She didn’t mind hard work. Having quit school when she was sixteen, she knew life would never be easy. If she could go back, she’d change a few of her stupid decisions.
Willa looked up from wiping down a particularly messy table—where a cranky two-year-old had just spent a couple hours crumbling up every cracker she’d given her into mush—to spot Velma Gentry, strolling through the door. Her replacement looked perky as ever.
“Been busy?” Velma asked.
Willa didn’t know how the woman did it. Velma always seemed to be cheerful no matter what time of day or night it was. Not only that, but Velma had an outlook on life she envied. It’s probably what made Velma such a good waitress. “We got slammed about four hours ago, been downright crazy ever since.”
“Travis been in? I need to talk to him.”
“He was here around six. Haven’t seen him since. Why?”
“Bill and me, we got us a reservation in two weeks at one of those fancy bed and breakfasts outside of town. Four days. I’m gonna sleep till noon all four, read me one of those hot and steamy romance novels and never leave my room. I want to ask Travis for some time off.”
Willa looked skeptical. “You got Bill to agree to take you to a B&B? That don’t sound like Bill to me.”
“I know. But it’s our anniversary and I told that man, I’ll be damned if I spend another year celebrating our wedded bliss without doing something special.”
Willa guffawed. “Is there such a thing as wedded bliss?”
“Damned if I know. But it got me a reservation and I’m making the most out of it and making him stick to the plan come hell or high water.”
When Willa started to reach for the salt to start filling them up, Velma stopped her. “Honey, why don’t you go ahead and clock out. I’ve got cleanup here.” She looked around the almost empty dining room. “I don’t see a rush hitting anytime soon unless the tokers come out for a little snack.”
“You sure? I wouldn’t mind getting off my feet and home to Charlie, although he’s more than likely dead to the world this time of the night.” Charlie Tucker was her sometime on-and-off-again boyfriend. Lately the two of them had been on.
“Make sure Charlie does something nice for you, you hear?”
“Believe it or not, we’ve been doin’ lots better than we ever did before.”
“Good. Good. ’Cause you’re a sweet girl, Willa.”
The blonde smiled. “I like you, too, Velma.”
“Now go on, get outta here. Tell that boyfriend of yours to treat you right. Tell him I said so or else.”
Willa didn’t have to be told again to hit the road. Her feet were killing her. This time, she circled around the counter, went to the back of the diner to clock out.
The time on her card read twelve-nineteen.
Grabbing her purse and jacket she slipped out the door and headed for her fifteen-year-old Honda Accord.
She hadn’t gone twenty yards when an older model Jeep Cherokee pulled into the lot and stopped next to her. He got so close that he almost ran over her foot with the left front tire. She watched as the man behind the wheel rolled down the driver’s side window.
“I’m lost. I’m trying to find 90 but I think I have to get back to the I-5 first? By any chance could you give me directions?”
“Sure. But you don’t have to get on the 5 to hit the Express.” Willa stepped closer to the car. “Two blocks over is First Avenue. Take a right, then a left on Cherry. When you see Second Ave, take another right. Head south until you get to Seattle Boulevard. It’ll dump you into I-90.”
She made the mistake of leaning her hand on the car window so she could turn to point to the end of the street.
All of a sudden the car door burst open, thrusting her off her feet. Before she could struggle she had to right herself. But the man was quick. When she opened her mouth to scream, she felt the cold steel of a nightstick punch her in the head.
A handcuff snapped around her wrist. She tried to pull back but he yanked her with such force she hit her head on the edge of the door. He dragged her into the front seat and then shoved her face down hard into the floorboard. On the way down, her head connected with the console about the same time she heard tires squeal out of the parking lot.
By this time she lifted her head to scream. But his fist smacked her in the bridge of the nose. Despite seeing stars she began to grope for the handle on the passenger side door, trying to get out. But it wouldn’t budge. It had been tied with rope.
“Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?” Willa sobbed.
Entwining his fingers in her golden hair, he jerked it from the root. “My idea of heaven, sweetheart, but don’t worry, honey. I promise it’ll be yours soon, too.”
Chapter Eight
Skye’s phone rang a little after six. Rolling over in bed, she felt around on the top of the nightstand until her fingers landed on her iPhone. Lifting one eyelid, she slid the bar across to answer the call and mumbled a barely coherent greeting. “What?”
“Skye, you know that new waitress we got?”
She recognized Velma’s voice on the other end of the line. Usually chipper, this time of morning, Velma didn’t sound sunny but worried.
Skye’s brain did its best to line up the tumblers in the right order. “You mean Willa? Sure. What about her?”
“She ended her shift last night a little after midnight. Around four this morning I took a load of trash out to the Dumpster and noticed her car still parked on the side street. I tried to wait until a decent hour to call. But I’m worried about her, Skye.”
“Maybe the car wouldn’t start.” Skye tried to sit up, tried to focus to get her bearings. Blinking in the direction of the clock at the early hour, she wondered what passed for a decent time where Velma was concerned. But then she remembered the woman pretty much lived at Country Kitchen.
“I thought of that already but if that were the case, Willa would’ve headed back inside to call her boyfriend so he could give her a lift. She didn’t do that. She would’ve let me know, Skye. Willa’s good that way. She hasn’t worked here that long but she’s gold when it comes to calling in, especially when she runs late. When she left here last night that girl was headed straight for home. She’d worked a busy eight-hour shift and she looked all done in, wanted to get home and go to bed. This isn’t like Willa to leave her car on the street overnight.”
Without voicing an opinion as to just how well you could get to know a person in three months’ time, Skye did her best to reassure her friend. “Okay. Let’s not panic. Let’s think this through before we leap to any conclusions.”
“Don’t give me that wait twenty-four hours crap, Skye. Something’s wrong. I called Charlie, that’s her boyfriend, and he said she didn’t make it home. I believe him, Skye. He had no reason to lie to me.”
But Skye was skeptical. “Why? Why would you believe him? Maybe they had a fight and he doesn’t want to admit it. Maybe Willa simply left on her own. Was the relationship a good one?”
Skye heard the intake of breath, the hesitation in Velma’s slow reply.
“It wasn’t ideal but he didn’t hit her, if that’s what you mean. They’d been back together for six months this time and she said he was good to her this go-round. He went to one of those therapists to get his anger under control.”
Great, thought Skye, not exactly a glowing point in favor of the boyfriend.
As Josh stirred beside her, the cynic in Skye ramped up. “Relationships often go south without warning, Velma. You know that. But hey, I understand you’re concerned about your friend. You’re right to be anxious if her car never moved. Give me Willa’s address. I’ll talk to this Charlie, size him up for myself.”
While Skye keyed in the number and street info into her phone, she realized she was anything but calm. A jumble of nerves began to crawl up her spine. Googling the address, she determined it was on the way to work.
“That’s real good, Skye, talk to Charlie,” V
elma echoed. “He’s a mechanic at Dalton’s Garage around the corner from Country Kitchen. When you’re done, stop in and I’ll see to it you get breakfast.”
Skye ended the call, saw Josh was all the way awake.
“Trouble?”
“Let’s hope not. Waitress didn’t make it home from the night shift. Remember Willa Dover?”
“At Country Kitchen? Sure, the cute little blonde, right?”
“That’s the one. Her car is still parked near the restaurant. She’s gone missing. But I suspect the boyfriend.”
“That doesn’t sound good. The boyfriend’s definitely a cliché but the first go-to guy for a reason. Maybe she took off somewhere on foot, reluctant to go home.”
“Not according to Velma. After waitressing eight hours on your feet, trust me, you’re not exactly ready to go out and party. But I’ll know more after I get through grilling the boyfriend. Wanna come?”
“You know I do.”
“Good because Velma dangled breakfast as an incentive.”
By the time Josh and Skye reached Dalton’s Garage, Willa had been off the grid since midnight, almost eight hours.
They found the repair shop a busy place where people were dropping off cars for simple stuff like a regular oil change and a variety of major work. They had to wait for the owner to hail Charlie Tucker, who was in the middle of overhauling an engine in an older model Suzuki.
When Charlie did crawl out from underneath the bay area, Skye watched from the window of the lobby as the tall, slender man with a long brown ponytail approached the waiting room. He was about her age, she decided, as he did his best to wipe the grease from his hands.
The guy didn’t wait for introductions before he wanted to know, “You here about Willa? Any word yet?”
Skye noted Charlie’s unease. At his next question she figured out why.
“Are you two cops?”
“No. And you’re under no obligation to talk to us. But if you are so inclined, we’d like to know about your relationship with Willa. Maybe start with this. Did you file a missing person report yet?”
“I called the cops two hours ago around six o’clock, got the runaround about how I had to wait twenty-four hours to report her gone. They said, ‘she’s an adult. She has a right to disappear.’ That’s bullshit, if you ask me.”
With a fair amount of prompting, Skye got him to focus. Once he did, Charlie settled down and went over the same story Skye had heard from Velma. To her, the more he talked, the more his apprehension faded away.
“Did you two have a fight?” Josh asked. “Even the happiest couples do fight from time to time.”
“I won’t lie. God knows Willa and I have had our share of them in the past. I’ve known her since she was seventeen. But we didn’t have a fight last night because I’m telling you, Willa never made it home. We were doing real good lately, you know? I didn’t even know she hadn’t shown up at home till Velma called at five-thirty and said her car was still at the restaurant. I knew right away something was wrong then.”
“Why is that?” Skye wanted to know. “Why is it you didn’t miss her crawling into bed with you in the middle of the night?”
“I’m a sound sleeper. Besides, I took cold medicine before I went to bed around ten. You can ask anybody here and they’ll tell you I felt like crap yesterday, thought I was going to hack up a lung. So when I got home I ate some leftover spaghetti Willa had made, drank a couple of beers, and went to bed before I dropped. I wouldn’t hurt Willa like that. I love her.”
Skye’s heart clutched at the heartfelt declaration. “Did you ever tell her that?”
When Charlie hung his head, she had the answer. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You give me a list of her friends and family, share a few phone numbers out of your cell phone I can check out.”
“I called everybody I know after I talked to Velma.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll give them a call, too.”
“You might as well know, on my way to work this morning I stopped by Country Kitchen and checked out Willa’s car. There’s not a damn thing wrong with it. I replaced the spark plugs at Christmas and the head gasket two weeks after that. It might be old but it runs like a top. You ask me, somebody did something to her.”
“Okay. But you should know I plan to call a detective I know to make sure Willa’s put on the front burner and it sails past a uniform. Hopefully it won’t get stuck in a pile on someone’s desk. Any chance you have a photo of Willa?”
Charlie hitched a hip and dug into his back pocket, pulled out a billfold. With his grimy fingers, he inched out a photograph. “Here’s one we took at the lake last October, a Sunday. We’d only been back together two weeks when I took this with my old Canon.”
“I’ll see you get it back.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said. “Will you let me know as soon as you hear something? Anything at all.”
“I will. And Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“If I find out you’re lying, I’m coming back here to get in your face. Even though I’m not a cop, you’ll likely need a lawyer if that happens. Or a doctor.”
“Okay. Fine. But I’m not lying. Find her. Will you?”
“You got it.”
“Do you believe him?” Josh asked once Charlie headed back to the Suzuki.
“I do. How about you?”
“I think he’s telling the truth. Which means—”
“We need to find Willa.”
They walked around the corner to Country Kitchen where Velma greeted them with a troubled look instead of her usual wide smile.
“So? Did you talk to Charlie Tucker?”
Skye went through the byplay back at the garage with the boyfriend. “I called Harry on the way here. He’ll expedite it, put out a BOLO for Willa until the obligatory twenty-four hours is up. If they get nothing from the BOLO, he’ll get Seattle PD to investigate it as a missing person case.”
“But you both plan to still look for her, right? You have to do something, Skye. You can’t just let Willa fall through the cracks like others have.”
Skye grinned. “You bet. Now how about that breakfast you promised?”
“Sure. What’ll you two have?”
“I’m craving blueberry pancakes,” Josh admitted.
“Sounds good to me, make it two,” Skye agreed. “Take a seat, Velma. Let’s go over exactly what happened last night with Willa.”
“Again?”
“Yep. Give it to me one more time.”
In the middle of the rehash, Travis walked up. Skye looked him in the eye, pointed a finger and said, “You know what, Travis? As owner of Country Kitchen with waitresses working here ’round the clock, you really need to think about installing security cameras, both in front and in the back. And make sure they have a high-quality resolution, not that grainy stuff.”
“Duly noted. I have a guy coming by this afternoon.”
“A little late for that,” Velma moaned as she got to her feet. “We need to get the word out.”
“And we will. I’m having flyers printed up to put in the window. We’ll circulate Willa’s picture, maybe get the news media involved,” Travis said.
“An excellent idea,” Josh said, nodding toward Skye. “And this is just the woman to do it, the perfect one to hold a press conference right here in front of the restaurant.”
“If I have to appear on camera, then I want my stack of pancakes first,” Skye groaned. “I get nervous enough without my stomach rumbling in front of all Seattle’s reporters.”
Soon after that, Velma complied by slapping down two plates filled with steaming flapjacks onto the Formica table.
After he’d scooped up the last of the stack, Josh slid out of the booth, took out his cell phone. “Finish up while I set up the press conference.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to take a look around outside first.”
“Why?” But she already knew. She stood up, tossed some
bills on the table from her pocket. “I’m going with you.”
“Velma said Willa left out the back door. Let’s head that way,” Josh prompted.
The negative energy blasted him the minute he reached the parking lot. He sensed an evil so dark it had him doubling his focus. He surveyed the area across to the alley and back again. Because he could still see Willa’s Honda angled at the curb on the street, he headed that way. But when the images lessoned, he stopped in mid-stride. Sensing that Willa had never made it this far, he turned on his heels to backtrack. As soon as he reached the middle of the lot again, the series of flashes became stronger. This is where he decided to concentrate his efforts.
“She didn’t get into the car on her own. He dragged her. He tried to do it without getting out, but of course, that didn’t work. He had to get out so that he could make room for her to get in. He’s not quite six feet tall, has brown hair. Not sure what color eyes, but he hasn’t shaved in several days.” Josh frowned, considered the rest.
“And he smelled. He was sweaty from some type of physical labor. His olive green shirt had major stains under the armpit and around the neck.”
“Why would she let someone like that get so close to her?” Skye marveled.
“He asked for directions, got her talking then pulled her into his smallish SUV. No, that’s not quite right. The SUV was a Jeep. I don’t know the model but I’d recognize the front grille. He peeled out of the parking lot right about there.” Josh pointed to what would’ve been the darkest part of the area where the light from the alleyway didn’t reach the entire scope.
“Going which direction?”
“South. He headed south on the I-5. I’m sure of it.”
They exchanged looks. Skye picked up on the where, mainly because she had complete faith in his ability to read the situation. She didn’t have a problem following his lead. Both knew the info was sketchy but more than they had had since six a.m.
“There are a lot of miles between here and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Josh. Think about it. The fact the guy headed south means nothing.”
Skye Cree 03: The Bones Will Tell Page 8