didn’t say a single angry word—nothing of how frightened she’d been, the tears she’d cried, the rage she’d felt when she saw his car pull into the drive and he emerged from it unscathed. She had smiled sweet acceptance of his explanation and shamefaced apology, had made him breakfast, then insisted he go sleep off his headache in an upstairs guestroom, well away from the sound of vacuum cleaners, telephones, and Laura’s stereo.
When he awoke, she and Laura were gone, along with a sizable withdrawal from their joint savings. No note, no nothing.
He called her family and his; he called all their friends, all of Laura’s friends; but she’d covered her tracks too well. She stayed away eight days, and when he came home from the office that ninth day, he found a drink waiting by his chair, their dinner in the oven, Laura upstairs talking to her friends on the phone, everything normal.
“Oh God, thank you, Jesus!” he’d said, holding her tightly as if he never meant to let her get beyond his fingertips ever again. “I was so damned scared you weren’t coming back.”
“Were you?” she’d asked. “How’d it feel, darlin’?”
From that night forward, despite his continued pronouncements about what a real man did or didn’t do, if he was going to be more than an hour late, he always found a way to call her.
Yet here it was, almost fourteen hours since anyone had seen him and not a peep. Joyce Ashe had driven her home and offered to stay the night, but Sunny had sent her off to search the house one more time. Sometime before dawn, she changed clothes and lay down on the bed. She hadn’t expected to sleep, yet she did eventually drift off for an hour or two.
Now she circled back to the portable phone there on the table and willed it to ring.
When it continued silent, she pulled the cellular from her pocket and hit the redial button.
“District Attorney’s office,” said a perky voice.
“It’s me again, Suanna. Put me through to Lucius?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Osborne, but he’s down talking to Sheriff Horton about doing something now instead of waiting the whole twenty-four hours.”
“About fricking time,” said Sunny.
“Yes, ma’am. I know you must be just about worried to death. How ’bout I have him call you soon as he comes back?”
“Thanks, Suanna.”
When the house phone finally rang about twenty minutes later, she snatched it up eagerly. “Norman? Lucius?”
“Sorry, sweetie,” said Joyce Ashe. “Just wanted to see if you’d heard anything since we talked.”
“Nothing except that Lucius is trying to get Tom Horton off his fat ass and go do something. Are you at the office?”
“Yes. Norman and Bobby were supposed to show the Big Bear property this morning, so I came in to hold down the fort. You doing okay?”
“I guess so. Just going crazy with the waiting.”
“You want to come wait down here at the office? I could order in. I bet you haven’t eaten a thing since last night.”
“That’s okay, thanks. I keep thinking maybe he did try to walk home with the moon so bright last night. He’s always been a fool for moonlight. And maybe he took a tumble. He could come walking in any minute, all banged up and cussing the state for not having guardrails on this road. Right?”
“I’ll bet that’s it,” Joyce said sturdily. “Probably twisted his ankle or something. The sooner they start really looking for him, the quicker they’ll find him.”
“Thanks, Joyce. I’ll call you soon as I hear anything, okay?”
“Sure, sweetie.”
Sunny was glad to ring off. She’d always liked Joyce, liked her, that is, in that slightly condescending way of someone higher up the pecking order. The Ashes had built a good business, but Norman’s father had been buying and selling land in these hills before Bobby Ashe was a cinder in his daddy’s eye. When the big boom started, Norman had seen the opportunities first and had jumped in fast enough to get a lock on the prime pieces of Lafayette real estate. No one else came close to matching his volume of sales, although the Ashes were head and shoulders above their lesser competitors. Until recently, it had been easy to socialize with Joyce. Since the merger, though, she felt so much apprehension that it was hard to act natural around her.
“Don’t worry about it, darlin’,” Norman kept telling her. “Bobby and Joyce, it’s not like they’re going to drown. He’s a big boy, and anytime you want to swim in the big pond, you can’t whine if you get a little wet.”
TUESDAY, 10:05 A.M.
Joyce Ashe sighed as she hung up her phone. The longer Norman Osborne stayed missing, the harder it was not to expect the worst. With so many out looking for him last night, if he had indeed taken the tumble Sunny was now hoping for, he must have been knocked out pretty bad not to have heard them. She couldn’t say that to Sunny, of course, not in the state she was in. Best to keep it positive and upbeat.
How he even got out of the room without Sunny noticing was the biggest mystery. It was like they were joined at the hip these last two or three months. Sunny had been Norman’s secretary in the early years, even had her own real estate license, which she’d kept updated so she could step in when he was shorthanded; but ever since her hot flashes began, she’d started showing up with Norman every time he dropped by the office here in Cedar Gap, taking notes on her steno pad almost like she was suspicious that things were going too much her and Bobby’s way during this transition period.
“Just getting my hand back in,” she’d said. “You and Bobby seem to have so much fun working together, it makes me see what I’ve missed out there on the tennis courts and ski slopes.”
Joyce sure hoped this was just a passing phase and that Sunny would go back to the tennis courts once her
