The Baker's Wife (7 page)

Geoff prayed for her and their son, and for Jack and Julie, which didn't surprise Audrey at all. But then he added this Diane Hall to his list, and that caught her off guard. Still, Geoff often saw things she missed. He prayed for less than a minute, but by the time he finished, some of Audrey's urgent need to keep the world in perfect order had subsided.

They pulled away from each other. “Maybe I should go over to Julie's house, see if she's there,” Audrey said. They walked down the hall.

“I'm sure Jack is taking care of all that,” he said.

“I'll call her then. Borrow your phone? Mine's still out in the car.”

“Do you know her number? Because I don't.”

“Maybe Ed knows it.” They pushed out the door into the dining room.

“Have times changed that much? Because when I was nineteen, I didn't give a rip about my ex-girlfriends' mothers' phone numbers.”

“That's because no one had cell phones back then.”

Ed was standing in the arched entry to the kitchen, staring out through the front windows toward the gray morning light like a sleepwalker. Audrey rounded the back of the counter and went to him. “Ed, do you know Julie's phone number?”

He blinked. “What?”

“Julie Mansfield's phone number. Do you know it?”

“Audrey, it's really not a good idea to call,” Geoff said.

“It will give me peace of mind, her being okay. And I need to apologize for the bike. She should hear it from me rather than Jack, wouldn't you say?”

“It's not great timing. You two aren't close. Jack is eyeing you for whatever he's going to call this crime. And Ed doesn't know the number.”

“Actually, it's only one digit off Miralee's,” Ed said, his tone flat. “I guess it's how their family plan worked out.”

“There. See?” Audrey reached for the old phone mounted on the kitchen wall just inside the archway. “Tell me.”

Ed recited the number.

“Do you think she'll be more upset that someone stole it,” Audrey asked Geoff, “or that I demolished it?”

Behind her Estrella opened an oven door and slid a baking sheet onto the rack. In the dining room a phone rang. The ring tone was particular and unfamiliar, something rhythmic and international, like African drums.

“Just be careful what you say,” Geoff advised. “What if the rider was someone she knows?”

She hadn't thought of that. She clicked off the phone to ponder Geoff's wisdom. The ringing in the bakery cut off mid-tone. It seemed to be coming from Diane's backpack, but if it was, the woman was ignoring her call, staring out the viewless window.

Audrey decided that chances were slim Julie would answer her phone at this hour. Also, if Jack hadn't been able to reach her, Audrey could start to patch things up by leaving a message rather than putting Julie on the spot. Waiting to address matters like this never panned out well. At least, it had ended very badly the last time they put it off.

“I'll just leave something on her voice mail,” she told Geoff as she hit the redial button.

Geoff was staring into the dining room, focused on Diane and her untouched baguette. Audrey's call connected.

Diane's backpack started ringing again. Audrey felt an unpleasant flash of heat pass through her stomach. The ringing ended and a recording began. Julie's voice came over the line, and the African drums in the pack ceased their beating.

In that moment, Audrey couldn't think of what she wanted to say to Julie. She hung up and raised her voice. “Is that your phone?”

Diane gasped and turned from the window, one hand on her heart.

Audrey tried not to sound accusatory. “Is that your phone ringing? In your bag?” She pointed to the backpack as she came out of the kitchen, around the counters, and crossed the room. Geoff followed her.

Diane's eyes shifted as if seeking the definition of each word in Audrey's question. “I don't have a phone. Those clothes are really too big for you.”

“They're exactly what I needed. You're kind to let me use them.”

“Are you sure you don't have a phone?” Geoff asked.

Diane blinked. “No, what would I—oh.” She bent over the pack and unzipped the outside pocket. “I found one on the way here. In the gutter.” She fished it out and handed it to Audrey. “I wouldn't even know how to answer it.”

Audrey pushed the button and swept her finger over the display. Five missed calls. She quickly found the log. The bakery number appeared twice, and beneath it, the name
Jack
, three times within a half hour of the accident.

“Where did you find it?” Audrey asked.

“A couple blocks that way.” Diane pointed down Main Street. “It fell off someone's scooter.”

Geoff put both hands on his head and exhaled audibly.

“Does this have something to do with what's going on out there?” Diane asked.

The phone felt heavy in Audrey's hands. She found her eyes darting to the windows, looking for Jack. Without weighing the pros or cons of what she was doing, Audrey quickly deleted the calls from the bakery in the log. She placed the phone in the middle of the round table.

“All that blood . . .” Diane murmured.

The three of them stared at the device.

Geoff said, “I think it would be best for everyone if you give this to the detective yourself, Diane. Would you mind?”

“The detective?” Diane's mystified tone sank into resignation. She lowered herself back onto the chair. “Why should I mind? I guess death just follows some people around.”

CHAPTER 6

When the administrator at Mazy High called Jack to see if he knew where Julie was, Jack left the accident scene. He returned to their modest ranch-style home and scanned the low-maintenance yard in the front: a lawn shaped like a kidney bean, juniper bushes under the windows, several old oaks dropping leaves onto the tar-shingle roof, redbrick walls that never needed painting. Behind the windows that faced the street, the curtains were drawn, as always.

The jack-o'-lanterns that Julie's students had carved and presented to her last month, before she took a short medical leave, were sitting on the porch, wrinkled and collapsing in on themselves, toothless old hags. Jack pulled the police cruiser he had borrowed into the driveway and made a mental note to throw them out before they liquefied. Usually his wife took care of such things, but a lot had changed since Miralee left.

The fog had thinned to a mist and floated beneath the trees.

He parked outside the closed garage, exited the car, and punched the security code into the exterior door opener. The familiar whirring hefted the panel and revealed the empty spot where Jack's Jeep would have been if it wasn't still in the shop. Next to this, on the left, the bay for Julie's sedan was also empty.

He sighed, no longer expecting to find her here.

Jack walked to the rear of the garage, which led to the backyard, and began to speculate:
Someone breaks into the shed, steals
the scooter parked there. Julie observes from the master bedroom window,
decides to follow
. The theory had holes. Julie would have called the precinct. She wasn't at the scene of the scooter disaster.

At the back of the garage, a crooked flagstone path led to the shed, which looked like an old single-car garage with barn doors padlocked shut. No forced entry. Padlock secure.

The phone inside the house was ringing. After the fourth ring the caller was sent to voice mail. Jack stepped onto the flagstones.

A quiet break-in. Julie wouldn't have heard. She gets up, goes to
work none the wiser
.

She didn't go to work, obviously.

She grabbed coffee with a girlfriend, forgot about the meeting she
was supposed to attend before school
.
Or took a detour to put cheap gas
in the car
.

That was another habit she needed to change: Why on earth waste gas money by driving great distances to save a nickel? The math didn't work. She of all people should know that.

When was the last time he'd spoken to his wife? He mentally reviewed. Usually she called him when she needed something. When he was deep in a case, checking in with her rarely occurred to him. Had she called him at all yesterday? Now that he thought of it, no.
She's angry with me about the long shift. Ignoring my calls
now because she feels ignored
. Julie did that once in a while. Not frequently enough for him to pay much attention to it. Still, that she was doing it now annoyed him. The circumstances were urgent. This was no time for games.

An affair. A plot to run away, start a new life. Casanova drives
the scooter, she follows him out of town. Divine justice intervenes and
reduces the interloper to a grease spot. She hauls his broken body into
her car and—

Though such an offensive scenario might have been supported by Julie's recently chilly behavior, her doctor had suggested she might withdraw for a time after her hysterectomy. Some hormonal side effect. Also, he didn't need a psychiatrist to tell him that Miralee's abandonment had devastated his wife, even though Julie refused to discuss it with him. She was having a rough time, not an affair. There was also the matter of her surgery, which would throw a wet blanket on any sexual flings, and the not-so-small matter of her not being able to lift more than ten pounds for another four weeks.

The Bofingers had been adamant that there were no other parties at the scene, though they had plenty of motivation to lie to him. Well, that wasn't his fault, was it?

On the side of the shed, the key was hidden above the window on its protruding frame. He removed the padlock, swung the white wood door open on its tired hinges, and reached for the string that turned on the light.

Nothing had been disturbed, not even the scents of potting soils for summer window boxes, or gasoline for the mower. Organic mixed with synthetic, damp air and dry earth. Rusting metal tools on a spongy wood floor, untouched dust and spider–webs, and the clean-swept spot near the door where the blue-and-white Vespa should have been.

There was nothing wrong with this scene at all.

New theory:
More than one thief, careful people who know my
wife's habits, like where she keeps this key. Stalkers? They stole both
vehicles, because—

A new possibility for why Julie wasn't answering the phone struck him, so obvious that it should have been the first to occur to him and not the last. He left the shed wide open and cursed himself as he ran back to the house, through the garage, and—the house door was locked. Julie never locked this door, though he admonished her to. His keys snagged on a thread in his pocket and tangled with each other before he got the right one into the keyhole.

His entrance into the kitchen was confused: rush to find Julie or treat the house like a crime scene?

“Julie!”

The refrigerator hummed.

“Julie, are you here?”

Three options: Julie was gone. Julie was here, clinging to life. Julie was here, dead.

The scooter accident had taken place more than three hours ago. If she was still here, she was probably not clinging to life any longer.

Procedure. Method. Don't do anything that will make a loophole
for whoever did this
.

It was Jack's house. There was no need for him to cover his hands or his shoes. Prints from both would be everywhere, and he could be easily excluded from the evidence.

The kitchen was like the shed, as it always was: the eat-in table empty except for a bowl of fruit and two placemats, though they never ate in here. The dishes cleaned and put away. The counters were tidy but still bearing crumbs from whoever had made the last sandwich. Perhaps Julie, for dinner the night before. Or him, when he packed a lunch two days earlier.

An inch of cold coffee sat in the carafe of the instant coffee-maker, as he had left it Monday afternoon.

Was Julie eating? He opened the cupboard that held the trash can. It held a clean, dry liner. Trash would have gone out yesterday.

He moved into the adjacent living room, scanning quickly for anything out of the ordinary. Carpets flat, furniture sitting squarely in carpet divots, pictures straight on the wall and organized in frames on the shelves. TV remote waiting for him on the end table, magazines in the rack. In the entryway his eyes alighted on the bench. Julie's classwork, organized neatly in a tote bag, sat on the bench. Beside it, her planner, her teacher's edition textbooks, a piece of lined three-ring paper bearing a note. Jack read it without picking it up:
Mrs. M, Thanks for the great opportunity, but I've
decided not to do it. Maybe Colin would? I hope you'll understand. –L

Julie wouldn't have left these behind if she had headed for the school. He didn't see her purse. Jack's pulse was louder in his ears now than his mental insistence that his wife was fine, perfectly fine.

He rushed past the guest bathroom on the left, the den that doubled as a guest room on the right, and only glanced into the bedroom at the end of the hall that was still Miralee's, though she'd vowed never to return. His goal was the master bedroom, which was where Julie was supposed to have been when Audrey's car demolished that bike, when Jack called and called, when the fog was far too thick for anyone to be slashing through it like some jungle adventurer.