The Wicked Wife (Murder in Marin Book 2) (25 page)

They took one of the tiny booths by the window. After ordering their food, Holly took charge. “Look, I don’t know what’s happened, but here’s what I think we need to do now.”

“I’m all ears,” Sylvia said with a forced smile, feeling the weight of the morning’s events pulling her down.

“After we eat, let’s drive back up Tennessee Valley Road. If her car is still there, I’m going to drop you back at your car, then try to get ahold of Rob, if he’s around. I’m sure he’ll suggest we speak to Eddie Austin.”

Sylvia frowned. “Do you think all of that is necessary? Perhaps we’re overreacting.”

“I’m not sure. I just know that whatever Eddie does will be a hell of a lot more than the two of us can do at this point.”

“Holly, you don’t think Willow’s in trouble…do you?”

“I have no freakin’ idea! Right now, I’d just like to know where she is!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Neither Holly nor Sylvia were the least bit surprised to see Willow’s car in the same spot where they had seen it last. They discussed leaving a note on the windshield, but reasoned that made little sense, considering that they had by now left several voice messages on her phone.
 

Holly was glad to be free of Sylvia, who was full of concern, but had no plan of action. On the short drive from the Manzanita car park to Rob’s house up on Filbert Drive in Sausalito, she thought about what she would tell him. She knew the story was pretty thin. Right now, there were far more questions than answers.
 

Holly felt a sense of relief when she saw Karin out in the home’s small side yard playing with her children, Micah and Alice.

Micah and Alice each grabbed one of her hands the moment she stepped out of the car. “Holly, do you want to make cookies with us?” Alice asked. “Mommy said we could make peanut butter cookies if we ate all our lunch!”
 

Holly kneeled down and gave each one of them a hug and said, “That sounds like fun, but right now I’ve got to see your daddy.”

“He’s over at Eddie’s house,” Karin said. “Eddie and Sharon got one of those build-it-yourself dressers for little Aaron’s room, and they were both about to lose their minds trying to assemble it.”

“Sounds like fun, huh?” Holly said, looking up from where Micah and Alice had tackled her.

“Okay, kids. Let your Aunt Holly go. I’m sure she’ll promise to come back later to try your peanut butter cookies.” Reluctantly, the children helped Holly up off the grass.
 

Sensing there was something troubling her longtime friend, Karin asked, “Is everything alright?”
 

“Probably, but it’s a long story. I’ll come back and tell you over peanut butter cookies and martinis,” Holly answered with a wink.

Eddie’s place was less than a two-minute drive from Rob’s house. It sat halfway up Litho Street, across from what is now Sausalito’s City Hall, a building that up until the mid-twentieth century had served as Sausalito’s main public school.

A frustrated Eddie greeted Holly at the front door with a quick kiss on the cheek and the suggestion she follow him back to his son Aaron’s room. “Rob is trying to assemble the mother of all do-it-yourself projects,” he explained. “I’ll tell you this, if the genius who writes these instructions for IKEA is ever found murdered, I’m not going to work the case.”

“Why not?”

“Ha!
You
try working a case where thousands of people have a perfectly good motive and see how easy it is to find the killer!”

Clearly, this was not how Eddie wanted to spend the balance of his Saturday, Holly thought. Well, he may not have to, if her worries were confirmed.
 

She followed him through the house to the little boy’s room, where Rob and Aaron sat, surrounded by a collection of screws, pegs, tools, handles, and boards of various lengths.
 

Rob looked relaxed and confident about finishing this life-sized jigsaw puzzle. He was surprised to see her. “So, what’s up? Come to join the fun?”

“I wish.” She paused, and added, “Could you, me, and Aaron’s daddy talk for a minute without the K-I-D?”

“Hey, I’m no kid,” Aaron shot back.

“See, Holly?” Eddie said with a smile, “kindergarten’s not just for coloring books and building blocks anymore.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard,” Holly said. “Soon they’ll be teaching them how to write code.”

Eddie ruffled his son’s hair. “Aaron, Mom is out in the garden; could you go help her for a while?”

“Okay,” Aaron said reluctantly. Slowly, he headed out the door and toward the back door of the house.

“So, what’s up?” Eddie asked.

Holly detailed her day, starting with the walk she and Sylvia had taken without Willow through Tennessee Valley. “At first, I was sure that Willow had just overslept, and that was simple enough. But when we saw her car, and knew she had come at least a half hour after us, we just hung around at the trailhead and waited for her to show back up. When I went back to check on the car after Sylvia and I had lunch, it was over two hours since we had originally spotted Willow’s car. In that time, an eighty-year-old could have walked through the valley and out to the beach and back. It just doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense!”

Eddie nodded. “Okay, I get it. Well, let me do a couple of things. First, let me get one of our patrol cars to keep an eye on her vehicle. If it’s still there around dusk, I’ll have it towed and brought to our lockup.”

“Will it just be placed in impound?” Holly asked.

“No, it will be towed to a secured place. The hope is that it’s kept clean before we have the crime lab staff start working on it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It might not seem possible now, but this could all have an innocent explanation.”

“What about William Adams?” Holly asked. “Shouldn’t someone contact him?”

“We’ll give it another hour. Say, around three-thirty. See if you can get him on their house phone and ask him to give me a call on my cell. I know you’ve got the number.”

“Okay,” Holly said, as her gut tightened.

“Let’s just take it one step at a time, Holly,” Eddie said, as he patted her shoulder. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred everything in situations like these comes out just fine. Nothing nefarious, just one big misunderstanding.”

Holly thanked him and wished Rob good luck as he continued to do battle with the easy-assembly beast, and drove the few blocks back to her home on Caledonia Street.
 

She spent the balance of her day wondering if Willow would be that one out of a hundred cases without a happy ending.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A little after three-thirty, Holly called William Adams on his house phone. She had no other contact number, and she hoped that Adams would remember her.

Mrs. Jackson answered the phone. After just a few moments of waiting on hold, Adams, to her relief, came on the line.
 

“Yes, Holly, this is William Adams,” he said in a warm welcoming tone.

“Yes, hi. I was wondering if you’ve seen or heard from Willow?”

“No. In fact, I just got home fifteen minutes ago from a round of golf. Willow told me last night that she planned to walk Tennessee Valley with you and Sylvia this morning. Is everything all right?”

“I don’t mean to worry you, but Sylvia and I have both been a little worried. Willow never showed up. After trying her phone with no luck, we just thought she overslept, so we walked without her. But about an hour later, when we left the parking area, we saw her car parked along the side of the road. Her phone was on the passenger seat. We went back to the trailhead and hung around for close to another hour, but she never appeared.”

At that point, William felt his chest tighten. His mind flashed back to that day up in Tahoe when he first reported Fran missing to the ski patrol. He willed himself to put any negative thoughts out of his mind and focus on the matter at hand.

After a moment of awkward silence, Holly stepped in and said, “Rob Timmons, my boss and the publisher of the
Standard,
has a very close friend, Eddie Austin, who is the lead investigative detective for the Marin County Sheriff’s Department. Eddie asked me to get a hold of you and give you his contact number. He’s requested that a patrol car check on the car during the late afternoon. If it’s not picked up by dusk, sometime around eight this evening he’s going to have it towed to the sheriff department’s secure lot in San Rafael near the Civic Center. Let me give you his cell number so that you can talk to him directly. Eddie’s a terrific guy. I know he’ll do everything he can to help you.”

William’s hand shook as he wrote down Eddie’s cell number. “Thank you for your concern, Holly. Willow has a great deal of admiration for both you and Sylvia. I can’t imagine why she would not reach out to you if something else had come up.”

“I agree. Well, hopefully this will all be some big misunderstanding. Call Eddie. I’m sure he’ll help you get to the bottom of this. And if—I mean,
when
Willow shows up, ask her to call me. I just want to know everything is okay.”

Eddie arrived at the Adams’ mansion less than an hour after he and William spoke.

As he drove up to the estate at the very top of Belvedere’s Golden Gate Road, Eddie remembered his relief when he was told to back off from asking Willow Adams if she knew anything about Pamela Botherton’s missing diamonds. The suggestion itself that Willow had anything to do with the missing gems was both logical and ridiculous.
 

William himself answered the door and led Eddie into the study. “Since Holly’s call, I’ve been worried. Is there any further news?”
 

“I got a call from one of our deputies on my way over to see you. Your wife’s car is still on Tennessee Valley Road. We’ll do another couple of checks and then, if it’s okay with you, we’ll tow it to our secure lot.”

“Holly mentioned that you suggested that.” William frowned. “At that point, is Willow formally considered a missing person?”

“Generally, we go with a minimum of forty eight hours, and often longer before declaring someone a missing person. In spite of what people see in all these police dramas, it’s often at the discretion of the particular department in which the disappearance occurred.”

“I’m at a loss; I have no idea what’s going on.” William’s voice shook. “Holly must have mentioned that my wife is something of a celebrity. Any day of the year, she might be anywhere on the planet. Still, someone close—myself, or her personal assistant, Andrea, or her talent agent—knows where she is at any given moment. I checked with Andrea. Her next scheduled event is tomorrow afternoon in Seattle. Then, at the end of this coming week, she’s due in Phoenix. Of course, what’s really disturbing is her car sitting out there on Tennessee Valley Road! I mean, she goes to meet Holly and Sylvia for a walk out to the beach, and has someone pick her up and she goes off somewhere else? That doesn’t seem to make any sense!”

“I agree, Mr. Adams.”

“William, please.”

Eddie nodded. “On the surface, it doesn’t make obvious sense. But in my line of work, more often than not, these things boil down to some sort of misunderstanding. Have you been here at the house all day?”

“No, actually when I left, Willow was still in bed. I was meeting my senior law partner James Finch for a round of golf up at Peacock Gap. I got back here around two-thirty. When Holly called, that was the first I heard about this.”

“And from the time that you left until now, have you looked at your cell phone’s display to see if you had a missed call, text, or voice mail from her.”

“I hadn’t until after I spoke with Holly. There’s been nothing from her, which also makes no sense. So now what?”

“If the car is towed to our lot, and we don’t hear from you or your wife, come Monday the crime lab techs are going to start going over every square inch of her car.”

“What does that entail?”

“Standard procedure is that you have to treat the vehicle the same as you would a crime scene.”

William winced at the suggestion, but Eddie sensed he was trying his best to hold back his fears.
 

“Every loose item is removed and checked for fibers and prints,” Eddie continued. “They’ll start with the engine, and finish at the trunk, checking everything in between. They’ll vacuum out the car’s interior and check what they collect for hair, skin fiber, and more. It’s all about looking for things that are not supposed to be there. More than likely, they’ll use Luminol as well, to see if they can bring out any bloodstains that might have been wiped away, because blood leaves its own chemical signature.”