Chapter 9
Well?”
Tom’s voice was strained, but he kept his volume down as he answered the call he’d been expecting. His wife was in the kitchen, humming as she set the table. He’d stayed late at the office, she’d fed the kids and had sent them upstairs for baths and homework. She was happy over the prospect of having a quiet supper, just the two of them.
By contrast, Tom was seething. After having been dispatched hours earlier, Frank Gray was only now reporting in. “What’s taken so long?”
“Driving all the way out there, for one thing. Jesus. I got lost twice even with GPS. Thought I was never gonna find it.”
“Okay, okay. And?”
“They weren’t there.”
Tom felt like he’d been hit by a two-by-four. “Say again.”
“What part didn’t you get? They weren’t there. Another reason I delayed calling you was because there was nothing to tell.”
“How could she not be there?” Tom asked, his voice rising an octave. “Her phone is there.”
“Well, it might be, but she wasn’t, and neither was he. Which was weird because his car was in front. That’s how I knew which house was his. There are several tucked into a cul-de-sac. His is at the end of it, kinda sitting off by itself. Not a sign of life anywhere near it.”
“Christ, Frank, if his car is there, they—”
“Honey?” The whiny voice came from the kitchen.
“Shit. Hold on.” Tom held the phone against his chest. “Yeah?”
“Dinner’s ready.”
“I’m on the phone.”
“Don’t let it get cold.”
“I’m about to wind up.” He put the phone back to his ear. “They’ve gotta be there.”
“I’m telling you, they weren’t.”
“Just by driving past, how could you tell?”
Frank gave a long-suffering sigh. “I overshot the turnoff. Pulled over and found a spot to leave my car where it wouldn’t be too conspicuous, went back to the cul-de-sac on foot. But which house was his?
“I had to walk the length of the street before I saw his car. A few of the neighbors had lights on, but none were on inside his house, and it’s dark as freaking pitch out there. I looked in the rear window of his car and saw a suitcase in the hatch. Maybe her phone’s in it.”
“You could’ve called it to find out.”
“Bad idea, Tom. If Bowie and the woman were in there with the lights out, doing what I suspect this is about, he could’ve heard her phone ringing, come out to check, seen me sneaking around his car, and shot me for trespassing. Palace doctrine or whatever it’s called.”
“Castle doctrine. And it’s not a defense unless there’s been forcible entry.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to test it on Bowie and his Glock.”
Tom pulled on his lower lip, wishing his wife would stop with the damn humming. It was a stupid song, and she was off key. It was distracting, and he was trying to work through this puzzle. “He’s mentioned a dog. Doesn’t he have a dog?”
“Don’t know, but none barked.”
“This makes no sense,” Tom hissed. “His car was there.”
“Maybe he had another means of transportation.”
“The TSA guy told me she turned in her rental. The DMV has only one vehicle registered to John Preston Bowie.” Supremely frustrated, Tom ran his hand over his thinning hair. “If you didn’t think they were in there, why were you afraid of getting shot? You should’ve searched the place.”
Again, Frank sighed heavily. “I waited there by his car for several minutes. Didn’t hear a sound from inside, so I dutifully made a three-sixty around the house and looked in every window. The house is small. Not many rooms or places to hide. In the bedroom was a bed. Nobody fucking on it.” He snorted. “Which I would’ve paid to watch.”
Tom was beside himself. “I wanted to nip this in the bud, scare him into humility and compliance, today, before he had time to think about defying me. I wanted to have this done with before all the hubbub over that damn show begins. Uppermost, I didn’t want him talking to that woman.”
Calls to the network offices in New York had confirmed that Beth Collins was a senior-level producer. But she hadn’t made the trip from the Big Apple to interview him. No, she’d come to talk specifically to Detective Bowie. And Bowie had gone to extremes this morning to keep her in town.
Regardless of the ogre’s belief that they were only hooking up for sex, Tom’s conclusion was that whatever they were doing together had the potential for being calamitous to him. Where the hell could they be? “People don’t just disappear.”
He didn’t realize he’d spoken his thought aloud until Frank laughed in that nasty way he had and smacked his chewing gum. “Isn’t that what Bowie kept telling you? Over and over like a broken record. ‘People don’t disappear. Bodies don’t disappear. That girl is somewhere, Tom.’ That’s when you started hating him.”
“I’d started hating him long before that,” Tom mumbled.
“Hon-ey.” He turned to see his wife standing in the open doorway holding a glass of wine and pouting.
He made himself look regretful. “Sorry, babe. One minute.”