Identical Stranger (HQR Intrigue)

by Alice Sharpe

  * * *

  HE AWOKE THE next morning to a phone call and answered it as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Hey, lover boy, you sound like someone who slept in.” Hearing Sophie’s voice was the best way to wake up. Well, second best.

  “Who me? I’ve been up for hours,” he said with a laugh. “Do you miss me?”

  “Like crazy. But you’re never going to believe who’s coming to visit me today.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s Danny Privet.”

  “Funny you should mention his name. I called him this morning to tell him to call off his sicko brother.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said his lawyer told him not to talk to me. He also said even if he knew how, he wouldn’t.”

  “Wow. I’m guessing it’s not Danny coming to visit you.”

  “It’s my mother. She’s getting a lady from her church to drive her over after lunch.”

  “Will you still be in the hospital?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, afraid so. The fever came back. They’re being cautious because I don’t live locally. Did you find anything in Sabrina’s house?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I keep thinking I’m missing something,” Sophie said.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I need to talk to Joy. She comes on at noon.”

  “Joy?”

  “The nurse. I think she said something yesterday that I was too groggy to pick up on. All we need is something to convince the police that Sabrina isn’t off on her own free will, right?”

  “Or under Paul Rey’s control. They still think he might be responsible for everything. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I try to explain about him confusing her for you. I think they’re so focused on catching him that nothing else matters.”

  “You’ll work this out, honey,” Sophie said. “I know you will.”

  He hoped she was right. “I’ll be at the hospital after I do a few things like talk to Adam Cook and search Louis Nash’s place.”

  “Sounds like fun. Be careful.”

  Jack’s first priority was to talk to Adam Cook but the man didn’t answer his phone. He recalled Sophie’s telling him Adam had said he was going to work on a house. Vowing not to involve Reece or any other cop unless necessary, he tried looking up Brad Withers’s telephone number.

  “Yeah, Adam can be hard to get ahold of when he goes up to Glenville to work on his house. Some cousin left him the place but it was a real wreck. He’s desperate to get out of my basement, though, so he works on it every chance he gets. He claims he doesn’t get good cell service because of all the forest around the place. You said it’s important you talk to him so I’ll give you his address but don’t expect a real warm welcome.”

  “I’m not sure where Glenville is,” Jack said. So that’s how the man had gotten a new house—he’d inherited it.

  “It’s a few miles southeast of Astoria. There’s nothing but a sign on Highway 101. Adam’s new place is off the road, 33401 Madrone. Real remote.”

  How handy for illegal activity, Jack thought but all he said was, “Thanks.”

  He drove by three churches before he saw one being readied for a wedding. Dashing inside, he found a florist setting a single spray by the altar, and created a story about being the bride’s brother and asking if the woman knew what time the wedding started.

  “In fifteen minutes. Where is everybody?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jack said.

  “It’s a crazy time for a wedding, isn’t it? Who gets married at eleven thirty on a Wednesday morning? I mean even though it’s a really small wedding...” The woman seemed to recall she was talking to a supposed member of the family and smiled. “Of course, love does as love wants.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll just go outside and wait.”

  He drove off instead, finding Nash’s van—obvious because of the photography sign on its side—parked in the alley behind the man’s house. He found a spot at the throat of the alley where he could see when the van left. He’d tucked his revolver into his shoulder holster before leaving the house that morning and checked now to make sure it was invisible. What he’d told Sophie was true. A gun could escalate a confrontation into a life-or-death battle. On the other hand, he didn’t know what was inside Nash’s house—or who. If Louis had nabbed Sabrina, then the stakes were already through the roof.

  At last, Nash limped with purpose to the van carrying a bag of equipment and a tripod. He threw his gear into the back of the van and roared off. Jack left his car where he’d parked it and approached the back of Nash’s house on foot. Pausing at the door, he looked for the telltale signs of an alarm system and saw nothing, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Throwing caution to the wind, he picked the lock and entered the house.

  Profound silence greeted his entry into the kitchen that was cluttered with unwashed dishes and bags and boxes of food. As he locked the outside door, he got his bearings. The door he’d noticed the afternoon before turned out to be unlocked and that came as a disappointment. If he was going to hide someone, he’d sure as heck lock the door. The landing behind the door was actually a small pantry with a few shelves covered with what looked like surplus food items. He walked past those until he came across a flight of stairs. He flicked a light to illuminate them and descended with his heart beating overtime.

  What he found was an elaborate studio. Photos Nash must have taken himself hung on the walls. Curtained-off areas looked like changing rooms while hooks held different robes and hats maybe for use as props or costumes. A small stage with adjustable lighting took up a corner while an assortment of chairs lined yet another wall.

  He lifted area rugs looking for hidden spaces, tapped walls and peeked under paintings and curtains all to no avail. This was obviously the public face of Nash’s business and a dead end for Jack.

  He immediately made his way to the living room and went up the stairs. He did a quick search of each room, behind mirrors, under drawers, searching for a trunk or some clue the guy had been down in Seaport a couple of days before. Satisfied there was nothing to find, he went back downstairs and picked the lock on the room Nash had disappeared into the day before. It turned out to be a small office. The closet was secured with a serious lock. Ignoring that for the moment, he zeroed in on a locked file cabinet. He found the keys to that in the desk drawer under the felt liner.

  It looked like business as usual to him as he thumbed through the files without much enthusiasm until he saw a folder labeled Cases. The file contained several head shots of women including the one of Sabrina. Each had a number on them between one and three. He took a photo of everything. Another file labeled Betty Nash/Mother drew his attention. It contained a mass of forms and old insurance papers along with a recently issued uncashed social security check made out to Betty Nash. He quickly scanned a stapled compilation of her recent bank statements and the deed to a house in her name located on 40105 Manzanita Drive. Maybe the woman would have insights into her son. He needed a map of the area both to locate this house and to find Adam Cook’s new property.

  He continued taking photos of anything that looked pertinent. Over an hour had gone by since he entered the house. Wedding photos could take forever, but he didn’t have forever to spend. It was well after noon now. Buzz’s plane landed in Portland at 7:05 this evening. Give him three hours to claim his luggage, rent a car and drive here. That meant he’d be back by ten and that meant that by then, Jack either had to be sitting beside Sabrina on her sofa or know exactly where she was and why.

  Was he spinning his wheels, trying so hard to stay busy that it was all for show? For all he knew, Louis Nash had abducted Sabrina days ago, killed her and disposed of her body. He could be looking for a ghost.

  A steely reserve flooded his body. Buzz needed to come home to facts, not haunting may
bes. Sophie, if denied her sister, had to at least have the truth of her death. No one could move forward without understanding the past, so in that way, whether Sabrina was alive or not did nothing to negate the importance of finding her.

  He heard a sound at the back door and froze. Footsteps echoed in the old house. Jack quietly closed the file drawer and locked it again. He replaced the cabinet key. A closet beckoned to him from across the room but there wasn’t time to get there—he took the only option he could see: he dived under the desk but it didn’t have a solid back and if Nash happened to look at the desk from the right angle, there was going to be an issue.

  A second later he heard a key in the door and that’s when he recalled he hadn’t locked it after himself. There was a pause and then the door opened. Jack’s view was of six inches of brown trouser leg and two worn-looking loafers that didn’t move as Nash must have surveyed the room for signs of an intruder. Jack made himself as small as possible, holding his breath. At last, Nash moved—perhaps he decided he must have forgotten to lock the door before leaving the house. Another key in another lock and the closet door swung open. Nash rifled through the contents, grunting when he apparently found what he wanted. He finally limped to the desk and dropped a gray duffel bag with black straps on the floor. It hit with a metallic clang. Jack drew in his legs as Nash sat down and swiveled the chair toward the file cabinet.

  What was in that bag? Tripods, maybe? Lighting trees? And what was Nash doing back here so soon anyway?

  Nash apparently retrieved the key from the desk drawer, then opened the file cabinet. The drawer rolled out, papers rustled, the drawer slammed shut and, once again, Jack heard the sound of a key in a lock. Nash got to his feet, hefted the bag with a grunt and walked out of the office.

  Jack stayed where he was until he heard the outside door slam shut. Curious about what Nash had taken from the file cabinet, he immediately searched the desk drawer, but the key was no longer under the felt.

  The closet that had been locked before now stood open. Did that mean that whatever Nash took from here in a duffel bag was the only thing he safeguarded? Jack’s quick perusal of the rest of the closet found nothing but photograpy equipment. He glanced at his watch. It was time to cut his losses and leave this house.

  Once in his car he drove past the church. The lot was empty, which suggested the wedding party was gone. Maybe Nash dropped by his house to get something he needed for the reception photos.

  Jack kept driving, unable to stop, knowing that time continued marching on like a determined soldier. He finally pulled to a stop in front of a small convenience store, where he made himself grab a premade sandwich because he’d skipped breakfast. As he ate the sandwich, he found Adam Cook’s general location on the map on his phone and almost choked on salami and cheese.

  Cook’s new house and the town of Glenville were only a mile and a half from the search he and Sophie had participated in the day before. In fact, they’d driven by the road he lived on. What’s more, Nash’s mother’s place was close to Cook’s but separated by the river that had serenaded them as they looked for Sabrina. In other words, the search location, the Cook house and Nash’s mother’s place were all within a half mile of each other as the crow flies. Sophie’s ominous statement came back to him: I sense Sabrina is close by.

  And now his gut told him she’d been right.

  With no bridge to cross the river, one had to go back out to the highway and travel north a quarter of a mile, turning onto a parallel road to travel east again, in effect making a giant U-turn. The three locations all but lined up on the GPS.

  Jack immediately tossed the sandwich aside and headed out of town.

  The skies were dark and foreboding. Driving through a part of town he wasn’t familiar with, he made any number of wrong turns in his quest to find the main road. They all either emptied into other streets or dead-ended against the side of a mountain. Anxiety and frustration had him gripping the wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. Finally plugging the address into his phone’s navigation, he followed the instructions, hoping he had enough service to get accurate directions. The synthesized voice actually calmed him and directed him south of town over the bridge crossing the Columbia River. A mile farther and it instructed him to turn east.

  After ten more minutes of twists and hills, he turned onto Manzanita. As if exhausted by her diligent service his phone almost immediately lost service.

  Living abodes this far out of the city were apparently built off on wandering driveways behind tall fences or acres of forest. The driveway leading to Betty Nash’s place was overgrown with underbrush at first but soon cleared to what must be a beautiful meadow when the sun was out and the fields weren’t muddy. Those fields held nothing now but a handful of wet cows.

  The house itself was a stately looking gray two-story Victorian-influenced building. A dozen or more barns and outbuildings had sprung up around it over the years. Between the outbuildings and the tangle of old roads crisscrossing the land, he thought the place must have been a dairy farm once upon a time. Everything looked old, dejected and worn-out. He parked near the house and stepped onto a porch in serious need of repair. A knock on the door and a ring of the bell produced no results.

  He tried yelling.

  Nothing. Hadn’t Reece said the woman was housebound? If that were the case, she might very well be inside. Maybe she hadn’t heard his knock. He tried the knob, his intention to open it a crack and call her name, but it was locked.

  He stepped off the porch and walked to a nearby open building that looked as if it might be the garage. All it held was an old sedan circa 1960 up on blocks.

  So, she might be inside, too disabled to answer the door. She might have had a friend give her a ride to an appointment. Hell, she might be looking out a window right now holding a shotgun, deciding she wasn’t about to open the door to a stranger—he didn’t blame her if that was the case.

  Did he try to search all the buildings? Several were out in the open, others abutted distant forests, and still others were nothing but dim shapes barely visible through the misty skies. It would take hours.

  Something was off about Nash, he just knew it. It all came back to proof and he had zip. If he wanted Betty Nash’s insights into her son, he’d simply have to come back later with Reece.

  He retraced his route, traveled south until he found Madrone and turned east again. It took a while, but he eventually ferreted out a sign nailed to a tree with the numbers 33401 painted in fading white paint. The drive was muddy from all the recent rain and very dark as the towering evergreens cut out the relative light in the sky. He expected to find a house under the process of renovation at the end of the drive, not the rickety-looking tan building that greeted him. If Adam was working here, it had to be on the interior.

  There was no vehicle in sight or any sign that anyone was home. He knocked on the door and peeked through the window. The room he glimpsed was even darker than outside, sparsely furnished and very still. He wasn’t surprised when no one responded to his knock or his voice calling out Adam’s name.

  A detached garage held a van. No trunks, no suitcases. Several big batteries stacked against a wall and, oddly enough, what appeared to be a new golf cart. Adam checked to make sure no one had appeared out of thin air before he opened the double back doors of the vehicle. He found a dozen boxes all sealed and randomly opened one of them to check the contents. It looked like the guy had visited a hardware store and stocked up on lantern fuel in case the electricity went out. Probably not an uncommon event out this far. There was no indication a dead handyman or an abducted woman had ever been in the van; indeed, as it now sat, there wasn’t room for a human being back there.

  Big fat raindrops started falling from the heavy clouds as he started a foot search of the land, following a fence as he moved while listening for the sound of an approaching engine. Just about convinced there was nothing
to find, he ran across what appeared to be a worn path disappearing into the woods and followed it until it ended at a new building set out of sight from the house and sheltered by undergrowth.

  The ruts in the path suggested Cook’s shiny new golf cart had made this trip with a heavy cargo...

  This building had to be where Cook was putting in his time. Overhead, he saw electricity lines connecting the building to the power pole and a spigot near the foundation promised water. Perhaps he was creating a whole other house back here. Jack walked around the entire structure. There were no windows. Odd. That precluded its use for human occupation. But it could be the shop. His father, a retired contractor, had often created a building similar to this one prior to construction. The single door was secured with a heavy chain and two different padlocks.

  He studied the locks—no way could he pick them. If there was the slightest indication that Sabrina was being held here, he’d shoot the locks, but there just wasn’t. In fact, face it, there was no indication at the Nash house or this one that anyone did anything wrong. Still, he pounded on the door and listened with his ear against the wood after calling Sabrina’s name.

  Striking out twice in a row and this late in the day was infuriating as well as heartbreaking. He headed back to town, determined to use what little time he had left to turn things around. Both Betty Nash’s house and Adam’s Cook place were well outside the city limits... He decided he’d stop and talk to the sheriff.

  He drove back to Astoria with a bitter taste in his mouth.

  * * *

  AGAINST DOCTOR’S ORDERS, Sophie checked herself out of the hospital. The fever had been gone for hours and she was restless. While the visit with her mother had been stilted and thankfully short, it was one of the few times in Sophie’s life where she could recall her mom trying hard to make a connection and she deeply appreciated the effort it took.

  But what really drove her was the conversation with nurse Joy that had taken place after her mother’s visit. She finally thought she could prove to Detective Reece that Sabrina had not run off with Kyle Woods.