CHAPTER TEN

THE temperature had dropped even lower when she left the cafe, and snowflakes, whipped by the wind into mad frenzy, whirled around her exposed face with malicious intent. As she opened the pickup door, the side mirror reflected a black scarecrowlike figure with flapping coattails dart around the corner of an office building across the street and disappear down the driveway. Oh hell, what now? She slammed the door, crossed the street and tromped down the driveway to a small parking lot.

Four parked cars sat there gathering snow; there was no figure, either scarecrow or human. Apparently, Sophie could disappear at will. Movement behind the shrubs along the back of the building caught her eye.

“Sophie?”

Agitated trembling of the shrubs, and the old woman rose through the froth of snow like a spirit from the vasty deep. The long black coat covered her from her chin to the toes of her laced boots; the black watch cap covered forehead and ears. Only her cheeks and sharp nose were visible and red from the cold. She carried an orange-and-yellow tapestry bag that bulged and weighed heavy on her arm.

“What’s in there, Sophie?”

The bag roiled. Sophie clutched it to her chest and the churning increased. “Ha. My knitting. Excuse me, I need to find my nephew.”

Bloody hell. Sophie had somebody’s cat in the bag. Probably something ought to be done about it. Susan had promised to uphold and enforce. And she used to laugh when Daniel came home fuming about Sophie and spending half his time with irate people and their damn cats.

“There he is,” Sophie said, and called, “Brenner!”

Coming up the driveway, emerging from the falling snow like the hero in a movie, was a man in a tan overcoat. The theme song from The Third Man came to mind and she wondered why, all of a sudden, everything reminded her of old movies.

Up close, he looked like a hero, blond hair blown by the wind in disarray across a high forehead, a clean-cut face and an air of city polish.

“This is Dan’s widow,” Sophie said with a crafty look. “Our new chief of police.”

Brenner Niemen regarded her with surprised pleasure, as though she were the very person he wanted to meet. He smiled. Oh yes, very handsome indeed.

“Haven’t seen him for ten years,” Sophie said with asperity. “My own nephew, and I’d never even have recognized him. Too busy to visit his old auntie.” Growls and grumblings came from the orange-and-yellow tapestry flouncing around under her arm.

“Sophie,” he said. “Give me the bag.”

She scowled. “You’re interfering.”

He held out his hand. With a hiss of resentment, she relinquished it. As he opened it, a highly indignant white cat shot out, raking his hand in launching a jump. Swearing, he dropped the bag. The cat streaked across the parking lot.

“You ought to be more careful.” Sophie bent to snatch up the bag. “I have to get home. This storm’s going to be a bad one.” She marched off, black coat fluttering around her ankles.

Brenner watched her with a harried look. “Probably going after the damn cat again.” Taking a handkerchief from his back pocket, he held it against his bloody hand. “I feel guilty as hell for being away so long. I had no idea Sophie had deteriorated so much. I don’t know what I’m going to do about her.” He smiled a rueful, appealing smile.

She felt herself smiling back.

“The cats are one thing,” he said. “Then there’s her habit of wandering around by herself, anywhere, any time of the day or night. She’s an old lady,” he said with exasperation. “I’m terrified she’s going to hurt herself.”

“I can appreciate the problem. Are you staying long?”

“As long as I can. I only planned a quick trip down and back. I’ve got a business deal that needs attention.”

“Where do you live?”

“I move around a lot. Right now, Kansas City. You must be cold standing here, and I’d better go find Sophie before she gets into more trouble.”

He led her across the street to Daniel’s truck.

“What business are you in?” she asked.

“Oh, I do a little bit of everything,” he said lightly. “Anything that might turn into money.” Then he sobered. “Any word on Lucille?”

“How did you know I was looking for her?”

“Sophie told me.” He opened the truck door for her. “I’m very sorry about Dan.”

“Did you know him?”

“In a place this size,” he said with a small smile, “everybody knows everybody.”

She got in the truck and, with a murmur of nice-meeting-you, he strode away through the falling snow. From the side window, she watched him, a veritable picture of a man worried about an elderly relative, worried about the difficulties she posed, worried about what she was doing at this moment.

Why this squirmy, uneasy feeling that something had slipped by that she should have noticed? Probably just this lousy cold. She shook her head, pushed the heater to high, switched on the windshield wipers and mushed off to find Bess Greeley.

Five miles outside of town, the small white frame house sat just off a narrow road. Bess opened the door with a big smile of welcome. She was a large-boned, stout woman with brownish hair and wore a loose red-and-blue flowered dress that zipped up the front. She had a cast on her right leg. “Come in, come in. Would you look at that snow? You must be near froze. Come in.”

Awkwardly, she maneuvered herself with crutches into the living room. “I’m just so pleased you came. I’m downright tired of my own company. Now you just sit right down over there, right by the furnace and warm yourself up.”

Susan sat on the dark green couch with lace doilies across the back and arms. Doilies were everywhere, ruffled and starched under table lamps, flat on chair arms and the top of the upright piano covered with framed photos. It reminded her of Grandmother Donovan’s living room, crowded with too much large furniture, knickknacks and family snapshots everywhere. Even the plaster religious icons seemed the same. Her grandmother’s had always terrified her as a child.

“Well now, what can I get you? A cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“A nice hot cup of chicken broth. I just made some fresh. Just the thing. Warm you right up. Are you sure? Won’t take a minute.”

“No, no, I—”

“Wouldn’t want you to catch your death. I’ll just turn up that old floor furnace a little. Not like central heating, I know, but it does the job.”

“No, no,” Susan said again quickly as Bess started toward the thermostat. “I’m fine, thank you. Really.”

“Are you sure you’re warm enough?”

“Quite sure.” In fact, too warm. She was barely able to survive outdoors, but inside, she’d found, everybody kept their homes too hot for her comfort. She was accustomed to less heat and much more moisture content in the air.

Bess dropped heavily, with a breathless whoosh, into the overstuffed green chair by the window, propped the crutches against the side and used both hands to lift her leg onto the footstool. “Can you imagine anyone being so clumsy?” She slapped the cast. “I fell on my own front steps, slipped on the ice and went rolling all the way down. I thought I was gone for sure.”

“Your niece Phyllis mentioned you had seen Lucille’s car.”

“Well, I have, you know. My goodness, where do you suppose that young lady is? With this leg of mine, I have trouble sleeping and I sit right here so I can look out the window. Not that there’s anything to see most times, but I look at the stars and the moon and sometimes the night creatures go by, owls and foxes, you know. That’s how I come to notice her car.”

“Did you see it Monday night?”

“Monday … no-o, no, not Monday.”

“When did you see it?”

Bess rubbed her chin with thumb and forefinger. “Three weeks ago today that I fell. Doctor says I have three more weeks to go with this fool cast. So it would be three, four days after that I started having trouble sleeping.”

She laughed. “First few nights, no problem. Pills, you know, but a body can’t take pills all her life. Goodness gracious, I’d turn into one of those drug addicts. Then where would I be? I have a business to tend to. I don’t know about those girls. They’re good girls, of course, but—”

“How often did you see Lucille drive past?”

“Oh dear now, let me see. Maybe two or three times. What could she have been up to?”

“You never asked her?”

“Well, I didn’t, you know. I didn’t see her to talk to. It’s hard for me to get out much with this confounded leg.”

Susan asked if Bess had seen Lucille on January seventh or fifteenth, the two dates on the cassette tape.

Bess wasn’t very clear on dates. She might have. On the other hand, it might have been the day before or the day after, or maybe some other day entirely.

“But it’s odd, you know,” Bess said. “Always so late I’d see her, two or three in the morning sometimes. And once, maybe on the fifteenth, around there, I saw that nephew of Sophie’s.”

“Brenner? You recognized him?”

“Well, no, not to say recognized, but I saw a car I didn’t know and I heard he was coming to visit, so it must have been him.”

Couldn’t have been, Susan thought. He hadn’t arrived until yesterday, the nineteenth.

“About time, too,” Bess was saying. “Can you imagine? All those years, treating Sophie like that, and her like a mother to him. I just don’t know about young people these days.”

“This car was following Lucille?”

“Oh, I don’t think anything like that. I saw her go by and then a while later I saw this other car. Of course, Lucille knows him. Or did, anyway. He used to work for her father, but that was a long time ago. I can’t remember exactly how many years. My goodness, it must be ten or twelve. How time goes. And used to be I could remember all these details, but my memory just isn’t what it was.”

She smiled. “But there now, I guess I’m getting on just like everybody else. There was some kind of trouble.”

“Trouble with what?”

“About Brenner when he worked for Otto. I don’t know what it was. Otto never spoke of it and Brenner never said. Nobody knows. Only that he was fired and wasn’t to ever go back.”

“You’re sure you didn’t see Lucille last Monday night?”

“Well, I didn’t, no. But then I wasn’t watching Monday. I got a blessed night’s sleep. She might have driven by. I wondered, you see, where she could possibly be going. That’s a road doesn’t really lead anywhere. Well, of course, Vic Pollock’s out that way. But surely she wouldn’t be going there in the middle of the night, would she? He has a new car, you know.”

“Who?”

“Vic. Big black thing.”

Bess rambled on contentedly and Susan interrupted to ask how she could find Vic Pollock’s farm. Bess obliged with detailed directions and numerous digressions.

*   *   *

SUSAN drove for miles, past empty fields with barbed wire fencing and bare trees, headlights barely able to penetrate the gauzy curtain of billowing snow, without seeing a house or a barn or even a mailbox. Already, snow covered the road and obscured the shoulders. She hoped Aunt Bess hadn’t left out a vital part of the directions.

At the next crossroad, she turned right and spotted the glowing red taillights of a car some distance ahead. Increasing her speed slightly, she pulled close enough to make out a large, black car. Vic Pollock? Well, good, a little piece of luck. All she had to do was follow.

He turned left, right, left and two more rights. She did the same, leaning forward with her eyes glued on the taillights so she wouldn’t lose him.

Suddenly, he sped up and slewed through turns. The truck fishtailed as she rounded corners to stay with him. What kind of idiot would drive like that in weather like this?

His taillights swung left. She came around and hit a patch of ice. The back wheels slid. She tapped the brakes gently and turned into the skid.

The truck skated to the edge of the ditch and hung there. She pressed the accelerator. The motor strained. The truck teetered, almost pulled out, then with a fast lurch the rear end slid and the truck dropped backward and down eight feet into the ditch.

She bounced, struck her head and swore. The front wheels were just below the shoulder of the road, the headlights aimed upward like searchlights. Swearing again, she turned off the lights and ignition, and watched the windshield rapidly become opaque. She rubbed her forehead.

Well, Daniel, now look what you’ve gotten me into.

With the heater off, cold seeped in quickly and she listened to the wind howl. Dammit, she’d have to radio for help. She reached for the mike, then stopped, dropped her hand, and let her head fall back.

Oh Lord. She pulled in a long breath.

She had no idea where she was. She had not kept track of those turns, left and right. It hadn’t been necessary. As long as she was mobile, she could head the truck generally in the right direction and sooner or later she’d get to town.

Well, she wasn’t mobile, knew only vaguely where she was, and a blizzard raged around her. She was lost, lost in the wilds of Kansas. A giggle rose in her throat. Out here where there was a road every mile, absolutely straight and true, north–south, east–west, one-mile intervals, laid out like a checkerboard, and she was lost.

She was to call and inform the citizens of Hampstead that their police chief not only couldn’t find a killer and a missing woman, but couldn’t find her way home either?

No. She’d stay here and freeze to death.