Goodnight Beautiful(29)

The Lawrence House was dark, and Sam’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Annie got drenched as she raced down the path to Sam’s office, where she cupped her face to the glass. The waiting room was dark, the door to his office closed.

“Did you call the police?” Maddie asks.

“Yes, last night. An officer took my statement, said they’d keep an eye out for his car.”

“That’s good, right?” Maddie says.

“None of this is good.”

Maddie sighs heavily. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m terrified,” Annie says.

“You want me to come over?” Maddie asks.

“Of course I want you to come over,” Annie says. “But you live in France.” Maddie, her cousin, is the closest person to her, the daughter of her mother’s twin sister, Therese. It was at their house Annie spent holidays after her parents died, with the aunt and uncle who opened their home to her as if she were their daughter.

“I know,” says Maddie. “But they have airplanes now. I can be there tomorrow.”

“I’m fine.” She tells Maddie she’ll call if she hears anything and then heads down the hall to the bedroom. She stops at the French doors that open onto the stone patio and sees they’ve lost one of the young oaks they planted a few weeks after moving in. Sam will be back to clean up the yard, she thinks. He’ll be out there tomorrow, piling branches into his wheelbarrow for firewood.

She sits on his side of the bed and rests her face in her hands. Something’s been off with him. For a few weeks now he’s been distracted and distant, sleeping poorly at night. She asked him the other day, over breakfast, if he wanted to talk about what was on his mind, and he grumbled something vague—the new practice, his mother—making it clear that he didn’t. She left it alone, figured he’d tell her when he was ready.

She lies back and closes her eyes, and she’s on the cusp of sleep when she hears a car in the driveway. She scrambles out of bed and looks out the window. It’s the police.

“Franklin Sheehy,” the man says when she opens the door. “Chief of police.”

“Did you hear something” she asks, terrified.

“No, ma’am. Checking in.” A kid with a baby face appears behind him. “This is John Gently.” Annie recognizes his name; he’s the officer who took her statement last night. “Got a few minutes?”

“Yes, come in.” She ushers them inside, into the living room.

“We just came from the Lawrence House,” Franklin Sheehy says. “Both the owner and the neighbor across the street saw your husband leave the office around five p.m. I’m assuming you’ve heard nothing from him?”

“No, nothing,” she says, as the cops sit on the couch opposite her. “I’ve been calling his phone, but it’s dead.”

“How do you know it’s dead?” Sheehy asks.

“It goes right to voice mail.”

“What I mean is, how do you know he didn’t intentionally turn it off?”

She frowns. “Because why would he do that?”

Sheehy ignores the question and takes a notebook and reading glasses from the inside pocket of his jacket. “I know you went through things with Officer Gently, but mind if I get some additional background?”

“Of course,” she says.

“Any problems we should know about?” Sheehy asks. “Gambling, drinking?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“How’s his mood been?”

She hesitates. “Fine,” she says. “Mostly. He’s been a little distracted.”

“He talk to you about it?”

“No,” she says. “But we’re going through a big transition. Moving here, taking care of Sam’s mother. It’s a lot.”

Sheehy shakes his head and tsks. “Heard about Margaret. Real shame. She never was the same after Ted left for that girl.” He clasps his hands. “I hate to ask, but any chance your husband might have a little something on the side himself?”

“No,” Annie says. “Nothing on the side.”

“How do you know?”

The two men are watching her. “Because I know my husband, and he wouldn’t do that.”

John Gently laughs loudly. “Sorry,” he says, clapping a hand to his mouth and glancing at Sheehy, embarrassed. “It’s just . . . Stats and I went to the same high school, years apart. The guy’s a legend.”

Annie gives the kid a cursory glance. “Yes, well, that was twenty years ago. Sam’s evolved.” She turns back to Sheehy. “Were you able to get into my husband’s office?”

“No, unfortunately. You were right. Landlord doesn’t have a key.”

“I know,” she says, confused. “But can’t you get in some other way?”

“No, ma’am,” Sheehy says. “The evidence required to enter someone’s office needs to be arguable, which I’m afraid is not the case here.”

“Arguable?” Annie says. “What does that mean?”

“Gently?”

“It means,” he says, sitting up straighter, “that if Chief Sheehy were to take a letter requesting a search warrant to the district attorney and ask her to show up in Judge Allison’s courtroom when all the chief has is a guy who didn’t come home from work, nobody’s going to be happy.”