Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he started.

“Hi.” Barbara glided up beside him and extended her hand to Debbie. “I’m Barbara LeBlanc, the manager.”

“Debbie Wolecski.” She bent her wrist and took the manager’s hand in the kind of grasp no guy would ever attempt. “Linda Van Alstyne’s sister.”

“Ah.”

“Has he told you that she’s missing?”

Barbara smiled crookedly. “We’ve just finished searching the hotel for her. I’ve seen parts of this place I didn’t even know existed.”

Debbie looked from the manager to Russ. “Nothing? No sign of her?”

He shook his head.

“Nothing from any of the places she worked at?”

“How did you know I was visiting her work sites?”

Debbie made an impatient gesture. “I spoke to the dispatcher at the police station. She told me I should stay put, too.”

Russ dragged one hand through his hair, feeling tension knots kinking through his shoulders. “You should leave your rental here and come back into town with me. I’ll run you back up tomorrow after they’ve plowed out.” He glanced at Barbara. “That’d be okay, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure. Our caretaker will plow our drive and the private road down to Sacandaga Road. You can leave your car here as long as you like.”

Russ fished in his back pocket and pulled out a creased business card. “Best way to reach me will be my cell phone for the next few days,” he said, handing it to her. “Please call me as soon as Opperman gets back from his business trip. It’s probably a long shot, but he might know-”

The front door inched open, admitting a gust of frigid air and a swirl of snowflakes. A man, angular and anonymous in a black wool dress coat and a scarf, banged his suitcase against the door, forcing it wider.

“Speak of the devil,” Barbara LeBlanc said cheerfully.

A woman staggered through the door, clutching her valise in one hand and the neck of her coat with the other. The man let the door swing shut behind her. She plucked the hat from her head and shook out her blond curls. Her eyes widened as she saw the three onlookers.

“Russ? Debbie!”

The man-Opperman-unwound his scarf, scattering snow on the plastic sheeting.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Linda Van Alstyne asked.

Debbie burst into tears. She covered her mouth with one hand and groped toward Linda with the other, shaking so hard from her sobs she could hardly walk.

Russ couldn’t move. Couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take his eyes off his wife, off her confused, red-cheeked, alive face.

“Debbie, what’s wrong?” Linda dropped her suitcase and hurried toward her sister. “What are you doing here? Is it one of the boys?” She opened her arms and Debbie fell into her embrace, still unable to speak.

“We thought you were dead,” Russ said hoarsely.

Linda looked up at him, strands of her sister’s hair clinging to her jaw. “What are you talking about?”

He found he could move again, and he was on her in two strides, wrapping his arms around both sisters, squeezing them so tight Linda squeaked. “We thought you were dead,” he repeated, and Debbie nodded her head, smearing tears and snowmelt over Linda’s shoulder.

“If you had bothered to stop by and check, the house sitter I hired could have told you where I’d gone.” Linda’s voice was amused.

Russ reared back enough to look her in the face. “Audrey Keane was murdered in our kitchen. Her throat was cut, and her face was so disfigured we couldn’t tell it wasn’t you.”

Linda’s big blue eyes got wide and her perfectly shaped mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding me.”

“We thought it was you!” Debbie wailed. “Until last night, we thought it was you! I had to go to your house and pick out an outfit for you-for you-for the-” Her tears got the best of her again.

“But… my God, that’s horrible!”

“Where. Were. You?”

Linda flinched at the anger in his voice. She glanced away from him to where the Algonquin’s owner was stripping off his coat and gloves. “John let me use his house on St. Croix.”

Once, as a kid, Russ had spent the afternoon wading through the swift shallow waters of the upper Hudson, amusing himself by sending stick canoes over the edge of the nearby waterfall. He came home slimy from falling between the slick stones, and his mother had screamed at him and shaken him and swore if he ever did that again he’d be grounded for a month, and he didn’t understand why until later, when he found out two kids had drowned after they lost their footing and swept over the falls into the boiling rapids below. His mother told him she was furious because she loved him, but he didn’t understand why, if that was so, she didn’t cry and hug him and treat him especially nice, instead of sending him to bed early with no dessert and no TV.

Now he knew. He gripped Linda’s shoulders hard, so hard he could feel her sinew and bones beneath the heavy wool of her coat. “You were on a beach in the Caribbean while I was listening to your goddamn autopsy report?”

“I’m sorry! Next time I’ll take out an ad in the paper!” She twisted, but he held on fast, fingers digging in. Hurting her, the way she had hurt him.

“How the hell did you get there, anyway? Your passport was at home! All your makeup and stuff was at home!”

“You don’t need a passport. It’s a U.S. territory. And if you don’t know by now that I have a travel kit of makeup and toiletries…” She let out a puff of air that said, You’re hopeless. “Please let go of me.”

He released her, clenching his hands into fists against his thighs. Debbie relaxed her grip on Linda’s other side and began patting her pockets for a tissue.

Linda looked across the lobby. “John gave me a lift to New York, and then he let me use his private jet.”

Opperman made a deprecating gesture. “Not mine. The company leases it.”

“That’s pretty damn generous,” Russ said. “Don’t those things cost something like a thousand dollars an hour? What did you get in exchange? Free consultation on your curtains?” He knew he was being an asshole, but he couldn’t stop himself. Linda drew in an outraged breath.

Opperman looked at him coolly. “I’m sure given Linda’s skills, it would have been worth it. As it happens, we were flying several potential investors to BWI’s St. Thomas resort, so it was easy to drop your wife off on the way.”

“That’s why I did it,” Linda said. “I had been talking about how badly I needed to get away, and John told me about the investors’ junket. One of the men who works for him had a girlfriend who was a pet sitter-” She caught her breath and touched her fingers to her lips. “Anyway, it all came together in a rush.”

Debbie’s search for a tissue had come to the attention of Barbara LeBlanc. The manager retrieved a box from beneath the reception desk and handed them to the wet-faced woman. Debbie blew her nose. “I can understand why you didn’t tell him what you were doing”-a jerk of her head toward Russ-“but why didn’t you let me know?”

Linda looked down at the toes of her boots. Through her blond curls, Russ could see her face coloring. “I knew if I told you you’d want to come along. And I wanted this treat to be just for me.”

“That’s why I suggested she stay at my vacation home instead of the resort,” Opperman said. “Complete privacy.”

“And no access to international phone calls?” Russ snapped.

“Chief Van Alstyne.” Opperman stepped toward him. “It’s not my responsibility to see that Linda maintains contact with you. Maybe next time you can take your wife to the Caribbean.”