sidney sheldon - Master of the Game

"I see." There were all kinds of implications in that phrase. The sergeant knew at least three reasons why a husband could be away from home at two a.m. in the morning: blondes, brunets and redheads.

He said tactfully, "Is it possible he was detained on business somewhere?"

"He—he usually calls."

"Well, you know how it is, Mrs. Mellis. Sometimes you get in a situation where you can't call. I'm sure you'll be hearing from him."

Now she did feel like a fool. Of course there was nothing the police could do. She had read somewhere that a person had to be missing for twenty-four hours before the police would even start looking for him, and George was not missing, for heaven's sake. He was just late.

"I'm sure you're right," Alexandra said into the telephone. "I'm sorry to have troubled you."

"Not at all, Mrs. Mellis. I'll bet he'll be on the seven o'clock ferry first thing in the morning."

He was not on the seven o'clock ferry, or the one after that. Alexandra telephoned the Manhattan house again. George was not there.

A feeling of disaster began to grip Alexandra. George had been in an accident; he was in a hospital somewhere, ill or dead. If only there had not been the mix-up with Eve at the airport. Perhaps George had arrived at the house, and when he found she was not there, he had gone. But that left too many things unexplained. He would have left a note. He could have surprised burglars and been attacked or kidnapped. Alexandra went through the house, room by room, looking for any possible clue. Everything was intact. She went down to the dock. The Corsair was there, safely moored.

She telephoned the Waldo County Sheriff's Department again. Lieutenant Philip Ingram, a twenty-year veteran of the force, was on morning duty. He was already aware that George Mellis had not been home all night. It had been the chief topic of conversation around the station all morning, most of it ribald.

Now he said to Alexandra, "There's no trace of him at all Mrs. Mellis? All right. I'll come out there myself." He knew it

would be a waste of time. Her old man was probably tomcatting around in some alley. But when the Blackwells call, the peasants come running, he thought wryly. Anyway, this was a nice lady. He had met her a few times over the years. "Back in an hour or so," he told the desk sergeant.

Lieutenant Ingram listened to Alexandra's story, checked the house and the dock and reached the conclusion that Alexandra Mellis had a problem on her hands. George Mellis was to have met his wife the evening before at Dark Harbor, but he had not shown up. While it was not Lieutenant Ingram's problem, he knew it would do him no harm to be helpful to a member of the Blackwell family. Ingram telephoned the island airport and the ferry terminal at Lincolnville. George Mellis had used neither facility within the past twenty-four hours. "He didn't come to Dark Harbor," the lieutenant told Alexandra. And where the hell did that leave things? Why would the man have dropped out of sight?In the lieutenant's considered opinion, no man in his right mind would voluntarily leave a woman like Alexandra.

"We'll check the hospitals and mor—" He caught himself. "And other places, and I'll put out an APB on him."

Alexandra was trying to control her emotions, but he could see what an effort it was. 'Thank you, Lieutenant. I don't have to tell you how much I'll appreciate anything you can do."

'That's my job," Lieutenant Ingram replied.

When Lieutenant Ingram returned to the station, he began calling hospitals and morgues. The responses were negative. There was no accident report on George Mellis. Lieutenant Ingram's next move was to call a reporter friend on the Maine Courier. After that, the lieutenant sent out a missing person all-points-bulletin.

The afternoon newspapers carried the story in headlines:

HUSBAND OF BLACKWELL HEIRESS MISSING.

Peter Templeton first heard the news from Detective Nick Pappas.

"Peter, remember askin' me a while ago to do some checkin' on George Mellis?"

"Yes..."

"He's done a vanishing act."

"He's what!"

"Disappeared, vamoosed, gone." He waited while Peter digested the news.

"Did he take anything with him? Money, clothes, passport?"

"Nope. According to the report we got from Maine, Mr. Mellis just melted into thin air. You're his shrink. I thought you might have some idea why our boy would do a thing like that."

Peter said truthfully, "I haven't any idea, Nick."

"If you think of anything, let me know. There's gonna be a lot of heat on this."

"Yes," Peter promised. "I will."

Thirty minutes later, Alexandra Mellis telephoned Peter Templeton, and he could hear the shrill edge of panic in her voice. "I— George is missing. No one seems to know what happened to him. I was hoping he might have told you something that might have given you a clue or—" She broke off.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Mellis. He didn't. I have no idea what could have happened."

"Oh."

Peter wished there was some way he could comfort her. "If I think of anything, I'll call you back. Where can I reach you?"

"I'm at Dark Harbor now, but I'm going to return to New York this evening. I'll be at my grandmother's."

Alexandra could not bear the thought of being alone. She had talked to Kate several times that morning. "Oh, darling, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about," Kate said. "He probably went off on some business deal and forgot to tell you."

Neither of them believed it.

Eve saw the story of George's disappearance on television. There were photographs of the exterior of Cedar Hill House, and pictures of Alexandra and George after their wedding cere-

mony. There was a close-up of George, looking upward, with his eyes wide. Somehow it reminded Eve of the look of surprise on his face just before he died.

The television commentator was saying, 'There has been no evidence of foul play and no ransom demands have been made. The police speculate that George Mellis was possibly the victim of an accident and may be suffering from amnesia." Eve smiled in satisfaction.

They would never find the body. It had been swept out to sea with the tide. Poor George. He had followed her plan perfectly. But she had changed it. She had flown up to Maine and rented a motorboat at Philbrook Cove, to be held for "a friend." She had then rented a second boat from a nearby dock and taken it to Dark Harbor, where she had waited for George. He had been totally unsuspecting. She had been careful to wipe the deck clean before she returned the yacht to the dock. After that, it had been a simple matter to tow George's rented motorboat back to its pier, return her boat and fly back to New York to await the telephone call she knew Alexandra would make.

It was a perfect crime. The police would list it as a mysterious disappearance.

The announcer was saying, "In other news ..." Eve switched the television set off.

She did not want to be late for her date with Rory McKenna.

At six o'clock the following morning, a fishing boat found George Mellis's body pinned against the breakwater at the mouth of Penebscot Bay. The early news reports called it a drowning and accidental death, but as more information came in, the tenor of the stories began to change. From the coroner's office came reports that what at first had been thought to have been shark bites were actually stab wounds. The evening newspaper editions screamed: murder suspected in george mellis

MYSTERY DEATH . . . MILLIONAIRE FOUND STABBED TO DEATH.

Lieutenant Ingram was studying the tide charts for the previous evening. When he was finished, he leaned back in his chair,

a perplexed expression on his face. George Mellis's body would have been swept out to sea had it not been caught against the breakwater. What puzzled the lieutenant was that the body had to have been carried by the tide from the direction of Dark Harbor. Where George Mellis was not supposed to have been.