Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(47)

“Jane Peterson,” Resnick said.

“What about her?”

“How well d’you know her?”

“Not very. She was helping to organize this day school last weekend, we met quite a few times because of that. But, you know, meetings, agendas, they don’t give you a lot of time to chat. And she wasn’t one to hang around after in the bar.”

“You didn’t know her socially, then? You never talked about anything personal? Husband, family, anything like that?”

“Sorry, not really, no.”

Resnick nodded. “And Saturday, how did she seem?”

Mollie drank some more coffee, thinking back. “She was fine. A bit worked-up, but you’d expect that. I don’t think she’d been involved with anything like this before. But when everything was more or less okay, she was pleased. Lively, like I say.” Mollie set down her cup and looked at Resnick steadily across her desk. “Now I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what’s going on? Has something happened to her or what?”

“Why d’you say that?”

Mollie angled back her head and laughed out loud. “Come on! You’re up those stairs first thing in the morning—well, first thing for some of us—first time you’ve gone out of your way to see me in ages. And bearing gifts. Which I can hardly get round to, because of all the questions about Jane Peterson you’re firing at me. And you want to know why I think something’s happened?”

“She’s gone missing,” Resnick said. “Since the end of the day school on Saturday.”

“Right,” Mollie said, “I see.” And then: “She wasn’t at the end of the day school on Saturday.”

They were walking along Stoney Street, toward St. Mary’s Church on High Pavement; the Ice Stadium was away to their left. Just as Mollie had been about to continue, her assistant had returned; the fax machine had begun chattering and then the whirr of the photocopier. It was quieter on the streets.

“You’re sure she wasn’t there till the end?” Resnick said. “Positive?”

“I was looking for her when the film came out. Aside from anything else, I had this free Friends membership to give her, a few comps, just a way of saying thanks. When I didn’t see her, I asked around in case she’d come out early or whatever. Everyone I spoke to—I don’t know, half a dozen, maybe—they all swore she’d not been in to the film at all.”

“There’s got to be a possibility they were mistaken, surely? It is dark in there, after all.”

“Yes, but not that dark. And one of the women I spoke to had been at the seminar on fetishism earlier. According to her, Jane had been there and left halfway through.”

“Which would have been when?”

“Half-two, quarter to three.”

“And as far as you know, nobody saw her after that?”

“Not at Broadway, no.”

Resnick’s mind was racing between possibility and wilder speculation; he slowed himself down, making minor adjustments, adding as much as four hours to the time Jane had been missing, the opportunity she had had to get clear. But clear to where?

“If I come back to the office, you can get me a list of everyone who attended?”

“No problem.”

“Good. We’ll need confirmation.”

As they went up the worn steps to the small graveyard that surrounded the church, he asked Mollie if she’d noticed any changes in Jane Peterson’s manner during the weeks they’d been meeting.

Slowing her pace, Mollie thought it over. “She was a bit up and down, that’s all. Positive most of the time, but then any little thing could throw her into a panic.” Mollie smiled a sideways smile. “Not exactly your classic cool.”

Resnick nodded: he couldn’t imagine Mollie panicking over anything.

They passed around by the front of the church, where a lank man in a cassock was arguing with a homeless youth and his spindly dog, who were trying to make their bed in the covered porch.

“We’d best turn around,” Resnick said.

“Yes,” Mollie agreed, “I suppose we should.”

Fascinating, Mollie thought, walking on at Resnick’s side, how going out with Hannah had changed him. Not simply that Hannah had dragged him along, more or less willingly, to see movies quite a few times, and foreign art movies at that. It was something about the way he was with women that had altered, the way he was with her. Before, whatever the reason, he had always seemed on edge, as if never knowing quite how to respond. But the few times she’d run across him in the Café Bar lately—and now—he seemed more at ease, able to relax in her company. Which was true for her too.

Odd, wasn’t it, Mollie thought, this big, slightly shambolic man with whom she had practically nothing in common, how she could feel drawn to him as much as she did.

By late that afternoon, Lynn and Carl between them had spoken to most of those members of staff who had any close connection with Jane. There was almost unanimous agreement that she was a good teacher, a little scatterbrained occasionally perhaps, not always totally on top of things where her preparation was concerned, and she had been known to be late; but she cared about what she was doing and, most important, had a good relationship with the children in her care. Most knew that she was married to a dental surgeon, quite a few knew his name was Alex, but not many had actually laid eyes on him. Alex Peterson was not one for attending school functions. Come to that, neither was his wife. Not unless her presence was mandatory. It was the one other area in which she had come in for a little mild criticism. But then, as Jane had apparently said not a few times, her husband worked hard, long hours, and when he did get home he liked her to be there. Old-fashioned, maybe, hardly likely to endear her to the school’s few remaining militant feminists, but by and large people respected what she said and did. It was her life, after all.