

“Georgia, what’s the problem?”

“Laura wasn’t in her apartment to get Ally dressed for school today, and she isn’t there for breakfast. She never misses breakfast with her. It doesn’t appear that she’s any place in the inn, so I though maybe ...” Georgia had been doing a fairly good job of fighting her anxiety up until this point, but her composure finally began to crack. Her voice quivered as she added, “I’m feeling really uneasy.”

“I’ll call you back.” He hung up the phone and walked out the front door and down the steps, his eyes scanning from side to side as he went toward the beach. Georgia was right, of course. Laura never would leave Ally, even in an emergency, without telling her that she’d be gone and arranging for someone else to be with her.

Georgia was right to feel uneasy. Suddenly, Tucker was feeling uneasy, too.

He stood at the top of the wooden steps, his hands shading his eyes, and looked up the beach in both directions. Nothing. From an inside jacket pocket he pulled what looked like a miniature pair of binoculars and held them to his eyes. Though very small, the range of the glasses was extensive. There was no sign
of Laura as far as he could see. A small worm of fear began to twist within him, and he broke into a jog as he hurried back to the inn, where Ally was standing in the front doorway, waiting for her mother to walk her to school.

“Tucker, have you seen my mommy?” Ally asked with a six-year-old’s impatience. “I’m waiting for her to take me to school.”

“No, I haven’t seen her. I’ll bet she went out for an early morning jog and forgot about the time.”

“My mommy hates to run.”

“Well, then, maybe she took a long walk. It sure is a beautiful morning.”

“Sometimes she likes to go watch the sun come up.” Ally said hopefully.

“Then that’s probably just what she did.”

“She always comes back before breakfast. She’s always here when I have to go to school.”

“Oh, I’ll bet she just lost track of the time today.

Maybe the sunrise was extra pretty this morning,”

Tucker said, wishing it was true.

“I have to go to school.” Ally looked up at him, concern in her face. “Someone has to take me.”

“I could walk with you this morning.”

Ally looked anxiously in the direction of the beach.

“Look, how ’bout if I walk you to school, then when I get back, I’ll walk on down to the beach to see if your mom is there.”

“When you find her on the beach, will you tell her to bring milk and ice cream money to school for me? Before lunch time?”

“How much do you need?” he asked.

“Four quarters and two dimes.”

Tucker dug into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of change. Holding his hand open, he said, “Let’s see if you can count out what you need all by yourself.”

She took two dimes and four quarters, thanked him, and relieved that lunch had been taken care of, said, “Now we can walk to school.”

He held out his hand and she took it, and they walked to the first corner, which they crossed on cue from the crossing guard. At the next corner they turned right for a block to the elementary school. When they reached the front walk, Ally stopped and said, “Mommy usually leaves me here. See, there’s Mr. McAfee. He’s the school guard.”

“Do you need anything else?” Tucker asked as he knelt down in front of her.

“Just a kiss,” she grinned, offering her cheek, which he kissed softly.

“Thank you,” she took off up the sidewalk, turning once to wave and call to him, “When you find my mommy, don’t forget to tell her that she should not be walking late in the morning.”

“I’ll do that,” he nodded, thinking that if he did find Laura right now, that’s the least he’d say.

When
he found her, he corrected himself as he hurried back to the inn. There was no doubt but that he would. He hadn’t spent a lifetime looking for her, only to have her disappear now.

Once back at the Bishop’s Inn, Tucker let himself unobtrusively into Laura’s apartment and walked through the neat, quiet rooms, looking for something out of place. He went into her bedroom and stood in the doorway, taking in the scene before him. The bed was only mildly rumpled on one side, the pillows
stacked as if the occupant had leaned against them to read, and indeed, the bedside table held a stack of books. He walked closer. Laura’s reading glasses were folded on the cover of a paperback novel that lay face down on the table.

Across the room, a dresser drawer stood open a few inches. Tucker peered into the deep drawer where sweaters were folded and stacked one upon the other in four piles. Three of the piles held four sweaters each. The fourth pile held only three.

He went next into the bathroom, where a night-shirt made a rumpled pile on top of the wicker clothes hamper. He returned to the bedroom and looked around, then back into the bathroom where he lifted the lid of the hamper. It held the long sleeved T-shirt she’d worn the night before, but not the jeans. Her bathrobe hung on the back of the door, and her slippers were under one side of the bed. He opened her closet door. The Nike walking shoes she wore frequently were missing.

“Laura, talk to me,” he said aloud to the empty room. “Show me who was here, so that I can find you ...”

His eyes searched the scene for something. There had to be
something
—but it was as if she had been plucked from her bed and abducted into thin air. He had all but come to the conclusion that there were no clues to be found when he noticed the open Bible pushed partly under the bed. Hesitating only for a second, he knelt down and scanning the page—the Book of Matthew—found that a section near the bottom of the page had been torn out. He lifted
the book and found the scrap of paper concealed under it.

I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh: and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

Is it possible that Laura’s abductor had given her time to read her Bible before spiriting her away, and had she used that time, however brief, to seek words that might provide a clue as to whom her abductor might be?

The back of Tucker’s neck began to prickle as he read and reread the marked passage, all his well-trained instincts on full alert.

chapter twenty-four

Georgia paced relentlessly waiting for Matt to arrive, replaying the phone call from Tucker over and over in her head.

“It appears that Laura disappeared sometime after she went into the inn around midnight. She’d apparently had time to change her clothes and get into bed, read for however long before whomever her visitor was, arrived. There was a book on the table with her eyeglasses, and the bed was only mildly disturbed
—
blankets turned back, the pillows stacked up against the headboard—as if she’d gotten into it and had time to do some reading, but maybe hadn’t slept in it.”

“The police
...”

“...
have been called. They don’t seem to think that she’s been missing long enough for them to be involved,” he had said tersely.

“And you?” she had asked.

“I think it’s been plenty long enough.”

“I’m going to call Matt. We’ll be there as soon as we can get there. And I’ll call my mother
...”

“Gordon already has. She’s on her way.”

The black pickup drove past the window, kicking up stones as it made an arc in the drive to turn back toward the road, and Georgia was outside, locking the door behind her, before Matt had time to come to a full stop. She raced to the cab and climbed in, slammed the door behind her even as Matt hit the gas.

“Have you heard anything else from Tucker?” Matt asked as he flew from the driveway onto the macadam roadway.

Georgia shook her head, “No. I brought my cell phone, though. I thought I’d call in another fifteen minutes or so and see if there’s anything new.”

Matt nodded, his jaw tight and his eyes hidden behind his dark glasses.

“The police told Tucker that it was too early to start worrying.” She leaned back against the seat and idly scratched behind Artie’s ears. On the seat between his humans, the dog closed his eyes blissfully, unaware of the turmoil.

“That’s ridiculous,” Matt scowled. “Laura isn’t the type of person to just take off like this. Where do they think she might have gone?”

They rode in silence for several miles, neither of them willing to voice their deepest fears.

Finally, Georgia dug in her shoulder pack and, pulling out her small phone, said, “I think I’ll call my mother’s car phone and see if she’s heard anything.”

Delia answered the phone on the first ring. “Mom, it’s me. Matt and I are about twenty minutes or so from Bishop’s Cove. I was just checking to see if you’d left yet.”

“You’ll beat me by about an hour. I left as soon as Gordon called. I take it you waited for Matt.”

“Yes. Have you heard anything?”

“Not from Tucker. But I did make a call or two.”

“To ...?”

“The first was to Jeremy Noble. The second was to Nick. He and India will be there in a few hours. Nicky will have called Zoey and Ben by now. Jeremy was in D.C., so he should be there before too long.”

“Jeremy is the private investigator who works for you occasionally?”

“Yes. He found Laura for me the first time. I was hoping that perhaps ...” The line went silent.

“Mom?”

“Yes, darling, I’m here. I’m just beside myself, Georgia. I know that something terrible has happened to Laura and I don’t know what to do.” Delia spoke slowly, as if afraid to voice her fears.

There was a brief period of heavy static on the phone.

“Mom, say it again, I couldn’t hear what you were saying.”

“I said, thank God for Gordon. He’s going to have someone drive him to meet me in Rehoboth, so that I don’t have to make the entire drive alone.”

“That’s so sweet of him, Mom.”

“It is. Oh, there’s that damnable static again. Call me back when you get to the inn.”

Georgia pressed the “end” button and pushed the thin antenna back into the phone. Keeping the phone on her lap, she told Matt about Gordon driving north to meet Delia, and that the rest of the family was on their way to the inn.

“That’s good. She probably needs all of you right now.” Matt nodded his head, recalling Delia’s words.
If one is wounded, we all bleed.

“That’s what she said. That she’d lost Laura once ...”

“Well, we’re not losing her,” Matt interrupted her. “We’ll find her.”

“Mom’s already called her P.I. He’s on his way to the inn. And Tucker’s a former SEAL. He must have some skills that could be useful in this kind of situation.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if the police continue to insist that she’s probably just having her nails done or she’s out shopping with her girlfriends, it will be good to have some investigative types around.”

“Well, maybe by the time we reach the inn the police will have changed their minds and will have launched a search for her.”

The police hadn’t changed their tune much, as Matt and Georgia discovered when they arrived in Bishop’s Cove. If anything, they spent more time thinking of excuses for Laura’s disappearance than they did of possible solutions for finding her. Even the ripped section from the Bible was dismissed as inconsequential. It was as if the thought of a serious crime having been perpetrated in their tiny coastal town was inconceivable.

“Now, look, Matthew,” the old chief was saying, “you don’t know that your sister didn’t have a gentleman friend she was visiting with last night.”

“The only ‘friend’ Laura was with last night was me,” Tucker scowled.

“That right?” The Chief’s eyes narrowed and focused his attention on Tucker. “Until what time?”

“Around midnight. I already gave this information to your officer ...”

“Well, give it to us again ...” The Chief pointed to a chair at the opposite end of the room and said, “Why don’t you just take a seat there and you and I will have a little chat...”