Covered Bridge Charm (16 page)

Sherie alerted security and Simon. The alarm was carried to all the parts of the retirement center.

Growing worried, Carly thought Crusher should be notified. Dot could have left the building and gone to his apartment. With the night staff in place, Sherie released her to pursue that avenue of the search.

Grateful, she shrugged into her coat, pausing to give Martha a few comforting words.

“It’s all my fault,” Martha moaned. “I drove her away.”

“That’s not true. You’re her best friend.”

“Not lately.”

“Please try to relax so your asthma doesn’t flare up.”

Miranda joined them and put her hand on Martha’s shoulder. Carly eased away as Miranda spoke soothing words to Martha.

Shivering, Carly stopped by the woodworking shop first and was relieved to find Crusher there working on a project. Alarmed by the news, he grabbed his hat and fled toward assisted living as fast as his eighty-year-old legs could take him.

Carly and Adam sped after him.

“I’ve got to find her,” he panted. “She counts on me for everything since—”

“I know,” Carly puffed, while tugging his shirt sleeve. “Please stop.”

Crusher halted, looking frantic and old.

“You must go home,” Carly reasoned. “If Dot’s outside the building, she’ll go home. Stay there, and we’ll search. The police are on their way.”

Adam volunteered to walk Crusher home and close up the shop before he helped search.

Nodding, Carly ran to the assisted-living entryway. She hesitated. If Dot was visiting Magnificent by the door and someone happened in, she might have slipped out while the door was open. Though the entire center was on alert, it wouldn’t hurt to check out the exterior grounds.

C
arly searched, working her way to the front of Sweet Life Retirement Center. Though her heart was pumping with fright, the grounds seemed quiet and deserted, situated in a picturesque setting of aged, droopy-limbed evergreen and mature vegetation. She hurried down the sidewalk that edged the parking lot, past the visitors’ benches, and halted at the twenty-foot, twin evergreens shaped like giant Hershey’s Kisses. Which way?

To the east was independent housing and the community garden, quaint with birdhouses and picket fence. Not a creature stirred within her sight. Just to the right of the garden, a wide path beckoned. It led through wild vegetation and dark canopied trees to a steeply embanked river. On either side of its clover-trodden path, blackberry, old-man’s beard, fern, and grass tangled menacingly up to seven feet in height. Enough to swallow Dot. Carly could hear the rushing river beyond. Her heart pounded.
Deadly.

Staring at the redbrick independent-living homes, she reasoned surely Dot would be afraid to take that path.

Heading west, she hurried into the nearest neighborhood of cute, prim, cookie-cutter track homes. She made a quick loop through the neighborhood and arrived back at the main entrance without a single sign of Dot. At a sudden blast of a car’s horn, Carly shrank back and clutched her bodice. She felt a vice grip on her left arm as Adam drew her back to the safe confines of the sidewalk.

“Did you find her?” she gasped.

He shook his head. “No. You all right?”

She shrugged away and blinked at the leaf-littered gutter, allowing her sudden fright to subside before she spoke, “I’m fine.” But she wasn’t. She was shaking, and despair had clouded her thinking so that she’d stepped off a residential curb, oblivious to oncoming traffic.

“It’s getting dark, Carly.” At his husky reminder, she realized it was a miracle the driver of the automobile had even seen her.

Hopelessly, she considered their surroundings as she tried to gather her thoughts. Newly planted angels of conifer and maple spread sheltering wings over middle-income lawns. Shadows replaced the chrysanthemum and asters’ colorful splash against driveways teeming with economy cars. All around them, people were returning to the haven of family and loved ones—except for Dot. Where could she be?

She buttoned her black wool coat in an effort to ward off the dropping temperature. Had Martha’s changing behavior provoked Dot’s disappearance? “If only I can remember something to help us see the situation through Dot’s eyes, then we might know where to search.”

“She could be a thousand miles from Sweet Home.”

Considering the city limits of their small Oregon town, Carly frowned up at her friend. “You think someone abducted her?”

He shrugged shoulders sculpted deep and broad from manual labor. “Dot could be miles from reality. Nobody understands dementia.” Belying his bleak statement, his quirked brows gave evidence he was trying to puzzle it out, too.

A squirrel skittered up a tree, and a street light blinked on. There was no stopping the encumbrance of nightfall once the sun dropped behind the hills. “I can’t bear the thought of Dot spending the night outside, cold and alone. I didn’t want to think about the river, but what if she went that way?”

Adam touched her shoulder, and she longed to curl into the comfort of his arms and draw from his strength. He whispered, “Then we’ll find her.”

Carly straightened her shoulders. “We must.” She glanced in both directions and started across the street, back toward the river.

Adam fell into step beside her. “But I can’t concentrate, worrying about—”

Her temper flared for no reason and she lashed out in confusion. “What? One car honks their horn and now I’m a worry?”

“No,” he said. “Crusher’s frantic. If you’re not going home, stay with him or at least go back to the center and help field calls. Talk to the police. The other residents need you now, more than ever.”

Of course she wouldn’t go home. Her heart sank just to think how the appearance of a police officer would alarm the elderly residents. Crusher’s tender expression flashed into her mind. Even with the test of living in separate quarters, his love for Dot endured.

Every day, he walked from his independent-living facility on the edge of the retirement community to the assisted-living building to bring his wife fresh-squeezed orange juice because he’d heard it helped with dementia. And he’d gotten her the canary. She blinked back threatening tears. Crusher wasn’t the only resident who would be devastated. Poor Martha.

Adam was right. By now the staff would have notified all the proper authorities. Dealing with calls and police officers would make them shorthanded. The evening shift was busy with visitors, medications to administer, and residents to assist with bed preparations. She understood how a single event could send a virus of confusion throughout the elderly group. Reaching the other side of the street, she fought against the pressure mounting at the sides of her temples.

With a nod that caused a curl to slip from her bonnet, she turned abruptly to face him. His shoulders were rigid, and concern shone in his soft brown gaze. “I’ll go back.” Still she protested, “But what if she went down to the river? Those cliffs.”

“I’ll fetch a flashlight. Volunteers from church are probably already assembling. We’ll get organized and search the woods and the river. But it’s not the place for you. You’d be snagged and pinned to a blackberry bush within minutes.”

“Oh.”

Adam sympathized at Carly’s wavering, “Oh.” It wasn’t often that anyone rendered her hesitant, much less speechless. Her blue eyes swam in pain, and some of her blond curls had escaped her covering.

As they returned to the center, his gaze darted everywhere, hoping to spot the tiny missing woman. Crusher always teased, “Temper and all, Dot weighs in under a hundred pounds.” Adam figured a puff of wind could have lifted her out of Linn County and carried her across the Pacific Ocean and Asia, back to the land of their Swiss German ancestors by now.

Uncle Si wouldn’t be happy about the missing person incident. He expected things at Sweet Life to flow orderly and efficiently, like everything else within his touch.

His mind ran along a well-oiled track. Dad and Uncle Si were reincarnations of the biblical Jacob and Esau. Only difference was they were identical twins. Uncle Si was Esau because he’d married outside the Conservative Mennonite Church and soon quit worshipping there.

Carly brushed past him to punch a code into the pad that opened the center’s glass doors. He followed her in. But when she made an uncustomary pause, he plowed over her foot.

“Ouch!” She shot him a dark look and proceeded into the fray before he could apologize. She headed straight to Crusher, who apparently hadn’t stayed put at home. He sat slumped at a table that displayed a partly assembled jigsaw puzzle of an old covered bridge. He looked up expectantly.

But she shook her head, touching the wrinkled chambray shirt. A black suspender slipped down his sleeve.

“I told my neighbors to keep an eye out for her. But I couldn’t sit there alone, not knowing what was happening. I had to come here.”

With one quick feminine gesture, she had the suspender strap back in place and was whispering something soothing.

Crusher nodded, his gray eyes lighting with hope.

Though Adam ached for Crusher, he figured there was more comfort in Carly’s feminine touch than any awkward attempts he could manage.

Disappointed that Dot was still missing, Adam strode to the caregiver’s station. “Hi, Miranda.”

“Awful, isn’t it? Your bishop’s rounding up a search team. We called the Alzheimer’s hotline, and the police are on their way.” Tucking her short bobbed hair behind her ear, she leaned forward. “While normally I’d love hanging out with you, could you assemble the troops outside, away from the residents?”

“Sure.” He turned away to follow her instructions, when she called him back.

“Adam? Don’t forget my invitation.”

“Invitation?” he teased, wondering what Dad would think if he caved in to Miranda’s suggestive flirtations and brought
her
home.

Outside, the temperature had plummeted several degrees, a chilling reminder that Dot probably wasn’t wearing a coat. He’d only gone a few steps when a red scooter rolled around the corner of a brick building, its rider braking in front of him.

“Hi, Aesop.” Even though the other man’s expression was grim, Adam asked, “You heard anything new about Dot?”

“No… nobody’s seen her.” The facility’s security guard raised a bright red glove, designed to allow his fingertips to poke out, and pointed toward the lamp-lit parking lot. “There’s a—a group… meeting over there.”

Adam followed the security guard’s gesture and recognized the bishop and several other men from his congregation as well as some strangers. “Thanks.”

With a nod, Aesop continued his patrol.

Adam strode toward the row of black cars. Nothing made sense. They should’ve found Dot by now. She’d only been missing a half hour before they’d initiated a search. Someone within the Sweet Life Retirement Community should have seen her. Though unlikely, if she’d made it to the outside and knocked on a stranger’s door, they should’ve called by now. It wouldn’t take long to discover she had Alzheimer’s and wore a medical bracelet with the facility’s phone number. He didn’t want to think about the possibility she’d wandered to the river or lay injured on the forest floor.

Picking his dad from the group of black coats, he hurried to his side. “Thanks for coming.”

“Dot still missing?”

Uncle Si answered, “Yup.”

Adam nodded at Dad’s mirror image, who was clad in jeans and a ball cap. “Inside, they said the police are on their way. And some volunteers are here from the Alzheimer’s hotline.”

The bishop cleared his throat, and the crowd quieted. His white bearded face shone eerily silver in the lamplight. “They’ve searched inside?”

Uncle Simon replied, “Yes, sir.”

Bishop Kauffman gave a brief nod. “It’ll take the police time to go through their hoops. Meanwhile, I’ve divided the brothers and volunteers into two groups. One will knock on doors within the bounds of the retirement center, and the rest will fan out in the woods. The Lord’s our helper. Let’s pray.” The bishop removed his black broad-brimmed hat, and the others promptly followed suit. “Dear Lord, we ask for Your direction as we search for our sister and for Your mercies to keep her unharmed.”