The B Girls (8 page)

Both sides rolled down their windows.

The driver of the truck touched the brim of his
hat, an old fashioned gesture that Lucy found oddly reassuring. "Bill
Leonard, I'm the resident ranger here in Cohutta. Everything okay ladies?"

Mae looked to Lucy for a response.

Lucy held up a finger indicating he should hold on
and climbed out of the van.

He didn't wait but got out of his truck and met her
halfway.

"I'm not sure if everything's okay," Lucy
said. "My aunt is missing and we think she may have been headed up here.
We were checking the lot for her car."

Mae and Jane joined the party.

"I don't suppose you've seen a seventy-odd
year old woman wandering around in your park?" Jane said.

Lucy took note of the fact that Jane was giving the
Ranger the once-over while she talked.

He smiled and chuckled to himself. "You
wouldn't be talking about Belle Morris?"

"Yes!" Lucy said. "Is she hurt?
Lost?"

"Not when I watched her drive away from the
Ranger station."

"She was at the Ranger station? What did she
want?"

"Maps of the area. Said she was looking for an
old homestead and needed the most up to date map."

"Homestead? I thought this was all
wilderness?" Lucy said.

"Now. Back in the 1800's there were quite a
few homesteaders up here. The terrain made it tough going and most folks left
for greener pastures. Some of the homesteads are still recognizable. Chimneys,
stone walls, the occasional well."

"Do you have any idea where, specifically, she
might have been planning to go?"

He shook his head. "Sure don't. I cautioned
her about hiking alone. She said she was planning to have company before she
went into the backcountry."

Jane made a wry face. "That would probably be
us."

"Well, if you ladies come back up here you
should check in at the ranger station first."

"I'm more worried about my aunt at the
moment," Lucy said. "When did she leave here?"

"About two . . . three o'clock," he said.
"I went out to make my afternoon rounds after that."

"Three o'clock and it's ten now," Lucy
said. "Something must have happened after she left here."

The ranger shook his head. "I've patrolled all
the parking areas in this part of the park. Her car didn't break down anywhere
nearby and it's not parked in any of the lots. She probably had plans she
didn't tell you about."

Lucy didn't bother to argue with him. "When
can I report her missing and expect someone to do something about it?"

"Wednesday morning. Unless there's reason to
believe there was foul play or a medical emergency."

"Wednesday!" Mae said. "Anything
could happen before then."

"Do you have some reason to think she's been
harmed or fallen ill?" Ranger Leonard said.

"You mean besides the fact that she invited me
to her home and should have been there hours ago?" Lucy said.

"Besides that, yes."

"No. But I'm telling you something is
wrong."

"What time was she supposed to be home?"

Lucy frowned, knowing her answer wasn't going to
help her cause. "She didn't say specifically. Just that she had something
to do and she'd be home."

To Leonard's credit he didn't state the obvious.
"I understand you're concerned. I'll give the county police a heads up.
Get them to keep and eye out for Belle's car. But there's really nothing else
we can do until Wednesday."

Lucy wasn't happy but it was clear she wasn't going
to get anywhere by pleading her case further.

With nowhere else to look, the girls returned to
Belle's house to wait.

###

"What if the burglar was a kidnapper?"
Mae asked as they began their vigil in Belle's living room.

Jane shook her head. "Timing's wrong. Belle
was safe with the ranger about the same time we were chasing off the
raccoon."

"Thank goodness," Lucy said. "One
less nightmare to have tonight."

"But you think something happened to
her?" Mae said.

"I think she would've at least called if she
could. My hope is that she's stuck somewhere with a dead cell phone," Lucy
said. "I can't think about anything else right now."

Lucy drank her way through two pots of coffee one
dollop of half and half and one packet of Splenda at a time, called the county
police every hour on the hour and paced until her legs ached.

Mae and Jane tried to keep her spirits up and took
turns dozing on the couch.

Mae was on cheering up duty when the clock on the
mantel ticked over to two AM. "You know," Mae said, "Belle
is--"

Lucy spun away from the fireplace and held up a
hand. "Stop!" She was afraid her head was going to explode if she had
to listen to one more version of "I'm sure she'll walk in the door any
minute".

Mae snapped her mouth closed mid-sentence looking a
little wounded.

"I'm sorry," Lucy said. "The
coffee's making me jumpy. You and Jane should go to bed. I'll wake you if I
hear anything."

"You shouldn't be alone," Mae said.

"Believe me, alone is exactly what I should
be."

"If you're sure?"

Lucy nodded. "I need some time."

Mae rousted Jane and they went up to bed.

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. Giving and
receiving feelings wasn't her best thing on a good day. The past couple of days
hadn't been good days and she needed to be alone to think without all sorts of
messy emotions beating at her.

Maybe that was part of the problem with her
marriage. She'd always thought Gary appreciated the fact that she didn't need a
lot of cuddling and love talk. But maybe he just thought she'd become cold. And
maybe he never thought about it at all.

How could he when he'd obviously been spending a
great deal of time thinking about and planning their divorce?

Her heart pounded double-time at the thought of the
"D" word.

She tried to push back the natural mental question
about what else could go wrong, but with Gary leaving her and Belle
disappearing in a single weekend it was hard not to feel a little fatalistic.

She shuddered. God or fate had a way of showing
what else could go wrong.

Lucy knew that only too well. A lesson she'd
learned when she was ten years old, trapped in an abandoned sewer during a
severe summer thunderstorm praying her friends would give away the secret of
the "magic maze" and bring help before the water covered her and took
her breath.

First she'd fallen in a hole. Next her friends left
with the promise they'd bring a rope to get her out. Then the thunder, loud and
frightening. Last came the water rising toward her face. She remembered
thinking each step of the way "what else could go wrong?" and each
time the universe provided a frightening answer.

Of course help had arrived but Lucy and her friends
never again enjoyed the same sense of freedom they'd had in those few heady
days before the grownups discovered their secret playground.

That was the day Lucy learned dreams could be dangerous.
Looking back, she realized she'd begun taking the safe roads in her life after
that day.

Spending summer days reading in her room instead of
creating her own make-believe with her friends.

Going to yoga class with her mother instead of
taking gymnastics lessons.

Staying home instead of traveling to Cancun with
her fellow seniors after graduation.

Commuting to college instead of moving into the
dorm.

Marrying Gary instead of digging up history.

Even those decisions hadn't kept her safe.

This time Gary had shoved her into a hole and fate
seemed to be determined to pour water in after her.

This time she'd have to rescue herself.

This time she'd take some chances.

Lucy finally fell into a fitful, jittery doze in an
armchair about four in the morning and dreamed about standing on the balcony of
her beach condo watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico--alone.

Chimes. Loud. Insistent.

Lucy didn't recognize the sound. She opened her
eyes trying to orient herself.

The chiming sounded again.

Lucy bolted upright on the couch. The doorbell.
Maybe someone had news about Aunt Belle.

She glanced at the clock on the mantle. Seven AM.

People don't knock on doors at seven AM with good
news.

On her way to the door she scrubbed her face with
her hands in an attempt to get the blood flowing.

She thumbed the deadbolt and threw open the door
without checking to see who was on the other side.

A man of about thirty with a bad haircut, dressed
in threadbare jeans and a wrinkled button down, stood clutching a battered,
soft-sided leather briefcase overflowing with paper in his right hand. The
index finger of his left hand was poised over the doorbell button prepared to
ring again.

He didn't look like a cop of any sort so maybe it
wasn't bad news after all.

She scowled at him. If he was some sort of
religious do-gooder she was going to say something sure to send her straight to
hell. "What?"

A series of expressions crossed his face, startled,
confused and finally smiling. "Lucy Deen?"

His smiling mouth didn't match something a little
desperate and edgy in his eyes and Lucy wasn't sure she wanted to answer.
"Who are you?"

His smile got bigger, showing more teeth.
"Perry Thiel. I'm here to see Belle."

Lucy stared for several seconds while her sleep
deprived brain tried to dredge up information matching the name or the face.
The man clearly expected her to know him.

Nothing.

"Do I know you?"

His face fell. "Belle didn't tell you?"

Lucy frowned. "Belle isn't here."

"Not here?"

Lucy wasn't big on patience this morning but she
bit back an urge to be rude. The guy seemed to know something about what Belle
was up to. "No, she didn't come home yesterday and I'm afraid something's
happened to her. Did she tell you where she was going?"

Perry looked a little alarmed now as well as
desperate. "No. She was helping me with something and I thought she told
you about it. It's pretty important. Maybe you can help me."

Incredulous, Lucy started to slam the door in his
face but decided to give him a piece of her mind first. "Didn't you hear
me? I said Belle is missing. Now is not the time." She stepped back to
close the door.

"Wait! Maybe I can help you figure out where
she went. It probably had something to do with the Dunlap Broadside? My PhD dissertation?"

An academic. She should have recognized the signs.
Dunlap Broadside? Something about the phrase tickled Lucy's brain but she
couldn't make the final connection. She found it hard to believe Belle was
involved in some sort of research for this odd man's dissertation. "I
doubt Belle went missing in a library."

"She wasn't helping me that way. She was
trying to find a rare copy of the Dunlap Broadside. She was supposed to get in
touch with me yesterday after she checked out a lead she'd found."

"What lead? I thought you said she didn't tell
you where she was going."

"She didn't. She said she found a clue but she
wouldn't say what it was. She said she didn't want to get my hopes up if it
didn't pan out. Maybe if we put our heads together we can figure it out."

When Lucy hesitated, Perry gave her a pleading
look. "Please! If you'll just give me ten minutes I can explain."

The guy looked desperate. He also looked harmless.
Of course they say Ted Bundy looked harmless too when he faked a broken limb to
lure women to their doom. But this guy had the look of some of the people who
had stumbled in and out of her parent's sphere of influence from time to time.
People who spent so much time in the mustiest parts of the library with old
crumbling books that when they came up for air they had trouble interacting
with real live people.

Social skills were not a top priority for people
like Perry Thiel.

The question was what to do with him now that he'd
arrived on Belle's doorstep. Belle would have let him in. She never turned down
an opportunity to meet someone with a new perspective.

With a sigh, Lucy stepped back and opened the door
wider. "Maybe you should come in so we can sort this out."