Reed Ferguson Mystery Box Set 5

by Renee Pawlish

  I followed her into an open foyer. To the right was a living and dining area, and beyond that a kitchen. Down the hall was a staircase leading up to the second floor. A small table to our left was toppled over, and a broken faux-Tiffany lamp lay on the floor.

  “What’s that?” She gestured at some dark drops on the hardwood floor.

  I bent down and studied it. “I think it’s blood.”

  She reached down to pick up the lamp, then stopped. “Oh, I probably shouldn’t touch it, in case this is a crime scene.”

  I moved over toward the lamp and examined it without touching it. “I can’t tell if there’s any blood on it.”

  “Why would there be blood on it?”

  I stood up straight. “If Marcia hit someone with it. Or they hit her.”

  A hand flew to her chest. “Oh my gosh.” Then she whirled around. “Marcia?”

  She started through the house, with me on her heels. We checked the kitchen, a small home office, and spare bedroom on the main floor, a master suite upstairs, and an unfinished basement, but Marcia was not there. We ended back in the foyer.

  “Other than that mess,” she gestured at the broken lamp, “this place looks like it always does. Do you think something happened to Marcia?”

  “I doubt it,” I said, more to comfort her than because I believed it.

  The truth was, a broken lamp and what might be drops of blood on the floor did not constitute a potential crime. There could be a perfectly rational explanation for it. In my gut, though, I knew differently. However, knowing it and proving it were two different things.

  “We should call the police,” Doris said.

  I nodded. She pulled out an ancient flip phone and dialed 911, and explained the situation. I wanted to check around the house more thoroughly, but Doris had her eyes on me.

  When she got off the phone, I asked, “Did Marcia ever mention a daughter?”

  “She didn’t have kids,” she said. “I don’t think she ever even married.”

  Then she went to the door, and we waited in awkward silence for a few minutes until a police cruiser drove up and parked behind my 4-Runner. A burly officer with a pencil-thin mustache got out and marched up the steps.

  He eyed me and tipped his head at Doris. “Ma’am.” His nameplate read, “Swanson.”

  Doris launched into why she’d called him. He listened politely, and every once in a while he looked at me.

  “And you are?” he asked me when she finished.

  I told him, and explained about how Gina had been trying to reach Marcia since Saturday.

  “So you’ve got suspicions that something might’ve happened to Miss Holder, but that’s all.”

  I nodded. His radio squawked and he lowered the volume. He knelt down and checked the drops on the floor. “Yeah, I’d say it’s blood.” He looked at the lamp, his face impassive. Then he stood up. “And nothing else in the house has been disturbed?”

  “Not that we can tell,” Doris said.

  He scratched his head. “There’s no real proof that a crime has been committed. Ms. Holder could’ve broken the lamp by accident and cut herself on a piece of glass.”

  Doris waved a hand at the broken lamp. “Why not clean it up?”

  Swanson shrugged. “Maybe she got called away, and she’ll get to it when she returns.” He frowned. “I can file a missing persons report, and someone will check the hospitals. Keep an eye out for any strange activity around the neighborhood, and report anything to us.” He averted his eyes from Doris’s glare. “Look, I wish there was more I could do…” His voice trailed off.

  Doris had her hands on her hips again. “Well.” She was peeved he wasn’t doing more.

  Swanson thanked us and made his escape before Doris could voice her displeasure.

  “That was useless,” she grumbled as he drove off. “What if something’s happened to Marcia?”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” I said. “You have my card. If you see any strangers around here, or if Marcia shows up, let the police know, but give me a call, too.”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  “Are you around a lot?”

  “Some.”

  I thought for a second. “I might have my two buddies watch the house for a few days, just so we don’t miss Marcia if she shows up.” I described Ace and Deuce, and their cars.

  “Okay, good to know.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know Marcia that well, but I still hope nothing’s happened to her.”

  I agreed with her sentiment.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the way home, I called Gina Smith.

  “Did you find her?” she asked.

  “No.” I told her what I knew, ending with, “The broken lamp could be something innocent, just like the cop told me.”

  “Do you really believe that, or do you think someone hurt Marcia?”

  My mind raced over everything I knew, including all the strange behavior I’d encountered in Sagebrush. “I have my suspicions.”

  “Why would anyone care whether I met my birth mother?” Her voice was almost a wail.

  “That’s the question of the day.”

  “I want you to find her,” she said without hesitation. “I’ll pay whatever it takes.”

  “All right. At this point, I need to talk to your dad. I know you don’t want me to, but –”

  “This changes everything,” she said with conviction, and with a new confidence I hadn’t heard in her before. “I’ll call him and tell him what’s going on, and arrange for you to meet him.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “I am now,” she said. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “That’s good, and the sooner the better.”

  “Oh, I won’t let him put you off.” A decidedly firm tone was in her voice. “I’ll call you back.”

  I ended the call. Ten minutes later, I was knocking on the Goofballs’ front door.

  Ace answered in an old T-shirt and shorts, his hair messed up, his eyes tired. “Hey, Reed.”

  “No work today?” I asked. Ace works in the electronics department at Best Buy, and his hours vary. I never know what his schedule is.

  “No, I’m off for a couple of days.” He yawned. “I stayed up late playing video games.”

  “Want to help me?”

  He was suddenly alert. “You on a new case?”

  I shook my head. “The same one, as it turns out.”

  “What do you need?”

  Now came the delicate part. Ace and Deuce loved to help me, but if it involved something boring, like a stakeout, not so much. So I had to make the boring sound thrilling, which wasn’t easy.

  “I need you to watch a house for me. A woman named Marcia Holder lives there.”

  “Oh, that sounds boring.”

  See what I mean?

  “It’s not,” I said. I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “It actually could be quite dangerous.” I was playing it up, and it worked.

  “Oh?” Now he was all ears.

  I nodded and described Marcia in detail. “If you see her, or notice any activity in the house, like lights on or noises coming from the house, call me. You can park across the street, where you can see through the chain-link fence into the back yard, and where the garage is. And if you see anyone else trying to get into the house, or watching the house, you let me know.”

  “Who else would get into the house?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly someone in a dark sedan. That’s the dangerous part.”

  “Ah,” he said, then hesitated. “Um, what if I have to go to the bathroom?”

  I shrugged. “You can leave for that, just make it quick.”

  “Okay, I can do that.”

  I gave him the address and directions, then described the house. He grabbed pen and paper and wrote it all down.

  “See if Deuce can help,” I suggested. “Maybe he can spell you at night.”

  “Spell ‘night’ for me?”

&nb
sp; I resisted a smile. “He can give you a break. Or stay with you, and you can keep each other company.”

  “Ah, I see.” He grinned. “You can count on us.”

  “I know, thanks.”

  And now, between Marcia’s next-door neighbor Doris and the Goofballs, if Marcia came home, someone should see her. My phone rang and I glanced at it. It was Gina.

  “I’ve got to get this,” I said.

  “I’ll change clothes and be on my way.” He saluted me and closed the door.

  I chuckled as I answered.

  “I confronted Dad.” Gina sucked in a breath. “I told him I’d tracked Marcia down, and that I wondered what he was hiding. He was not happy with me, and said I never should’ve tried to find her. But he’s worried about Marcia, so he says he’ll talk to you, even though he doesn’t think he knows anything that will help.”

  “When?”

  “Now, at his house.”

  “What’s the address?”

  She gave it to me. “It may be a waste of your time.”

  “We’ll see.”

  John Smith lived in a quaint ranch house on Fillmore Street, near the University of Denver campus. The neighborhood was filled with small houses on big lots, or McMansions that had been built where tiny houses used to be. I parked and had barely walked up to the minuscule front porch when the door opened.

  “Come on in,” Smith said to me.

  He showed me into a small living room furnished with a sage green couch and overstuffed chair that flanked a yellow brick fireplace. The carpet and walls were off-white, and the only decoration in the room was a painting of aspen trees that hung over the fireplace.

  “Have a seat,” he ordered.

  I sat down on the couch and he took the chair. He was in gray slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his one nod to casual. He sat ramrod straight and stared at me with cold brown eyes.

  “Gina should’ve never started down this path,” he said with a headshake. Then he changed direction. “Are you sure Marcia didn’t just leave for a few days? Maybe seeing her daughter overwhelmed her, and she needed some time to think.”

  “It’s possible, but what if something did happen to her? Time is of the essence then.”

  “This is crazy,” he muttered.

  When he didn’t offer anything more, I said, “I got Marcia’s version of what happened back in 1985. How about telling me yours?”

  “There’s not much to say.” He glanced away wistfully. “I was wandering a bit after college, working a series of odd jobs for years, not ready to settle down. I ended up in Sagebrush.”

  “Where’d you go to college?”

  “Back east.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “Yes.” He arched an eyebrow slyly. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “You were running away from something,” I said.

  He ignored that. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  He shook his head slowly. “You don’t need to know that.”

  “What’re you hiding?”

  “My past doesn’t have anything to do with this,” he snapped.

  “How do you know?”

  He ignored that, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “When I got to Sagebrush, I started working at the dairy plant. I met Marcia and we fell in love, but since she was so much younger than I was, we kept it a secret. I’m sure she told you how her father could be.”

  I nodded.

  “Then she got pregnant and we decided to leave town, away from all of it.”

  “All of what?”

  He thought about his answer. “Her father. We left a month before she was due, and had gotten as far as Kansas when she had the baby.” He stopped, and pain flashed in his eyes.

  “What happened that night?”

  “We were at the hotel and they suddenly showed up.”

  “Who?”

  He again took time in answering, as if trying to decide how much to tell me. “They came for us, and there was a fight. Marcia tried to intervene, and she fell against the nightstand.” He looked away. “She was out cold. I bent over to try to help her, and they knocked me down and tied me up. They left, carrying Marcia and the baby.

  “I struggled for a while, but it didn’t take me long to loosen the sloppy knots they’d tied. I got out of the room as fast as I could, but stayed to watch the hotel. They came back a while later – I think to kill me – and I saw that Marcia was in their car. I knew I couldn’t rescue her right then.” He put his head down for a moment. “I didn’t know what to do. They left, and I assumed they took Marcia back to Sagebrush. I didn’t know what Mayor Holder would do to her or the baby, so I sneaked back to Sagebrush and got in touch with Marcia.”

  “How did you avoid Holder in a small town like Sagebrush?”

  He hesitated. “I was careful, I guess. He didn’t know I was there, and that’s all that mattered. Marcia and I worked out a plan that I’d come to Denver with the baby, and she’d try to move here at some point, if she could arrange something with her father. She just wanted to be close to Gina, but she was scared of what her father would do if he ever found out that she knew where Gina was. Once we decided that, I sneaked out to her house one night. She’d gotten the baby all ready to go, so I took the baby, and left.” He stared at me. “I think you know the rest.”

  “Would Mayor Holder come after you, if he knew you’d taken Gina?”

  His jaw tightened. “Holder could be a tyrant. He had that town fooled.”

  I took that as a yes. “Have you had contact with Marcia over the years?”

  He shook his head. “We couldn’t risk it.”

  “You think Mayor Holder is so vengeful that he’d do something even years later?”

  He didn’t say anything to that.

  “And you haven’t talked to Marcia since she met Gina the other night?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I gazed at him for a moment, sure that he was lying to me. Did Marcia’s disappearance have something to do with his past? Had he talked to Marcia recently? If so, why not tell me?

  “Would anyone else besides Mayor Holder be after Marcia?”

  His eyes darted away from me and then back. “Like who?”

  “Someone from your past.”

  “No,” he said quickly.

  “Someone in Sagebrush? Was someone besides Mayor Holder angry with the two of you?”

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Would Marcia just disappear and not come back?”

  “I don’t know.” He blinked hard. “I hope nothing’s happened to her.”

  “It would help if you told me everything.”

  “I have,” he snapped. He recovered quickly. “What’re you going to do next?”

  I shrugged. “I’m going up to Sagebrush to talk to Mayor Holder.”

  “I doubt you’ll get anywhere.”

  “I have to try.”

  “Be careful. He’s slick.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “You should leave the past in the past.”

  “I just want to find Marcia.”

  He frowned, then stood up and showed me to the door. As I walked down the sidewalk to my car, I frowned. Smith obviously cared about Marcia, even after all these years, but he was also not telling me everything. Why?

  Chapter Seventeen

  On the way home, I called Cal.

  “What’s up, O Great Detective?” he asked.

  “You busy?”

  “Not too much for you.”

  “Did you find anything on John Smith?”

  “Not so far, sorry.”

  “I finally got his address. With that, you could track him down, right?”

  “Of course. Have you been holding out on me?”

  I laughed. “No, I just met him.” I brought Cal up to speed on my investigation and my conversation with John Smith. “I don’t trust the g
uy. I want a thorough background check on him. Dig deep, okay? And can you monitor his phone calls?”

  “Sure. I’ll call you when I get something.”

  “Thanks.”

  Willie was at work, so I left her a message telling her about Gina’s call, that I was headed back to Sagebrush, and to call me when she could. I told her that I loved her, and not to worry. Then I turned on the music, but I wasn’t really hearing it. I kept thinking about Marcia Holder, and hoping that nothing bad had happened to her. When I arrived home, Deuce was coming out of his place.

  “Hey, Reed, I’m going over to spell Ace.” He emphasized “spell”, as if he and I were in on a secret.

  I winked at him. “Good thinking. I’ll touch base with Ace in a little bit.”

  “He hasn’t seen anything,” he said, trying to be helpful.

  “Okay.” I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for your help. I hope it’s not too boring.”

  “It’ll be all right,” he said, not convinced. “How long do you want me to stay?”

  “Maybe ten o’clock or so?”

  I could see him doing some calculations in his head, figuring out how long he would have to be bored.

  “That won’t be too bad,” he said. “I was worried you’d want me to stay all night.”

  I shook my head. “No need for that, especially since you have to work tomorrow.”

  “Right. I’ll do a good job watching the house. We’ll call tonight if we see anything.” He waved and left.

  I hurried upstairs, packed some things in a duffel bag, and put my laptop in my backpack. Then I strapped on my Glock and ankle holster, and headed out. I stopped at a Subway for a quick bite and was on Interstate 70 by 4:30. At that time of day, traffic was at a crawl, but the farther I got from Denver, the lighter the traffic became. I put the 4-Runner on cruise control and enjoyed an uneventful drive across the eastern plains. The only thing that would’ve made the drive better would have been Willie sitting in the passenger seat.

  Almost two hours later I turned north off the Interstate, and soon drove into Sagebrush. I stopped and got the same room at the Sagebrush Inn. I left my duffel bag on the bed, but kept my backpack with me. Then I drove to Annette Gessler’s house. I parked, then strode up to the front door and knocked. She answered a moment later and her face went pale.