Stiff Competition

by Annelise Ryan

  Bo’s brow draws down in confusion. “Skill? I’d say more of a lack of it, wouldn’t you?” Richmond doesn’t answer and it takes Bo a second or two to catch on. “Wait, are you saying this wasn’t an accident?”

  “It doesn’t appear so,” Richmond says. “Did you know Mr. Sanderson?”

  Bo shrugs. “Hard not to know the guy given how much he’s been in the local paper. He came into the store a few times, and I know some contractors who have worked with him, but I didn’t know him personally if that’s what you mean.”

  “Anybody you know have a beef with him?” Richmond asks.

  “Lord, yes. I can give you half a dozen names right off the top of my head. Apparently the guy wasn’t particularly tactful and his standards weren’t up to par with those of a lot of folks, but I can’t say I know of anyone who disliked the man enough to kill him.”

  “So back to the archery question,” Richmond says. “Where does someone learn how to do that around here?”

  Bo shrugs. “I teach at the sportsmen’s club over by Marshfield.”

  “Do other folks from Sorenson go there?”

  “Sure. Lots of them.”

  “How many who are good at archery?”

  Bo pulls at his chin. “There are several folks in town who are good. Reece Morton used to be the leader of the pack, but he doesn’t shoot much anymore. Dan Hooper is quite good. He typically places high in the tournaments the club sponsors.”

  “How many folks that go to the club are bow hunters?” Richmond asks.

  “There are a lot of them,” Bo says. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  I know Richmond isn’t going to want to name names, and sure enough, he switches to a different line of questioning. “Let’s talk equipment. Do archers typically have identifying marks of any type on their arrows so that you can tell who an arrow belongs to?”

  “Sure, especially if they’re hunters. There are differences in the shafts, and in the types of points, too. And there are markings on the shaft that designate the weight and diameter. The right size and weight is necessary to get the best air time and that’s determined by the bow. Probably the biggest difference is in the fletching.”

  “Fletching?” Richmond asks.

  “Those are the feathers on the arrow,” Bo explains, “though these days they’re typically made of plastic.”

  “So if we were to show you an arrow,” Richmond poses, “would you be able to tell us whose it is?”

  “Possibly, if it belongs to someone I know.”

  “Will a picture suffice?” I ask.

  “It might.”

  I look at Richmond. “Let me call Arnie and have him forward a clean picture of the arrow to my cell.”

  “Will that be big enough?” Richmond says. He looks over to Bo for the answer.

  Bo flashes a cheesy grin and says, “Hey, bigger is always better.”

  “I can have Arnie send it to my e-mail account. If the picture I pull up on my phone isn’t big enough, would you let me borrow a computer so I can log in to my e-mail?”

  “Sure,” Bo says. “You can use the one behind the counter.”

  Other customers have entered the store, so I step outside for some privacy and call Arnie.

  “Hey, Mattie, how’s it going?” he says. “Are you glad to be back to work?”

  Am I? It’s a good question, one I’m not sure I know the answer to. On the one hand I miss my son a ton, and I’m bone-aching tired. But on the other hand, I think that if I hadn’t gone back to work, I might have lost my mind over time. My sister, Desi, is a natural at this mothering stuff. She’s always been a stay-at-home mom and she seems to delight in the day-to-day tedium the job entails. I, on the other hand, need something more. And that makes me question my maternal instincts.

  “Yes, and no,” I answer Arnie truthfully.

  “Good answer,” he says with a chuckle. “Sorry to hear about the troubles with Emily.”

  “Yeah, she’s been a challenge. And that’s one of the reasons I’m calling you. I need a favor.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Ironic choice of words, as you’ll realize in a second. Before I get to the favor, can you take a close-up picture of that arrow from Lars Sanderson and send it to my e-mail?”

  “Sure can. Give me about thirty seconds and you should have it. What’s the favor?”

  “I need you to get in touch with Joey Dewhurst for me. I have a laptop I need him to break into.”

  “Let me guess. Is it Emily’s by chance?”

  “It is.”

  “Not a problem. Where and when do you want him to meet with you?”

  “How about in your office at . . .” I look at my watch. “Let’s try for around noon. Shoot me a text to let me know once you get ahold of him.”

  “Will do.”

  I disconnect the call and half a minute later I hear a ding from my phone to let me know that a new e-mail has arrived. As soon as I have the picture up on my screen, I head back into the store.

  “It’s pretty small,” I tell Richmond, showing it to him.

  Bo is ringing up a sale so we stand by patiently waiting for the transaction to finish. The customer is a local plumber named Zane Michaels and as Bo is ringing up his purchases, Michaels says, “Hey, did you hear what happened to Lars Sanderson?”

  Bo shoots us a look. Richmond gives him a subtle nod. “Yeah, I heard he got killed,” Bo says.

  “Sure did,” Zane says. “Someone said he got shot with an arrow. Ain’t that a kick in the butt?”

  Bo says nothing, but Zane isn’t about to let the topic go. “Have you heard any rumors about who might have done it? Knowing Lars, I can’t help but wonder if it was an accident or if someone took him out on purpose. That guy knew how to rile people up.”

  “Haven’t heard a thing,” Bo says.

  “What do you think it was: accident or murder?” Zane’s voice takes on a suspenseful quality as he utters the word murder.

  “Wouldn’t know and wouldn’t want to speculate,” Bo says, though I’m pretty sure he would want to speculate if we weren’t standing here listening. He counts out Zane’s change, bags his purchases, and hands them over.

  “Let me know if you hear anything, okay?” Zane says as he heads out the door.

  “Will do,” Bo says, giving a tip of his hat. As soon as Zane is gone, Bo looks at us and says, “Sorry about that.”

  “No need to be,” I tell him. “The gossip mill in this town waits for no man.” I walk up to the counter and hand him my phone. “Here’s a picture. Can you tell anything from it?”

  Bo takes the phone, studies the picture for a moment, and then says, “Yeah, I can. That fletching is pretty distinctive and I only know of one person who uses that green and purple neon color. I know because it’s a custom-made arrow. And I’m the one who made it.”

  My heart quickens.

  “That arrow belongs to Reece Morton.”

  Chapter 20

  After learning that Bo can provide documentation to prove he custom-made the arrow in question for Reece Morton, Richmond and I thank him and head back out to the car.

  “Well that’s both good news and bad news,” I say. “Now we know who the arrow belongs to but it doesn’t do us much good because we’re pretty sure Reece couldn’t have shot it, and his archery equipment is missing.”

  “Too bad they didn’t find any prints on the arrow,” Richmond grumbles as we settle into his car.

  “They did find one, but it belonged to Lars.”

  Richmond scoffs his frustration.

  “We need to think back to Reece’s storage unit,” I say, grabbing my cell phone as it dings with an incoming text message. “Don’t those places typically have security cameras?”

  Richmond looks over at me with his happy face. “They do,” he says, as I read the text message. “Shall we go retrieve it?”

  “I’d love to, but that was Arnie texting me to let me know that Joey will be at our office
at noon. So while you do that, I’m going to go over to Hurley’s place to have a look around Emily’s room and get her laptop so I can take it to Joey. Would you mind dropping me off back at my office so I can get my car?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I’ll touch base with you before Hart Bauer’s interview at two.”

  As soon as Richmond drops me off, I head inside to check in with Izzy. I find him in his office, busy working on the mounds of paperwork that go with the job.

  “Anything going on?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Just the usual paper chase. Anything new on the Sanderson case?”

  “Some.” I fill him in on our chat with Ms. Rutherford, Bo’s identification of the arrow, and our upcoming chats with Hart Bauer and Brad Donaldson. “Richmond is headed to Reece Morton’s storage facility now to see if he can get any security tape of the unit that might show someone accessing it recently.”

  “Any news on Emily?”

  “Yes, and no.” I tell him about Hurley heading for Chicago, and my plans to use Joey so we can hopefully get a look at Emily’s laptop.

  “Be careful, Mattie,” Izzy says with a frown. “I get why you’re going to use Joey, and I’m not disagreeing with the idea. But know that whatever he does has to be off the books.”

  “Of course,” I say, unsure why he’s cautioning me on the matter. “This isn’t an official investigation.”

  “Maybe it should be.”

  “Why? It’s not like this is something new and unusual. Emily has disappeared before a number of times.”

  “Well, not to be a pessimist,” he says in a way that tells me he’s going to do just that, “but what if this time is different? What if this thing goes bad? If, God forbid, we have to open an official investigation, anything Joey does with Emily’s laptop could taint any evidence it might contain.”

  There it is: the elephant in the room. Though even Izzy is skirting around it a bit. “I understand, Izzy, but if this time is different, and Emily is in any real danger, then the faster we find her the better. What are our other options with regard to her laptop? Arnie and Jonas don’t do that sort of stuff. Laura is a wiz at sleuthing out information on the Internet, and she might be able to find something on the computer if we can get it unlocked, but there isn’t anyone here locally other than Joey who can hack into the thing. If we send it off to the Madison lab, who knows how long it will take them to even get to it, much less find anything?”

  “Like I said, I understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. And I’m not saying it’s the wrong choice. I just want to make sure you understand the possible ramifications it might have down the road. And I’m not talking strictly evidentiary or legal implications. If Emily does return, what is she going to think when she finds out you snooped through her stuff? If you think she resents you now, just wait.”

  “I get it, but I think we have to do this. Hurley is going crazy trying to locate her, and since this is different from her usual disappearing act, I feel like we need to do everything we can to find her and bring her back home. If our snooping makes her resent me even more, I’ll deal with it when it happens. I’d rather have that on my conscience than the knowledge that I didn’t do everything I could, especially if this does turn out bad.”

  “Okay,” he says with a wan smile. “Good luck. I hope it works.”

  I leave before he has a chance to change his mind or say anything else. I make a quick stop in the locker room to pump, and then head for Hurley’s house.

  I have a key; Hurley gave it to me months ago when I was being stalked by a crazy man who wanted to kill me. I let myself in and take a few moments to walk through the main floor and look around. I’m not sure what it is I’m looking for, but I feel the need to scope out the entire house, and figure I might as well start on the ground floor.

  I walk around the living room, checking out the magazines, looking under the chair and couch cushions, scanning the titles in the bookcase. I open up the coat closet and scan its contents. There are two jackets that are too small to be Hurley’s, one made from a canvas material suitable for fall, the other a puffy, lightweight jacket that would be good for cold weather at the start of the winter or in the spring, but hardly warm enough for the current temperatures. I check the pockets in both of them and find some change, a stick of gum, and a pen.

  Next I head for the kitchen. I haven’t been here since right before Matthew was born, but nothing looks unusual or out of place. There is a cordless house phone and I take it out of its base and scroll through the caller ID history. Nothing leaps out at me. Off the kitchen are a small bathroom and a mudroom, neither of which offers anything of interest, so I head upstairs.

  The main bathroom is to the right at the top of the stairs, so I check it out first. It’s obvious that Emily has been the one using it. The countertop is covered with the detritus of a teenage girl’s daily needs: skin products, makeup, scrunchies, hair bands, hair spray, mousse, deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste. The sight of it all gives me a chill and ratchets up my anxiety a notch. If Emily had left with the intention of staying away for any length of time, wouldn’t she have taken these items with her?

  I open up the medicine cabinet and find two prescriptions with Emily’s name on them. One is an antidepressant prescribed by Maggie, the other an antibiotic often used to treat acne. That Emily didn’t take these with her doesn’t alarm me as much as the makeup and toothbrush. Teenagers tend to balk at taking pills for legitimate medicinal reasons even though they’ll pop a handful of unknown meds in order to get high at a party.

  I poke my head in the shower and see it’s stocked with shampoo, conditioner, body soap, a razor, and a net scrubber. Again I have to wonder why she didn’t take these toiletries with her. Granted, she had Hurley’s money with her and she could buy the stuff easily enough, but why not just take them? She could have stashed them in her backpack without Hurley knowing.

  I leave the bathroom and its ominous findings, and head for the end of the hall to Hurley’s room. He has his own bathroom off the bedroom, and I see that his toiletries are all missing. The bed is unmade and several items of clothing have been tossed on it, no doubt stuff that didn’t make the packing effort.

  Finally I head for Emily’s room.

  It’s a mess, and I wonder how much this bothers Hurley. He’s hardly a neatnik, but he’s not nearly as messy as this room is. Clothes are strewn everywhere, and there is no way for me to know if Emily has taken any clothing with her. I head for her desk area. The laptop is sitting there, open but asleep. I wake it up, see the prompt for a password, and for grins I try variations of Johnny Chester’s name. I know Hurley said he tried birthdates, but don’t know if he knew or thought to try Johnny’s. So I place a call to Laura and ask for help.

  “I need a birthdate,” I tell her. “It’s for Jonathan Chester.” I give her a few other details, such as his father’s name, and as I’m holding she starts clicking away at a computer.

  “Is this about Emily?” she asks. “It’s a darn shame that the poor girl is having so much trouble and I feel really bad for Detective Hurley because this can’t be very easy for him, suddenly inheriting a teenaged girl for a daughter who he knew nothing about and who doesn’t know anything about him because her mother—”

  “Laura, take a breath,” I say, interrupting her run-on blab.

  “Sorry,” she says. I hear her actually take a breath, a deep one, and then she says, “Here you go. Date of birth is March 23, 1999.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and then before she can start another bout of verbal diarrhea I say, “Bye,” and disconnect the call. I try various iterations of the birthdate, but nothing works. I abandon the laptop and start looking at other items. On top of the desk is a picture of Emily’s mother, Kate, one that appears to be a few years old. There are some art books lined up against the wall at the back of the desk and I flip through the pages looking for notes. There aren’t any, so I move on to a pile of school papers with
grades ranging from a C in math to an A on an English paper. Underneath everything is one of those large calendar blotters but a quick scan of the few items that are written on it reveals school-related stuff—test dates, homework assignment deadlines, a pep rally. On the far right is a stack of school books—algebra, history, and biology. Accompanying each one is a black and white composition notebook. I flip through the pages of the textbooks first and then tackle the composition books. The first one contains notes for a biology class and Emily has drawn doodles on nearly every page, some of which are excellent renditions of animals and faces, including one that I recognize as Mr. Clarkston, the biology teacher. I move on to the next one, which contains notes on U.S. history and, like the first notebook, it also contains a number of drawings and doodles in the margins of the pages. One I recognize immediately as Johnny Chester. Another one looks familiar but it takes me a second to figure out who it is. I flash back to Hurley’s and my trip to the school and my visit to the girls’ bathroom, and it comes to me then that the face is that of Carly Randall, the cheerleader I spoke to in the bathroom. I don’t recognize any of the other faces, but assume they are classmates or friends of Emily’s. The third and final notebook is similar to the first two, though the topic for this one is algebra, and it contains far fewer doodles. I suspect that’s because the algebra class requires more of Emily’s focused attention than the other classes do.

  There are three drawers in the desk, a wide, shallow center one, and two deeper ones on either side. I open the center one first and find the expected assortment of pencils, erasers, staples, paper clips, sticky notes, a compass, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, and a collection of pens in a variety of colors. Mixed in with these items are some hair ties, several pairs of earrings, nail clippers, an emery board, and a couple of bottles of nail polish. The side drawer on the right is filled with socks of all colors and designs. Recalling my own attempts to hide things from my sister when we were younger, I examine every pair, unrolling the ones that are matched up and squeezing each and every sock to make sure nothing is hidden inside them. I come up empty and move to the drawer on the left. It’s a hodgepodge of stuff. There are several comic books with titles such as Unlovable, Runaways, and This One Summer. A quick scan of the content shows they all run along the same themes: acceptance, peer pressure, trying to fit in, establishing your identity, and the problems inherent in developing and maintaining friendships in adolescence.