The Weedless Widow

by Deborah Morgan

  He wandered to the other room, chose a small, wrapped package from a shelf and smiled as he read the tag, which was written in his own hand: “For my darling Sheila, when you crave a new-old cuppa.” He looked up, chose another box. The tag on this one read: “For Sheila — something to chase away a rainy day.” He gazed around the room, noted that over a dozen of the carefully wrapped presents were scattered about, perched on shelves or on recently polished pieces of furniture.

  Sheila had hoarded so many things in the months before becoming completely housebound. Some she’d wrapped herself, others she’d worked into artful displays, still others she’d purchased online after her agoraphobia had become so debilitating that she couldn’t even go the few blocks over to Queen Anne Avenue to visit the little shops. Sometimes, she asked either Jeff or Greer to open those things she’d bought online, make sure they were in good shape, then wrap them for her to choose later from her rooms. They willingly accommodated.

  Jeff was surprised that she’d hung on to ones that he’d specifically purchased for her. She had no clue what was waiting inside them, and it had been so long since he’d discovered them, that he couldn’t recall the contents himself.

  He felt a sudden urge to look inside one of the wrapped boxes. He toyed with this new compulsion, debated whether he would be crossing the bounds of privacy by doing so. What could it hurt, he asked himself, if it provided some sort of connection to Sheila?

  Package in hand, he darted through the passageway into the adjoining room where Sheila kept a small spinet desk stocked with office supplies. It was an Arts and Crafts desk, but he’d never been quite able to pinpoint either its maker or its value. Yet, he’d paid only fifty dollars for it at an estate sale and, sometimes, one had to be secure in the knowledge that monetary value wasn’t everything. Besides, the desk had character. To either side of the slide-out writing surface was a curved cubbyhole, and all along the back were drawers and slots and shelves. The spinet part came from its design similar to an old piano whose ivories could be encased and locked for safekeeping.

  Sheila kept the desk unlocked, as she often sat at it to write letters, plan menus, and keep records of catalog purchases.

  Jeff opened little drawers until he found scissors, then sat at the desk and cut the pink satin ribbon with which the gift box was bound. He lifted the lid and unearthed a white teacup and saucer, decorated with gold trim and full-blown garnet roses. He remembered this set. He’d found it buried in a box he’d bought for practically nothing at an estate sale.

  The cup wasn’t very valuable as cup and saucer sets go, but it matched a set that his wife was slowly amassing for the dining room. She was so into dishes that she’d set about completing a different service for each of the four seasons.

  Jeff swallowed against the lump in his throat as he realized that she hadn’t seen this one.

  He needed a diversion and, after casting about, settled on the doors under the window seat. He opened the doors and discovered several Dobbs hatboxes. The black and yellow boxes from the Fifth Avenue hatter got the best of his curiosity. He pried a lid off one and peered inside. A sheet of copy paper on the top read: SAVE FOR JEFF’S CHRISTMAS.

  He reddened, as if he’d been caught peeking through a window. Trembling, he started to replace the lid. He stopped. These were items Sheila had tracked down for him, stowed away until that time when the calendar announced that December had arrived, and the couple would exchange a gift every few days throughout the month.

  Perhaps, if he looked at the items, he could feel Sheila’s presence, fill a small portion of the enormous void that was growing inside him like a cancer.

  The first item was a collapsible top hat of black silk, in pristine condition. Its label read: MADE IN WEST GERMANY, and stickers indicated that it was “long oval” in size 7 3/8. His size. He marveled at Sheila’s ability to track down the perfect gifts.

  Next, he withdrew a small navy blue case with the name of a jeweler stamped across it in gold. He pried open the hinged lid and found an exquisite pair of baton-shaped onyx cuff links — 1920s French, if he wasn’t mistaken — with a garnet cabochon at either end encircled by diamonds. Marlene Dietrich wore a similar pair, he seemed to recall, and the thought crossed his mind that these might actually have belonged to the screen legend.

  He shuffled through the rest of the hat box, hoping to find a letter of provenance that would tell him whether the cuff links had a fascinating history, but he found nothing. Well, he thought, maybe Sheila had stored the letter in a folder.

  Sheila.

  The thought of her snapped him back to the present. He glanced at his watch, realized that less than three minutes had passed since he’d last checked the time. He’d become so lost in the comfort of the antiques, that he had allowed nearly three minutes to pass without thinking about the current situation, the realization that Sheila was out there somewhere — alone, disoriented, hurt.

  Guilt washed over him. Hastily, he put the gifts back into the box, finishing just as Greer tapped on the door.

  Jeff looked up, detected a brief and almost imperceptible expression of astonishment on his butler’s face, and remembered that he was still wearing the bonnet.

  Greer was holding a large silver tray. “Sir, you should have some dinner.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.” Jeff pulled the bonnet from his head. “I thought I could feel her presence. I thought she would walk in and ask me what I was up to, ferreting out Christmas packages like a ten-year-old. But . . . I feel helpless here.”

  “With all due respect, sir, you should eat something. When the missus returns home, it’s going to take both of us to care for her. We must take care of ourselves until then.”

  Jeff looked at the tray of food, shook his head.

  Greer set the tray on the desk, poured water from a silver pitcher over the ice in a glass. The cubes cracked loudly in the silence, setting Jeff’s nerves on edge and causing the hairs on his arms to stand out.

  Greer quietly left the room.

  Jeff checked his watch. Gordy should be arriving soon. And the cops should have called by now. And none of this should be happening but it was.

  He picked up the tray, walked down the service stairs to the kitchen, found Greer making a seemingly heartless attempt at eating his own dinner.

  The butler rose and took the tray.

  “May I join you, Greer? I’d rather not eat alone tonight.”

  “Of course, sir.” Greer quickly arranged a proper place setting on the table for his employer.

  They ate out of duty and in silence. Both men jumped at every sound, no matter how insignificant, that came from the house, the street, the neighborhood.

  The doorbell rang and they shot to their feet and ran to the front door. Jeff paused an instant, as the possibility of bad news hit him. He stepped back a foot as Greer opened the door.

  Apart from Sheila, there was no one Jeff would’ve wanted to have seen more than Gordon Easthope.

  Gordy was as big and solid as a Wooten desk at six-foot-four and weighing two-eighty if he weighed a pound. He was dressed all in gray from his suit to his overcoat to his snap-brim fedora and he looked as if he’d stepped straight out of a Dick Tracy strip.

  In a voice with the bite and warmth of whiskey, he said: “Let’s bring our little girl home.”

  PART THREE

  THE CATCH

  El pez muere por la boca.

  (The fish dies because he opens his mouth.)

  —Spanish Proverb, Anonymous

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.

  — Izaak Walton

  The Compleat Angler,

  1653-1655

  “You know the drill.” Gordy appeared calm and collected on the outside. Inside, however, Jeff knew that his mentor’s wheels were grinding against themselves at a frantic rate.

  Jeff provided a thumbnail sketch for Gordy and a Seattl
e bureau agent by the name of Simms (who looked too young to shave), beginning with his arrival home and ending with his waterfront visit to Lanny.

  When he finished, Gordy skimmed the notes he’d been making. “Are you sure you’ve given me all of it, right down to smoothing your hangnails?”

  “That’s it, Gordy.”

  “So, no lights anywhere?”

  “Other than the computer screen? No.”

  “Did the cops go through the house, after your initial search?”

  “No.”

  Gordy shook his head, studied his scribbles. “The door. You said it pushed open.”

  “Right. It’s tricky. You have to give it an extra push for it to click. We’ve got a repairman coming to take a look at it . . . ?” He looked at Greer with the question.

  “Tomorrow, sir.”

  Gordy said, “Listen to yourself, Jeff. You’re thinking as if Sheila was in the house when the door was closed. Try it the other way. What if someone was in here, wanted to make it look like she’d left on her own? He pulled the door shut, but didn’t know about the tricky latch.”

  “Damn it, Gordy, you’re right.” Jeff rubbed a hand across his face. “I’m too torn up to look at this through the eyes of an investigator.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up for that. Emotions outweigh training. Why do you think they prefer agents who are unencumbered?”

  Gordy turned to Simms. “Got your print kit on you?”

  The agent nodded.

  “Let’s check her office then.”

  Jeff led the way up to the third floor.

  “We’re definitely dealing with someone who knows what he’s doing,” Gordy said after they’d dusted for prints. “It’s too clean. Not even the hint of a smudge from her hand on the mouse.”

  “We’ve got prints on the phone, though,” said Simms. “Probably hers.”

  “So,” Jeff said, “whoever was here touched the computer but nothing else.”

  “Looks that way, and since no other lights were on in the house, we can assume it was before dusk.

  “By now,” Gordy continued, “I’m sure you’ve run through a mental list of people you arrested. Anyone you dealt with in the past who might have gotten out recently?”

  “I’d thought of that, but I don’t think so. Besides, the people I put away are thieves, not killers. They’d be more likely to kill in order to get their hands on an antique than for getting caught stealing one.”

  The screen saver popped up on the monitor. Gordy appeared to be studying the lighthouse’s beacon. “Jeff, do you ever use this computer? Any files in here that somebody might’ve been after?”

  Jeff felt a vise tighten around his chest. He sat down at the computer, double-clicked an icon on the desktop. “Saturday, I forwarded some of Bill’s links to Sheila’s E-mail address. I checked last night to make sure I had done it right. They were here.”

  Bill. Jeff realized that Gordy didn’t know about the murder. He told his ex-partner what he knew. Gordy was shocked and saddened, but the special agent in him kicked in and he asked the questions that needed answers. Jeff supplied them mechanically.

  He turned back to the computer and checked the E-mail program’s Inbox. The files weren’t there. He began double-clicking folders listed in a column on the screen’s left side, opening each one to see if Sheila had assigned the links to a separate folder.

  Nothing.

  The vise tightened further. “They’re not here.”

  “Check the trash.”

  Jeff opened the Recycle Bin. It was empty. Fear overtook him as he realized the danger Sheila was in.

  Quickly, he told Gordy the rest of the story, explained how the sheriff had asked him to check Bill’s fishing links against some of the items he was going to sell for Mrs. Rhodes. He reminded Gordy about the antique lures that had been stolen from Bill earlier, and how the links had indicated that Bill was tracking down and purchasing those stolen lures.

  When Jeff had finished, Gordy said, “It ties together somehow.”

  “Yeah, but how?”

  “Where did you say the lures are? The ones you’re supposed to sell?”

  “I’ve got them in storage, in a warehouse down on the waterfront.”

  “Who knew about the forwarded links?”

  Jeff thought it over. “Just about everybody I saw over the weekend. But . . . it doesn’t make sense. Everything points to Bill’s widow as his killer.”

  “Which probably means that she didn’t do it. I wonder if the sheriff over there knows whether Bill had a pre-nup. If he didn’t, then the wife wouldn’t have had a motive. She could’ve taken him to the cleaners in divorce court.” Gordy’s brow wrinkled. “Is Bill’s computer at the bait shop or the house?”

  “House.”

  “We need to know who’s behind the sale of those stolen lures. Call up your sheriff. Have her check Bill’s computer.”

  Jeff thought about the sheriff’s ignorance regarding computers. She was smart, though, smarter than a lot of people seemed to give her credit for. She would recruit some techno junkie from her staff to go with her to the Rhodes house. He used Greer’s cell phone, punched in the sheriff’s number. As he did so, he said to Gordy, “You know, I was down at the warehouse a couple of hours ago, but I wasn’t looking for anything suspicious. I’m not sure whether the lures were still there or not.”

  “You go to the warehouse, see if it’s secure. I’ll alert our Internet team, get ‘em ready to hit warp speed when you get something from those links. We can pick up a trail, track down who’s selling the stolen goods, see if it gives us what we need to find Sheila. Simms, you get this Sergeant Wyatt on the horn, see if the locals have turned up anything.” Gordy stabbed at the keypads on his own cell phone, then put a hand on Jeff’s arm. “And take a gun, you hear me?”

  Jeff nodded, pressed Send on the cell, and started toward the library.

  Gordy put the phone to his ear. “We’ll need some maps of the neighborhood. Ferry schedules, too.”

  Greer said, “I’ll see to it, sir,” and hurried from the room.

  “McIvers here.”

  Her voice sounded tired. When Jeff spoke, his sounded more so. “Sheriff? Jeff Talbot again.”

  “If you’re calling about the Black Widow, she’s clean. Matter of fact, she took a call from Bill while she was at the beauty shop, probably no more than an hour before he was murdered. My deputy’s mother said that Tanya was there all afternoon.”

  “That means there’s still a killer out there somewhere. A killer who may have my wife.”

  Silence. Then, “What did you say?”

  “You heard right.” Jeff went on to explain Sheila’s disappearance, the missing computer links, and — although he wasn’t sure why — he threw in the part about the couple Lanny had overheard.

  When he was through, the sheriff said, “I’ll swing by the office and grab Manning. He stays up on all this new technology. It won’t hurt to keep an eye out for that maroon car, either. Jeff?” She paused. “Has it crossed your mind that all this might be tied together?”

  “That’s what Gordy said, too, and it scares the hell out of me. Another thing that scares me is the fact that I can’t find the missing link.” Actually, there were two missing links — the one that connected Sheila’s disappearance to this whole mess, and the one that might hook together the scam to sell Bill’s stolen lures, thus leading to whoever was behind all of this.

  He thought for a moment. “Sheriff, I’m headed to the warehouse now to make sure Bill’s lures are still there. After that, I’m coming back to the village. If there is a connection, then I’m just as likely to get a lead on Sheila over there as I am here. And the cops over here just want me to stay out of the way.”

  “Better hurry. Last ferry will be pulling out soon.”

  “Thanks.” Jeff punched End, then dropped the phone into his shirt pocket.

  Next, he moved two volumes on collecting Old West firearms and retrieved his weapon
.

  The gun felt cold and strange in his palm.

  He’d rarely used it, even when he was working undercover. It crossed his mind that he may not even be able to handle it anymore. But when he thought about Sheila and the chance that she’d been abducted by Bill’s killer, he knew that he could, and would, do whatever it took to bring her home safely. He grabbed a clip from the drawer in his library desk, threw on his windbreaker, and ran to the car.

  For the third time that day, he drove down to the waterfront.

  He clasped the automatic tightly in his right hand, surprised that his palm was clammy. Had he lost his nerve in the years since working law enforcement? He didn’t think so, but he was irritated that even the possibility required conscious thought. He racked a shell into the chamber, then got out of the car.

  The service door of the warehouse creaked slightly as Jeff pulled it open. The skin crawled at the back of his neck. He had dashed in here not two hours earlier, giving no thought to the fact that it might hold danger or leads or anything else, other than the benign acquisitions from an old lady’s odd existence and a dead man’s collection of fishing lures. Now, his senses were at top alert.

  He flipped the light switch, gave the room a fast once-over, then walked to the back where he’d left the boxes of Bill’s lures.

  They were there, with everything intact. He wondered then whether Sheila’s abductor had gone through their home, searching for the collection. He tried to recall whether he’d mentioned the warehouse to anyone, but he wasn’t sure. If not, then only Sheila, Greer, and Blanche knew that he was using it. Oh, and the movers. Two pairs of movers, actually. He knew that Blanche wouldn’t hire anyone who didn’t pass scrutiny. He also knew that the more people who were in on a secret, the more chances there were for double-cross.