TUESDAY AFTERNOON
Andre is riding shotgun; Kashi’s driving, so short her nose barely touches the top of the steering wheel, which would be humorous if not for the fact she’s goosing it on the switchbacks, making Erika dizzy in the back.
“Excuse me,” she asks, knocking on the Plexiglas, “but could you slow down? I’m getting carsick back here.”
Kashi meets her gaze in the rearview. “Almost there.”
Almost where? They’ve been driving for forty minutes. Now they’re on a service road in the Green Mountain National Forest, having just passed a sign marking a wilderness area. Erika has always thought of wilderness areas as thick, deep woods for hard-core hikers. No snowmobiles or ATVs allowed. Moose country.
To calm the butterflies in her stomach, she taps her collarbone, a trick she learned from her therapist. She wishes Andre would show her some mercy and slip her a hint of what’s going on. No doubt in his training he was taught to keep witnesses oblivious so their initial impressions wouldn’t be prejudiced by subliminal subjections, or some such police BS. Whatever, this journey of not knowing is torture, especially since Andre would have mentioned if he spoke to Robert and Holly.
Erika calculates it’s going on sixty hours since anyone’s heard from them. There are no comforting explanations remaining for why they’ve gone dark. If something’s happened to them that she could have prevented by sounding the alarm yesterday when she first became concerned, she’ll never forgive herself.
“Is this where we turn?” Kashi asks Andre.
He points to a yellow tape tied to a tree. “There.”
Kashi swings into a barely discernible pull off in the overgrown underbrush and kills the engine.
“Can you make it in those?” Andre asks, nodding to the pair of Holly’s thin leather driving loafers on Erika’s feet.
They’ll be trashed in the mud. The least of her problems, Erika thinks.
“Not like she has a choice,” Kashi says, brushing off her own sturdy boots. “Do you have a spare key? It might come in handy.”
Erika fishes through her bag with no luck. “Not on me. Robert has the original.”
Kashi and Andre lead the way. A set of tire tracks has forged a path through the dense vegetation, damp from the recent rain. Erika follows, stepping on logs and avoiding mucky boobytraps, head down. She doesn’t want to see the so-called scene. She wants to go back to her apartment and hide under the covers.
The cops quit walking and Erika looks up, her heart plummeting. The Kia’s listing to one side, its left tires flat, a gaping hole ringed by shards of glass where her rear window should have been.
“Oh, no,” she moans. She aches for it as though it were her own child beaten and abandoned in the woods. “Oh no!”
Andre says, “I’ll take that as a positive identification of your vehicle, then.”
She can’t speak. It’s awful. So violent. If this is the state of her car, she can’t bear to think about the state of its passengers. It makes her sick.
“A hiker found it this morning,” Kashi says, as Andre slides a thin rod down the window and breaks the lock. “Reported a suspicious vehicle. I assume this was not the condition in which you saw it last.”
The car is covered in leaves, dirt splattered along the sides. “No. This was not the condition in which I saw it last.”
“There’s glass all over here,” Andre cautions as they move closer. “You’ll cut your feet in those slippers.”
“Do you think Robert got carjacked?” she asks as Andre unlocked the door.
“Carjacked?” Kashi asks “What do you mean? Like held at gunpoint and forced to drive to this location?”
“Yes,” Erika says. “That’s exactly what I mean.” Was she missing something? Isn’t that the very definition of carjacking?
Andre clicks on a flashlight and inspects the interior, reading off the contents of the car. “Bottle of Diet Coke in the cupholder. A couple of unopened bills on the passenger’s seat. A pen. Lots and lots of glass.”
“If they were headed to Montreal, is it possible they might have taken a train? Now, I usually hop on the Adirondack in Whitehall ’cause that way you don’t have to cross the lake, but they could have picked it up as far north at Rouses Point if all they were trying to avoid was that never-ending road construction in Montreal,” Kashi suggests. “If they left the Kia in Whitehall, then this vehicle might have been stolen from there and dumped here. The station’s only an hour away.”
Erika brightens. She hadn’t considered the train. Robert wouldn’t have wanted to leave his pricey Tesla in a strange area, but he wouldn’t have thought twice about ditching the Kia in an unsecured lot. “He didn’t mention a train, but it was all very last minute. Do you think that’s what happened?”
“There are no visible signs of foul play. No blood. No signs of a struggle. No tracks leading from here to deeper in the woods. We’ve done a thorough search of the immediate area,” Kashi says. “It’ll be easy enough to check if they purchased tickets.”
“They might have used pseudonyms.”
“Why would they use pseudonyms?” Kashi asks.
“For privacy? They’re in this online property rehab contest, a really popular show called To the Manor Build. They have hundreds of thousands of followers. Robert and Holly are on their honeymoon. They wouldn’t want to be pestered.”
Kashi writes this down.
“This is interesting.” Andre is holding a plain, brown cardboard box. “Yours?”
“No,” Erika says, warily. “What’s in it?”
He holds up a length of rope. “This and these,” he says, fisting a handful of plastic zip ties.
They look so sinister, a sour sensation rises in her throat. “Gross.”
“And one knife.” Andre’s latex-gloved hand pinches a folded knife with a wood veneer. “Also not yours?”
Her mind is swimming with hideous images. Rope. Zip ties. Knife? It’s like a serial killer’s emergency prep kit. “I’ve never seen any of this stuff in in my life. What would I do with a knife and a rope and zip ties?”
Kashi says, “I don’t know. What would you do?”
Erika’s confused. Surely, they don’t think she’s lying. “These aren’t mine. That’s the truth. I don’t know whose they are.”
“Could they have belonged to Robert and Holly Barron?” Kashi regards her with that weird unblinking stare.
What was she suggesting? “No! Absolutely not. Robert and Holly aren’t like that.”
“Then who do they belong to?”
“Whoever stole the car?” Erika suggests. “That seems the most logical explanation.”
Unless . . .
Andre sets the box on the trunk, clicking on his light as he inspects the rear through the broken window. “Actually, it appears our earlier assessment was incorrect, Trooper Kashi. Is this blood?” Andre shines his light on a dark red patch in the corner behind the driver’s seat.
Both women peer inside and for one horrific, nauseating moment, Erika leaps to the same conclusion. That is until she spies the silver case glinting under Andre’s light and she goes weak in the knees.
“Not blood,” she says, light headed with relief. “Candied Tomatoes.”
“Candied tomatoes?” Andre frowns.
“A shade of lipstick called Candied Tomatoes by Florasis. Cost me forty-nine bucks. Must have fallen out of my purse and then with the car closed and the sun . . .”
“I hate when that happens,” chimes in Kashi, letting her cop mask slip.
Andre shakes his head. “We should have it towed to the barracks regardless. Have it swabbed and dusted. Do an odometer reading . . .”
That’s when she remembers something that might be helpful that won’t require her to violate her employer’s privacy. “This car’s leased, you know,” she blurts. “The company that owns it might have a tracking program installed. Like, they know how many miles I’m putting on it and when’s the next oil change. They might be able to tell you where it’s been and when it got here.”
“Good thinking,” says Kashi. “Meanwhile, do you have any contact information for Robert and Holly Barron?” Kashi flips to another page in her small spiral notebook. “The name of the hotels they’re staying in in Montreal or Airbnb?”
“No idea.”
Kashi lifts her pen. “Pardon?”
“We’ve been trying to reach both of them for a couple of days. We assumed they were on their honeymoon and wanted to be alone so we’ve been trying not to worry. Robert said he’d be back by tomorrow at the latest. Or maybe Thursday. But he didn’t leave any forwarding information.”
“When was the last you spoke to either Mr. or Mrs. Barron?” Kashi asks, a wrinkle of concern forming between her brows.
“Since after midnight on Saturday. I was probably the last person to see Robert when he came by my apartment then to ask if he could switch cars. My Kia for his Tesla.”
“Midnight Sunday or midnight Saturday?”
Erika has always had trouble with that one. “Midnight Saturday. A few hours after his wedding.”
“To Holly?”
“Yes, to Holly.” What does she think?
Kashi pauses from her rapid note-taking. “You said you were the last one to see him? How do you know?”
Erika doesn’t like the way Kashi asked that, as if she suspects her of lying. “I’m not certain I was the last. I’m just not aware of anyone else who’s seen them since.”
Kashi waits a beat and then says, “And there’s been no contact since. No texts from them. No email. Not one phone call.”
“That’s correct. Which is strange, I have to say, because this is the last week before the big reveal on To the Manor Build. There’re a lot of decisions to be made and scenes to shoot. Before he left, Robert said he’d be reachable by phone or text, but that hasn’t been the case. No one’s been able to reach them.”
“Not even friends or family?”
“I spoke to Robert’s father yesterday morning. He hadn’t heard from him. As for Holly’s mom, I spoke to her yesterday evening. She hasn’t had contact, but, in fairness, my impression is they’re not that close.”
“I see.” Kashi flips to a new page. “You have their contact info, though.”
“Not with me, but I can get it to you.”
“That would be useful. Also, any business associates.”
“You might want to talk to LuAnn, the producer in LA. She’s always emailing them and I know she’s been concerned.”
Kashi finally blinks. “Rightly so.”
Andre quits snapping photos of the scene and joins his partner. “Why didn’t you file a missing person’s report?”
There’s a hint of reproach in his question that pricks Erika’s conscience, making her feel simultaneously guilty and annoyed. It’s so like Andre to take advantage of the situation to pin some sort of blame on her, and she can’t resist shooting back, “I didn’t know I had to file a missing person’s report because a forty-year-old real estate investor on his honeymoon didn’t check in with his assistant.”
Kashi’s lips twitch in a snicker. “Is there any other information you can provide that’d be helpful?”
The threatening letters in the bottom of Robert’s drawer. Holly’s and Robert’s passports which she found while pawing through their personal belongings. Erika keeps pulling on her fingers, unsure what to do. Now would be the time to tell the police everything. Her car’s been trashed and found containing restraints and a knife. Robert and Holly are unaccounted for.
Erika has a horrible image of Zeke with a gun pressed to Robert’s or Holly’s temple forcing the other to drive, him ranting and raving about their stealing his house. They might still be alive. He might have them tied up, perhaps holding them for ransom. Then again, she doesn’t know for certain Zeke sent the letters, but if she turns them over to the police, that would be their job to determine.
Robert would be livid if his hidden correspondence was made public without his permission. What was it his father said? Something about Barrons not running to the police with their private business. Guess that must be true, since she wouldn’t know about the letters’ existence—or the passports, either—if she hadn’t been snooping.
Besides, Erika would rather not have to admit that while her employers were away she was violating their privacy. Not only would that reflect poorly on her, but Robert and Holly would dismiss her immediately without offering to write her a recommendation. And Robert did say they’d be back tomorrow, so better she should stay the course and wait for them to return as scheduled. That’s what he’d want her to do.
“Not at the moment,” Erika lies. “But I promise to let you know if anything comes up.”