“I’m starting to feel like Dorothy in that Wizard of Oz tornado,” Jace told Mitch as they flew out of the calm, sunny eyewall of the storm into fierce winds again. “Lexi made me watch it—twice. Can’t wait to see her again, though I’m going to put the skids on seeing any of her movies more than once. Besides, that Wicked Witch in it still scares her.”
“Can’t quite picture having kids,” Mitch told him through their headsets. They had been talking on task for hours and had completed their mission—except for getting this big plane and crew home safely. They were both exhausted but still in battle alert mode. After all the new jargon with their scientist crew, it felt good to let down a bit.
Mitch went on. “Man, I hope the predictions of a busier than usual hurricane season are wrong. What if one hits when Kris and I are supposed to get married?”
“Don’t even think that, because that would mean one was threatening Naples. We don’t need any kind of chaos there. Thank God things have calmed down after all Lexi’s been through. It will be great to get home for a while between storm duty to peace and quiet and...no damn bumps in the road, not to mention in the air,” he said, though the first blast of turbulence rocked them as if a giant, invisible fist had hit the plane. He leveled them out and flew on.
Claire didn’t see Will Warren at first, so perhaps the crowd in front of the house had scared him away. How long had the poor man been out here waiting—if he was still here?
She spotted him over by the corner of the yard with the small butterfly garden. Of course that was where he’d be. At least now she wouldn’t have to go looking for him to find out if he knew anything about visitors to the butterfly farm or where Darcy might have gone. Ken Jensen had mentioned it might be good for her to talk to Will without Nick or the police along. Nick hadn’t seemed too pleased about that at first and had requested that he be with her if she spoke to Will, but he would have to understand since the man had come to her. She could be nonthreatening, and she had known Will Warren years ago, though not well. It was Darcy who had taken to him, but Claire and Lexi had also attended many of his library story hours, a second generation enthralled by his children’s tales and variety of voices.
He turned to face her with a striped tropical blue wave butterfly on his arm. At least, even with the pain and pressure, she remembered which kind that was.
“Mrs. Markwood,” he said, gently blowing the butterfly off its perch. “I regret I seem to have called at a difficult time. I especially regret what I heard from Tara Gerald this morning.” He frowned. His eyes looked watery. Surely he had not been crying, too. His usually melodic voice seemed scratchy. “Is Darcy still missing, and is there anything I can do to help?”
“Please come in the house,” she said. “You were wise to come to the back door with the reporters out front.”
“Like hovering hawks, though I pray they can help. Then it is true? She has disappeared and not returned?”
Claire nodded as they walked toward the house. Darcy was right to describe him as an “old-fashioned dandy.” He would have looked just right in a bowler hat with a pocket watch vest and a carnation in his buttonhole. He wore a long-sleeved, light blue shirt and jeans, which looked as if they’d been ironed. And a bow tie, his signature piece, she recalled from years ago when she and Darcy were the kids at library story time. And he had come to their house with books for Mother once and stayed to tell them a story in their very own living room.
“Please have a seat while I check on how things are going,” she said, gesturing toward their seating area in the Florida room. “Darcy’s husband is meeting with the media out in front.”
He ran his finger under one eye where a tear had puddled. Perhaps something in his own past—someone missing—made him especially moved. The fact he had come to visit rather than just waiting for news seemed most unusual. Perhaps he did know something that could help.
As he headed into his office, loosening his tie before yanking it off, Nick told his secretary, Cheryl, “Now that the news is out—I just called home to learn the newsmongers have descended on our house—I did talk the judge into a two-day delay. Two days, that’s it.” She came right behind him with her notepad. “Mrs. Lacy says she can use the rest. But with the weekend,” he went on, “that’s four days to find Darcy and support Claire and Lexi—Darcy’s family, too.”
“See, some judges have blood and not ice in their veins.”
“Yeah,” he said, grabbing his briefcase and slamming it shut. He also tried to shut out the picture he had when she’d mentioned blood. He’d seen too much of it and prayed Darcy wasn’t lying cut or hurt somewhere—or worse.
“Nick, I do have to tell you one thing before you go,” she said, glancing at her notepad.
“Someone called about Darcy or our reward for information? I didn’t think that was out yet, so—”
“No. Not that. I just need a yea or nay about whether you will commit ASAP to interviewing that guy who owns the deep-sea fishing boat, ah—Larry Ralston, highly connected in town somehow. The mayor actually called, said to let him know if there was anything he could do to help find Darcy—and he put in a plug for your helping Ralston if he goes to trial. The guy’s connected to a wealthy family, I think, probably contributors to the mayor’s reelection campaign.”
“Can you stall him until next week? Or can someone else in the firm meet with him?”
“He—and the mayor—want you.”
“Larry Ralston is going to be fined big-time or may even face prison time because he netted that protected dolphin—which he denies, right?”
“Right. The environmental people will be all over this. You always say everyone is innocent until—”
“Yeah, I know. Listen, he’ll have to wait until next week if he wants me to represent him. Besides, I don’t need the eco-groups down here, at least not the ones who seem like they are foaming at the mouth, to be after me or the firm right now. Maybe give our resident tech genius Heck a call. Have him look into Larry Ralston and whoever he’s tied to, so we know what we’re really dealing with.”
He locked his case and grabbed his coat and tie. What we’re really dealing with—the words echoed in his head. What—who—were they dealing with for Darcy’s abduction, if that was what it was? Intentional? A random crime of opportunity? Darcy wasn’t an obvious target for an abduction, not well-known, not rich. His stomach churched. He prayed it wasn’t someone trying to get back at Claire or him for something, because they were the ones who’d made enemies in the past. Meanwhile, he had to go check out that Fly Safe pro-butterfly group who had given Tara Gerald flak.
“Sorry, Nick,” his longtime, faithful secretary and friend said, making him realize he was standing there frozen, lost in thought.
“Call me if anything turns up, okay?” was all he could manage before his voice snagged. He patted her shoulder on the way out the door.
“Darcy’s husband is giving a press conference out there,” Claire told Mr. Warren when she returned to the Florida room where he had risen and was pacing, staring out at the fenced-in yard. “I’m tempted to go out to back him up, but I’ve been through too many confrontations like that. Still, if I thought it would help Darcy, I would.”
He nodded so strongly she thought he just might march out there, too. She had to get herself together. She had to settle down enough to take advantage of asking this man what he knew about Darcy that she might not even know.
“I appreciate your stopping by,” she said, sitting at an angle to him when he came back to the couch. He perched there, leaning forward, somehow not sinking into the soft leather cushions.
“I came to ask if there was anything I might do. To learn the facts. And to see how Darcy’s daughter was—is—getting on.”
“Not well, I’m afraid. Nor is my daughter, so I need to get back to them. Let me be frank, Mr. Warren—”
“Will. Please call me Will.”
“Will. I suppose you didn’t know her that well, but can you suggest anyone who might want to hurt Darcy?”
“Or, if she was taken, could they have misidentified her as Tara?”
“Yes, but surely not for long. Unless, of course, they immediately incapacitated her so she couldn’t explain or protest. Her purse was missing, so that would have been full of ID. Her phone was found on the floor and someone—surely not Darcy—left the butterfly door to the exotic house open.”
He sat even more forward on the soft seat. “And were any of the exotics missing? Has Tara taken a survey—a count?”
“I don’t know. She said some orange somethings were missing, though—can’t think of their name now, though I know it.”
That made him sag back a bit. “The falcates. It had to be the falcate orangetips. Valuable and not indigenous to this area, though they like the sunny south and adapt well. Their native turf, if I can put it like that, is over in Louisiana.”
“The falcates—valuable how?” she asked, even as she heard a racket from the front of the house. The girls’ shrill voices, Steve’s...
She vaulted to her feet and ran with Will puffing along behind her.
“What happened?” Claire asked Steve as Jilly clung to him around his waist in the front hall and Lexi just hugged that doll.
“The kids cheered me when I came in,” he said. “I think most of the crowd is breaking up, good thing, too, ’cause I about lost it answering some of their damn questions. Oh, Will,” he said, tipping his head to see the man behind her. “What are you doing here?”
“Just here to see if I can help.”
Claire was surprised they knew each other, since Steve often worked out of town and wasn’t the type for story time.
Lexi’s doll voice said, “If you came to tell us a story, Mr. Will, make it a happy one, ’cause we are all going to cry over losing Aunt Darcy. It’s just like me being taken away. Very, very bad.”
When Nick came in from the garage, Claire threw herself into his arms as if he’d been the one taken and had come back at last.
“I have at least four days off,” he told her. “Let’s see what we can do.”
“Will Warren showed up, but I hardly had time to question him. I did say I’d go with him tomorrow to help Tara do a careful count of the butterfly breed that is evidently missing, the falcate orangetips. I guess they’re valuable because they’re rare around here.”
“He just showed up? You didn’t invite him?”
“Absolutely not, so I don’t expect a scolding from you or Ken Jensen. But for a double-whammy, Lexi has really regressed, not just last night but this morning. I was hoping she’d kind of sleep it off. Nick, I’m afraid to just take that old doll from her. Last time she went off the deep end. She didn’t use or need it as a prop but just had that imaginary friend. This time, I think I’d better try to wean her away from it, carefully talk her out of it.”
“Maybe we could replace it with another one.”
“Doll shopping is down on my list right now, but that might be worth a try. It used to be a darling doll, but it’s so—so worn and tattered now that it kind of haunts me. Finding Darcy has to come first, but I’ll keep working on finding some good, healthy substitute for that doll. You see, when Jace and I split up, it did comfort her. So I need to spend time with her, help her through this and, if I can’t again, get her some counseling. I swear, Trey’s the only normal one right now, and I think even he senses something’s wrong. However pregnant Nita is, I’m so grateful she can still help with the kids before her own arrives at least.”
They still held tight, not moving farther into the house. “Got a call on the way home,” he told her. “Heck’s coming over tonight to report on some research he’s doing. And though he doesn’t know it yet, I want him to look into that Fly Safe group. Probably research Tara, too, even Will Warren.”
“Will is advertising his new book on butterflies, Love and Lore. I have his card. By the way, he said he thought Darcy might’ve had that book with her since she was reading it, so maybe whoever took her took that, too. It would have fit in that big purse of hers. Oh, Nick, where is she? Is she—is she all right?” Claire cried at the thought of what she’d almost asked: Is she alive?