Hush (6 page)

Charlie wished he could make this easier on her, but Anna probably wouldn’t appreciate him putting his arm around her in public. He gave her knee a quick squeeze instead.

“Bobby with her?” Hawkins continued.

“He was dressed in a Texas Rangers baseball shirt and white shorts.” Anna’s cup clattered as she replaced it in the saucer. “I have a picture on my phone of Bobby wearing that outfit. Will that help?”

Hawkins scribbled into a notepad, ripped a paper out and handed it to Anna. “Send it to my e-mail, if you don’t mind. What time did Simone leave the library on Sunday?”

“She was there about an hour, so I’d say eleven.”

Caleb Carlisle bolted to his feet, bumping the coffee table and sloshing tea on the carpet. “Who cares if Simone took Bobby to the damn library? Why haven’t you put out an Amber Alert?”

“We’ve been through that, Dad.” Nate remained slumped on the couch, his chin boring a hole in his chest. His lips thinned into a worried line. “Bobby’s with his mom.”

Hawkins nodded. “By all accounts, Bobby is with his mother. And his mother has every legal right—”

“To run off with my grandson? Like hell she does.” Carlisle’s face sagged, and his eyes grew moist. A barely perceptible tremor had crept into his voice. “You’ve got to do something, Hawkins.”

“I’m trying to do something, Caleb…sir. I’m trying to do my job.” His tone held surprising resolve. “So how about you take your seat and let me get on with my questions.”

Carlisle let out a resigned breath and sat down. As instructed. That had to be a first. Charlie had underestimated Hawkins.

The sheriff next turned to Jenny Jacoby. “Miss Jacoby, you were at the home of Lila and Caleb Carlisle yesterday, Sunday, when Simone and Bobby stopped by. Approximately what time would that have been?”

“Noon.”

“So Simone must have gone straight from the bank to her in-laws’ place.”

“The bank?” Charlie and Anna asked in unison.

Hawkins put up his hand. “Simone withdrew her maximum daily allowable, five hundred dollars, from the Safeway ATM on Sunday at eleven-thirty.” He gave Jenny an encouraging smile. “Go on, Miss Jacoby.”

“Lila was at her woman’s club meeting, and I was making appetizers for a card party later that afternoon. I was surprised to see Simone at the door because she knows Mrs. Carlisle has her Red Hat Club every Sunday while Mr. Carlisle plays golf.”

Hawkins grazed his hand over his close-cropped brown hair, preening for pretty Jenny Jacoby. “Maybe she forgot.”

Jenny shrugged. “Anyway, she asked to come inside, even though the Carlisles weren’t home. She said she needed to change Bobby’s diaper. The weird thing is she didn’t use any of the downstairs rooms. She went all the way upstairs, was gone a good twenty minutes, and when she came back down she hadn’t changed the baby.”

“You don’t know that.” Anna rushed to her sister’s defense, her voice shaking with fury.

Charlie grabbed her hand and held on. To hell with what people thought.

An apologetic look came over Jenny’s face. “Simone’s a good mom, Anna. But I could
smell
him…and that’s when I noticed Simone didn’t even bring a diaper bag inside. How could she have changed Bobby if she left his diaper bag in the car?”

Jenny’s bright green eyes seemed guileless, intelligent. Charlie didn’t know her at all, but his instincts told him she was telling the truth. As strange as that truth seemed.

Nate still hadn’t looked up. His father put an arm around him. It was one of only a handful of times Charlie had ever seen Caleb show his son any physical affection.

“Has anyone tried tracking her cell phone?” Jenny suggested softly.

“No luck.” Hawkins responded. “She may have removed her battery from her phone. I’m sorry to say this, Nate, but it seems to me like Simone doesn’t want to be found. Maybe all she needs is a cooling-off period.”

Nate finally looked up, eyes blazing. “Why wouldn’t my wife want to be found? Why would she need a cooling-off period? We haven’t argued.” He glanced sideways at Anna. “No more than usual at least.”

Anna stood and went to her brother-in-law. She touched his shoulder in a show of support. Nate placed his hand on top of Anna’s, and then looked up to meet her eyes. “Did she tell you where she went, Anna? She must have told you something.”

Anna drew in a sharp breath. Charlie could read the anguish in her eyes. “Of course not. How can you think I would keep a secret like that?”

Carlisle came to his feet again, a hard look on his face. “It’s a fair question, Anna. Everyone in this town knows the Kincaid sisters always have each other’s backs.”

Chapter Five

Tangleheart: Monday 11:30
P.M.

A
BANDONING HER KEYS
in the front door of the public library, Anna flipped on the lights and sprinted for the security panel on the far wall. With only a moment to spare, her index finger connected with its target. Beeps sounded. Green lights flashed. The security system shut off without a hiccup. She whirled around, aiming two thumbs up at Charlie.

His response: the high arch of one amused eyebrow. “Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to sneak into the Tangleheart Public Library, where you are, in fact, authorized to be at any time, and disarm the security system, which you, in fact, programmed yourself.” He’d made his voice the rich velvet of a radio announcer, and now he was giving her an exaggerated slow clap. “Dangerous business breaking into the library after hours.”

She waved a dismissive hand, putting too much spin on her wrist and banged it against the wall. Her hand stung a little—so did Charlie’s sarcasm. Joking around had always been Charlie’s way, and she knew he was only trying to distract her from worry about Simone, but he didn’t seem to understand how important her work at the library was to her. “Go ahead and make fun, but I could lose my job over this.”

“Then Mrs. Marlowe must’ve changed. Last I heard she was as addicted to the pleasure of your company as to that nip of brandy from the bottle she keeps hidden in her desk drawer. Does she still bring you brownies on Saturdays and call you
dearheart
?”

Nursing her wrist, she said. “I suppose you think protecting the privacy of a library patron is less important than doctor-patient privilege.”

He shrugged. “I think you’re okay on this one. The library patron in question happens to be your sister.”

“This is serious stuff. Maybe Mrs. Marlowe wouldn’t fire me if she found out, but I know I’m violating a professional code of ethics. If I didn’t think Bobby and Simone might be…” The tightness in her throat transformed her voice into a thin thread “… in real trouble, I’d never allow you in here. I’d never misuse my position as librarian to snoop into any patron’s business, not even my sister’s.”

“You’re right—I’m being a jerk.”

He sounded sincere, but after that slow clap…She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, considering.

“No. I mean it. I know how hard this must be for you.” His voice lowered, and his eyes lingered on her mouth in a way that made the room suddenly seem far too warm.

She released her lower lip from between her teeth. Her pulse still raced, even though the sprint from the door to the security panel was nothing compared to the hills she ran most weekends. Crossing her arms over her chest to protect her heart from any stray charm bullets Charlie might fire off, she took a baby step back—just far enough to escape his force field.

Charlie continued to study her. His head angled sideways. “Remember the time we went to see
Knocked Up,
and there was no one manning the ticket booth?”

Knocked Up?
Surely he wasn’t still holding a grudge over ten lousy dollars. “My stars, Charlie. Is there going to be a point to this little stroll down memory lane? Because we’ve got stuff to do here.”

A faraway look preceded his words. “I wanted to go inside and catch the movie for free, but you insisted on chasing down the manager and paying for the tickets. I never thought I would say this, but I’ve missed that sort of thing about you.”

She uncrossed her arms and planted her hands on her hips. “You stayed mad a whole week.”

“Well, yeah. Your overdeveloped conscience cost me ten bucks, but when you don’t see someone for a long time, it’s the little things that sneak up on you and make you realize…” His gaze went to a spot somewhere over her shoulder. “I’m rambling, and we really should get on with it. I honest to God don’t want to cause trouble for you with Mrs. Marlowe, and the sooner we figure out what Simone came looking for, the sooner we can start our search.”

Our search.
The knowledge that Simone and Bobby’s fate might very well depend on them weighed heavily on her heart. Sheriff Hawkins believed Simone had left of her own volition, that she was nursing a jealous streak. He’d taken a missing persons report and put out a BOLO, but it had seemed to Anna as if he were just going through the motions. Convinced this was a routine domestic incident, Hawkins wasn’t keen on calling out the cavalry just yet, but Anna had seen enough episodes of
Criminal Minds
to know how important the first forty-eight hours were in missing person cases. If Bobby and Simone hadn’t been found by then…

“Charlie.” To keep the vibration out of her voice, she paused and gulped air. “Thank you.”

He took her hand, turned it over in his. “Sure. But for what?”

“For being here.” She kept her hand in his, allowing herself to feel safe, if only for the space of a single heartbeat. “I don’t know if I could do this without your help.”

“I think you could do just about anything.” A husky tone braided itself into his words. “But we do make a good team.” As she pulled her hand free, his brow furrowed. “I only hope this little undercover operation at the library doesn’t turn out to be a wild goose chase.”

Anna thought about how agitated Simone had been after looking through the vertical file yesterday morning, the way Simone had rushed out of the library without so much as a wave good-bye. Top that off with the fact that Anna was desperate to find her sister and nephew, but was at a loss as to how to proceed, and there you had it—sneaking into the library and snooping through the files suddenly seemed like a completely reasonable course of action. Her jaw firmed. “We have to start somewhere. The vertical file is this way. Grab my keys and close the door, will you? ”

Charlie did, and then followed her to a corner in the back. “What’s a vertical file?”

“Sorry, that’s librarian-speak. I suppose a lot of libraries don’t even have vertical files anymore. But Mrs. Marlowe is—”

“A sweet old bat.”

“I was going to say old school. Basically, the vertical file is just a cabinet full of newspaper clippings from the
Tangleheart Gazette
—stories that were reported before the paper went online. Mrs. Marlowe wants to be sure important articles, especially the ones about town history and locals, won’t be lost to posterity. I’ve been meaning to scan all of the stories in for her and get rid of the clippings, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“And Simone was digging through the vertical file yesterday morning?”

“With Bobby in tow. She nodded hello to me and went straight to the back. Later, I saw her riffling through the file cabinet, and even at the time I thought it was peculiar.”

“What’s so peculiar about that?”

“You mean besides the fact she didn’t head straight over to grill me on my love life the second she walked in? It’s peculiar because even though anyone can go through the vertical file on his own, no one ever does. The vertical file is hardly ever used, and the patrons who do use it routinely ask me to find the clippings they need for them. It’s certainly not Simone’s style to hesitate to bother me.”

Propping her hip against an oversized reading desk, she continued, “We don’t allow patrons to refile the clippings. They leave them in this basket.” She indicated a large wire basket. “And then either Mrs. Marlowe or I file them back when we get time.”

“Lucky for us you haven’t had time.” Charlie snatched the only folder in the file-back basket, and opened it, displaying its contents. “Not good.”

There appeared to be at least fifty clippings in the file. While a lump rose in her throat, hope sank in her chest. Charlie was right. They were chasing wild geese, looking for needles in haystacks, wasting precious time. She busied her hands, fiddling with the buttons on her blouse.

“How are we going to figure out what Simone was looking for with all these clippings to choose from?”

Charlie cast a comforting arm around her. “You know Simone better than anyone, Anna. Something will stand out—you’ll know it when you see it.”

She was no psychic. The only thing she knew for certain was that her sister would never have taken Bobby away from his father over a run-of-the-mill marital spat. Simone loved Bobby, and she loved Nate. She wouldn’t have run off with her infant son, knowing the worry she’d cause. Simone knew too well the way she and Anna had suffered when their own mother ran off. No. Either Simone had a compelling reason for running,
or she hadn’t run at all
. Her fingers stopped flying over her buttons. Her heart fluttered in her chest. A flash of tears threatened, but she blinked them back. “The police should be doing the job of trying to find Bobby and Simone, not rank amateurs like us.”