214 Palmer Street(40)
“Still here.” He sighed. “Everything I can do you can do yourself, and more easily. Check her credit card activity and cell phone records, and see what you come up with. If the car has GPS tracking capability check and see where she went.”
“She isn’t driving yet and she didn’t take her phone or her debit card. She doesn’t have a credit card.”
Gavin laughed. “Then what exactly did you think I could do? Walk around town yelling her name? Use your brain, Kirk. Call her friends.”
“I already did that.”
“Then find out if she had any odd charges on her debit card recently. She might have made reservations at a hotel. Then after you do that, go online and see what calls or text messages she’s made in the last few weeks. You might get a clue. She’s been home a lot. She might have a new friend.”
Kirk could imagine him making air quotes around the word “friend” and he knew what that implied. He said, “She’s not cheating on me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I never said she was.”
“So you’re not going to help me?”
Gavin let out an exasperated sigh. “My God, I’ve never seen a man more obsessed with his wife. Could you give the woman some space?”
“She can have all the space she wants. I just need to know where she is.”
After a long pause, Gavin said, “I’ll tell you what. Make up a flyer with a good photo of her, and list her physical characteristics—weight, height, hair color, and all that. Put a paragraph about why you’re concerned about her wellbeing. I’d lean heavy on the head injury if I were you. Email it to me and I’ll print out a few copies to give to my people, tell them to keep an eye out for her.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s more than you’d get from anyone else, my friend. Just make up the flyer and try to get a good night’s sleep. She’ll be back and it will be fine. You’ll see.”
Typical. In the history of their friendship, Kirk had been the worrier while Gavin had been the one to downplay any concerns. This time, though, he hoped Gavin was right.
TWENTY-THREE
By the time nightfall arrived, Maggie was gone and Sarah was ready. In anticipation of tromping through dirt, she laced up her hiking boots, clipped a small flashlight onto her belt, and went to get the pickaxe and shovel out of the garage, carrying them through the house rather than circling around outside. The neighborhood was quiet. Another plus? The backyard was lined with tall, closely spaced lilac bushes, creating a green wall on each side. Bordering the rear lot line was Dallman State Park. Nothing back there but hiking trails, trees, bushes, and squirrels.
Sarah stood on the back porch, her hand grasping the handle of the pickaxe and assessed her surroundings. With Maggie absent on one side and the house on the other side empty and currently for sale, Sarah felt secure. Luckily for her, the other houses in close proximity were all one-story. No one could peer down from a second-story window and observe what she was doing in the yard.
She rested a toe on the wide blade of the axe and leaned on the handle, surveying Josh and Cady’s backyard, uneven piles of dirt still imprinted with the tire treads from a professional excavator. If only she had that Bobcat now. It would make the job easier, but truthfully, she wouldn’t have used it anyway since the noise would have attracted too much attention.
She’d seen overhead photos of the backyard on the county website and close-up photos of the landscape crew at work on Cady’s Facebook page, so she thought she had an idea of the size of the property. In person, though, it looked much bigger and she began to doubt herself. What if she went to all this trouble and found nothing inside the bomb shelter? Even more horrible, what if she were arrested for breaking and entering, or trespassing? There would be no explaining what she’d done or why she’d done it. Who would believe such a crazy story? Would they blame the brain damage? It wasn’t too late to turn back but if she did, then what? Could she sit across the dinner table from Kirk wondering if he and his friends were murderers?
She thought about a documentary she’d seen recently about serial killers. All the men’s wives said they’d had no idea their husbands were capable of murder. One of them said she hadn’t believed it initially until he apologized to her, saying he couldn’t help himself, that he wasn’t able to control his compulsion to kill. “I slept next to him,” she’d said, her voice cracking. “He rocked our babies to sleep. Everyone thought he was a great guy.” She’d shaken her head.
At the time she’d watched the show she thought these women were in denial, but now she wondered if there was more to it than that. Obviously, their husbands excelled at living a double life.
Sarah knew her husband, his expressions, the nuances in his voice. She could always tell when something was troubling Kirk or when he was putting on a brave front. In the same way, she’d instinctively known he was lying when he’d said none of them had any idea what had happened to Jeremy.
The lying, that was the sticking point. She had to know, and intuition told her two teenage boys didn’t voluntarily lock up a bomb shelter, one that had served as their clubhouse, unless they had a damn good reason.
She had to know.
Well, there was nothing to it, but to do it.