Pawsitively Secretive

by Melissa Erin Jackson

But Kim was already chatting happily about the last time the whole committee met at the Siamese. Amber got the impression the group had started to hang out more since the dramatic departure of Whitney Sadler and Susie Paulson. Had Amber been invited—and didn’t remember—but had always turned them down? Or had no one asked, assuming she’d have said no anyway? Both possibilities were depressing in their own right.

  The last time Amber had been to the Sippin’ Siamese had been the night she and her younger sister, Willow, had joined Connor Declan and his friends for Connor’s birthday celebration. Though Amber had originally been going to the Siamese to see Connor, she’d run into Jack Terrence, Purrcolate’s pastry chef. They’d had a nice chat that had solidified her crush on him, but the evening had been cut short when word spread through town that an older woman had been found dead at the Manx Hotel—the same hotel where Amber and Willow’s Aunt Gretchen had been staying.

  Amber still got chills when she thought about how scared she’d been, sure the dead woman would turn out to be her aunt. That had started a series of events that eventually culminated in the terrifying night on Edgar’s property where the cursed Penhallow had nearly killed Amber. She’d lost her car and her budding relationship with Jack Terrence that night.

  If Jack was there again tonight, Amber vowed to walk home in the storm. Getting struck by lightning would be far better than seeing the lack of memory in Jack’s eyes.

  The drive to the Siamese took nearly twenty-five minutes, thanks to the ever-present rain. The bar was located on Korat Road. On one side of the street were a handful of shops and restaurants—only about half of them still in business—while the other side was lined with empty, fenced-off lots choked with overgrown grasses or copses of dense trees. At least Kim wasn’t prone to slamming on the brakes in slick conditions; she just drove like a grandma—which was more than okay with Amber.

  Once they’d parked in the gravel lot a few doors down from the bar, positioned a little behind what had used to be a diner, Amber and Kim made a mad dash across the wet sidewalk, running past the boarded-up shop fronts. It was a testament to the Siamese’s great beer, food, and dancing that it was still open—and packed nearly every night—despite how many other businesses around it had folded.

  Both the podium and the outdoor patio area were deserted. Kim pulled open the door and warm air, laughter, and loud music poured out. They stomped their feet on the already-soaked black mat just inside the door and shook out their coats. Dozens of sopping umbrellas rested against the entrance walls and were heaped on the floor, the bar’s warm yellow light reflecting dully off their slick surfaces.

  Kim led the way through the crowd that was thankfully less robust than it had been the last time Amber was here, but she guessed the place would be packed as the hour grew later. They walked past the smaller front bar, all the stools occupied, with a row of people standing behind them, some with arms in the air, trying to catch the eye of one of the two busy male bartenders.

  Pushing her way through the side door that led into the second room, which had an additional bar, a mechanical bull, pool tables, and a dance floor, Kim confidently strode ahead, quickly finding their party at a table with a perfect view of the mostly deserted dance floor. Ann Marie and Nathan were deep in conversation, Nathan’s arm around the waist of a petite blond with a pixie cut. The pair’s backs faced the dance floor, while Ann Marie stood in front of them, her hands waving about as she talked.

  Nathan noticed Amber and Kim first and he grinned, waving them over. “Blackwood! You made it!”

  Amber stopped before the group and shrugged, smiling. “This must be your wife?” she said, holding a hand out to the blonde.

  Her smile was wide and, as she shook Amber’s hand, said, “I’m Jolene. Nice to finally meet you. I work graveyard shifts in Belhaven a lot, so when I am in town, I’m passed out.”

  “NICU nurse,” Nathan said, grinning down at her with nothing less than total admiration.

  Jolene nodded. “I miraculously got the night off, so Nate dragged me out of the house. We have the babysitter for another three hours, and my challenge for the evening is to get so tipsy that my lovely husband has to carry me out of here over his shoulder like I’m a sack of drunken flour.”

  “And since she only drinks once every three months and weighs one-ten soaking wet, that time will likely come sooner rather than later,” Nathan said. “First round is on me. What do you ladies want?”

  After their orders were placed, Nathan wandered to the bar on the other side of the dance floor.

  While the four women were making idle chitchat until their drinks arrived, Ann Marie suddenly gasped. Amber and Kim stood with their backs to most of the bar, while Ann Marie and Jolene had their backs to the DJ booth in the corner.

  “Don’t look now,” Ann Marie said, “but is that Francine Robins?”

  Amber wasn’t sure how literal “don’t look now” actually was, so she glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, Francine Robins was standing near the back wall, chatting up a very attractive guy wearing butt-hugging jeans, a black button-up, a black Stetson, and a huge belt buckle. He looked like he belonged in a sexy tractor commercial. Francine was a leggy black-haired woman who was at least five-eight. She wore a white sundress and an amazing pair of black-and-red strappy shoes. Amber was almost positive the woman couldn’t dance in those things, but Amber herself wouldn’t have even been able to walk in them.

  “I haven’t seen her here … ever,” Ann Marie said. “I figured she and the mayor spent most nights snuggled up on the couch together but pretended in public that they were just colleagues.”

  Just as Ann Marie finished that sentence, the gorgeous cowboy slipped his hand behind Francine’s head and brought his mouth to hers. Francine most definitely didn’t push him away. In fact, the make-out session went on for so long, Amber and Kim quickly turned back around, and Ann Marie and Jolene diverted their gazes.

  “Welp, there goes that theory,” Ann Marie said.

  “If it’s true the mayor hasn’t put the moves on Francine, that’s his loss,” Jolene said. “She’s a knockout. Did you see those shoes? Get it, girl! Giddy. Up.”

  The four women erupted in laughter just as Nathan arrived with their drinks.

  “What’d I miss?” he asked, smiling wide, gaze bouncing around the group. The question only made them laugh harder.

  “Nothing, babe,” Jolene said, and got up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

  Kim and Ann Marie shared a quick, quiet look that only Amber seemed to notice.

  Nathan, content to ask no further questions, set about distributing the drinks.

  Amber had said, “I’ll have whatever Kim is having,” seeing as Amber drank even less than the tiny Jolene. Kim’s drink of choice was Vodka and Red Bull, neither of which were things Amber would even drink separately, but she needed to get out of her slump, and if this was what normal, well-adjusted people her age drank, then she would drink it, too.

  It was decidedly horrible. She chugged the foul thing down anyway.

  Before she knew it, Kim was dragging her by the hand onto the dance floor for the night’s first line dancing lesson—the beginner’s lesson. Even with the alcohol cruising through her system, Amber was so nervous, her knees were nearly knocking together. Luckily, the instructor was extremely easy to follow, and most of the people on the floor were just as clueless as Amber was.

  When the lesson ended, Kim and Nathan on either side of her—Ann Marie already knew the dance, so she was holding their table—it was time to put her retention skills to the test. “Copperhead Road” started and Amber and Kim shared an excited squeak. Amber only screwed up twice, colliding with Nathan when she went the wrong way. But she was laughing and he was laughing and Kim beamed at her, clearly thrilled that she’d gotten Amber to come out tonight.

  A bubbling sense of appreciation for the goofy chatterbox was suddenly so overwhelming, Amber felt a lump form in her throat. She wanted to shout her thanks at K
im, but the song ended and soon the floor was swarmed by more people, as the lesson for the advanced group was due to begin. Ann Marie hurried onto the floor, and Jolene stayed her ground, while Amber, Kim, and Nathan hurried off.

  They had just reached their table when Amber’s phone started to vibrate in her back pocket.

  Brow furrowed, she slipped it out, expecting to see Willow’s smiling face—hardly anyone else called her—but it was an unfamiliar number.

  “Hey, you okay?” Kim asked, gently touching Amber’s elbow, seeing as Amber had just been staring down at her ringing phone for several moments as if she’d never seen it before.

  Since so few people had her number, she automatically assumed most phone calls were from someone who was trying to reach her because of dire circumstances. Had something happened to Willow or Aunt Gretchen? “Sorry, one sec,” she said to Nathan and Kim, then hit accept and pressed the phone to her ear.

  “Amber?” came a semi-frantic sounding male voice. “Is this Amber Blackwood?”

  She pressed a couple fingers to her free ear in an attempt to drown out the sound of people chatting, laughing, and the instructor calling out, “Five, six, seven, eight!” “Yes, this Amber.”

  “This is Frank Deidrick.”

  Amber blinked several times. Why was he calling her? “Hi, Frank,” she said loudly, brows pinched. “What can I help you with?”

  “Have you seen Chloe?”

  Her heart rate ticked up. Without saying anything to Kim and Nathan, Amber strode for the back door that would let her out onto the patio. She might get lashed with rain, but it would at least be quieter out there. She scanned the bar as she walked, mostly hoping not to see Jack Terrence. Francine and her hot cowboy were gone. Good for her.

  Once the door was open and the biting air hit Amber’s flushed face, she realized that she’d left her jacket inside draped over the back of a chair. She shivered, but stepped outside anyway, letting the door clank shut behind her. The rain had mercifully stopped, but the temperature had dropped several degrees during the hour she’d been in the bar.

  “Sorry, Frank,” she said. “Did you ask if I’d seen Chloe?”

  His breath whooshed out. “Yeah. She and I had a long talk this afternoon and she agreed it would be best to have this Johnny kid come by the house tonight so I can meet him. She said she would call him and invite him over here for dinner at six. Ingrid and I had been prepping the meal for the last half hour while Chloe showered and got dressed. But around five forty-five, I realized she hadn’t come down yet or confirmed that he would be here by six. I went up to her room to make sure everything was okay, but her bedroom is empty. The window is open and her car is gone.”

  Amber squeezed her eyes shut and leaned against the damp wall behind her. “Has she ever snuck out before?”

  “Never,” he said. “And in this storm? What was she thinking? I’ve called her half a dozen times and she hasn’t picked up.”

  Silence descended on them, and Amber listened to the dead air on Frank’s end of the line. Then something clinked on his side. The first image that came to mind was ice dropping into a glass.

  “Um …” she finally said, “can I ask why you called me?” Some part of her already knew why.

  “Because she confided in you about this boy first,” he said, the bitterness in his voice as biting as the wind ruffling the hem of her too-thin shirt. “Did she tell you where they were going? Or anything about Johnny?”

  Amber wracked her brain to remember her conversation with Chloe. “Oh, maybe she’s sticking with her original plan. She said she and Bethany were going to meet him at the arcade. She said she was going to Bethany’s first, and then they were going to the arcade together. They may already be there by now if it’s after six.”

  He heaved out a breath. “Okay, well that’s a start. Thanks.”

  “I would never forgive myself if we didn’t tell your dad where you were planning to go and something happened to you.” That was what she’d said to Chloe, and yet, even after telling her dad, she’d slipped out her bedroom window anyway.

  Amber could only wonder if Chloe would have described the conversation with her father as merely “a long talk.” Chloe Deidrick was one of the most level-headed people Amber had ever met—even when the girl was very young. What had her father said to her that would make her lie to his face, then sneak out of the house in the middle of a thunderstorm?

  “Have you called the Williamses?” Amber asked. “Maybe Bethany’s parents know where they are.”

  “I tried calling both Bethany and her mother, but no one answered.”

  “I’m currently over at the Sippin’ Siamese; I think the Williamses live pretty close to here. I’ll head that way,” Amber said, walking to the patio door. “What kind of car does she drive? We’ll keep an eye out for it; they may have headed somewhere other than the arcade.”

  “It’s a black four-door Honda,” he said. “There’s a bobble doll of a purple cat on her dash—like a hula girl, but as a cat. It dances around as the car moves.” With a shaky sigh, he added, “I got it for her birthday last year.”

  “It’ll be okay, Frank,” she said. “Let me know if you hear from her, okay? I’m sure she’s fine.”

  The call abruptly ended.

  Teenagers snuck out all the time, didn’t they? Sure, this was rare for Chloe, but that didn’t mean this wasn’t just a case of late-onset typical behavior. Chloe was fine. She was a lovesick girl who had likely been forbidden by her father to date unless he met and approved of the boy first, and Chloe decided not to subject the boy to it. So she snuck out. She was likely playing Ms. Pac-Man or laughing at one of the boy’s silly jokes or interrogating Bethany in the bathroom about what she thought of him.

  When Amber reached the table where she’d left Nathan and Kim, Kim was still sitting there, watching the advanced lesson. Nathan was on the dance floor now, wedged between Jolene and Ann Marie, and looking completely baffled by what was happening around him.

  Kim’s brows shot up as Amber approached. “Everything okay?”

  “Not sure,” she said, and grabbed her coat, slipping it on. She buttoned up her peacoat. It was still damp, and a chill seeped into the fabric of her long-sleeved shirt. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll call a cab, okay? I don’t want to ruin your night.”

  “Don’t be silly!” said Kim, popping out of her chair. “I’ll drive you.”

  A song suddenly blasted out of the speakers and the instructor counted, “Five, six, seven, eight!” The dancers all surged to the right in unison. Poor Nathan surged left, his substantial weight almost knocking the guy next to him off his feet.

  Amber turned her attention back to Kim. “You don’t even know where I’m going.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said, pulling on her coat, too. “You’re not going out into that nasty weather alone. Nuh uh! Don’t argue. Let’s go.” Turning to the dance floor, she waved her arms in the air enthusiastically, like she was guiding a plane onto the tarmac. Nathan spotted her first. With a series of elaborate hand gestures, Kim mimed that she was going to take Amber home.

  Nathan frowned, then nodded and waved. Amber waved as well, then followed Kim back out of the bar.

  By the time they emerged out the front doors, the rain was back to a light drizzle. It was so quiet and deserted out on Korat Road—the only sounds were the muted hum of music coming from the Siamese, and the light tap of their shoes on the wet sidewalk—that it made Amber’s ears ring.

  “I’m sorry I’m making you leave early,” Amber said.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “Now, what’s going on?”

  Kim’s eyes widened a little more with every new detail Amber told her. They climbed into Kim’s car and she cranked up the heater. It smelled a little like a wet dog.

  “And now he has no idea where she is,” Amber said, buckling her seatbelt.

  “That seems really unlike Chloe,” Kim said. “I don’t know her that well, but she’s always been so well-b
ehaved and respectful. Her dad must be worried sick.”

  “He is,” Amber said. “But this is new ground for them both. Chloe has never liked a boy as much as she likes this one. You remember how intense high school crushes were—”

  “Oof, girl, you don’t even know …” Kim muttered.

  Amber let out a surprised laugh. “Frank has never had to deal with her acting out before, so he’s especially worried. I’m sure she’s fine, though.”

  Amber hoped that if she said that enough, it would be true.

  “Okay, so where should we go? Bethany’s?”

  “Yeah. They’re not far from here right?” Amber asked.

  Kim nodded and pulled out of the gravel lot. “Her mom and I are in a book club together. I’ll call her.”

  The Williamses lived in a little tucked-away neighborhood off Korat Road. It wasn’t as isolated as Edgar’s house, but it was one of those places that was hard to find if you weren’t looking for it, and the unpaved road that branched off Korat was unlit and surrounded on both sides by a dense copse of red alder, Douglas fir, and western hemlock trees.

  Kim used her hands-free settings to call Bethany’s mom as she turned left onto Blue Point Lane, her little car bumping along the semi-uneven ground. The thin gray trunks of the red alders stood out amongst the thicker fir trees. The alders’ branches had been stark and bare up until a few weeks ago, and now they hung with reddish catkins and small brown cones. In the dark, they looked like dangling, fat human fingers. It wasn’t full dark yet, but it was getting close, and Kim’s headlights shone bright on the wall of trees on either side of the road.

  “Hey, Kim!” came the crisp, clear voice of a woman through the speakers, and Amber jumped. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, hi, Grace,” Kim said, sounding startled, too, as if she hadn’t expected her to pick up. “Have you seen Chloe Deidrick tonight by any chance?”

  “Uh … no, I haven’t,” Grace said, likely confused as to why Kimberly Jones was asking about the mayor’s daughter. A bit of rustling followed. “Oh dear. Looks like I’ve got a couple of missed calls from her father. Bethany’s been sick all day with stomach bug; she hasn’t had any visitors.”