Dark Storm

by Karen Harper

  He walked way down the hall and turned a corner, seeking privacy. He was really looking forward to the end of this trial. He and Claire were going to take the kids north—way north—to Mackinac Island off northern Michigan, which they had always wanted to see during warm weather, since the place had been frozen during their time spent there under the Witness Protection Program. They had reservations for the last week in August, right before Lexi went back to school, if they could only pry her away from her butterfly obsession and her pony, Scout, which she rode twice a week.

  He thumbed over Claire’s photo to call her, his beautiful redhead with a penchant for getting into trouble. But then he should talk. They’d been through thick and thin together from the moment they’d met, but at least things were calm with nothing dangerous on the horizon now.

  She didn’t answer at first, must have left her phone elsewhere in the house. He was just about to leave a message when she answered. “Oh, Nick, thank heavens. Listen, Kris is with the kids, Nita’s on her way there and I’m heading to check on Darcy at the butterfly farm. Tara Gerald called me.”

  “Check on Darcy why? Is she sick? What happened?”

  “She might have disappeared—took her car. Don’t call Steve yet.”

  “Yeah, he’s working upstate. You be careful. Don’t walk into anything strange. I’ll call Ken Jensen to come out, if you think it’s not just some...some mistake. He owes me a favor, but, Claire, wait for him if anything looks off. Do nothing on your own.”

  “I’m pulling in. Got to go.”

  “Call me back, leave a message. As soon as I can get out of here, I’ll be there. Keep calm. Don’t panic.”

  But Nick knew she was. And knowing Claire was a magnet for danger, he panicked, too.

  2

  Claire drove her car up the bumpy gravel drive, past the old, one-floor sprawling house with its wide, wraparound porch that had been Tara’s parents’ home. Behind it stood three metal-framed, white-mesh humpbacked butterfly houses that looked like greenhouses. They were filled with the vibrant-hued plants the butterflies loved. The mesh let the sun through but protected the delicate inhabitants that flitted about, feeding off the flowers and sugar-water feeders. Tara kept some of the caterpillars and cocoons in a room in the house also.

  As Claire jumped out of her car, Tara came running from the nearest butterfly house. “I’m so sorry!” Tara shouted. Even from here, Claire could tell that she’d been crying, and she was wringing her hands. “I can’t imagine what happened. If only I had a surveillance camera out here or in the houses. Should I call the police?”

  “My husband is doing that. But just show me first,” she said as she ran toward Tara. “You did look in the other two butterfly houses?” Claire was already out of breath and in panic mode. She tried to regain control.

  “Yes, before I called you. Here, be careful to keep that door closed behind you. It was left open—that was the giveaway, because Darcy was never careless. I didn’t have time for a good count but a lot of falcate orangetips are gone.”

  The air inside was warm and moist, but it felt better than the humidity and strong sun outside. Claire was sweating more from her frenzy than the heat. The profusion of vibrant plants here suddenly seemed overwhelming, pressing in. Her mind flashed back to their mother’s funeral—all those fragrant flowers on the casket, and she and Darcy holding hands.

  “You checked through all the foliage?” she asked Tara.

  “In all three houses.”

  “Where was—is—her phone you used?” She understood why Tara used it to call her, but what if there were fingerprints on it—ones that weren’t Darcy’s? Claire almost dry heaved in fear. What could have happened here in this peaceful, private, lovely place?

  Tara showed her the phone, lying on a table with plants. She pointed out the grassy floor under a three-foot-tall spray of scarlet cosmos and purple zinnias where the phone had been dropped. Claire pulled a tissue from her purse and lifted the phone, wrapped it and put it on the counter. A painted lady butterfly landed on her hand as if to comfort her, but the eyelike pattern on its wings seemed to stare.

  Had someone been lurking, watching Darcy? Saw Tara leave? Saw a woman alone here?

  “I’m going to call my contact at the police station,” Claire told her, perching on one of the metal folding chairs in the aisle. “My husband, Nick, probably already did, but I will, too, to make sure someone comes.” She took out her phone. “This officer has worked missing persons before.”

  Tara sank into the other chair. She was a spry, wiry woman who kept her auburn hair in easy-to-tend corkscrews now frosted with silver. Claire was tall at five-ten, so Tara, at least eight inches shorter, always seemed so petite. Although she had loved her elementary school students, she’d retired at age fifty-five to grow this business she loved so much. As far as Claire knew, she had never married. Her butterflies and students had been her life.

  She looked up Ken Jensen’s number in her contact list and connected the call. Oh, thank God, he answered right away.

  “Detective Jensen here. Claire? Nick called me, and I’m on my way out. He’s going to try to talk the judge into a temporary emergency adjournment.”

  “Oh, thank you! There’s no sign of my sister here.”

  “Sit tight and don’t touch anything. You know the drill. And don’t start interviews until I get there. So it’s way down at the end of Sabal Palm?”

  “Past the citrus grove, as far as you can go.”

  Those words echoed in her mind when she ended the call. Where did Darcy go? Her husband, Steve, was miles away in Daytona overseeing the installment of a solar community. She dreaded calling him. Darcy’s son, Drew, was with Steve’s parents in upstate New York for the month before school began again. And Jilly—dear God, please don’t let me have to tell her that her mother’s missing.

  * * *

  Ken Jensen pulled in fifteen minutes later in an unmarked car, kicking up another cloud of dust. Too bad it hadn’t rained for two days, Claire thought, so car tracks in Tara’s driveway and on the road would show, maybe could be traced or molds made of strange treads so that—

  No. She had to stop playing cop. She had to stay calm, objective, not fall apart as Tara had, at least not yet.

  Ken Jensen always looked Scandinavian to her with his blond hair and blue eyes. He was in civilian clothes, no sport coat or tie and a short-sleeved light blue shirt. She introduced him to Tara, whose eyes were red from crying. At least she wasn’t shaking like Claire was, and Jensen evidently knew it when he held her hand a bit too long.

  “So, Ms. Gerald,” he said, whipping out a notebook, “please show me where you last saw Darcy—her last name?”

  Both women told him “Stanley” at the same time. They led him into the so-called exotic butterfly house, though Claire had noted there were Florida breeds familiar from her backyard inside, too.

  “Like another world in here,” Ken said. “Garden of Eden. Wow,” he added as a turquoise long-tailed skipper—Lexi and Jilly had raised a couple of those at home—landed on his arm. “Go ahead, please,” he said, not shaking it off.

  He sat them in the two chairs while he stood, taking notes as Tara told him everything she’d explained to Claire. She pointed out Darcy’s phone and where it was found.

  “Glad you wrapped it and didn’t touch it. If there are other prints on it—”

  “There will be,” Tara told him. “Mine. I panicked and called Claire on it because I didn’t have her phone number.”

  “So what other property of Darcy’s is here?” he asked. “A purse?”

  “Missing, as far as I can tell,” Tara said.

  “Ken, the point is she’s missing, too!” Claire cried, though she was trying to keep calm. “I can tell you her license plate and the make of car. Can you put out an APB for her? There’s a lot of land out there,” she rushed on, gesturing toward the wilderness of the Glades, where there was some dry, drivable land as well as lot of ponds and strea
ms.

  He put his hand briefly on Claire’s shoulder when she tried to get up, so she stayed put. “That’s what I’m going to do right now, Claire, but we have to figure this out. Why don’t you try Nick again and see if he got away from the courthouse? Then I want you and Ms. Gerald to tell me anything about anyone you think Darcy might have been in contact with. When an adult disappears, there can be many reasons, sometimes generated by the person themselves.”

  “No,” Claire said, looking up at him. “She would not skip out! Ken, she would never have left that butterfly door open if she left on her own, so I’ll give you her license plate number right now.”

  As many years ago as it was, a sharp, stunning memory flashed at her. It was the day when she and Darcy were little and their father went missing. Her mother had insisted to the police he would never leave his family, but it turned out he had deserted them without a word or warning. That was another reason Darcy would never leave on her own. No way Darcy would do that to her own family.

  “Might there have been a random visitor, Ms. Gerald?” Ken went on. “Maybe a visitor or buyer who could have dropped by? You do sell butterflies and not just, well, show them?”

  “Yes. Sometimes I give tours and sell specimens, most through the mail, but I wasn’t expecting anyone today.”

  In the humid warmth, even sitting down, Claire thought she would either faint or throw up from stomach cramps. But, of course, this was the way to go about things, calmly, rationally. Still, she wanted to scream, just scream. She wanted Nick here. They had to call Steve to tell him his wife was missing and to come back now. No way Darcy had missed him so much she would drive up to see him, surprise him, though she’d done that once before. But not without telling Claire to take care of the kids, not without her phone, unless she’d accidentally dropped it, then realized too late she didn’t have it. No, she’d come back for it. She would not just leave an open door for the butterflies to escape.

  Claire recited Darcy’s license plate, then began to shake harder as Ken stepped away to make his call outside the butterfly house door. She kept picturing the door of their childhood home that she had stared at, waiting for Daddy to come back when she was five and Darcy was a newborn. He was on the road a lot, so maybe he was just delayed somewhere. Maybe he had finally made a big sale and stayed awhile and forgot to call them. She’d been so devastated by his desertion, still was, always would be, but Darcy didn’t even remember him, that is, only through what Claire recalled and shared. And Mother was so broken—so broken by his loss that she had never talked about it to them, not even when they were old enough to understand.

  Even at her age now, even a mother twice herself, Claire admitted that Darcy and Nick were still her security and sanity.

  * * *

  Nick tore off his suit coat and tie and tossed them in the car he’d parked behind the one he assumed was Ken Jensen’s. Ken had helped them before, but then they’d helped him, too. Though Nick knew he was out in the boondocks, he locked his car and sprinted toward the three white butterfly houses baking in the afternoon sun. He was not only worried about Darcy, but about Claire—and Lexi and Jilly, too, of course, if Darcy really was missing. Surely there was an explanation, and his sister-in-law would turn up soon.

  “We’re over here!” Ken yelled out the door of Tara’s residence before he could enter the first butterfly house. Good, Nick thought, because, unlike Lexi and Claire, he didn’t like those things landing all over him, though he never let on, given how thrilled they were with the little critters. After all, butterflies were bugs, just ones blessed with gorgeous wings. He’d known people like that with fancy facades that hid motives and crimes. And that made him silently pray again that this disappearance was not foul play.

  He went in through the door Ken held open for him, and they shook hands. It was dim and cool inside; an old air conditioner purred away. “Thanks for coming,” Nick told him. Without another word, he followed Ken through a kitchen and a room—once a dining room, he bet—where cocoons, all labeled, hung on pegs on otherwise spotless white walls. Something called Orange F predominated, but those pegs were mostly empty alongside a lot of others. What a strange creature to go through such different life stages.

  He found Claire in the living room, comforting the first-grade teacher Lexi had liked so much, the one who had gotten his family caught up in this butterfly craze.

  “Since you said you were on your way,” Ken told him, “I waited to get formal statements from both of them, though no one needs a lawyer.”

  “I need this lawyer,” Claire said, and rose to hug him. She was trembling and had tears in her eyes, and Ms. Gerald had obviously been crying. Out of one trial with weeping witnesses and into another, Nick thought, but then, this was family.

  “All right, I’m going to start with Ms. Gerald since this is her property and she saw Darcy Stanley most recently,” Ken explained. “Of course, this is open land, a commercial endeavor where outsiders could walk in, but can you think of anyone who has any sort of issue with you or this farm, Ms. Gerald?”

  “I’ve been racking my brain, of course,” the older woman said. “I mean, who has anything against a peaceful and educational butterfly farm? We did a major release last month in Fort Myers for the dedication of a children’s cancer clinic, and it was so symbolic and beautiful.”

  “And all went well?” Ken asked. “No customers have seemed disgruntled or upset?”

  “No, and wouldn’t they come after me if they were?”

  “Would they know the woman tending butterflies wasn’t you?” Ken countered.

  “Well, perhaps not, but Darcy and I don’t look anything alike, if someone meant to take—to hurt me. I do have several pictures of myself on the Flutterby Farm website.”

  Claire held Tara’s hand as she sniffed back tears and wiped under her eyes with her other hand again. “Well, now that I think of it, there is a group who are upset about our mailing practices for distant events,” she said, her voice wavering. She looked away from Ken to Nick. “They threatened—I mean, mentioned—a lawsuit, because they say butterflies should not be put in special little envelopes and mailed on ice. Well, they have to be kept cold and they quickly reanimate and fly free.”

  Nick had been careful not to jump in on Ken’s questions, but Tara had given him the opening with that look and the mention of the lawsuit. “Anything further on them?” Nick asked. “Is this group local?”

  “Local and loco, if you ask me,” Tara said, showing some spunk instead of looking so wilted. “They are bleeding hearts just looking for a cause and publicity. They insist it harms nature to release the lepidoptera in an area they don’t know, like taking them away from their family or something like that.”

  Nick saw Claire sniff back a snob. She was thinking that someone had done that to Darcy? Their strong and intimate marriage let him read her mind sometimes. If Darcy didn’t turn up fast, he knew she’d be questioned thoroughly about Darcy’s domestic life and problems. Steve would, too. Damn, they had to call Steve with this terrible news. They’d grown closer over the last year, as different as they were, and if Claire called him with the news, she’d probably fall apart, because she looked like she was getting close to that right now.

  Ken said, “So what is the name of this eco-friendly, protect-the-butterflies group, Ms. Gerald?”

  “‘Fly Safe,’ if you can believe that,” she said. “They’re into protection of all sort of insects, birds and even bats, not just the beautiful, inspiring, adorable butterflies I raise. And I understand they’ve also branched out into the protection of marine animals like dolphins.”

  Nick’s gaze snagged Claire’s at her mention of the name Fly Safe. Jace and his buddy Mitch planned to start a flight school on nearby Marco Island in the off-season for hurricane hunting, and Fly Safe was the company title they’d chosen. Maybe, using the excuse he was checking out the domain rights of that name, he could visit the eco-group and see just how hostile they really were.<
br />
  Doing their own investigations had gotten him and Claire in hot water with Jensen before, which made him wonder if he should he bring it up or fly under the police radar? Claire would probably say to forge ahead. Meanwhile, he had to get Steve home and sit with Claire while clever Ken questioned her about Darcy. He knew damn well that adults sometimes snapped and took off, even leaving behind ways they could be tracked—like cell phones. So had Darcy snapped? Whether she had or not, he could sense Claire was about to.

  3

  Nick had made a lot of tough phone calls in his years as the lead lawyer for Markwood, Benton and Chase, but calling his brother-in-law, Steve, about Darcy’s disappearance was the hardest. While Claire stayed inside with Tara, he paced along the grass next to the butterfly houses, waiting for his call to connect. At least cell phones worked out here in the boondocks.

  “Yo, Nick.” Steve’s voice boomed over the phone amid the buzz of background construction noise. “Everything okay? What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a problem here, Steve. Darcy was working at the butterfly farm and seems to have just vanished. Claire says she surprised you with a visit once before. Jilly’s with us but—”

  “You kidding me? It’s our anniversary soon, but that’s next week. And yeah, she told Claire last time. So she didn’t say anything to Claire or Jilly? I think she told Jilly before, too. Damn, hope that’s it. Should I wait here, or come home? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Her cell phone was on the floor, and the butterfly door was left open. Some of the species that are here on a special order escaped.”

  Steve muttered some tough language, and Nick heard him sniff hard. Silence for a minute. More swearing. Nick stopped pacing, picturing the strong, burly guy with buzz-cut hair, a square jaw and big shoulders. But he was a gentle man, touchingly so with his wife and daughter, though he loved to roughhouse with his son, Drew.