Mary Clark - Moonlight Becomes You

This can’t be happening, Neil thought. He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder and wanted to shake it off. He was afraid that sympathy would undermine his resolve, and he would not let that happen. He wasn’t going to give up. Maggie wasn’t dead. He was sure of that. She couldn’t be dead.

“I’ve talked to Mrs. Norton,” Brower continued. “Her husband came home at the usual time yesterday, then left and didn’t return until midnight. This morning when she tried to find out where he’d been, he wouldn’t answer.”

“How well did Maggie know this guy Norton?” Robert Ste phens asked. “What would make her agree to meet him? Do you think he might have forced her into her own car, then driven to where you found it? But then, what did he do with Maggie, and since he left her car there, how did he get home?”

Brower was shaking his head as Stephens spoke. “It’s a very unlikely scenario, I agree, but it’s an angle we have to pursue. We’re bringing in dogs to try to follow Ms. Holloway’s scent, so if she is in that area, we’ll find her. But it’s a long way from Norton’s home. He’d have to have acted in tandem with someone else, or he’d need to have gotten a ride home from a passerby, and frankly both of those options seem unlikely. This woman he was crazy about, Barbara Hoffman, is in Colorado visiting her daughter. We checked on her already. She’s been there since the weekend.”

The intercom rang, and Brower picked up his phone. “Put him on,” he said after a moment.

Neil buried his face in his hands. Don’t let them have found Maggie’s body, he silently pleaded.

Brower’s conversation lasted only a minute. When he got off, he said, “In a way, I think we have good news. Malcolm Norton had dinner last night at the Log Cabin, a small restaurant near where Barbara Hoffman lived. Apparently she and Norton ate there together frequently. The owner tells us that Norton was there until well after eleven, so he must have gone directly home.”

Which means, Neil thought, he almost certainly had nothing to do with Maggie’s disappearance.

“Where do you go from here?” Robert Stephens asked.

“To interrogate the people Ms. Holloway pointed us to,” Brower said, “Earl Bateman and Nurse Zelda Markey.”

His intercom sounded again. After listening without comment, Brower hung up his phone and stood. “I don’t know what kind of game Bateman is up to, but he just phoned to report that last night a coffin was stolen from his funeral museum.”

Dr. William Lane realized that there was very little he could say to his wife this Tuesday morning. Her stony silence indicated to him that even sh e could be driven too far.

If only she hadn’t come home last night and found him like that, he thought. He hadn’t had a drink in what seemed like ages, not since the incident at the last place he worked. Lane knew that he owed this job to Odile. She had met the owners of Prestige Residence Corporation at a cocktail party and had touted him for the director’s job at Latham, which was then being renovated.

Latham Manor was to be one of Prestige’s franchised residences, as opposed to fully owned and operated; but they had agreed to meet with him, and then later had submitted his résumé to the franchiser. Remarkably, he got the job.

All thanks to Odile, as she constantly reminded him, he thought bitterly.

He knew that the slipup last night was a sign the pressure was getting to him. The orders to keep those apartments filled; don’t let them pass a month unsold. Always the implied threat of being let go if he didn’t perform. Let go, he thought. Go where?

After the last incident, Odile had told him that if she saw him drunk even once, she was leaving.

As enticing as the prospect was, he couldn’t let that happen. The truth was he needed her.

Why hadn’t she stayed in Boston last night? he thought.

Because she suspected that he was panicking, he reasoned.

She was right, of course. He had been in a state of terror ever since he learned that Maggie Holloway had been looking for a sketch Nuala Moore had made that showed Nurse Markey eavesdropping.

He should have found a way to get rid of that woman long ago, but Prestige had sent her, and in most respects she was a good nurse. Certainly many of the residents valued her. In fact, he sometimes wondered if she wasn’t too good a nurse. She seemed to know more than he did about some things.

Well, whatever was going on between him and Odile, Dr. Lane knew he had to go over to the residence and make his morning rounds.

He found his wife drinking coffee in the kitchen. Uncharacteristically she hadn’t bothered to put on even a minimum of makeup this morning. She looked drawn and tired.

“Zelda Markey just phoned,” she told him, an angry glint in her eye. “The police have asked her to be available for questioning. She doesn’t know why.”

“For questioning?” Lane felt the tension run through his body, gripping every muscle. It’s all over, he thought.

“She also told me that Sarah Cushing gave strict orders that neither she nor you was to enter her mother’s room. It seems that Mrs. Bainbridge isn’t well, and Mrs. Cushing is making arrangements to transfer her immediately to the hospital.”

Odile looked at him accusingly. “You were supposed to be rushing home to see Mrs. Bainbridge last night. Not that you’d have been allowed anywhere near her, but I hear you didn’t show up at the residence till nearly eleven. What were you doing until then?”

Neil and Robert Stephens drove to the remote road where Maggie’s station wagon was still parked. Now it was surrounded with police tape, and as they got out of their car they could hear the yapping of search dogs in the nearby woods.

Neither man had spoken since they left the police station. Neil used the time to think through all he knew so far. It amounted to very little, he realized, and the longer he felt in the dark, the more frustrated he became.

It was good, even essential, to have the understanding presence of his father, he realized. Something I didn’t give to Maggie, he told himself bitterly.

Through the heavy woods and thick foliage, he could make out the figures of at least a dozen people. Policemen or volunteers? he wondered. He knew they had found nothing so far, so the search had spread out over a wider area. In despair, he realized that they were expecting to find Maggie’s body.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and bowed his head. Finally he broke the silence. “She can’t be dead,” he said. “I’d know it if she were dead.”

“Neil, let’s go,” his father said quietly. “I don’t even know why we came out here. Standing around here isn’t helping Maggie.”

“What do you suggest I do?” Neil asked, anger and frustration showing in his voice.

“From what Chief Brower said, the police haven’t spoken to this guy Hansen yet, but they found out he’s expected at his office in Providence around noon. At this point they consider him small potatoes. They’ll turn over the fraud information Norton left with his note to the district attorney. But it wouldn’t hurt for us to be at Hansen’s office when he comes in.”

“Dad, you can’t expect me to worry about stock deals now,” Neil said angrily.

“No, and at this moment I’m not worried about them either. But you did authorize the sale of fifty thousand shares of stock that Cora Gebhart didn’t own. You certainly have a right to go to Hansen’s office and demand some answers,” Robert Stephens urged.

He looked into his son’s face. “Don’t you see what I’m driving at? Something made Maggie mighty uneasy about Hansen. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that he’s the guy who fronted an offer on her house. You can get him on the defensive about the stocks. But the real reason I want to see him right away is to try and find out if he knows anything at all about Maggie’s disappearance.”