That was the day Mary Sadat disappeared.
Bonnie and I drove in to the bookstore to work on a window display. Bonnie was full of her plans for Paris and insisted on telling me all about them. So far I had kept my chagrin to myself. I bit the insides of my cheeks and exercised self-control.
The display, featuring kites of all kinds including a handsome Chinese number, was going up fast, so I decided to take a break and call the people whose names Bianca had given me. I was halfway through the list when Jay rang up.
"What's with the busy signal?"
I explained.
"Well, okay," he grumbled. "Listen, Dale just called me. They think that dark-haired intern, Mary Sadat, is missing. She didn't show up for a work-session this morning. You know what this means?"
"Among other things, that the Dean will be camped in your office all afternoon."
He groaned. "You got it."
"Shall I drive to the farm and see if I can find out what's happening?"
"If you have time. I tried calling Bianca a couple of times without getting through."
"Okay," I said. "After lunch."
I finished the funeral calls, and Bonnie finished the display window. We went out for deli sandwiches. When she heard of my mission at the farm, Bonnie said she'd call Tom to take her home. That was kind. They were, she said, planning a side trip to northern Italy. That was less kind.
There were no cop cars in the parking area by the Meadowlark car barn, so I gathered that Dale hadn't sent for the Search and Rescue people. I knocked on the mudroom door and went in. When I entered the kitchen, Marianne dropped a ladle.
"I didn't mean to startle you," I said. "I did knock."
"It's okay. I'm just jumpy." She rinsed the ladle off at the sink. "You heard about Mary?"
"I heard she didn't show up this morning."
"No." Marianne went back to her kettle. Something smelled of garlic and onions.
"What does Bianca think happened?"
Marianne sighed. "God knows, but she's frantic. They're out at the greenhouses."
"Tell me how to find them, and I'll get out of your hair."
She started to give me directions, but Mike came in from their wing of the house, so she sent him with me. Mike was a shy young man, and I'd never really talked to him. We trudged past the car barn in silence. As we came to the machine sheds, he burst out, "D'you think somebody hurt Mary?"
Hurt was a euphemism for killed. I said gently, "I don't know, Mike. I hope not."
"She's so little." His voice was anguished.
I stole a glance at him. His face was suffused with emotion.
"Tell me about Mary. She was quiet the day I met the interns. I felt I didn't get to know her at all."
He mumbled something. Another glance showed he was near tears, so I didn't press him. I thought about shy people. They do a lot of the world's work.
"Dad doesn't like her," he burst out.
That was my impression, too. I could think of nothing comforting to say.
We walked along a path springy with bark dust. I supposed it kept out the mud. I could see the greenhouses, ultra-modern metal and vinyl constructions, in the near distance.
"I wanted to go out with her." Mike sounded half-ashamed. "But her folks are strict with her. And anyway she said she liked older guys." He glanced at me. "She's not a lesbian, you know."
I was startled. "I didn't think she was."
"Dad says Angie's hot for her."
I kept my mouth shut. I was not about to criticize Del Wallace to his son, but I did wonder about the depth of Del's malice toward Mary. What had he called her? Sadsack Sadat? Mary was from the Middle East. Her parents ran a place called the Phoenician, and I suspected they were fairly recent immigrants. That might be a clue to Del's attitude. He was a born Know-Nothing.
Partly to lighten the mood, I said, "I'm surprised you like Mary. I thought all the guys would go for Carol Bascombe."
Mike cleared his throat. "Carol's kind of cute, but she's a real airhead."
Either that or she gave a good airhead imitation.
Up close the greenhouses seemed built on a larger scale than the distant prospect had led me to believe. In spite of myself I was impressed. Oriented east/west for maximum light, they loomed well over my head, with odd vents and extrusions marring their smooth lines. The greenhouses were big enough to get lost in--or hide in. A tall stack of wooden flats leaned against the nearer of them.
"Was this where Hugo's bike was hidden?"
Mike hunched his shoulders against a wind gust. "Yeah. I guess so. I mean there aren't any other stacks of crates."
I could see why the bicycle wasn't found immediately. The stack was as high as my head and quite close to the north wall of the greenhouse. If the bike had been shoved back into the crevice, it would have been hard to see. I walked to the door and started to open it.
"They're in the other house, Mrs. Dodge."
I followed him around the corner of the first greenhouse to the entrance to the second. The two greenhouses were offset so one did not shade the other. As we approached, I could hear voices--a male rumble and sharp female response.
Mike stopped on the step. "They're arguing."
I said, "Well, thanks for showing me the way out, Mike. I'll see you later."
"Okay. Bye." He loped off toward the house, looking relieved not to have to go in.
I took a deep breath and pushed the door open without knocking. A strong herbal odor, not unpleasant, weighted the warm air. I shut the door with care.
"...and you were the last one to see her, Del," Bianca was saying.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Del's voice rose.
They were standing with Angie about halfway down the long walkway between two rows of seedlings in long flats.
"She was working for you yesterday afternoon."
"What if she was?"
"Damnit, Del, I just want to know when she left and whether you said anything to her to drive her away."
At that point, Angie's head came up, and she spotted me. She waved, and the others turned.
"Oh, Lark," Bianca said. "Have you heard..."
The floor was concrete covered with some kind of outdoor matting, dark brown. I unzipped my jacket and walked toward them. "Jay called me."
"And you knew I'd need you." Bianca gave me a melancholy smile. "How thoughtful of you."
The other two stared at me as if I were an intruder, an unwelcome one. I didn't blame them. However, Bianca's assumption meant I didn't have to explain my presence.
I said, "Tell me what happened."
"Nothing's happened," Del snorted. "Not a damned thing."
"You wish." Angie's lip curled. "Mary was supposed to help me thin the spinach." She made a wide gesture that encompassed the trays of greenery. "When she didn't show up at eight, I waited for her ten minutes or so then I started in working. I thought she'd show up. Sometimes she oversleeps."
"Lazy cunt," Del muttered.
Angie took a step toward him. "If I were you, Del, which thank God I'm not, I would speak softly and watch my words."
"I'll say what I damned well please." Del's response seemed automatic. I thought he looked worried.
"Because..." Angie cleared her throat. "Because you are the only one on this farm who disliked Mary, and when the police find her body--" Her voice broke. She stared at Del, blinking back tears. "You shit. I hope you hang. We hang murderers in this state."
Bianca said, "Now, Angie, we're not sure Mary's been harmed."
"Her parents don't know where she is." Anger steadied Angie's voice. "I called them at ten, Lark, when she still hadn't come. Her mother said her bed hadn't been slept in, and she didn't work at the restaurant last night. It's closed Mondays. Mary is missing, goddamnit."
Bianca removed her tweed hat and stuffed it in her pocket. Her bangs stuck to her forehead. "I spoke with Mrs. Sadat, too. She said Mary's book bag is gone, and the car. I got the license number from her."
Del snorted. "Kid drives an old Volkswagen Beetle, bright red. The cops should be able to spot it."
"Dale Nelson told me they won't do an official missing person's report until Mary's been gone twenty-four hours."
Bianca ran a hand over her face. "He took the license number, though. She is a witness." She drew a long breath. "I'm asking you again, Del, and I'm not accusing you of murder. Did you say anything to upset Mary yesterday?" She touched Del's arm.
Del shook her hand off.
"If you scared her," Bianca said, "or made her mad, she may just have gone off to brood about it. Kids do that."
Del opened his mouth to reply, but Angie rounded on her employer. "You people make me sick. Here's Hugo hacked to death, and you're trying to deny the obvious. There's a killer on the loose. How many victims do you need?"
Bianca spread her hands. "One is enough."
Del Wallace was as red as a turkey cock. Angie stared at him. "This man gets a kick out of castrating sheep. Mary's a mere female. Why should he hesitate to kill her if she knew something incriminating?"
Del roared and went for her, hands clawing. Bianca shouted a warning, and I took a step forward.
Angie kneed him. He dropped to the floor, moaning.
She looked at me. "The first week I worked here, Del called me a ball breaker. Gee, I guess he was right." She turned to Bianca. "Get him the hell out of my greenhouse."
"What's going on?" Keith McDonald's voice, behind me.
I turned. Bianca stared at him, too.
"Ask Del." Angie was brushing potting soil from her sleeve. Del's charge had shoved her against the flats of seedlings. She began to straighten them.
"Somebody at school said Mary Sadat was missing." Keith paid no attention to Del or Angie. He was asking his wife. "Is that true?"
Bianca nodded.
"How long?"
"We don't know. Probably overnight."
"This is awful. A student. Mary wouldn't harm anyone. We have to do something, Bee."
Her eyes narrowed. "I notified Nelson. He said he'd send out a bulletin on her car."
"Her car! What if... We've had one killing. We have to search the farm."
I was trying to understand Keith's reaction. He seemed genuinely upset. His hands shook and his eyes were scared.
I said, "Was she a student of yours, too, Keith?"
He gave me a distracted glance. "What? Oh, yes. She took my ballad class last term. The Dean will have fits," he added in a more normal voice.
I mentioned Jay's call to me.
"He's checking on campus?"
"Yes."
"Good, good." He shook his head as if to clear it. "I have a bad feeling about this."
"Thank God somebody has sense," Angie snapped.
Del levered himself to his feet, wheezing. He shambled down the corridor without looking at anybody. The door slammed behind him.
Chapter 9
"I thought you had a one o'clock class." Bianca tossed Keith a glance over her shoulder. She was helping Angie tidy the work area.
He touched his beard with a shaky hand. "I dismissed them early. What are you going to do about Mary?"
"We could search," Bianca said without enthusiasm.
Angie slammed a tray of seedlings back in place. "I'm going to search whether the rest of you do or not."
"Are the other interns here?" I said.
It appeared that Jason and Bill were moving sheep, the Carlsens were plowing lime and compost into fields that would be planted with spinach, and Carol Bascombe was home with the flu. Or so she had said when Angie called to see if she was missing.
Bianca pulled her tweed cap out of her jacket pocket and settled it on her head. "We can't search the whole farm, Angie. The best we can do is the outbuildings. I presume you've already looked through the greenhouses."
Angie nodded.
"Then we should pair up. Keith, you and Lark can look through the machine sheds and the car barn--"
"Let Angie go with Keith," I said with elaborate nonchalance. I had reason to think she could handle him should he fondle her thigh. "You and I need to talk, Bianca."
Keith's blue eyes narrowed. Bianca shrugged. "Okay. I have to stop by the house for a flashlight. Then I'm going to drive straight to the old barn." She buttoned her jacket and turned to the other two. "Lark and I will do the ice house and the sheep sheds on our way back."
Angie glanced at her business-like watch. "Rendezvous at the house at four?"
That seemed agreeable to everybody. I thought Keith was pouting a little. Del probably was, too. Or maybe he was castrating a sheep.
Angie and Keith decided to double-check the greenhouses, so Bianca and I set out for the house without them. When we were out of earshot, I raised the subject of the workshop. I waited until then because I thought an audience just made Bianca stubborner.
She stopped walking and turned to me. "I can't think about the workshop now." Her eyes darkened under the cap. "I'm too worried about Mary."
The implication was that I wasn't.
Bianca shook her head, mournful. "Mary, of all people. How could Mary threaten anyone? She's so quiet."
"I would have said that of Hugo."
Bianca lapsed into grim silence. I felt fairly grim myself. We trudged along. I was thinking that her detour to the house was a pretext, that she'd dally to telephone the congresswoman and assorted government agencies, but she just stuck her head in the kitchen and asked Marianne for messages.
Half a dozen reporters had left their numbers on the answering tape, Marianne said, and Dale Nelson would be at the farm at five. Bianca grabbed one of the small electric lanterns from the mudroom and we went to the car barn. She indicated that I should get into a pickup so ancient it had lap-restraint seatbelts. There were five other vehicles in the barn.
To my surprise she didn't follow the lane past the ice house. She drove down to the highway, turned east, and rattled along the road to the top of the crest. There an old-fashioned three-barred gate led into scrub forest. I got to open the gate. And close it.
The barn sat in a natural meadow filled with incurious sheep. I gathered that Jason and Bill had come and gone. Like many old barns in the area, this one was built of unpainted vertical boards under a peaked cedar roof. Weather had turned the wood silver. Inside, it was darker than a deconstructionist short story.
"Watch your step." Bianca turned her electric lantern on and swept the beam over decaying stalls and cribs. "Floor's rotting."
I followed her in, placing my feet with care. The interior smelled of mold, musty hay, and ancient manure. We searched the main floor methodically. It was a silent place but the silence seemed to breathe. Darkness watched us from every corner, from behind us and above us. I saw nothing but a few old implements and an abandoned saddle that had fallen from the wall in a heap. Somebody had cleaned the place out long ago.
I sneezed once but the sound was swallowed up in the watching stillness.
When we had circled back through the labyrinth to our starting place, Bianca pointed to a rickety ladder nailed to the wall of the barn. "If she's here she's in the loft."
"Will that thing hold me?"
She shrugged. "I think so, but not both of us at once. You go first. I'll light the ladder for you."
I inched my way up into a huge space that was half-lit by the unglazed window through which hay had been winched. A timber protruded over the yard from the peak of the gable, but the pulley used to raise bales was long gone. Inside, heavy beams crossed the width of the building about twenty feet up, one on each wall and one across the center. A thick post supported the central beam. Patches of gray sky showed through the roof. Mold-blackened hay bales stacked as high as my head in some places rimmed the walls. Some had tumbled to the plank flooring atop ankle-deep drifts of loose timothy. Plenty of room to hide a body. I didn't see how we could hope to find it, if it was there.
Bianca was more inventive than I, or better acquainted with barns. She
stuck the lantern in her jacket pocket and hauled an old pitchfork up the ladder. The handle of the fork had broken off halfway down and the tines were brown with rust. "Stay away from the window." She lifted the pitchfork in both gloved hands. "The floor's rotten over there where the rain blows in." She strode to the far wall and began probing between the bales.
I waded through the loose hay at a more cautious pace. When I reached the tallest heap of bales I began to climb. Unseen creatures skittered away from my tread. Mice, probably. I thought about spiders.
The bales formed a surprisingly steady stairs, rather like the steps of a Maya pyramid, though the loose hay at their base was slick. As I scaled the top, I jarred one of the bales with my left hand.
Something brushed my face, and a low cry rang in my ears. My heart stopped.
"Barn owl," Bianca called from the far side. "She's probably nesting."
She was. I watched her flutter out the opening, still emitting mournful hoots. I had just escaped dislodging her nest with my hand. It was a good thing I had stopped to pull on gloves. I sank back on my bale-mountain and breathed through my nose, in out, in out.
My peering and poking discovered nothing more startling on that wall than the owl. Relieved, I scrambled across to a tumble of loose bales.
I was almost enjoying myself, and I remembered my father's stories of the family farm in New York. The Daileys were prosperous Quaker farmers. By my father's time, the farm itself had shrunk to a handful of symbolic acres, and the great cobblestone barn with its iron weathercock was used for family gatherings. Dad swore a century of hay had polished the hardwood planks of the second story floor like the surface of a huge ballroom. The local square dance club used to hold its dances there.
I was envisaging a happy hoedown when something alien caught my eye. I stopped dead and peered. I couldn't recall the color of Mary's anorak. A fold of dull fabric protruded from the loose hay. It looked purplish in the dim light.
"Bianca!" I croaked. I cleared my throat. "Bring the lantern over here. I'm afraid..."
I heard her slither toward me. "What is it? Jesus!" The beam of Bianca's light whirled and steadied.
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