At five-thirty, Erik called it a day.
He took twenty minutes to clean his brushes and rollers and to stack his supplies in the corner of the big downstairs room of the two-story town hall. Then, at ten to six, he threw a paint-spattered tarp over everything and locked up the hall. Outside, it was already dark. The rain that the heavy clouds promised had yet to start falling. The evening air was cool and moist.
Erik grinned to himself as he climbed in his truck. He was anxious to get home. If the trip to Sacramento had gone off as planned, there’d be a new computer on the desk in the living room when he walked in the house. He couldn’t wait to see it.
Well, more to the point, he couldn’t wait to see the pleasure on his son’s face. Or to be the recipient of the smugly innocent looks that Evie was going to be sending his way for the next few days.
Erik knew what his wife was up to. The computer was more for Pete than for herself. But she couldn’t have told Erik that because then she was sure he wouldn’t allow her to buy it.
Erik’s grin turned to a frown. Hell. He shouldn’t let her buy it. If he had any pride at all he would have nixed the computer idea the minute she started making noises about it. He had a good notion how much something like that cost. She was going to end up cashing in one of those CDs she was so damn proud of to pay for it. And he shouldn’t let her do it. He should—
The mental exercise in self-rebuke ended abruptly as Erik saw that the lights were still on inside Wishbook. He hit the brakes just in time to make the turn into the driveway that led to the parking lot in back.
He grunted in disapproval as he pulled into the space beside her van. What could she be up to now, a good half an hour after she should have been home? She didn’t think sometimes. That cold she had was nothing to fool with. She shouldn’t be working overtime. But she just wouldn’t slow down. She loaded up her schedule with the thousand and one things she wanted to do—most of them for everyone else but herself. And then she just wouldn’t give anything up.
Erik got out of the truck and went to the back door of the building. He found it unlocked, which neither surprised nor worried him. In other towns, leaving back doors open might be an invitation to robbery. But no one ever robbed anyone else in North Magdalene.
Erik traversed the short hall at the back of the building and entered the main part of the store. A quick scan of the room showed him that it appeared to be empty.
“Evie?”
She didn’t answer.
He walked to the register counter, in the center of the room. “Evie?”
Nothing.
He went to the front door. It was locked, the Closed sign facing out.
He realized she was probably up in the storeroom, or perhaps in the vacant apartment up there. He started for the back of the store again. When he reached the stairs, he took them two at a time.
But when he got up there, the storeroom was locked and so was the apartment. For a moment, he was sure she must have gone on home, a thought that sent his heart racing in his chest. Was there something wrong at home then, for her to have left in such a hurry that she forgot to turn off the lights and lock the back door?
But then he remembered her van. If she’d gone home in a hurry, she would have driven the van.
Though he was reasonably sure she wasn’t upstairs, Erik knocked on both doors and called her name. As he’d expected, no answer came.
More puzzled by the second, he returned to the lower floor, where he went to the phone behind the register and dialed his own number. His mother answered. He told her he was at the store and couldn’t find Evie, then he asked, “Is she there with you?”
“No,” Darla said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been starting to wonder what could be keeping her.”
Erik was standing in front of the ornate antique register. He punched the Sale button. When the drawer slid out, he saw twenties, tens, fives and ones, as well as plenty of change. The extra set of keys to the store and the rooms above was right where it should be, in a spare change compartment. Everything looked undisturbed, it didn’t appear that the store had been robbed. He took the keys and stuck them in his pocket, so he could lock up the back dead bolt when he left.
“Erik,” his mother said, “is something wrong?”
“No.” He pushed the drawer back in. “No, of course not. Look. Could you hang around over there for a little bit longer? I want to make a few calls.”
“Certainly. But where is Evie?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
His mother was speaking again as he hung up.
He bent to look for the phone book Evie always kept near the phone. He found it, in the cabinet beneath the register. Her purse, which he knew she always stowed there, was gone.
A half an hour later, he’d called everyone in town who might possibly have heard from Evie or know where she’d gone. He’d called all of her cousins and all of his own brothers and sisters. When he called Delilah Fletcher’s house, he also asked to speak with Oggie Jones, Delilah’s father, who lived with her and Sam. Evie thought of Oggie like a second father. If anyone might know where she was, it would be Oggie.
“What’s the problem there, boy?” Oggie called every man under the age of eighty either “boy” or “son.”
Erik explained that he was looking for Evie and asked the old man if he’d seen her.
“Not in the last couple of days.”
Erik thanked him and started to hang up.
“Hold on there, son.”
“Yeah?”
“Is everythin’ all right?”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Erik said, trying to convince himself, as much as Evie’s uncle.
“You call me. When she gets home.”
Erik promised he would and then went on to the next call, trying not to remember how worried Oggie had sounded. The rest of the calls yielded no more than the first ones had. No one had seen Evie all day, except Tawny, who’d left her at the shop at a little after two.
When he finished calling all the relatives, he called home again. Evie still hadn’t shown up there. And his mother was getting edgy. She wanted to know what was going on. The kids were starting to ask questions.
“I’ll be home soon, Mom. Please. Don’t worry them.”
“Is there something to worry about?”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Never mind,” Darla said gently. “You do what you have to do. I’ll take care of things here.”
He thanked her and hung up. Then he stared into space for a moment or two, his nerves humming like high-tension wires. He hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do next.
Nellie, he thought.
He hadn’t called Nellie. And he should. Nellie came here a few times a week, from what Evie said. She might know something. It was even possible that Evie was with Nellie now.
Erik dialed the number.
Nellie answered after two rings. “Nellie Anderson speaking.”
“Hello, Nellie. It’s Erik.”
There was a deadly pause, then she said, “Yes, what is it?” as if he were some stranger, a salesman trying to sell her something she’d already explained she had no use for.
He tamped down a flash of anger. She was so damn selfrighteous. She would never change.
He made himself speak reasonably. “I’m looking for Evie. Have you seen her today?”
“No.”
He didn’t know whether he felt relief that he could hang up now—or despair that the last person he could think of to call knew no more about where his wife might be than he did.
“I don’t understand,” Nellie said. “Is she all right?”
He answered more sharply than he should have. “How would I know? No one’s seen her since two this afternoon, from what I’ve found out so far.”
“Oh, dear,” Nellie said.
“Listen, I have go now.”
“Wait.”
The urgency in her voice stopped him. “What?”
“I don’t know if it matters, but—”
“Tell me.”
“Yes. All right. About two hours ago, around four-thirty. I dropped by the shop.”
“And?”
“It was closed, that’s all. And that surprised me, since Evie never closes until five. Also, when I looked in the window, I couldn’t see Evie, but all the lights were on. It seemed odd.” Nellie paused, then added, “I suppose it doesn’t mean anything, but I just thought you should know.”
He turned the information over in his mind. Evie hadn’t been in the shop at four-thirty. Wherever she was now, it appeared she’d been gone for at least two hours.
“Erik? Are you still there?”
“Yeah. Listen. Thanks. I have to go.”
“Erik.”
“What?”
“Will you please call me, when you discover where she’s gone? I…I will worry. Until then.”
“Yes,” Erik said, his own voice gentling in response to the hesitancy in hers. “Of course.”
“Thank you.”
Erik hung up quickly then, trying not to think that Nellie’s Thank you sounded tiny and lost, exactly the same as the Thank you she had uttered a year ago, when he’d called to tell her that Carolyn was dead.
Still trying to figure out if there was anything he hadn’t thought of, Erik walked around the shop a little.
Everything seemed to be in order. It all looked just as it should—except for a certain emptiness; a feeling that the heart had gone out of the place.
And it had. Because Evie was the heart. Without her, this store that his daughters thought of as magical was nothing but a jumbled bunch of odds and ends. From the carnival glass collection to the display bed with all the stuffed animals on it, it needed Evie to make it come alive.
Just as he needed her…
Erik cut off the self-indulgent thought before it could go farther. There had to be some perfectly logical explanation for this. Evie had gone somewhere in a hurry, that was all—somewhere he simply hadn’t thought of yet. And as soon as she got home tonight, all the questions that kept nagging him would be answered.
Once she walked in the door and he’d wrapped his arms around her and hugged her good and hard, they were going to sit right down together and have a long talk. Before that talk was over, he’d get some satisfaction about where she’d disappeared to for half the afternoon.
The minute Erik stepped in the front door, the kids were on him, wanting to know where Evie was. He told them he wasn’t sure; they’d have to wait till she got home and she’d tell them all.
Darla had made dinner. They sat down to eat as soon as Erik had cleaned up. Then Darla went home and Erik spent a couple of hours with Pete, trying to learn how to play Space Death on the new computer. Pete slaughtered him at the game. Pete had all the experience at it, after all—and Erik had a little trouble keeping his mind on the survival of his own personal fleet of intergalactic ships. He kept worrying about Evie, waiting for the sound of the gate opening out front, listening for the tapping of her shoes on the porch steps.
At a little past nine, Erik put the kids to bed, tucking each one of them in, even Pete, who usually considered himself grown beyond tucking in. He noticed, when Becca’s turn came, that she cradled the stuffed chipmunk she called Chippy in her plump arms. The toy was one he’d allowed Evie to give her when Evie had said she’d be his wife.
In Jenny’s room, he found his older daughter clutching the princess from the snow globe. Jenny had received the princess when Becca got her precious Chippy.
Erik made no remarks to either child about the toys. He knew why they were holding them so tightly. He secretly wished he had some small talisman from Evie to clutch close to his own heart, until she returned to him.
Darla called right after he got the kids to bed.
“Is she home yet?”
“No.”
“I’ll be right over,” Darla said.
Erik didn’t argue. He wanted to go back over to Wishbook and look around some more.
When he got to the store again, he turned on some lights and went upstairs. He let himself into the apartment and walked through each room, calling her name, expecting no answer, really. And getting none.
He tried the storeroom next and found it full of things Evie wasn’t using downstairs right then, but no sign at all of Evie herself.
Once back downstairs, he went to the old rocker in the corner near the children’s books. He sat, leaned his head back on the back rail and wondered for the thousandth time where his wife was—and if she was all right.
He rocked for a moment, the slight creaking sound of the runners on the wood floor vaguely comforting. And then he stopped rocking.
There was no sense in stalling anymore. He knew what he had to do next.
He rose and went to the register counter. He got out the phone book and looked up Jack Roper’s number. Jack Roper was Oggie Jones’s oldest son, a son Oggie hadn’t even known existed until a couple of years ago. Being Oggie’s kin made Jack family; he was Evie’s cousin and half brother to Amy’s husband, Brendan.
Jack was also a deputy over at the sheriff’s station.
Jack told Erik to sit tight, he’d meet him right there, at the store.
Jack arrived fifteen minutes after Erik had hung up the phone. He asked a lot of questions. Erik told him everything he knew and explained how he’d called everyone he could think of in town, looking for someone who might know where Evie had gone.
“Erik, was anything bothering her recently?” Jack wanted to know.
“Like what?”
“Did the two of you have some kind of an argument in the past few days?”
“No.”
“Is there something going on between you that might have made her want to get away for a while?”
Erik’s first reaction to that question was anger. He quelled it. Jack was just trying to find out what was really going on here. “No. I don’t think so. She seemed happy today. She’s always gotten along great with the girls, but she’d finally found something to get through to Pete.”
“What?”
“She bought a computer. She and Pete and Pete’s friends drove down to Sacramento today to get it. And Pete was all excited about it. I could hardly pry him away from it to get him to bed tonight.”
“So there were no problems, between the two of you?”
“Hell, Jack. Sure, we have problems.”
“Like what?”
“We…we argue about money sometimes. And I think she pushes herself too hard. Sometimes I get on her about that. She’s had a cold she can’t shake for two weeks now, and I think it’s mostly because she just won’t slow down.”
“But is there anything that might make her run off out of nowhere?”
Erik answered with conviction. “No. As far as I know, there’s nothing like that, I swear it.”
“Okay, then,” Jack said. He thought for a moment. “She has a couple of sisters, right? They came to your wedding. Nevada and—?”
“Faith.” Erik supplied the other name.
“Have you called them about this?”
“Not yet.” Erik rubbed his eyes. “I keep thinking she’s going to turn up any minute.”
“I understand.” Jack’s voice was gentle. “And she probably will. But it’s almost ten now. Eight hours since Tawny left her here for the day. I think it’s time you contacted the sisters. Tell them that she’s been gone for several hours and ask if they’ve heard from her, or if they know anything about where she might be.”
“All right.”
“And what about her mother and father?”
“Deceased?”
“Yeah. She never talks about them much.”
Jack nodded. His dark eyes, which were such a strange contrast to his white-blond hair, looked sad. “Sometimes there’s not much to say. About the past.”
Erik gave no response to that. He didn’t agree. He’d told Evie everything of his past and he’d wanted to know everything of hers. But she had secrets she insisted on keeping.
Could it be that her disappearance now had something to do with those secrets?
Jack said, “Look. Go on back home. Call Evie’s sisters. If you learn anything that sheds any light on this, give me a call at my place. Otherwise, call me in the morning.”
“And then?”
“We’ll go over to the station and fill out a missing persons report, get her description out to all the law enforcement agencies.”
“And that’s all?”
Jack sighed. “Erik. There are no signs of a struggle here. Her purse is gone, there’s money in the till and you say the store was closed when you discovered she was missing.”
“But all the lights were on. The back door was open.”
“I know. I hear you. But it still appears as if she walked out of here of her own accord.”
“But she left her van. Why would she leave her van?”
“Look. I think you’re right. Something’s fishy. But to mount any kind of a major search for her, I’m going to have to justify it to a lot of people who don’t know her. And they’re going to tell me that she’s a grown woman who closed up her store and left without telling her husband where she was going. They’re going to veto any requests I make about spending taxpayers’ dollars looking for her until we have more to go on than we do now.”
Erik opened his mouth to keep arguing—and then shut it. What could he say? Jack’s reasoning was sound.
So he went back to the house and sent Darla home. Then he called Faith and Nevada.
His conversations with Evie’s sisters left him feeling worse than ever. Each sounded worried and acted closemouthed. And when he tried to push them as to what they were hiding from him, each of them insisted she didn’t know what he was talking about, then asked that he call as soon as he had any news.
He hung up from both of those conversations feeling misled and unsatisfied. By then, it was nearing eleven. He went upstairs, thinking he might try to get some sleep.
But one glance into the room he usually shared with his wife was enough to put an end to that idea. He’d never fall asleep in their bed tonight without her beside him.
So he went to his studio. There, the portrait he’d painted of her hung on the wall opposite his drawing table. He found himself staring at it, looking into those brandycolored eyes, a hundred questions chasing themselves around in his head.
Where are you?
Are you all right?
Sweet God, why don’t you call?
He remembered what Jack had said, how there was no way they could mount a search for her unless they had some evidence of foul play.
And he remembered the way both Nevada and Faith had seemed to be hiding something.
From the painting, Evie looked down at him, smiling that beautiful, mysterious smile of hers.
He couldn’t look at it for one minute more. Though he knew it was childish of him, he marched right up to it, took it down and set it on the floor facing the wall.
Then he went to his worktable and picked up a pallet and a brush. He approached a painting he’d been working on the night before, of a high mountain meadow in summer. The painting was nearly done. When it was, he would take it to Sam Fletcher’s store in hopes of a sale. For a few minutes he dabbed at the thing halfheartedly with the brush, trying to finish it up.
But his heart wasn’t in it. His mind kept returning to thoughts of Evie.
He couldn’t help thinking of the nightmares she’d been having the past couple of weeks, the ones she always insisted she couldn’t remember. Every time she’d had one, she’d sworn they meant nothing at all.
He hadn’t believed her. But he hadn’t pushed her to reveal more than she was willing to. As each moment ticked by now, he felt more and more certain he should have pushed her.
Erik set the pallet and brush aside. He dropped to the couch and stared at the painting, not really seeing it.
The questions kept playing themselves, in a loop, through his head.
Where are you?
Are you all right?
Sweet God, why don’t you call?
Eventually, with a despairing sigh, he stretched out as best he could on the too-small couch. He stared blindly at the painting and waited for sleep, not really expecting it to come, thinking of all the questions never asked—all the answers never offered…