No Show (6 page)

“When I saw you climbing over the fence yesterday, I had no option but to call the sheriff.”

Osbourne waited a moment. Terry guessed he was waiting for a pat on the head or a medal for carrying out his civic duty so diligently. He’d be waiting a bloody long time, in Terry’s estimation.

“Well, I wanted to let you know it was me who called the sheriff’s department.”

Terry didn’t say anything.

“Sheriff Holman responds very quickly to calls coming from our neighborhood watch committee,” Osbourne said, impressed with his own importance.

Terry still didn’t reply, and Osbourne’s face exhibited signs that he was realizing he wasn’t welcome.

Breaking the silence, Terry said, “I was put in a cell.”

“But it wasn’t for long,” Osbourne corrected, raising a finger. “You weren’t in overnight or anything. I saw Deputy Pittman bring you back.”

“I’d been in the country five hours, and I wound up in jail.”

“A holding cell, actually.”

Osborne’s semantics failed to impress Terry, and he frowned.

“You understand how the situation looked. I had no choice.”

“You could have asked me what I was doing.”

Now it was Osbourne’s turn to look unimpressed. “What? Ask you if you’re a burglar and could you come down from that fence? No way. I’m retired, and I would like to remain retired for some considerable time to come.”

Terry could see Osbourne’s point, but he didn’t want to admit it. Osbourne was one of those annoying people who needed to feel important, and being chairman of the neighborhood watch committee satisfied that need. Admitting Osbourne had a point
would only fuel his desperation to be needed, but Terry felt sorry for the guy and caved.

“You might be right.”

“Well, I wanted to come over and say sorry for the mix-up. We, the Sutter Drive Neighborhood Watch Committee, have your best interests at heart and would like to extend an invitation to you to join. We meet the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. The meetings usually take place at my house, although we do like to rotate locations. Can I count on you being at our next meeting?”

“I’m sorry, no. I have some important issues I need to attend to before I consider anything else. So if you’ll excuse me.”

“Is it because of your wife?”

“Yes…yes, it is. How did you know?”

“Sheriff Holman alluded to something along those lines when he called me back to explain the misunderstanding.”

“Have you met my wife?”

“Oh, yes,” he said matter-of-factly, and then his manner changed. “She wasn’t very nice to me, Mr. Sheffield.”

Osbourne paused. Terry guessed he was after an apology. He wasn’t getting one.

“Quite rude, in fact,” Osbourne continued. “Saying she had no time for the neighborhood watch committee. But it hasn’t stopped me from keeping an eye out for her and you.”

Terry had wanted to dismiss Osbourne without giving him a second thought, but now he changed his mind. The guy might be an interfering busybody, but sometimes an interfering busybody could be most valuable.

“When was the last time you saw my wife?”

Some neighborhood watch chairman
, Terry thought. Osbourne hadn’t known anything useful. He wasn’t the omniscient curtain
twitcher he claimed to be. But one piece of information came out of the forty minutes he had detained Terry. Osbourne remembered seeing Sarah about a week ago, which tied in with the stack of unread mail Terry had discovered.

It wasn’t much, but it was something Terry could throw Holman’s way. He’d even toss in Osbourne’s name so that Edenville’s official and unofficial law-enforcement officers could share some personal time together. A mischievous smirk creased his mouth.

From his living room, Terry watched Osbourne fire up his lawn mower. Osbourne tried to make it look like he was tending to his garden and not watching his neighbors. Terry smiled and left him to his work.

He searched through Sarah’s home office, hoping to find something that explained her disappearance. Sifting through her things left him queasy. It reminded him of when he and his mother had sorted through his grandmother’s belongings after she died. But Sarah wasn’t dead. He couldn’t lose sight of that fact. Something had to be there to explain her absence.

Sarah’s home office was pretty typical. She had arranged two desks in an L-shape with a PC on top. A couple of bookshelves lined one wall and file boxes filled the closet. The books didn’t reveal anything beyond Sarah’s reading taste. The files consisted of nothing but her assignments. His search would have been helped if Sarah had kept her office tidy. Nothing seemed to be in chronological order, and if Sarah put a book away the right way up, it was a miracle.

The computer looked to be the best option, and he fired it up. While he waited for the Dell to boot up, he stared at the walls. Post-it notes clung to the surface, each carrying an abbreviated snippet of information that only Sarah could understand. Framed newspaper articles hung on the walls—past glories—boasting a glittering career Sarah had carved out for herself. There weren’t any Pulitzer prizes, but she had garnered a number
of cover stories in a variety of newspapers and magazines. But only one framed picture interested him. It was a picture of them taken outside of the Luxor Las Vegas. The picture had been taken the day after their wedding.

He found it hard to hold back tears. The photo confirmed what he’d always known—Sarah did love him. She hadn’t run out on him. She was in trouble and she needed help. The sheriff’s insinuations were dead wrong. The photo blew all his doubt away. If Sarah didn’t care, she wouldn’t have a picture of him above her computer, where she could look at him every time she went to work.

The computer completed its boot up. He rummaged through Sarah’s e-mail again but didn’t find anything that would indicate she was planning a trip or going on the run. And no more of her friends or contacts had replied to his plea.

Terry turned his attention to the address book from the night before. Now came the tricky part. Whom to call? He didn’t know one person from another, so he might as well start with the
A
’s and work his way through. Just as with the e-mail he’d sent out the night before, he learned all over again how remote Sarah seemed from the people in her life. The people he got through to knew her, but not well. They were ex-coworkers, old college classmates, business contacts, and even ex-boyfriends. They mentioned being close at one point, but somewhere along the way they’d lost touch. That aspect worried him. He felt closer to Sarah than anyone he’d ever known, but did she feel the same way? In five years would she lose touch with him? Had she already?

Don’t be a twat,
he told himself.
Sarah’s in trouble, and you’re going to find her.

He ran a highlighter over the last name and number he’d called. It was dark outside, and he hadn’t come up with one useful lead. He wondered if all police work was as fruitless as this. If it was, no wonder so many crimes went unsolved. He closed the address book with the intention of repeating the same disheartening task tomorrow.

But after closing the address book, he changed his mind. He’d give it one more shot and dial one last number. He flipped to another page to dial the first number his eyes fell upon. He punched it in and put the phone to his ear. He didn’t hear a dial tone. He heard silence, with the occasional hiss of static. It took a few seconds for Terry to realize it wasn’t static he was hearing, but breathing. He’d picked up the phone to dial at the precise moment someone had called him.

“Hello,” he said.

No one answered.

“Hello,” he said again with no answer. “Is anybody there?”

The reply was more breathing—not heavy or strained, just the sound of someone calmly breathing in and out. Something Terry wasn’t doing. Fear forced him to fight for breath like an asthmatic. He gripped the receiver more tightly.

“Hello,” Terry said for the third time. “I know you’re there.”

He paused. He went to say hello again, but the caller interrupted him with a mocking laugh.

T
he following morning, Oscar arrived with a toot of his horn. Terry checked his watch. It was exactly 9:00. He emptied his coffee cup into the sink and locked up the house.

“Morning to you,” Oscar said, standing in front of his Toyota 4Runner.

“Right on time,” Terry said. “I like that.”

“Well, if I’m going to get you Americanized then we need to beat the rush. I thought we’d take my car.”

“Thanks. I need to find a car of my own soon.”

“Let me see what I can do,” Oscar said, getting back into the 4Runner.

Terry climbed inside the SUV alongside Oscar and buckled himself in.

“So how was your night?” Oscar asked. “Any word on Sarah?”

The strange phone call Terry had received last night flashed in his mind, but he didn’t share this with Oscar. They barely knew each other, and their burgeoning friendship wouldn’t be helped if he threw sinister callers in along with his missing wife. The guy was going above and beyond the call of duty helping out a stranger, and Terry didn’t want to spoil it by coming off crazy or paranoid.

“No, nothing.”

“Don’t lose heart. I have a feeling you’ll be back with your wife in no time.”

“I hope you’re right. Where to first?”

“Somewhere we can get you baptized as an honorary American—Social Security office, then the DMV.”

When Oscar explained the procedure for getting a Social Security number and driver’s license, Terry was surprised that so much had to be done in person. He never had much to do with these government agencies in England. The UK equivalent of these documents had been dealt with by mail. The only time he’d come in contact with the UK’s version of the DMV, the equally ominous DVLA, was when he took the test. He wished the US would adopt the same culture and save everybody time.

His encounter with the Social Security office wasn’t too bad. The building was smaller than he expected, with an even smaller waiting room. A daytime soap played on an eighteen-inch TV in the corner. He filled in the appropriate forms and stood at the counter while his information was processed. The clerk told him he could expect his card in a couple of weeks.

“That was easy,” Terry said, following Oscar back to his SUV.

“I’m easing you in nice and slow. Just wait until you get a load of the DMV. You’ll be singing a different tune then.”

The nearest DMV was some ways from the Social Security office, which meant a scenic drive across the county, giving Terry the chance to see more of his new surroundings. They bantered about the horrors that would await him when they reached the DMV.

“I want to ask you a personal question, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, okay?”

Terry didn’t know if he’d like what was coming, but he said okay.

“Have you contacted your family or friends back in England about what’s happened?”

Terry fidgeted in his seat. He’d thought about it after Holman had released him, but he had decided against the idea. He shook his head.

“Can I ask why?”

Terry exhaled. “My friends and family didn’t exactly approve of what Sarah and I were doing.”

“Is that why you came to the US?”

“No. It wasn’t a case of restless natives banging on the front door with pitchforks and flaming torches. People thought I was making a mistake marrying someone I’d met on holiday before I’d had a chance to get to know her. They were looking out for me, and I can understand that. What is it, one in three marriages fail?”

Oscar frowned. “Closer to one in two in the US.”

With that remark, Terry got the feeling Oscar was on the losing side of that statistic. “Well, there you are. They just care.”

Oscar was back on Solano Dam Road. He crossed the bridge spanning the dam and bore right with the road. The reservoir the dam held back was magnificent and millpond still.

“But if they care so much, why haven’t you let them know that something’s wrong?” Oscar asked. “They’d want to help, I’m sure.”

Terry didn’t want to answer this question. It was hard enough admitting the truth to himself, let alone to Oscar.

“Embarrassment,” he admitted. “I’m embarrassed. If I tell everyone, then they would have been right all along. I know it’s stupid and irrational, but I don’t want everyone thinking, Look at what sad, stupid Terry got himself into.”

“So you’d rather put your trust in strangers.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Not really. It’s a tough call either way.”

Oscar changed the subject by turning into a Santa Rita County tour guide. He talked about the history of the dam and several other landmarks. Before long, Oscar was pulling into the DMV parking lot.

“Remember,” Oscar said, “You gotta stay strong.”

Although only 10:30, the DMV was a cattle market. Three security officers were herding errant strays into various roped-off lines for something or other. Terry was glad he had Oscar as his guide or he would have wasted a lot of time.

Oscar grabbed a copy of the California driving rules and regulations and handed it to Terry. “Read that. You’ll need to know it for the written exam. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to read it.”