Джеймс Паттерсон - Three Women Disappear

I dragged my injured leg up the splintering steps and burst through the door. No point in knocking: she never wore her hearing aid at home, and she didn’t believe in locks.

“Aunt Linds!” I called out, standing between the twin rubber plants in her narrow, gleaming foyer.

I waited, heard nothing besides the ticking of an antique clock. I set the tote bag beside an umbrella holder and started down the hallway, checking the living room, the dining room, the den. In the kitchen, I stared out the back window, scanning the foliage she let run wild because, as she put it, repairing the ozone was more important than having a neatly trimmed lawn. Never mind the periodic infestations of mice and spiders: every creature had a right to live.

“Aunt Linds? Are you upstairs?”

“I’ll be right with you,” came a voice from the greenhouse off the kitchen. “I’m just trying to resurrect this basil plant.”

A few beats later, she rounded the corner in her rubber clogs, her apron wet and streaked with soil.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said. “It’s so nice to—”

She stopped short once she got a close look at me.

“What on earth …?”

We stood at arm’s length while she studied my wounded leg, my torn clothes, my panicked expression. I could see her counting to five in her head as she took a breath, a technique she’d picked up at the ER.

“You sit down now,” she said, pulling a chair away from the table. “Tell me all about it. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

The promise of a brief rest made me realize just how long I’d been teetering on collapse.

“I will,” I promised. “I’ll tell you everything. But I have to make a call first.”

No need to say it was an emergency. She pulled a cordless phone from the wall, handed it to me, and turned to leave the room.

“I’ll just be in the greenhouse,” she said.

I called Anna. Twice. The second time, I gathered myself and left a message.

“Anna, this is Sarah. I’m assuming you know by now … Listen, I have your jewelry. I have no idea how your collection wound up in my car, but I don’t want any part of …”

I stopped. I didn’t hang up. Instead, I pressed the number 3: message deleted. No good would come from a voice mail. Anything on tape could be manipulated, entered into evidence. I took a breath, then called Anna’s pastor, the person most likely to know where she was. Anna’s not religious by nature, but sitting on the church’s board of directors made her feel a little better about being a mob wife, and she and Father Priatto had grown close. Maybe too close. Sometimes I wondered …

The good father picked up on the first ring.

“Hello,” I said, my voice already breaking. “This is Sarah Roberts-Walsh, Anna Costello’s personal chef. I don’t know if you remember me, but we—”

“Of course I remember you, Sarah. How are you?”

“Good. I’m good. I was just … I’m trying to get ahold of Anna, and I was wondering if you might happen to know where she is?”

The line went silent. I could hear my own breathing, cycled through the electronic circuits, amplified back to me in the receiver. The call was still active. The father just wasn’t talking.

“Father?” I said. “Are we still—?”

“Where are you right now, Sarah?”

“I’m with my … I’m sorry, but why would you ask that?”

“Where are you?” he repeated, his tone cold, clinical.

“Why would you want to know where I am?”

“I think you know why.”

I felt suddenly bloodless. The Costellos had judges and commissioners on their payroll. Why not a priest as well? What better informant than the man who hears confession for all the neighborhood cops and thugs?

“I don’t,” I lied. “It isn’t obvious at all.”

Aunt Lindsey was standing in the doorway now, looking me up and down, trying to figure out what had gone wrong and how she could set it right.

“Let me give you a piece of very generous advice,” Father Priatto said. “You don’t know who you’re up against. Jail might be the best of your options at this point. I suggest you tell me where you are. I can create a degree of amnesty for you.”

“It wasn’t me who—”

“Stop right there,” he said. “You know what you did. They will come for you. I guarantee it. And when they find you—”

I left him talking to a dial tone.

CHAPTER 11

AUNT LINDSEY bit back her concern long enough to lighten the mood.

“Anna Costello goes to church?” she said. “Now that’s a hoot.”

I almost laughed.

“I think Anthony uses the diocese to launder money,” I said. “Nonprofit status makes for good cover.”

“And your detective husband sent you to work for that man?”

My complexion must have darkened a little. Telling her why he’d sent me to work for Tony wouldn’t have given her any comfort.

“Sorry,” she said. “Last thing I want to do is shame you.”

“Anyway, I don’t work for him anymore.”

“I have a feeling that’s bad news. What happened?”

I wasn’t ready to talk. I needed a prop, something to ease me into the conversation. I looked around for the tote bag, then remembered I’d left it in the foyer.

“There’s something I want to show you,” I said.

I pushed myself up from the table, took a step, felt my knees buckle. Aunt Lindsey had her arms around me before I could hit the floor.

“Goodness,” she said. “Sit back down and let’s get you fed.”

“It isn’t food I need,” I told her. “I mean it is, but—”

“Insulin,” she guessed. “Why on earth didn’t you say something? How long’s it been?”

She bolted out of the kitchen before I could answer, returned seconds later with the emergency kit she kept on hand for my visits.

“This’ll fix you up,” she said.

And then she was on her knees, administering a fifteen-unit shot. The relief came instantly—a fleeting high that could trick you into believing the disease was worth the reward.

When I opened my eyes again, I found Aunt Lindsey in full nurse mode, cutting my jeans open with a pair of scissors, tossing away the makeshift tourniquet, dousing the wound with rubbing alcohol and covering it with gauze. I did my best not to grimace.

“That should hold off any infection,” she said.

I watched her pack away her gear, then flit around the kitchen, brewing tea and arranging an assortment of biscuits on a badly tarnished tray.

“That’s just to tide you over,” she said, setting the tray in front of me and taking a seat. “Now talk.”

I started and stopped a half dozen times before I made it to the end. There was so much I couldn’t say, so many questions I couldn’t answer. I still couldn’t remember any of what happened before I woke up on that rock. I didn’t know who killed Anthony, didn’t know if I’d been there when it happened or if I’d run off beforehand. I couldn’t say for sure that it hadn’t been me wielding the knife.

“That’s an easy one,” Aunt Lindsey told me. “You didn’t stab that man.”

“Because I don’t have it in me?”

She nodded.

“When you were ten or eleven, I took you out on a fishing boat. I’m not much of a fisherwoman myself, but it’s a useful skill in this part of the world, and I thought I should let you try. You know what you did? You went around setting everyone’s bait free.”

I shook my head.

“You didn’t know Anthony,” I said. “He was maddening. He could drive people to—”

“That doesn’t matter,” she interrupted. “The evidence points to someone else.”

I looked at her as if she’d just posed me a riddle.

“What evidence?”

“You said the power was cut, right?”