The tail end of the lunch hour meant the tables and counter at the luncheonette were crowded with patrons whose meals were finished and whose checks were waiting to be paid. Tom was in his usual spot, nursing a cup of coffee and grappling with the crossword. I spent a few moments talking with him, confirming he and Terry had no plans for the later afternoon. When at last a table opened, I snapped it up without waiting for the dishes to be bused.
Sipping an ice water with lemon and waiting for my lunchtime appointment to arrive, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number for the vet.
I listened to the phone ring on the other end and reviewed the calculations in my head. Friday had been in their care for over five hours. If the surgery took less than half an hour, as I’d been told it would, then my cat must be recovering, right?
The woman who finally picked up the call sounded like answering the phone was the ultimate inconvenience. When I told her I was checking up on my cat and gave my name, she told me to wait while she checked and put me on hold.
While I listened to the local soft rock station playing on the vet’s phone hold, in walked the man I was meeting for lunch.
He dropped his notebook on the table before he slid into the booth. “Georgia,” he said.
I tapped the “End Call” icon on my phone and set the device facedown on the table. “Thanks for meeting me, Detective.”
“I could hardly resist the curiosity,” he said. “And I’ve asked you to call me by my name.”
“I know.” I lifted a shoulder. “But this is sort of an official kind of meeting. I thought I’d keep it professional.”
“Are you going to try and sell me a stained glass night-light?”
“Not my business,” I said. “Yours.”
He blew a noisy breath through his nose. “That much I guessed when you called.”
A pair of menus landed on the end of the table. Grace pulled an order pad from her apron pocket. “Something to drink while you decide, Detective?”
“Coffee,” he said, and he lifted one of the menus to hand back. “That will be all.”
“Georgia?” Grace said. “Coffee?”
“I’ll stick with the water,” I said. I peered at Detective Nolan as I eased the remaining menu closer to me.
“I’ll get the coffee.”
When Grace moved on to the next table, I opened the menu as though I intended to search for something to order, but I looked at Nolan. “Did Diana happen to mention why I wanted to talk to you?”
“Davis is in the house today,” he said. “She’s on paperwork. I haven’t seen her.”
“Let me see if I have this. I’m supposed to call you Chris instead of Detective Nolan but you’re going to continue to refer to Diana as Davis?”
One side of his mouth rose in a quick grin. “It’s a professional thing.”
“Fine,” I said. “You said you guessed it was business when I called.” In the library of suppressed memories, the recollection of him inviting me to dinner stirred. Sitting opposite him, just the two of us alone—in essence—since that night, I began to wonder . . .
“So why don’t you tell me what you’ve discovered about your missing friend, and I’ll tell you what we’ve discovered, if I can.”
I gave a half laugh. “What makes you think I’ve discovered anything?” Or that Diana hadn’t already shared what the police know, for that matter?
“Really?” he asked. “You’re going to try pretending you haven’t been conducting your own personal investigation?”
I sighed. “You’re right. Okay. You’re right about that, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”
Grace strode to the table, plunked down a porcelain cup—empty. She held a carafe of coffee above the cup and glared at Nolan. “You want coffee?”
The detective glanced at her. “Please.”
“How bad do you want this coffee?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not pouring this coffee until you tell me what you’re doing to find my friend,” she said.
He looked to her with what I knew to be his most sincere expression. “We’re doing everything we can.”
Grace huffed. “That’s what my niece keeps saying.”
“I don’t think I could tell you anything that Da—Diana hasn’t already,” he said around a grimace.
“That’s what I was afraid of.” She poured his coffee then, displeasure turning down the corners of her mouth. “What are you having, Georgia?”
“Oh.” I shook my head, rattling the marbles in my brain, and lifted the menu. “I haven’t looked, I—”
Nolan laid his fingers against the top of the menu and gently pushed down. “Would you mind? Could you not order until after I leave?”
“Are you serious? I asked you to meet me for lunch. I haven’t eaten.”
“Please. I’d appreciate it.”
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“Georgia.”
Grace huffed, turned away. “I’ll be back.”
“Okay, seriously,” I said. “What is the problem with me eating? I assure you I have top-notch table manners. I never even slurp my soup.”
“It’s a personal issue.” He lifted the coffee cup straight from the end of the table to his lips and took a gulp that had to be painfully hot.
“Of course it is, but what is it?”
He shook his head. “Personal.”
That little memory in the back of my head popped up to ask what the man intended when he invited me to dinner. Would there have even been a meal involved?
But a surprising realization rolled through my mind. It didn’t matter what might have been. And it didn’t matter what Nolan’s reasons were behind his food avoidance. They were his personal issues. I didn’t need to know them.
Of course, I was still hungry.
“All right, since I need information and I’m starving, let’s make this quick. What’s going on with the investigation into David Rayburn’s murder?”
“Death.” He shook his head. “Not my case.”
“According to Di— Davis, it’s Webb’s case and you and Webb are good friends.” For all I knew, they hung around not eating together. “You’re going to tell me you two cops have never discussed the case?”
Sighing, he sat back. “What do you need to know?”
“What’s your theory? I mean, what is the police department’s theory on why Rayburn was, um, possibly murdered?” I took several gulps of ice water. Maybe it would keep my stomach from collapsing in on itself from hunger. “Is there anything in his life, his history? Any enemies, debts?”
“Rayburn was an insurance rep for an outfit out of Connecticut. Traveled a lot, but his family have been in the county for, I don’t know, four or five generations. Folks we’ve spoken to say he’d never admit it but it looked like he was angling for a future in local politics.”
I nodded, showing I was following along. “And you think that would explain why he was involved with the group opposed to the promenade?”
“He was at the head of the group. He was in charge,” Nolan said. “So I’d say, yeah, that’s a fair bet.”
“Wait. So you think it was just posturing? Some staged crusade to raise his popularity with the residents?”
“Raise his popularity, I doubt it. Raise his profile? That’s where my money is.”
“Why would you doubt the popularity angle?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Not a whole lot of folks opposed to the promenade.”
This was news to me. The surprise clearly showed on my face, prompting Nolan to explain.
“You have a stretch of empty land, along the river no less, that no one’s making any use of. There’s no view because it’s all flat, and the houses that were there predate standard insulation and central heating. Development there is a step in the right direction. You’d almost have to be crazy to oppose it.”
“Or looking for personal visibility.”
He nodded and pointed at me, a wordless way of showing I was catching on.
“Okay, but if that’s all true, why would anyone kill—I mean—allegedly kill Rayburn? What’s to gain? For that matter, what was to gain by Rayburn’s protests anyway? The promenade was a done deal. The developers would be the most likely to want to silence Rayburn, but the ink was already dry on the building agreement. They had no need to keep Rayburn quiet.”
“Sums it right up,” Nolan said. “You can’t have murder without motive and Webb can’t find one.”
“Then why is it still an open case? It is open, isn’t it?”
He gave a sad sort of smile. “An otherwise healthy man dies suddenly after eating a specially made pastry. The coroner might have ruled the death as unexpected but most likely natural causes. Then the baker disappeared. That changed everything.”
“If Rozelle hadn’t vanished, Rayburn’s death would have been—”
“Tragic and unexpected but in the end not suspicious.” He took another deep drink of his coffee. “By the way, what did you think of him?”
“Who? Rayburn? I never met him.”
“I meant our coroner.”
There was no sense pretending, not with Nolan. “How did you know I met the coroner?”
He smiled, big, broad, and more than a little wolfish. “Not a lot gets by me.”
* * *
“Why do I have to be the dumb one?” Terry asked. I’d lost count of the number of times he had asked this question in different variations, making me wonder if perhaps he was pulling my leg. Wouldn’t it be just like a kidder to keep forgetting the answer to a question like that? But as we crossed the parking lot from my car to the glassed-in entrance of The Regency Assisted Living Complex, I got the sense there was something more going on than a poor attempt at humor or a case of rampant forgetfulness.
“Why are you so against this?” I asked. “You said this was a good plan. Why the change?”
Terry shuffled along next to me, his pace slowing with each step. “It is a good plan. It was better when you were going to get Pete to come with you.”
I, too, would have liked to have Grandy along but he apparently took my advice to heart and decided to get out of the house. There was no answer when I had phoned. I turned to Terry as a backup. Still . . . “Why is it better with Pete? You’re the one with experience pretending to be someone you’re not, Hank.”
“I have to go in there and pretend I’m looking for an old friend but can’t remember her last name,” he said. “They’re going to mistake me for a resident. They’re going to think I’m an Alzheimer’s patient who wandered off.”
“They’re not.” I slipped my arm through his, matched his reluctant pace. “They’re going to believe you’re my great-uncle Hank and I brought you to visit your old friend Dolores. Do you think you’re the first person who’s no good with names? I assure you, you are not. And I’m not talking about residents either.”
I kept a constant stream of chatter going, gently tugging him along through the sliding doors, through the glass-enclosed lobby, past the ring of wheelchairs gathered in front of a big-screen television, and to the horseshoe-shaped reception desk.
“Hi there.” I rested one elbow on the reception desk and held tight to Terry’s arm. “Do you think you can help us?”
The short-haired brunette behind the counter peered up at me over the rims of her half glasses. “What do you need, hon?”
“My great-uncle Hank here,” I said. Hey, if Terry could go around making up aliases without warning, so could I. “He’s just on his way back down to Florida for the winter and wanted to stop in and say hello to an old friend.”
The woman nodded and tugged a keyboard closer to her. “Uh-huh. Name?”
“Well, that’s the problem,” I said. “His friend’s name is Dolores—they were neighbors back in the day—but he, uh”—I leaned into the counter, moving that much closer to the receptionist, and whispered loudly—“he can’t remember her last name.” I gave her my best innocent smile, threw in a half shrug for good measure. “Of course, I told him that shouldn’t be a problem. I mean, how many women named Dolores could be living here, right?’
She tap-tapped away on the keyboard then tipped her head back so she was viewing the monitor through the bottom half of her glasses. “Uh, we have three.”
I felt my jaw lower as my brows rose. “Oh. Oh. Okay. Three.”
She grabbed a notepad from some hidden shelf. “I’ll write them down.”
“Thanks,” I said. I grinned at Terry, hoping the grin looked more confident than I felt. Three women named Dolores. What were the odds?
“This is where Dolores is?” he nearly shouted.
It took me a moment to pick up his cue. “Yes, Uncle Hank. We’ll see Dolores.”
“Well, what are we standing around for?” he demanded.
“Hold your horses there, Pop,” the receptionist said. She passed over the piece of paper on which she had written three names with a different number beside each. Sliding a log book from its spot beyond the computer monitor to directly in front of me, she said, “Just sign in for me. The elevators are past the television and to the right.”
Terry picked up the list of names while I used the worst handwriting ever to write our fake names in the visitors’ log.
Placing the pen back in the book’s gutter, I thanked the receptionist again then made a show of turning Terry toward the elevators.
When I reasoned we were both out of eyeshot and earshot of the receptionist, I let go of Terry’s arm and shrugged out of my jacket. “Okay, what is with the heat in here? Dang.” It wasn’t the kind of heat that made you sweat, not right away. It was the sort of heat that slowly suffocated you, dried the life out of you. The kind where any sweat that might gather on the surface of your skin instantly evaporated.
“Just wait. You’ll be old one day, too.” Terry punched the elevator “Up” button. “And you’ll be looking for a house in Florida.”
Rapid mental arithmetic allowed me to extrapolate his meaning. The older you get, the colder you get. And I was going to spend a winter in Grandy’s house. Suddenly unpacking all my sweaters, wool socks, and fleece pullovers seemed a waste of time.
We rode the elevator first to the fourth floor, where Dolores Number One had never heard of Rozelle Schurz and nearly broke my nose slamming the door in my face. One floor down and at the opposite end of a long hallway, Dolores Number Two peered at me through the gap created by a safety chain between door and jamb.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Um, hi, Dolores,” I said. “We’re friends of Rozelle Schurz’s and we’re looking—”
The door slammed shut.
I was, at least, prepared this time and had kept my distance from potential injury. Sighing, I turned to Terry. “Third time’s the charm,” I said. “Where next?”
But the clatter of the safety chain dropping announced the imminent reopening of the door.
No more than an inch shorter than I was, Dolores Number Two had short, rich red hair combed in neat waves and the smooth skin of someone who had spent their outdoor life beneath a sun hat.
“Is Rozie all right? Did something happen?” she asked.
I glanced to Terry; he swept a hand upward in a manner indicating the answer was up to me. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” I said. I laid a hand against my heart. “I’m Georgia Kelly. I’m Pete Keene’s granddaughter. Has Rozelle—”
Dolores’s face lit. “You’re Pete’s granddaughter.” She swung wide the door and stepped back to wave us inside. “Come in, come in. Oh, Rozie’s told me how Pete hardly stops talking about you.”
She seemed to suddenly catch sight of Terry. “Who’s that?”
Prepared to make the introductions, I ended up stepping back as Terry moved forward, smile on his face, twinkle in his eye, hand outstretched. “Terence Lister. Please call me Terry.” When Dolores rested her fingers against his palm, he lifted her hand as though to kiss it, but he stopped just short and gave a half bow. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
Why, the charming devil.
Dolores very nearly giggled as Terry released her hand. Smile slowly fading, she closed the door and invited us to sit.
“Now then,” she said. Tucking the tails of her pale pink cardigan under her, she lowered herself into a gold-and-cream-striped arm chair that sat at right angles to the gold-and-green couch on which Terry and I settled. “Tell me what happened to Rozie. Is she all right? She’s not . . .”
Again I glanced to Terry, not out of any sort of deference to his age or his supposed wisdom, but because for a moment I lost my nerve. I had not an inkling how to tell this woman that her friend was missing.
Terry proved to be no help whatsoever.
Letting out a breath, I slipped my fingers behind my knees and leaned forward. “The thing of it is, no one’s seen or heard from Rozelle since Saturday morning.” I waited, eyes on Dolores, to be sure she wouldn’t go into any sort of shock or distress. But she sat calmly. Only the shifting of her eyes belied the worry within. “We were wondering if the last time you saw her she mentioned anything about taking a trip or maybe going to visit her sister or . . .”
Dolores slowly shook her head. “She was here Friday,” she said. “We go out to dinner. The early-bird special.” She gave a soft laugh. “More so Rozie doesn’t have to drive back home in the dark.”
“Completely understandable,” Terry said. “It’s tough driving at night.”
“Did she maybe talk about any plans for the weekend?” I asked.
With a little grimace, she said, “What are the police doing? Are they looking for her? Why aren’t they here talking to me?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why they haven’t, um, gotten here yet. But they are looking, I can assure you of that.”
Dolores put her elbow on the armrest of her chair. Chin resting on her hand, she slumped over a little, as though she had suffered a sharp pain to the gut. She shook her head, gaze fixed on a random spot on the carpet. “She said . . . she said she was going to go home and . . . and call Pete because he worried about her driving and wanted to know she’d gotten back safe.”
“He calls it worry but it’s really because he likes to give orders.” I smiled, trying to bring her mood a little lighter. I imagined she’d made the call or Grandy would have mentioned if she hadn’t.
“She planned to go to the luncheonette in the morning and make fresh biscuits.”
“Oh, those biscuits.” Terry touched the tips of his fingers to his lips. “Delicious.”
“But she didn’t mention anything other than that. She did say she was disappointed she wouldn’t be seeing Pete, that his daughter is visiting?”
I nodded.
Dolores twisted around, straightening her spine while continuing to lean her elbow on the arm rest. “What about Rozie’s sister? Does she know? Has anyone spoken to her?”
“I haven’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t know how to contact her.”
“That’s something that really is best left to the police,” Terry said gently. “Her sister will have questions only the police can answer. But maybe you can be part of that talk.”
Quiet gripped the room as we each followed our own thoughts.
“Dolores,” I said, keeping my voice quiet, matching the hush in the room. “It looked to me like Rozelle had made cookies on Saturday and took half of them . . . somewhere. Would you have any idea if that was possible? Was she in the habit of bringing anyone cookies or pastries?”
Dolores pulled in a shaky breath. She gave me a quivering smile. “She used to bring those cookies here and I had to ask her to stop. I could go through a whole dozen in one sitting.”
I smiled in sympathy. “You ladies have any other friends here Rozelle might visit? Anyone still living in the neighborhood?”
She gave a half laugh. “No, just us diehards. The rest were wimps like her sister who couldn’t stand the cold. I doubt Rozelle drove off to Florida just to deliver cookies.”
With Terry’s help, the conversation turned to more general topics. We chatted awhile longer, talking of the upcoming season, of life in an assisted-living facility, and the benefits of having a pet.
Reminded once again that I had not heard from the vet, I slipped my phone free of my purse under the guise of checking the time when in reality I was checking to see if I had missed the call. I hadn’t. Nonetheless, the time proved alarming. “Goodness,” I said, dropping the phone back in my bag, “we’ve taken up quite a bit of your time. We should be getting back.”
I stood from the couch, eager to escape the room so I could call and check on Friday. “I can’t thank you enough, Dolores,” I said as we ambled toward the door. “You’ve been a big help.”
“I don’t see it quite that way,” she said.
“Nonsense,” Terry put in. “It was very kind of you to invite us into your home and answer our questions.”
“Well, it’s always nice to have a visitor. The days around here can be a little empty.”
Getting the uncomfortable feeling I was in danger of preventing some important flirting, I hustled a little faster for the door.
“You must have a hundred friends to fill your day with,” Terry said.
“Oh, if only that were so,” she said, only the slightest hint of sadness weighing her words. “But everyone’s so busy these days, trying to fit in so many things. Sometimes a quiet visit among friends gets pushed to the bottom of the list.”
I steeled myself and dug in my purse for my car keys. Staying for a good long visit would be a kind thing to do, but I was one of those people trying to fit a million things into her day. And one of them was finding Rozelle.
“Maybe you’d like to come for a visit another time?” Dolores suggested.
“Well now, that—”
“Oh, wait now. Hold on,” Dolores said. “I remember now.”
I turned my back to the door, fingers clutching my key ring.
“Rozie did say something. She said she was worried about the girl who works for her. She was going to call and see if she was all right. You should try talking to her.”
“To who?” I asked. “Nicole?”
“That’s the name,” Dolores said. “Nicole. Yes.”
I shook my head. “Nicole said she hadn’t heard from Rozelle since the shop closed.”
Dolores raised both neatly drawn-in brows. “I tell everyone I have no use for a man in my life,” she said. “Saying something doesn’t make it true.” Then she winked at Terry and I hurried out the door.
On our way down the hall to the elevator, I dialed the vet’s office. On the other end of the line, the phone rang, rang, rang. No one picked up.
I wanted the truth from Nicole and I wanted my cat.
And nothing was going to stop me.