6

 

Jane arrived at Andrew and Eric’s farmhouse that night later than she’d expected, having been waylaid by a problem at the Xanadu Club. She was selling it to her ex–business partner, Barry Tune. Barry had taken over the daily management last year. When Jane had time to stop in, which was rarely, she felt that the club was going downhill. She’d trusted Barry because of his experience in the industry. By the time she’d realized she’d made a mistake, it was too late. The old employees at the club were unhappy, the new employees were lowlifes, druggies, and losers, and the food standards had taken a nosedive, and unless she devoted herself to the place exclusively for the next six months—or longer—nothing was going to change.

When Barry had made a lowball offer to buy her out, she’d rejected it out of hand, but then found herself dithering over it. She’d attempted to negotiate a better deal, though in the end had taken his offer. She planned to sign on the dotted line early next week. Unfortunately, her lawyer and Barry’s lawyer had nearly gotten into a fistfight today over what Jane considered a minor detail, so she and Barry had met with them to smooth out the issue and move things forward. Jane had to admit that she’d felt more than a few pangs of regret when she stopped by the club for a few minutes after the meeting. Once upon a time the place had been a jewel, a crumbling Art Deco movie theater that she’d turned into a hot, urban, Uptown nightclub. Sure, the food was basic turn-and-burn steakhouse fare, but with the addition of an interesting wine list and some unusual upscale menu items, it had been a classy one. That was all gone now. She’d had a good run, but restaurants didn’t last forever. It was time to cut her losses and move on.

Jane pulled her CR-V off the gravel road into the farmhouse’s long driveway a few minutes before eight. A BMW and two trucks—one new and expensive looking, the other rusted and old—were already parked in the drive. She maneuvered her SUV into the grass next to a long row of thickly blooming spirea.

It was that golden time of evening, when the world—the trees, the bushes, the house, even the RV parked at the back of the yard—looked as if it had been bathed in amber. The house was a newly painted two-story wood structure with a spacious screened front porch and a garage toward the back that looked as if it might once have been a barn. A tall grass meadow ran along the west side of the property, with woods bordering the rear. A green-and-white domed tent had been set up on the lawn in the backyard.

Jane hadn’t spoken to Andrew since this morning. He’d left her a message, saying that everyone was planning to gather back at the farmhouse for dinner around seven, and that she should join them. As she got out, hope circled inside her mind that the boys had returned, even if it meant she’d made the trip for no good reason.

Noticing a bunch of cigarette butts in the grass, Jane bent down to take a closer look. She pulled out her cell phone and took a quick picture. They’d been fairly easy to spot, their tan filter tips clearly visible against the green. What surprised her was finding a single roach—the end of a marijuana joint—in the midst of the butts.

“Find something interesting?” came an unfamiliar voice.

Jane cupped her hand around the roach and stood as a man with wavy black hair and a prominent Adam’s apple, shirtless, wearing a pair of ripped jeans, ambled toward her. He was loose limbed and lanky, and skinny as a stalk of wheat.

“Who would you be?” he asked.

“Name’s Jane,” she said. As he came closer, she noticed a gold earring attached to his left earlobe. “I’m a friend of Andrew and Eric’s.”

“Are you now.” The guy had a tattoo of an anchor on one forearm, a naked woman on the other.

“Truman Lindstrom, Eric’s uncle,” he said, glancing at the cigarette butts on the ground.

“Those yours?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. Can’t say that they are.”

“I assume you heard about—”

“Jack and Gabriel? Yeah, I know.”

“You have any idea who might have been out here smoking?”

“Nope.”

“You smoke?” she asked.

“Last I looked it’s still a free country.”

“Smoke any weed?”

“Matter of fact, I do.” He bent over and picked up one of the butts. “But this isn’t weed. It also isn’t my brand. I smoke Chesterfields. These are Winstons.”

She glanced over at the tent.

“Anybody figured out what they’re up to?” he asked, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

“Up to?”

“You know.”

“Not sure I do.”

“Kids,” he muttered. “They’re like mice. They mess around where they don’t belong.”

“Meaning?”

“You always ask this many questions?” He flashed her an amused smile, then headed back across the lawn to his RV, sat down on a folding camp chair, spread his legs wide, and pulled a pack of cigarettes off the table next to him.

“Charming,” whispered Jane, trotting up the steps to the porch. She called Andrew’s name before she stepped inside. “Anybody home?”

Andrew came dashing out of the back of the house, his face drawn with worry. She hadn’t seen him in a few years and was surprised to find that his chestnut hair, once almost the same color as hers, had receded and was shot through with gray. He’d let it grow long, binding it in a ponytail, and had shaved off his beard, revealing a firm jawline and a dimpled chin. He was thickly muscled through his chest and arms, looked strong and fit, though he’d put on weight.

“The kids back yet?” she asked.

“Afraid not.” He ushered her into the dining room, where the family was gathered around an old octagonal game table surrounded by folding chairs. The interior of the house was the exact opposite of the exterior, with holes in the walls, peeling paint, water stains, cracks in the ceiling, and an oatmeal-colored carpet that looked like it was flecked with more than color variation.

“We thought for sure we’d found them this afternoon,” said Eric, rising and giving Jane a peck on the cheek, then motioning her to a chair. “A man called the police and said he’d spotted them over in Short Creek. When we drove over, we discovered that he’d found two kids, all right, but not Jack and Gabriel. It was such a letdown. We came back here to regroup before we go out searching again this evening. Are you hungry? I took a tray of lasagna out of the freezer and heated it. Suzanne made a salad.”

After shaking Suzanne’s hand and being introduced to Branch, Jane sat down between Eric and Andrew. The chair was empty, most likely because they didn’t want to sit next to each other. While Suzanne made her feel welcome by offering her a glass of lemonade, Branch, the new husband, dished her up a plate of food. He was a big man, with a long face, a high, wide forehead, and narrow cheeks. His manner was appealingly shy; he was the kind of guy who, for whatever reason, never took his baseball cap off, even inside the house. He dwarfed everyone in the room.

Jane ate her dinner while listening to the conversation, attempting to take each person’s measure. She sensed that it was a close group. Suzanne was warm and articulate, though behind her outward openness Jane detected a certain wariness—a stiffness that caused many silent assessments before she allowed herself to speak. Jane couldn’t help but wonder what this carefulness was hiding.

After dinner, everyone pitched in to clean the kitchen. Once the food was put away and the dishwasher was loaded, they all drifted out to the living room with mugs of coffee.

“I’m glad you agreed to help us, Jane,” said Eric, draping an arm around his sister’s shoulder. He was a classically handsome man, a kind of fair-haired Lord Byron whose looks still had the power to drive women, and undoubtedly a few men, crazy. He was, however, an older, less pumped version of the guy who’d once picked Andrew up after work and whisked him away in his convertible.

Jane decided that it was time for her to ask a few hard questions. She began with the cigarettes and the roach she’d found out in the grass.

“Where exactly did you find them?” asked Eric.

“By the spirea, a few feet from the driveway. I met your uncle outside while I was examining them. He said he doesn’t smoke Winstons.”

“Oh, please,” said Andrew. “He smokes anything he can bum, and that includes weed.”

“When was the last time someone cut the grass?” asked Jane.

“Tuesday afternoon,” said Eric. “I know because I did it.”

“Anybody else around here smoke? Cigarettes or weed?”

“Nobody,” said Andrew.

“Well, actually, I do,” said Branch holding up his hand a bit sheepishly. “A cigarette or two a week—when I feel stressed. I’m trying to quit.”

“I don’t think that counts,” said Eric.

“Whoever was out there was smoking in full view of the house,” said Jane. “My guess is, it probably happened after dark.”

“You think it was the kids?” asked Branch.

“If they’re smoking behind your back, I doubt they’d do it in the open, even at night.”

“So what’s it mean?” asked Andrew, settling into a chair.

Turning to Eric, Jane asked, “Have you had any recent visitors?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Somebody was out there,” said Andrew, running his knuckles across the scruff on his cheeks. “Whoever it was, he was standing not twenty feet from that tent. If you mowed the grass on Tuesday afternoon, it had to be sometime Tuesday night.”

“The night the kids took off,” said Jane.

“You think someone was standing out there watching the tent?” asked Andrew.

“Are you suggesting the boys were taken?” demanded Suzanne. “That they didn’t run away?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” said Jane. “But we have to explore all the possibilities, look at every piece of potential evidence. There were five cigarette butts out there and one roach.”

“If it was one person,” said Andrew, “he would have been standing there for quite a while to smoke five cigarettes. Fifteen minutes? Half an hour?”

No one offered a different opinion.

“I better call Steinhauser,” said Eric, fishing his cell phone out of his jeans.

“The BCA in St. Paul might be able to pull some DNA off the cigarettes,” said Jane. “Problem is, I’m not sure how long it will take them to run tests. We could use this information right now, but that’s not how forensic examination works.”

“Not like on CSI: Miami?” asked Branch.

“Nothing at all like that. You also have to figure that the butts and the roach have been out in the grass for a few days. They may prove to be worthless, even if they are evidence.”

Suzanne began to pace in front of the TV. “The police have to take this seriously now. No more, ‘The boys will be home by bedtime.’”

“Has the cop you talked to last night been out to the house today?” asked Jane.

“He came this morning,” said Andrew. “Looked at the tent. I don’t think he found anything. He planned to spend part of the day talking to the boys’ friends. We’ve already done that, but he seemed to think he could get more out of them than we could.”

“And then he planned to speak with some of their teachers,” said Branch. “Lord knows where he thinks that will get him.”

A throat cleared.

Everyone turned to find a plump, owlish-looking man with round, dark-rimmed glasses, his arms at his sides, standing in the living room doorway. He had on running shorts and a T-shirt, his running shoes loosely tied. Adjusting his glasses, he glanced tentatively around the room. “The door was open. I thought it might be okay to come in.”

“Mr. Eld,” said Andrew with a forced smile. “Hi. Sure, it’s fine.”

“Hi there, Pastor Born,” said Eld, nodding to Suzanne, then extending his hand to Branch.

Since everybody knew the guy except for Jane, Andrew introduced him as Aaron Eld, the seventh-grade science teacher at the middle school.

Eric nodded to Eld as he ducked into the kitchen, the cell phone plastered to his ear.

“I’m sorry to intrude at a time like this,” said Eld.

“You’ve obviously heard about our boys,” said Andrew.

“That’s why I’m here.” He removed a small yellow-and-white cell phone from the front pocket of his running shorts. “I sometimes go for a run in the evenings. When I was out tonight, just a few minutes ago, I spied this under a bush. I know Gabriel has one just like it. I confiscated it from him one afternoon before school was out. He was using it to make calls during class. Do you think it’s his?”

Everyone gathered around to look.

“It’s either broken or out of juice,” said Eld, pressing and holding the on button with no result.

“It’s Gabriel’s,” said Branch firmly, taking it from Eld’s hand and turning it sideways. “See that nick along the edge? Gabriel dropped it the first night he had it. He was outside in the driveway. It hit one of the brick pavers and made that mark. He was really pissed about it, too. Asked if we could take it back so he could get a new one.”

“Where did you say you found it?” asked Jane.

“Under a bush,” said Eld. “When I leave my house, I usually head up the hill past the Carnegie library and then cut across Grand Avenue to the joggers’ path that hugs Bay Point Lake—you know, by the park? It was under the hedge on the east side of the library. The color made it stand out, otherwise I never would have seen it.”

Inside the pocket of Eld’s T-shirt, Jane noticed the unmistakable outline of a pack of cigarettes. Unusual for a runner to be a smoker, she thought.

“Once you get it working,” said Eld, “you might find something that could help you locate the boys.”

“Thank you so much,” said Suzanne, watching her husband try to remove the back.

“Yeah. No problem. If there’s any other way I can help, my number’s in the phone book. Well,” he continued, with everyone’s attention fixed on the phone, “sorry to barge in. I should get out of here and let you people get back to … whatever.” He inched toward the door. “I like those boys a lot. They’re good kids.”

He gave off a distinctly uncomfortable vibe. Since he appeared to be the poster child for bookish introversion, Jane figured that accounted for it.

“Better get home,” he said again, raising his hand in a tight, mechanical wave.

“Thanks so much, Aaron,” said Suzanne, smiling up at him, then returning her attention to the phone.