by J A Whiting
“I don’t know.” Brad thought about it. “She got back in on her own. He didn’t force her. Right?”
“No, not physically.”
Brad shook his head. “I guess not. She would have to press charges and if she got back into the van on her own…I mean, she could have yelled if she was afraid…there are always people around here. So I guess not then.” He shrugged. “But what the hell is up with that Alexei?”
“I don’t know. But it shook me up. There’s something wrong with that guy.”
Brad nodded. They went back to the front of the shop. “Listen, I came by because I saw Joe in town when I was closing up the store. He said he needed to talk to us. He’s down in the cove right now…meeting with some guy about a house to renovate. He said he’d be done a little after ten and could we meet him at the bar in the cove.”
“What’s it about?” Olivia asked.
“He said he heard something of interest today and wanted to talk to us about it.”
“Well, I’m done here. Let’s go see what he has to tell us,” Olivia said.
***
Olivia and Brad headed down to the cove.
“Did you see our ad about the necklace in today’s paper?” Brad asked while they walked.
“I did see it. No one has called or emailed about it so far,” Olivia told him.
“Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe the person in question won’t reply so as not to call attention to himself,” Brad suggested. “You armed your burglar alarm when you left the house, right?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Listen, Liv. I know you’re a big girl and all…” Brad started.
“What?” Olivia asked.
“I just wonder if maybe you should stay at Joe’s for a while…you know, in case someone breaks into the house when you’re asleep, looking for that necklace.”
“I have the alarm system. It’ll be okay.”
“Now I wish I didn’t suggest the ad,” Brad said.
“Don’t be silly. It’s a possible way to get that guy to show himself,” Olivia said. “It’s okay, Brad. Really. It had to be done.”
“I’m worried. That’s all.”
“Are you turning into Joe?” Olivia asked. “He worries for all of us.”
”I’m thinking he has good reason,” Brad muttered.
Joe was sitting on the deck of the bar, overlooking the cove. He was nursing a beer. He waved to Olivia and Brad.
“How’d the painting go?” Joe asked Olivia.
“It looks good. I finished. Now I need to look over the inventory and clean up and I’ll be ready to open.” The waiter came by and Brad ordered a beer and Olivia asked for iced tea.
“So what’s up, Joe?” Brad asked.
“I was up in Wells at the coffee shop this morning. A lot of construction guys hang out there before they head to their jobs. Turns out the guy that I mentioned to you the other night, the guy who worked on the Siderov place. Mike Sullivan. Well, he’s disappeared. The police found his car crashed into a tree last night. A few miles from his house in Concord.” Joe paused. “But there’s no sign of him.”
“What happened?” Olivia asked.
“Not sure. They speculate that he lost control of the car. Hit a tree. But it’s like he vanished…disappeared into thin air. They can’t find him.” Joe lowered his voice and leaned closer to Brad and Olivia. “Remember I told you this guy was a talker? He had worked on the Victorian, just for one day. The only guy from the area who had done anything there. Well, he talked about it…even though he had signed the agreement not to discuss the job. Trouble was, he said too much. He talked about the design, the materials they were using. He even leaked the word on the safe room,” Joe said.
“But Alexei said there is no safe room,” Olivia said.
Joe raised his eyebrows. “Who should we believe? The guy working at the place or Alexei?”
“Did he claim to see the safe room?” Olivia asked.
“Not sure if he saw it himself or one of the other workers told him about it,” Joe said. “So this Mike Sullivan gets called again,” Joe continued. “Day before yesterday. Siderov wants him for something else. Tells Mike to come by yesterday morning to complete some masonry work,” Joe said. “No one’s seen him since yesterday.”
This is a weird coincidence,” Brad said. “Guy works on the place and winds up missing.”
“Do you think the Siderovs had something to do with this? Because Sullivan talked? It can’t be. It’s too unbelievable,” Olivia said.
Joe rubbed his chin. “I don’t know what to think. But as Brad says, it’s a strange coincidence.”
“How old is he? Mike Sullivan,” Brad asked.
“Late twenties,” Joe responded. “And here’s where it gets stranger. The guy who told me about Mike…he went over to Mike’s house earlier this morning to see if his wife needed anything. Nobody answered the door. So he looked in the back door window and there were supper dishes on the table. Like the family got interrupted and just got up and took off. He said he called the house several times and no one will answer,” Joe said.
“What do you make of it?” Brad asked.
Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. The wife and kid didn’t go with Mike. It seems the wife’s sister stopped at the Sullivan’s house yesterday around dinner time to drop off a sewing machine she had borrowed. Says she talked to Mrs. Sullivan for a few minutes and left. Everything seemed normal. According to the timeline, the police found Mike’s car around the time the sister was at the house. So Mrs. Sullivan was at home when Mike hit the tree. But no one’s seen or talked to the wife or kid since then.”
“I don’t like this,” Olivia said. “I don’t like it.”
Joe squeezed her hand.
Olivia said, “Too many questions. Could there really be a link between Siderov and Sullivan? Would Siderov hurt Mike Sullivan because he talked about the Victorian?”
“Tell Joe what you saw from the store window tonight,” Brad suggested.
Olivia told Joe what she had seen. Joe leaned back in his chair. “That guy is trouble. Maybe the whole family is trouble.”
“All of this mess started up after the Siderovs moved here,” Olivia said.
“We can’t jump to conclusions,” Brad answered. “We need to think things through.” He ran his hand through his hair.
They were all quiet for a few minutes.
“I was thinking that tomorrow I might take a ride out to the Sullivan’s house… to see if maybe the wife showed up,” Joe said. “Maybe she’s back. She could have gone to stay with someone. I’d like to ask her if her husband was threatened by Siderov.”
“How about we go with you, Joe?” Brad asked. “I have the morning off. I don’t think you should go out there alone.”
“I agree,” Olivia said. “I’d feel better if we came with you. If she’s there, we can sit in the car and wait while you talk to her, if you think that’s best. If she’s not there, well, then we can have a look around.”
Joe said, “I’d like to have you along.”
“I’ll come by and pick you both up in the morning,” Brad said.
Chapter 18
The morning sky was clear and blue. The weather had been perfect for the past several weeks and everyone hoped it was the beginning of a warm, dry summer that would bring plenty of tourists to Ogunquit. Joe and Olivia were being chauffeured by Brad to the Sullivan house in Concord; about twenty-five minutes drive from Ogunquit. The car wound along a country lane lined with mature trees whose branches framed a canopy over the road. The houses were spread far apart and every few miles, they passed a small ranch or cape. Some had barns in the backyard.
Brad pulled onto the road’s shoulder in front of a well-tended, gray, shingled Cape Cod style house with a white picket fence around three sides of the front yard. The lawn was mowed and flowers bloomed in beds next to the fencing. There was no car in the driveway and no sign of anyone around.
“Pretty place,” Olivia said.
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“Yeah, nicely taken care of,” Joe remarked. “I’ll go to the front door and ring the bell. I’ll see how things go. If she’s willing to talk to all of us, I’ll wave you up.”
Joe followed the brick walkway to the front door. He waited a couple of minutes but no one answered. He turned towards the car and shook his head. Joe and Olivia got out of the car and joined Joe at the front of the house.
“Nobody home,” Joe said.
Olivia stretched her neck to try to peer into the living room through the big glass window at the front, but the glare on the window made it impossible to make anything out.
“Let’s go around back,” Joe said.
A detached two-car garage was at the end of the driveway. There was a wide deck on the back of the house. A vegetable garden was off to the side and the plants looked like they could use a drink. Joe and Brad looked through the small glass windows of the garage.
“No cars,” Joe said.
Olivia walked up the steps to the deck and looked out over the back yard. There was a swing set near the vegetable garden. A kid’s bike was lying in the grass next to the garage. Joe and Brad joined her on the deck.
“I rang the back doorbell,” Olivia said.
“Obviously no one’s here,” Brad said.
Olivia gestured to the clothes line in the yard. “The wash on the line is dry, so it probably wasn’t hung this morning.”
They were quiet as they looked over the backyard. Olivia went to the back door and peeked in the window. “The dirty dishes are still on the table.”
“So I guess no one has been here since the night Mike disappeared,” Joe said.
“Dead end,” Brad said.
“Maybe I’ll wander over to the neighbors’ house and ask if they know how to reach Mrs. Sullivan,” Joe said. “Why don’t you two stay here? I’ll be right back.”
Brad and Olivia sat on the deck’s steps.
“The kid must go to school. The bike isn’t a tricycle, so the boy must be in elementary school. Maybe we could go over to the school and ask if there was a way to contact Mrs. Sullivan?” Olivia said.
“The school probably wouldn’t give us any information. You know, privacy laws and all that,” Brad told her. “Mrs. Sullivan could be staying with family or friends. She might not want to be at home right now. Maybe she just doesn’t want to be alone here.”
Olivia nodded. “I can certainly understand that.” She knew it was going to take her a long time to get used to living in her house without Aggie.
“Are you doing okay, Liv? On your own?” Brad asked gently.
“I’m okay,” Olivia said. “Most of the time.”
Joe came towards them ducking under the tree branches as he crossed the patch of lawn that separated the Sullivan’s driveway from their neighbors.
“Nobody home there, either,” he reported.
The three started down the driveway back to Brad’s car. A flicker of something caught Olivia’s attention and she glanced up, but quickly moved her eyes straight ahead and kept walking. “Guys,” she said. “Keep walking and looking forward while I tell you something, okay? Don’t look up.”
Joe and Brad kept walking to the car. “Okay,” Brad said. “What is it, Liv?”
“I think I saw the curtain in the upstairs window move back. I think someone is watching us,” she said. “Let’s stand by the car for a minute and figure out what to do next. Let’s not spook them.”
When they reached their parked car, Brad opened the driver side door, crossed his arms and leaned on top of the car door facing Joe and Olivia, who stood on the passenger side. “We can pretend to be casually talking. Who the heck is spying on us?”
“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure someone’s in there. If we ring the bell again, it’s not going to make them answer the door. What should we do?” Olivia asked.
“If it’s Mrs. Sullivan, she obviously doesn’t want any visitors,” Joe said. “On the other hand, if it’s not Mrs. Sullivan, why the heck are they in her house if she isn’t home?”
“I think we should get in and drive away,” Olivia said. “Then park a bit down the road and come back on foot.”
“We can watch the house from a distance,” Brad said. “There’s plenty of cover around here with the trees lining the road.”
Joe nodded. “Let’s go.”
***
Brad parked the car on a small dirt entrance to a trail way. Two other vehicles were parked there and Brad pulled in and placed his car further from the road so that it would be less noticeable to anyone driving past. The three got out.
“Once we get up by the house, why don’t we position ourselves so that we have three different viewpoints of the place? We can text each other if we see anything,” Brad suggested.
“I don’t know how to use the text feature on my phone,” Joe said.
“Really, Joe,” Brad said. “You need to come into this century.”
“We’ll all put our phones on vibrate and talk softly to each other,” Olivia said.
“Come on, we need to hurry in case whoever’s in the house decides to vacate before we get back,” Brad said.
They jogged up the road. Brad stepped into the brush directly across from the house. Olivia decided to take her place behind a group of pines that stood a few yards in from the road across from the Sullivan’s neighbors’ house which gave her a view along both houses and down to the Sullivan’s garage. Joe went into the woods on the right edge of the Sullivan’s property so he could watch the back of the house.
Olivia pushed through the brush and branches. She tripped over a big root. Mosquitoes buzzed at her eyes and ears. Her tank top was stuck to her sweaty back. Ugh. I’ve probably got ticks all over my legs too, she thought as she swiped at the mosquitoes and horse flies. She came to a fallen pine tree and used it as a seat to perch on as she watched the front and left side of the house.
Olivia watched the upstairs windows for any movement behind the curtains. She thought about Liz Sullivan and her missing husband. Olivia wondered how Mrs. Sullivan broke the news to her son that his daddy had been in an accident. Her heart contracted as she thought about the call informing her of Aggie’s passing. The phone ringing late in the night waking her from a deep sleep. Her hand fumbling over the side table trying to locate the phone in the dark. Joe’s voice cracking.
She took a deep breath and let her gaze wander around the Sullivan’s front yard. The toys, the neatly tended house and property. She thought about the hard work that went into making a life. A family of three, with one missing now. Lives yanked from their brightly humming orbit. Olivia hoped that Mike Sullivan had just hit his head, had amnesia or something, and would be found wandering in the woods off of Route 495. Please just let it be a simple accident.
An hour passed. Nothing happened. Olivia got a text from Brad: are we wasting our time? Olivia sent a return text: maybe. She sat for fifteen minutes more before another text came from Brad: called Joe…no answer…u call him. Olivia called Joe’s number. He did not pick up. She texted Brad: maybe he doesn’t feel the phone vibrate. Brad replied with, maybe we should give up on this…i’ll go talk to joe. Olivia hoped the guys would want to give up the vigil and get the heck out of the woods. They could think up Plan B.
Another text from Brad: can’t find joe…come help me.
Olivia’s stomach lurched. She stumbled through the brush. Branches scratched her face as she ran for the road. She jogged along the pavement, trying to see the spot where Brad was searching for Joe. “Brad!” she called.
“Here! In here.” Olivia heard Brad’s voice and headed to the sound. She entered the woods at the point where she could hear twigs snapping. Brad was in about fifty feet from the road. When Olivia reached him, he held up Joe’s phone.
“This is all I found,” Brad said. His face was pinched with worry.
“Where is he?” Olivia said, her voice tight and high, her eyes darting all about the woods.
“I’ve been callin
g for him. I walked around. All directions,” Brad said.
“He can’t just disappear.” Olivia’s voice cracked. “Did you see anybody else around here?”
Brad shook his head. They stared at each other.
“Liv, walk up the road. Call his name. I’ll keep searching in the woods,” Brad said.
Olivia nodded and turned back to the street. She jogged, calling “Joe” every few steps as she made her way along the road. She ran about a half mile before deciding to turn back. She saw Brad in the distance walking towards her. When she got closer, she could tell by his face that he hadn’t found Joe.
Olivia was panting. “What are we going to do?”
“Maybe he went back to the car,” Brad suggested.
Olivia didn’t think so. “He would have passed your line of vision if he decided to come out of the woods and go back to the car. You would have seen him, Brad.”
“He could have gone through the woods. I’ll go back and check the car just to be sure. Stay here in case he shows up?” Brad said.
“Okay.” Olivia nodded. She walked to the place where Brad had been positioned so that she would have a good view of the front of the Sullivan’s house. She stared at it letting her eyes rove over every inch of the building and the yard.
Olivia couldn’t sit still and decided to cross the road. She walked slowly past the trees that lined the wide patch of lawn separating the neighbors’ house from the Sullivan’s place. She stayed on the neighbors’ side as she peered through the branches at the gray cape, studying it for anything that seemed different from their earlier visit. She examined each of the windows. She was nearly at the end of the driveway opposite the edge of the garage, still on the neighbors’ side, when she sensed something stir near the Sullivan’s deck. Olivia froze. A German shepherd emerged from the far side of the garage, sat down at the bottom of the deck’s stairs, and riveted its eyes on the back door of the house.
Olivia tried to slow her breathing. She didn’t want the dog to sense her. She worried that someone would come around the garage after the dog and would see her standing behind the trees. While she grappled with whether or not she should stay where she was or risk the dog’s attention by moving away, the back door of the Sullivan’s house opened. Olivia held her breath.