Finding Amanda

by Robin Patchen

  The phone rang three times before she answered it, her voice hoarse but alarmed. "Mark? What's wrong? Is it Madi?"

  "Madi's fine," he said gently. "The house was broken into."

  She cleared her throat. "What?"

  "The police called. The alarm was going off."

  "Are you there now?"

  "Yes. Somebody broke the window in the office and knocked over your bookshelf, but . . . Do you have your laptop with you?"

  "Yeah. Of course."

  Mark looked around. "I don't know this room very well. It seems fine." He studied the desk again, the bookshelves behind it. Nothing looked touched. Nothing was overturned. The furniture seemed to be in the right place. "Well, if you have your computer, then I guess . . . The police officer thinks somebody broke the window to unlock the sash but when it lifted, it set the alarm off. Whether he came in and then bolted back out or just . . ."

  Mark looked around as he spoke, and his eyes stopped on a piece of glass behind Amanda's desk, at least three feet from the rest of the glass. He knelt beside it, and from his position near the floor, looked toward the window. With the desk in the way, the glass couldn't have fallen here. "The intruder came in," he said. "He tracked a piece of glass on his shoe and dropped it behind your desk."

  "Okay. So . . . ?"

  "I don't know. The house looks fine. Is there anything in particular you want me to check? I mean, I checked your jewelry chest. It's there, untouched. The TVs and electronics are where they should be. I guess this cop's right. Whoever broke in was spooked by the alarm and took off."

  He heard her sigh. "Okay. Thanks. Should I come home, or—?"

  "No. I'll take care of this."

  "The girls must be scared. Can I talk to them?"

  He hadn't seen that coming. "They're sleeping. I'll have them call you tomorrow."

  "What do you mean, they're sleeping?"

  "Um, I left them at my apartment."

  "Alone! What are you thinking?"

  "They're not alone. I asked Annalise to come over and stay with them. They won't even know I'm gone."

  There was a long silence. Holding his breath, he waited for her to say something. Finally she said, "Annalise, huh? That didn't take you very long."

  "I just knocked on her door and asked her to come over while I was gone, so I wouldn't have to wake them."

  "Right."

  "I don't have to explain myself to you, Amanda. You're divorcing me, remember? So I guess you're going to have to get used to it."

  "You and Annalise? I guess so."

  "Whatever. Good night." He hung up before she could respond.

  When Mark woke up the next morning, the first thing he saw was one bright blue eye staring at him from mere centimeters away.

  Madi jumped on top of him, and Sophie jumped on her sister and screamed. "He's awake. He's awake."

  He rewarded his daughters by tickling them until they begged for mercy, only stopping when the neighbor in the next apartment pounded on the wall. No surprise there—it was barely seven o'clock.

  He settled them down. After bowls of cereal, they played hide-and-seek until they ran out of places to hide. It didn't take long. Then he agreed to play Candy Land with them again. They were seated at the table, slogging their way over Gum Drop Mountain, when the phone rang.

  "Hey, Chris. What's up?"

  "You awake?"

  He looked at the clock. It was almost ten-thirty. "No, I'm sound asleep, and this is a dream."

  A half-hearted chuckle. "Can I stop by?"

  "Sure. What time?"

  "I'm in your parking lot right now."

  Two minutes later Chris walked into the apartment carrying two Dunkin' Donuts coffees and a large box.

  "Donuts!" Sophie yelled.

  "Can we have one, Daddy? Please?" Madi asked.

  Two sets of big, round, pleading eyes batted their lashes at him. Madi's lips puffed out in a perfect pout. His girls were so adorable, he was going to have to lock them up when they turned thirteen and keep them hidden until they were, oh, twenty. Maybe thirty. "One donut each," he said.

  Setting the coffees and donuts on the table, Chris leaned against the door, arms crossed, and seemed to hardly notice the girls. Sophie and Madi took their time picking out just the right donut. "Thank you, Uncle Chris," Sophie said. Madi echoed her big sister.

  Mark watched Chris, anxiety burning his stomach. "Why don't you girls go watch cartoons?"

  "Yay!" Madi said, and the two of them barreled into the living room, forgetting the game.

  Chris barely smiled at them.

  A prickling on the back of his neck told Mark he wasn't going to like whatever Chris was about to tell him. "What's wrong?"

  "Let's sit down."

  Mark lifted the game board and placed it on the counter. The sound of cartoons filled the space, but Mark didn't move to turn the volume down. He didn't think he wanted his girls to hear whatever Chris had to say.

  "I didn't have time to pick up my messages until about nine o'clock last night. I got a call from the detective who arrested Sheppard. Detective Diaz. Remember I called him a couple of weeks ago?"

  Mark nodded.

  "He's been on leave. His wife had a baby. Anyway, he just got back yesterday. I left him a message to call me back ASAP. He did about an hour ago."

  "Okay."

  Chris took a sip of his coffee and set it on the table. He leaned back in his chair. "They dropped the statutory rape charges because their star witness, the victim, disappeared."

  Mark leaned forward. "What do you mean, she disappeared?"

  "Diaz told me the prosecutor offered Sheppard a pretty good deal—such a good deal Diaz was furious. But Sheppard refused. He was sure he would win at a trial—that's what he told the prosecutor, I guess. And then the trial was put-off and put-off, so it was more than a year later before it was scheduled to start. Sheppard had already lost his medical license, and he was working at a community college at that point. Anyway, it was a couple of weeks before Christmas. The trial was supposed to start the second week of January. And the girl was walking home from school after a meeting of some sort—student council or something. She walked home every night, according to this detective. It was about five o'clock, dark outside of course, but she walked with her friend. Her friend lived just a couple of blocks away."

  "What town?"

  "Everett. I don't know if you've been there, but it's right outside of Boston, still pretty urban."

  "Okay. Go on."

  "So the friend went home, and this girl only had two blocks to go. But she never made it home."

  Mark's heart hammered so hard, he was sure the girls would hear it over their cartoons.

  "They never found her. Never found a trace of her or her body anywhere."

  "Are you saying you think Sheppard killed her?"

  Chris blew out a breath. "The thing is, he has a rock-solid alibi. He was Christmas shopping. He has receipts to prove it. But even then, Diaz was sure he was lying—maybe gave his credit card to someone else. So they looked at the surveillance tapes from the mall, and he's there, in the tapes, at the same time the girl was snatched."

  "But obviously someone close to him did it."

  "That's what Diaz thought, too. But the wife was at their daughter's dance class in Andover—witnesses saw her there the whole time. Sheppard's son was seventeen and had a driver's license and a car, but he was playing in a basketball game in Tewksbury at the time. Hundreds of witnesses. Diaz checked on Sheppard's former receptionist, an unlikely partner in crime, but he'd suspected that Sheppard and the woman had more to their relationship than boss and employee. But she had a new job by then, and she was at work. The detective hit a dead end."

  "But obviously Sheppard did it somehow. He paid someone or something. Somebody helped him."

  "I agree. Diaz agrees, but there's no evidence. No witnesses, no body. They never charged him, and they had no choice but to drop the charges against him."

 
Mark massaged his temples. Sheppard was a murderer. If he didn't kill the girl himself, he had someone else do it. He'd been willing to kill to stay out of prison. But would he be willing to kill now, to protect his reputation?

  "There's more," Chris said.

  Mark buried his rising fear and met his friend's eyes. "Okay."

  "We were near the university yesterday, and we had a few minutes' downtime before meeting with a witness, so I stopped by the psychology department and chatted with the office manager. She's the same one who told me about Baxter McIlroy, and she seemed happy to talk. She told me Sheppard isn't tenured yet. He was up for it a few years ago, but there were some rumors about him and a couple of his female TA's and even a couple of students and some suspicious after-hours meetings. This lady didn't believe it—seems to think Sheppard's a saint. But the rumors kept him from receiving tenure. Well, he's up for it again next year."

  Mark rubbed his temples. "He has to keep his reputation squeaky clean."

  "Yup. And having a book out detailing an affair with a teenaged patient might keep him from getting his tenure, even if it doesn't name him. Rumors were enough last time, so—"

  "He's already killed once," Mark whispered, almost afraid to say the words. "If he was willing to kill an innocent child to protect himself, he'd be more than willing to kill a grown woman."

  "Yeah."

  Commercials blared in his ears, grating on Mark's nerves. He stood, started for the TV to turn it down, and stopped. He looked back at Chris, who was staring at his coffee, then at the girls. He had to get out of there. He had to find Amanda and protect her. He had to hunt down Gabriel Sheppard and kill him before he could hurt his wife.

  His phone rang.

  He grabbed it, hoping it was Amanda and disappointed to see a number he didn't recognize. He considered not answering it, but what if Amanda needed him? What if she was in trouble and had borrowed someone's phone?

  "Hello?"

  "Mark? It's Roxie Richardson. We have to talk about Baxter. He's not the connection to Amanda."

  Twenty-Four

  Amanda woke up Saturday morning in the cushy king-sized bed she'd shared with Mark so many times. She rolled over to snuggle with him. With a shock she remembered he wasn't there. She shivered in her loneliness, longed for him, and hated herself for it.

  She threw off the covers and discovered the very air was against her. She hugged herself and tiptoe-ran across the wooden floor and into the bathroom, only to find its tile felt like patterned blocks of ice. This was a New Hampshire kind of cold. Damp and shocking, it seeped in through the windows and around the doors and crept across the floors, avoiding the thermostats that would take up battle against it. This cold crept up Amanda's leg beneath her fleece pajamas and bored into her skin like a parasite.

  Even the hot shower didn't eradicate it, and as she dressed for the day, she had but one cognizant thought—steaming coffee.

  Making her way down the stairs from her room on the third floor, Amanda's mind veered away from the cold for a moment to focus on the conversation she'd had with her husband in the middle of the night. Though her thoughts weren't so much on what he'd said but on what he did after he hung up—go home to Annalise. Amanda pictured the supermodel in silky lingerie, drinking bubbly out of a fifties-style champagne glass, its wide rim reflecting her perfect face. She frowned at the ridiculous visual. If nothing else, Mark wouldn't spend the night with Annalise when the girls were there. That gave her exactly one more night to imagine he still loved her.

  Not that she wanted him. She just didn't want Annalise to have him. Or any other woman, for that matter.

  Coffee. A little coffee would restore her sanity.

  One steamy mug down, more coffee shimmering in the cup, Amanda began to prepare for the breakfast she would be teaching and serving that morning. Mindlessly she removed eggs, sausage, and cheese from the enormous refrigerator. A few minutes later, pajama and slipper-clad women began shuffling in murmuring coffee and cold and food in quiet, demanding tones.

  A couple of hours later Amanda finished cleaning up the kitchen from the breakfast extravaganza and told the ladies to be back in the kitchen at six o'clock that night. She changed into her favorite dark gray slacks, a turquoise sweater, and her black leather boots. The boots were practical in their warmth only, good for the walk into the bookstore and back to the car. It was important to make a good impression at a book signing, even if it meant wearing torture shoes.

  She found Frank in the office behind the front counter hunched over a scattering of papers, his balding head bobbing back and forth from one sheet to another, his wrinkly hand writing furiously. She felt stupid asking him to walk her to her car way out in the boonies, but she wasn't willing to take any chances. And she had promised Mark.

  She knocked on the open door. "I'm ready to go. Do you mind walking me out?"

  With a broad smile, he stood, dropped his pen on the papers, and headed for the door. "Not at all," he said in a raspy voice. "How'd it go this morning?"

  "Just fine. They're a loud group."

  "Isn't that the truth? Be thankful we stuck them out in the motel."

  In all the times Mark and Amanda had been to the Faraway Inn, they'd never had a room in the motel-style buildings that surrounded the old house. In fact, besides their first visit when they'd slept in a tiny room on the second floor, they'd always had the largest room on the third, a room with a king-sized bed and an amazing view of the valley. Perhaps that was because they usually made reservations early. She suspected it had more to do with the fact that Frank was so fond of Mark.

  He followed her out of the small room and grabbed his jacket off the coat stand in the lobby. "You have snow tires on your car? We're supposed to get a storm tonight."

  "What time?" Amanda didn't mind driving in the snow, but on these winding roads, in the dark and by herself, she'd prefer to avoid it.

  "They said it'd start about dinnertime."

  "Oh, I'll be back by then. I'm cooking dinner."

  He swung open the wide front door, cheeks puffy with a grin. "Mmm. Something to look forward to. Breakfast this morning was delicious. Don't tell Claire, but I finished the whole thing. French toast. Oh, and the eggs Benedict . . ."

  "I'm glad you liked it."

  They began the slow walk across the parking lot to her car. He'd aged a lot in the years since she'd first met him, moving slower and slower every year. She guessed he was nearing eighty, but he and his wife ran the inn like they had since they'd retired from their government jobs almost twenty years earlier.

  She resisted the urge to check her watch. Who knew it would take this long to get to her car?

  "You know, if you didn't give us the food, we might not let you take over our kitchen. But how can we resist? Last night, beef tenderloin. This morning, eggs and French toast."

  She giggled. "It's like culinary extortion."

  "If I die of a heart attack today, it'll have been worth it."

  Amanda stopped, crossed her arms, and said with mock disapproval, "That's not funny."

  He offered a low, throaty chuckle. "Just jokin'. I'm as healthy as a horse. Here we are."

  She unlocked her car and climbed in. "Thanks, Frank. I know this is silly, but Mark insisted."

  "Too bad he couldn't come with you this weekend. I was looking forward to sharing war stories with him."

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. "I know he's sorry he couldn't make it."

  "Call me when you're close, and I'll meet you out here. When are you due back?"

  "Probably between five and five-thirty."

  "Good. You should beat the snow. See you then." He closed her door and rapped on the roof of her car. She pulled away, waving as she turned onto the country road.

  Within fifteen minutes Amanda was driving up the on-ramp to the interstate toward the bookstore in Concord.

  Twenty-Five

  Mark drove as fast as he could in the traffic. The drizzle was enough that he had t
o run the wipers, but not enough to keep them from scraping against the glass. Their rhythmic squeaks added to his already heightened anxiety.

  He merged onto Route 93 and dialed his mother's phone number, praying she'd answer.

  "Hello?"

  "Ma, can you watch the girls for me?"

  "Well, hello, Mark. And how are you today?"

  He rolled his eyes. "Sorry. I'm fine. How are you?"

  "As you know, it's been months since I've seen my only grandchildren, but other than that I'm doing all right. I had dinner at the club with Rhonda and Jenny last night. It was delightful. They served this—"

  "That's great. Can you watch them or not?"

  "Well, it is short notice. I was planning to—"

  "Fine. Forget it. I'll call Dad." Mark waited in silence. They'd been divorced for years, but for his mother, the battle with her husband still raged.

  "Now, don't be hasty. I didn't say no. What's the big rush, anyway?"

  Mark looked at his girls in the rearview mirror. They were sitting quietly, watching the portable DVD player he kept for long drives. They probably weren't listening, but they were master eavesdroppers. And the truth was none of his mother's business.

  "Amanda's teaching a class up near Waterville this weekend, and I'm joining her."

  "Humph. And why would you do that? I thought you two were over."

  "No, Mother, we're not, despite what you told Annalise."

  "You should be thanking me, Mark. You and I both know you should've married her in the first place."

  Thank her? Right. He loved it when his mother intruded in his marriage. "You're wrong. Can you watch them or not?"

  "When?"

  "I'm on my way right now."

  "Until . . . ?"

  "Sometime tomorrow."

  She sighed, and Mark rolled his eyes again. It was no wonder Amanda wanted out of the marriage—who would choose this woman for a relative?