Gone

by Karen Fenech

  “Yes, hello,” Clare said to the woman on the other end of the line. “I’d like to leave a message for the driver who delivers produce to Farley, South Carolina . . . oh, your company doesn’t deliver produce. Dry goods. Thanks for your time.”

  Her second call was to McKinley Transport. McKinley, she learned, did deliver produce and to Farley. Clare willed herself to remain calm. She repeated the same message.

  “Name of the driver?” the receptionist asked.

  Clare selected a name at random. “Jim Silver.”

  “Hmm. I don’t recall that name,” the receptionist said. “Where did you say the driver goes to? South Carolina?”

  The woman went on without waiting for Clare to reply. Clare heard the clack of computer keys being struck.

  “South Carolina territory belongs to Gil Hoag. Oh—wait a minute—Gil doesn’t drive to South Carolina anymore. Nate Linden took over Gil’s route.”

  “It’s Gil Hoag I’d like to leave a message for,” Clare said.

  “Your name?”

  “Clare Marshall.” She considered adding that she was calling about Beth Ryder, but she didn’t want to spook her sister who’d gone to great lengths to leave town in secret and hadn’t disclosed her destination. Of course, she couldn’t include her own identity as Beth’s sister. She feared Beth’s reaction to that even more.

  “I’m calling from Farley regarding a personal matter,” Clare added. She left her cell phone number and hoped that would be enough for Gil Hoag to return the call.

  She thanked the receptionist and disconnected. At this point, she had nothing to do but wait for the phone to ring. She didn’t have to be in Farley to receive the call. She was finished with the town and could leave if she wanted to and go home.

  As appealing as that thought was, she dismissed it. She would arrive at home only to have to travel someplace else when she determined Beth’s location. The best thing to do was to stay put and go directly to Beth from here.

  Looked like she was staying in Farley for the time being. The grocery store parking lot had gained a few more vehicles in the time Clare had been parked there. Her stomach rumbled. Her last meal had been on the plane yesterday.

  The prospect of eating at the Farley diner made dieting a welcome alternative. She rolled her eyes. Since there was nothing to be gained by subjecting herself to that unpleasant environment, she’d cook for herself. She hoped to be in contact with Hoag shortly, and to be on her way to wherever her sister was by tomorrow at the latest. Clare left her car to stock up on a few things to take her through the next few hours.

  * * * * *

  One hour later, she was back in Earl Lowney’s deceased uncle’s kitchen. She was at the table forking up scrambled eggs. Steam rose from a cup of black coffee, liberally doused with sugar, that she’d placed beside her plate.

  Also beside her plate was her cell phone.

  She caught herself glancing at it again and again. Willing it to ring wasn’t going to make it happen. Even as she thought that, her gaze strayed back to the phone.

  She dropped the fork onto her half-eaten eggs. Her stomach was too tight to eat more. There was nothing left to do but wait.

  By ten p.m. her neck and shoulder muscles were so tight they felt as if they were bulging. She took a long shower, letting the spray beat against her taut back. She resigned herself to another night on the sprung mattress.

  She was stepping out of the tub when her phone rang.

  Clare pounced on it. Caller ID displayed the name G. Hoag.

  “Clare Marshall,” she said, her voice slightly breathless. She pushed wet hair back from her face.

  “Yeah. Hey. I’m Gil Hoag. You left a message for me to call you out in Farley? You said it’s personal. Do I know you?”

  “No, Mr. Hoag, you don’t.” Clare licked her suddenly dry lips. “I’m calling about Beth Ryder. I need to speak with her.”

  “Who are you? Why are you calling me about Beth?”

  “I need to get in touch with her. I need you to relay a message to her. I’m—” Clare hesitated briefly, closing her eyes, praying Beth wouldn’t dismiss her as crazy. “I’m Beth’s sister.”

  “Sister, okay. But, now, I’m confused here.”

  “Confused?”

  “Why do you think I can get your message to Beth?”

  “Because Beth is with you.” Clare spoke the words slowly. “She left Farley with you one week ago.”

  “She was going to hitch a ride with me out of town, but she didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Beth never showed up.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Beth never showed up? Was that what you said, Mr. Hoag?”

  Clare hadn’t turned off the water taps since stepping out of the shower to retrieve her phone. Behind her, water struck the plastic orange curtain enclosing the tub, making it difficult to hear. She bent over the tub now and turned off the faucets.

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. I told her where I was going to be,” Hoag said, “and she said she’d meet me, but she never showed. I waited a bit, but then I had to get going. I have a schedule to keep.”

  Water sluiced down Clare’s face from her sopping hair that hung like rat’s tails to her shoulders. She blinked a drop that fell into her eyes, but ignored the thick white towel she’d left on the vanity earlier.

  “I was told that she left Farley with you.” Clare’s grip on the cell phone tightened. “You’re saying that Beth didn’t arrive at the specified time and you left town without her?”

  “That’s right. I figured she just changed her mind about leaving.”

  “You didn’t wonder why she didn’t show up?” Clare’s tone was sharp. “Didn’t find her to ask?”

  “Hey. Not my business if she decided not to go.”

  “Not your business? According to what I’ve heard, you and Beth were lovers.”

  “Lovers? Who in blazes told you that?”

  “It’s all over town, Mr. Hoag.”

  Hoag cleared his throat. “Lady, I was going to give Beth a ride out of town, and that’s it.”

  Clare’s stomach clenched at the news that Beth wasn’t with Hoag. “I want to know just what plans you and Beth made.”

  “You sound like a cop. Just who are you, lady? If Beth’s mixed up in something involving cops, I don’t know anything about it.”

  “I am an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation but I’m also Beth’s sister. Just answer my questions, Mr. Hoag. Now, I’ll ask you again, what plans did you and Beth make?”

  “I don’t need to tell you a damn thing. I don’t want nothing to do with cops.”

  He was right. At this point she couldn’t force him to talk to her about anything. She needed his cooperation. Clare released a breath. She softened her tone.

  “Mr. Hoag,” Clare said. “I’ve contacted you unofficially. I’m not speaking with you as a federal agent, but as Beth’s sister. She isn’t in Farley. As far as everyone here knows she left with you. I’m trying to find her. I would appreciate any information you could give me.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  His tone was wary. Clare reminded herself not to push or she’d lose him. “You said that you were meeting Beth. Where?”

  “She was going to meet me out on County Road Nineteen at five o’clock, but like I said, she never showed.”

  “Who picked the time, you or Beth?”

  Clare heard Hoag exhale sharply, like he was releasing cigarette smoke. “She did. I drove the same route going on fifteen years. I usually pulled into town around ten in the morning and made my delivery to Dawson’s then pulled out again around four thirty. She asked me to wait the extra half hour, said she couldn’t get off work before then without someone wondering about it. She really seemed like she wanted the ride, and hey it wasn’t going to be more than thirty minutes, likely less, so I said I’d wait.”

  “How did you meet Beth?”

  “She works at the inn. I’ve spent
some nights there. Hey, I got to know a lot of people from Farley. Ask around.”

  There was an edge to the comment that Clare didn’t understand, but she decided to let it go for the moment. “Where did Beth say she was going?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Where were you headed from Farley?”

  “Next stop was Bradley County. I drove the same route from Florida to North Carolina, making my deliveries and pickups.” He named the towns and cities he went to. “Once I hit Raleigh, I just turned around and went back to do it all over again.”

  From what Gladys Linney had said about Beth wanting to see the world, Clare thought it was likely she would head for a big city. Though which one? There were a lot of cities between Florida and North Carolina. The theory had merit, except, according to Hoag, Beth hadn’t left town with him.

  “When did Beth ask you for the ride?”

  “Same day she wanted to leave. Friday.”

  “What time did you and she make these arrangements?”

  “Going on eight in the a.m., I’d say. I spent the night before at Connie’s place and was making my way from my room, on my way to grab some breakfast, when Beth come up to me and asked what she did. She asked me not to say nothing to nobody. Wasn’t my business, I said, and told her so.”

  “Sounds like a spur of the moment decision?” Clare prodded.

  “I don’t know about that. She didn’t say why she wanted to leave, only seemed real anxious to get gone.”

  “You pulled out of Farley at four-thirty that day, Mr. Hoag?”

  “No lady, it was after five o’clock. I told you that I waited a bit, just in case she was running late.”

  “Did you drive straight through to Bradley?”

  “Yeah. Straight through. Had a pickup early the next morning and I had to be on time. Fruits and vegetables lose their freshness real fast.”

  “Where was that pickup?”

  Clare took a tube of lipstick from her cosmetics bag on the vanity counter and scrawled the information in Beige Bisque on the mirror.

  “I made the rest of my stops,” Hoag said. “Then I turned around and went back home to Jacksonville.”

  “You’re not delivering to Farley anymore. Why is that, Mr. Hoag?”

  Hoag’s response came out in a rush. “I’m in a new relationship and my long route keeps me away for a couple of weeks at a time. It’s causing problems. I want to be close to home.”

  “I may need to speak with you again, Mr. Hoag. Where can I contact you directly?”

  “I don’t know what more you’d have to ask me, but hey, I got nothing to hide.” He recited his home telephone number. “To tell the truth, I was surprised when Beth didn’t show up. Like I said, she seemed real anxious to get gone.”

  “If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate if you’d call me. Day or night.”

  “Okay,” Hoag said.

  Clare ended the call reluctantly. Her heart was pounding. When she’d asked Hoag why he was no longer delivering to Farley, the trucker had lied to her, she was sure of it. He’d answered too quickly, as if he’d been anticipating the question or had rehearsed the answer.

  Believing that, it had been a monumental effort for her to say goodbye to him.

  Was it a coincidence that Hoag’s last day delivering to Farley was also Beth’s last day in town?

  Earlier Jake had believed that Cal Dawson knew the driver, but had chosen not to reveal that information. Clare chewed the inside of her cheek. Both men were holding something back. Did that something have to do with Beth?

  She’d check Hoag for any priors, but that was all she could do about him for the moment. Cal Dawson was local though. Clare dressed quickly in jeans and a cotton top and finger-combed her damp hair.

  In the kitchen, she retrieved the phone directory then looked up Dawson’s home address. Three Dawsons were listed, but only one Calvin Dawson.

  She scooped her car keys from the table in the hall and left the house.

  Ten minutes later, Clare was at Cal Dawson’s front door.

  Dawson’s house was a modest two-story. A sprinkler set to low watered the clipped lawn that looked black as ink, except for the occasional flash of a Lightning Bug. Intermittent bulbs on posts staked into the ground lit the faces of gnome statues scattered about.

  Clare rang the bell. A porch light came on. Cal Dawson opened the door.

  His eyebrows arched at seeing her. Clare expected that his eyes would narrow now in a show of the same hostility she’d received so far from Farley’s residents.

  It wasn’t hostility that filled his gaze, but fear. Clare’s heartbeat already pounding too hard, kicked up another notch.

  “Good evening, Mr. Dawson,” Clare said. “I don’t believe I have to introduce myself. By the expression on your face, I’d say you know who I am. I need to speak with you. May I come inside?”

  Dawson, a small-boned man, set himself squarely in the doorway, doing his best with the little bulk he had to block the entrance. He glanced over his shoulder then stepped onto the wooden porch with her, closing the door behind himself.

  He glanced to his left, to the neighboring house, Clare thought. The porch was dark. No way to tell if someone was out there. In any case, if someone were there, the distance was great enough to prevent eavesdropping. And as she thought that, she wondered what Dawson feared that someone might overhear.

  “What are you doing here?” Dawson whispered. His voice was hoarse with tension.

  Clare decided to try a bluff. “Gil Hoag says hey.”

  Dawson’s face paled. His eyes fixed on her in a deer caught in the headlights stare.

  Clare’s stomach tightened as she wondered what was causing Dawson’s panic. “I just had a talk with Gil about why he’s no longer delivering to Farley.”

  Dawson’s shoulders slumped. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat, and then rubbed a hand up the column of his neck. He left the hand there, clutching his Adam’s apple.

  “Please. None of that has anything to do with you,” he said. “What do you want to go and stir up my life for? I got a wife—kids. If word of me and Gil got out, I’d be finished in this town.” Tears welled in Dawson’s eyes. “It’s over now. I called it off.”

  Clare believed she’d just learned what Dawson had hidden from Jake. Why he hadn’t wanted to name Gil Hoag . . .

  “Did you see Beth Ryder on Gil’s last day in town?” Clare asked.

  Dawson squinted in confusion. “Ah, I don’t know. Maybe.” He shrugged.

  Clearly, Dawson had no clue where she was going with this.

  “Does Gil know Beth?” Clare asked.

  Dawson shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Can’t say we ever talked about Beth Ryder.”

  “Did you know that Beth had arranged to leave town with Gil on that same day?”

  “Heard talk of it. Around town. After.”

  “Gil didn’t mention it?”