Strangers in the Night (6 page)

A new set of Barbie dolls with a wardrobe sat next to an overflowing toy chest with stuffed animals and toys and building blocks. Everything a little girl could want.

Emma squealed with delight and dove into her treasures. “Mommy, look, Nana bought me books too.”

“I see.” Abbie chuckled. “We'll have a lot of reading to do.” Turning toward her mother, she added, “Mom, you didn't have to do all this.”

“Of course we did.” Carlene placed a hand on Abbie's shoulder, slipping up beside her. “Grandchildren are so precious, and we want to make her happy.”

“You'll spoil her.” Abbie couldn't have been more pleased. She circled her mother's waist and hugged her.

Abbie spent a few minutes hanging up Emma's dresses and tucking her shirts, pants, and underwear into the dresser before moving into her own room.

She paused at the doorway to the bedroom. Her mother had decorated in there as well. The walls were white and the bedspreads floral, with various pillows that picked up the colors in the flowers: pink, rose, cream, pale green. A white wooden rocking chair sat in front of a window that looked out over the ocean. While Emma made herself at home with her toys and dolls, Abbie tucked away her own things in the large closet.

The unpacking reminded her of the day she arrived at Margie's. She'd come with little and had left with slightly more. About the only real purchases she'd made had been pillows, linens, and art supplies. In Grand Forks, she'd bought an extra suitcase for those things. They'd planned to rent a trailer, but in the end realized everything she and Emma had would fit in Jake's car.

Abbie sighed. There was something pathetic about a twenty-eight-year-old woman who could pack her whole life into three suitcases. She did, however, have an easel and her art supplies, along with a portfolio of watercolors she'd done at Margie's. She'd had to leave her original equipment along with her portfolio in Iowa when she fled.

Maybe someday she'd go back and get them. Though knowing Leah, they'd have gone out with the trash and been burned. She shoved the unkind thought aside, along with memories of Leah. She was home and it was time for celebration—not despair.

After dropping Abbie off, Jake headed straight to the office. He hesitated before opening the door, worried about what might be waiting for him. Then, taking a deep breath, he went ahead.

“Jake!” Sandy eased her large frame out of the chair and waddled over to give him a welcome-home hug. “I am so glad you're here. The phone has been ringing off the hook. We have a lot of unhappy clients. Barbara didn't show up for any of her appointments and—”

“You still haven't been able to locate her?” Jake headed for his desk. The office was a single large room with a small storage space, a conference room for meeting with clients, and a restroom. This room held three large executive desks. Sandy's was situated just inside the entrance. Barbara and Jake's desks faced the door as well. The desks formed a triangular arrangement.

Sandy shook her head. “Not a word. The police are finally starting to take her disappearance seriously. A police officer was here this morning asking questions about you.”

“About me?”

She sighed. “Yes, well, it appears that since Barbara went missing about the same time you left, you are their primary suspect.”

Jake ran a hand through his hair. “Great.” He paced to the door and back. “Did they give you any particular reason why I might want to get rid of my partner at a time when I needed her to take over for me?”

“Money?” Sandy looked up at him, her brown eyes brimming with tears. “I had to tell them that if something happened to her you would get any commission she might make.”

“Wonderful. And I suppose you told them about how great Barbara and I get along.” Barbara was a good worker, but they'd had plenty of disagreements. Since he was the senior partner and the broker, he'd gotten on her case a few times for not following through. She worked hard but didn't seem all that invested in the business.

“I told them you got along okay.” She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. “I'm sorry, Jake. I didn't offer them any extra information. I just answered their questions.”

“It's not your fault.” He dropped into his leather executive chair and started going through the papers. “I suppose they want to talk to me.”

Sandy nodded. “As soon as possible.”

Focusing on the stacks of paper in front of him, Jake said, “Walk me through this, will you. Tell me if there's anything urgent I need to deal with this minute.”

“I took care of most of the calls, but there are a couple of people you need to talk with. One is Douglas Perkins. He's been working with Barbara on the Cold Creek Property. He's saying he put an offer on it before the Grants did.”

With elbows on the desk, Jake held his head in his hands. Could things get much worse?

He'd been afraid Perkins would pull something like this. It was true that Barbara had shown the property to him first, but he'd already gotten a yes from Lyle Grant before Perkins called with his offer.

He didn't feel up to talking with the guy, but he should at least acknowledge him. He stood and took the note to Sandy. Placing it on her desk, he said, “How about calling Mr. Perkins for me and setting up an appointment for tomorrow—say around ten?”

“Will do.” Sandy picked up the receiver and began dialing.

“Did the police officer leave a card?” Jake asked.

“Um, yeah. It's around here somewhere.” She shuffled through the stack of papers on her desk, found the card, and handed it to him. “Detective Meyers. He's with the state police and said he had to go back to Portland this afternoon. Said you could just call the local police. He mentioned Jeff's name.”

“Well, that's something.” Jeff Stuart was an old friend who worked as a detective for the Oceanside Police Department. Jake had sold Jeff and his wife a house up north in Road's End. Jake pulled his suit jacket off the back of the chair and flipped it over his shoulder. “I'd better go talk to him. Get this thing straightened out.”

A few minutes later, Jake walked into the police station and asked to talk to Jeff. He spoke briefly to the receptionist and was told to wait. Jeff showed up about two seconds later.

“It's about time you got here, buddy.” Jeff clasped his shoulder. “Let's go get some coffee. Have you had lunch?”

“Coffee sounds good. Lunch too, for that matter.” He and Abbie had stopped in Portland for a late breakfast. Eating on the road had turned his meal schedule upside down.

He followed Jeff out of the building and into the parking lot. Jeff started toward his unmarked Chrysler. “We'll take my car, if you don't mind.”

Jake climbed into the passenger seat. “Sandy told me a Detective Meyers came by. She says he asked about my having something to do with Barbara's disappearance. What's that all about?”

“He had to ask, Jake. You left town about the same time she disappeared. How do we know you didn't help her disappear, or maybe you killed her, pushed her car off the road, put her body in the trunk, and buried her somewhere between here and Fargo?”

“I didn't go to Fargo.”

“Oh, right, Grand Forks. And what's the deal with a police officer out there calling us to ask about you? Did you get into some kind of trouble?”

“Come on, Jeff. You know I didn't have anything to do with Barbara's going missing. Charlie, he's the officer who called, just wanted to make sure I was who I said I was. They weren't about to send Abbie off with some stranger with a criminal record. Thanks for giving me a good report, by the way.”

“No problem.”

“Have you come any closer to locating Barbara?”

“No, but we did find her car this morning.” Jeff cast Jake a sidelong look before twisting the key in the ignition. “A tourist spotted it when he walked off the path to get a picture.”

“Where?” Jake's gut twisted. From the timbre of Jeff's voice, the news wasn't good.

“At the bottom of a ravine just south of town.”

Jeff drove out of the lot and turned right.

“She was in an accident? Is she…” Jake rubbed his brow, bracing himself for the worst.

“She wasn't in the car,” Jeff said as he pulled onto Highway 101 and headed north.

Jake let the news sink in. “So where is she?”

“That's what we're trying to find out. We searched the area but found no sign of her. First we thought she might have survived and crawled out, but there's no evidence of that. Of course, we've had a lot of rain.”

“So she could have been thrown free of the car and climbed back to the road. Maybe hitched a ride with someone?”

“It's possible. We just don't know, Jake.” He sighed. “She may have planned to ditch her car and had someone waiting.”

“That seems pretty farfetched.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We have to cover all the angles. The gearshift was in neutral, so it looks like someone purposely shoved it over the edge of the cliff.”

“Why would she do something like that? She needed her car to get around.”

“To be honest, we really don't know.” Jeff slowed with the traffic at a stop sign.

“I think you were right having your secretary call us. I just wished we'd taken your concerns more seriously early on.”

“Have you found anything else? Any clue as to what happened to her or why she might want to ditch her car and leave town?”

Jeff hesitated, and Jake suspected he had something but wasn't ready to share. “Her parents told us she hadn't been in contact with them.” He blew out a long breath. “We asked the police department in Portland to notify them about the car. Next thing I know Detective Meyers is on the case.”

Jeff pulled into the café's gravel parking lot, and they went about getting seated and ordering before taking up the conversation again.

“Have you checked her apartment?” Jake asked once they'd gotten their coffee.

“We did.” Jake met his gaze. “Look, I'm not sure how much of this to tell you. We like to keep evidence close to the vest.”

“Sure. I understand that, but I might be able to help if I know what you're dealing with.”

“You have a point.” Jeff blew on his black brew before taking a sip. He took his coffee straight up. Jake added a little cream and sugar to cut the bitter taste. “The only odd thing we found in the apartment,” Jeff went on, “was that her closet had been ransacked and her personal items—things like a toothbrush—were gone. There was no suitcase, and it looked as though she might have packed up and taken off.”

“Why would she do that?” Jake mused as he tasted the coffee and added a bit more cream. “Barbara seemed to like her job. She had several sales pending.”

“Truth is, I'm not sure what to think.”

“Have you talked to Travis?” Jake interrupted. “He'd been dating her for a couple months or so. Maybe he has some insight.”

Jeff nodded. “I questioned him, but that was before we found her car. I'll need to talk with him again.”

Jake wiped a hand across his jaw. “None of this makes sense.”

“You've got that right. So, what can you tell me about Barbara?”

“Not that much. She was quiet. Kept to herself a lot.” Jake thrummed his fingers on the Formica tabletop, trying to remember more about the woman.

Jeff nodded. “Travis told me he'd had a date scheduled with her the night before you left, but she cancelled on him. She told him there was something she had to do.”

“But she didn't say what?”

“Nope. He said it might have had something to do with a project she'd been working on, but he couldn't tell me about that either.” Jeff looked into his cup before adding, “Detective Meyers considers him a suspect too.”

“I figured as much.” Jake couldn't see Travis doing anything to hurt Barbara.

“Sandy told me Barbara was thinking about breaking up with Travis. That gives him motive. He also had the means and opportunity. Trouble is, there's no real evidence of foul play. Right now it looks like she skipped town without letting anyone know.”

“I don't believe Barbara would skip town. And if she did, why would she push her car over an embankment?” Jake thought about his statement and backed off a bit. “On the other hand, even though we've worked together for two years now, you'd think I'd know her better than I do. She rarely talked about her personal life. Kept to herself a lot. The only reason I knew she was dating Travis is because he told me, and I'd seen them having coffee a few times. She's good with people, but not pushy. Barbara brought in a lot of business.”

“So you're saying that you're better off with her alive.”

Jake shrugged. “Of course.”

“Did you ever date her?”

Jake shook his head, thinking immediately of Abbie and not sure why. “Not my type, I guess. We talked a fair amount, but mostly about business. Like I said, she rarely if ever mentioned family. About all I know is that she had parents living in Portland.”

He looked up at Jeff. “I wish I could offer more. Come to think of it, she seemed jumpy…agitated before I left town.”

“Sandy mentioned that.” Jeff pushed his empty cup toward the waitress when she came by offering refills. “Did she ever tell you about any previous jobs she might have had?”

Jake pursed his lips, trying to remember. “She used to be a bank teller in Portland. I never checked her references. I suppose I should have, but it didn't seem necessary. When she came to me to apply for a job, she'd just gotten her real estate license and that was good enough for me. She was on a six-month probationary period and passed with flying colors.”

Jeff leaned back and studied Jake's face, then, apparently coming to a decision, leaned forward again. “When you clued us in that something might be wrong, I did some digging. Ordinarily I wouldn't tell you this, but there's good reason to suspect foul play and/or the theory that she skipped town. She was a bank teller until five years ago when the bank she worked in was robbed. It didn't go down well. The bank robber took a hostage and got away with half a million in cash.”

Jake whistled. “And Barbara was there?”

“Saw the whole thing. The gunman disappeared with the money and a twenty-five-year-old woman who worked with Barbara at the bank. There's been no trace of them since. The hostage was Barbara's best friend, so it was doubly traumatic for her. Her mother said she changed after that. Wouldn't go back to work and sort of shut down for a while. She lived at home and finally went back to school and decided to go into real estate.”

“What brought her to Oceanside?” Jake asked as he processed this new information. Barbara's past experiences shed a whole new light on her disappearance.

Jeff shrugged. “No idea. Her parents said she thought it was time to move on and she had always liked this area. The robbery is why Meyers is chiming in on the case. He thinks she may have come here because of some tip they'd gotten about two years ago that the bank robber had been seen out here. About the same time a few bills from the robbery surfaced in Oceanside.”

“I'm sorry, I'm not following you. You think Barbara came here to work so she could search for a bank robber? Isn't that up to the police?”

“Yes, but Barbara was apparently obsessed with the case. For a while after it happened, she drove the police nuts calling in with sightings. After a while she stopped calling them.”

“And now she's missing.”

Jake straightened when the waitress brought their orders. The breakfast special for Jeff and a BLT for him.

Jeff and Jake talked while they ate, but not about Barbara. Jeff's wife was pregnant and due in October. They were all friends—Jeff and his wife, Becky, Travis, Sandy, Jake's sister Peggy, and her husband, Brent, Jake's primary carpenter. Jake had known all of them for as long as he could remember.

He had to smile at the weaving of people making up the town of Oceanside. It was like a lot of tourist towns along the Oregon and Washington beaches. There were the locals—people who lived there year-round—and the tourists. But there was also a division between the locals. There were the natives, those who were born and raised Oceansiders, and there were those who had moved in as adults.

He and his friends were natives and tended to band together. Not that they excluded others, but they had an unspoken pact. He'd gone through grade school and high school with these people. In a way, their closeness was a good thing. In another, they were like a high-school clique that made outside friendships difficult.

As an outsider, Barbara had never been part of the group, but not because they didn't want her to be. He couldn't ever remember her wanting to be with them. Early on, he'd invited her to a few of their get-togethers and she'd turned him down. Come to think of it, Travis had mentioned inviting her as well. Jake wondered if Barbara had made any close friends in Oceanside outside of Travis. If she had, he didn't know about them.

“Did you talk to any of Barbara's neighbors?” Jake set his empty plate aside, thinking maybe someone at the apartment complex could tell them something about her or people who might have visited her.

“I made a quick run-through. A couple of people know her by sight. None of them remembered seeing anyone come or go from the apartment but her.”

“Not even Travis?”

“Apparently not. I showed them photos of both you and Travis, but no takers.”

Jake frowned. “You showed them my picture?”

“Well, you are her boss.”

“And a suspect, I know.”

“Sorry about that.”

“What about Travis? No one saw him at her place either?”

Jeff shook his head. “Seemed strange to me, but Travis says he was never invited to her apartment. She always met him somewhere.”

Jake frowned. It sounded as though Barbara was hiding something. “Come to think about it, I've never seen the inside of her apartment either. I picked her up outside or dropped her off a couple of times when she had car trouble or needed a ride, which wasn't very often.” The more Jake thought about it, the more he realized how little he actually knew Barbara Nichols.

Jeff wanted to know about Jake's trip to the Midwest, so Jake filled him in. Talking about Abbie and Emma raised his mood considerably. His friend apparently noticed. “You like her.” He grinned. “Don't try to deny it, buddy, you've fallen big time.”

“It's not like that. I do like her. There's something special about her. She's an artist. I'm not into art, but I appreciate it as much as the next guy does. I care about her. Abbie has been through a lot and I want to help in whatever way I can.”

“Oh, yeah. You have all the symptoms.” Jeff chuckled. “You're even playing the knight in shining armor.”

“It's more than that.” Jake wanted to tell him about Abbie's ordeal with her late husband's family but thought better of it. If there were a warrant out for Abbie, Jeff would feel obligated to act on it. His friend was an honest cop, which was one of the reasons Jeff couldn't arbitrarily rule out Jake and Travis as suspects in Barbara's disappearance.

Jake paid for their lunches and the two walked out to the car. Jake felt more confused than ever. Had Barbara really skipped town? Somehow, he couldn't see her doing that. True, he didn't know her as well as he'd thought, but her leaving town so suddenly and mysteriously didn't seem like a reasonable theory. If he was right, and she hadn't sent her car over the cliff, then someone else had.