“The more the merrier,” he said and wondered how Deborah felt about house dogs. Mr. Kezzie gave two of his hounds the run of his house and he had never heard her speak against it. Their own house might be different, though.
At the police station, Dwight left Cal happily chattering with the desk sergeant who refereed their Pop Warner games while he went into the chief’s office.
“Jonna’s gone missing?” Paul Radcliff asked in disbelief when Dwight explained why he was back.
Dwight shrugged. “Cal says he hasn’t seen her since she drove him to school yesterday morning. Mrs. Shay hasn’t heard from her, and her boss out at the Morrow House says she didn’t come in today the way she was supposed to.”
“Still and all—”
“Look, Paul. Jonna and I may have our differences, but she’s a good mother. Cal says she’s never left him alone 4 before and you know how protective she is. Overprotec-tive at times.”
“Yeah. Jimmy said she almost didn’t sign the permission slip for him to play football. She thought it was too rough.”
“No way would she go off and leave him alone this long.”
“Okay. I’ll notify the highway patrol to be on the look-out for her car. A blue Honda, right?”
“So far as I know.” He stepped to the doorway and called to Cal. “Your mom still have that blue Accord?”
Cal nodded. He looked so anxious again that Dwight gestured for him to come join them and he laid a reassuring hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. Chief Radcliff’s going to find her for us.”
“Sure thing,” Radcliff said. “Bet you a nickel she had a flat tire on one of those snowy back roads that didn’t get plowed yet. We’ll check ’em all out. I’ve got your dad’s cell number and I’ll call as soon as we find her.”
Back at the house, Cal looked all around to make sure no one was watching—“Mother says to keep it secret”—then retrieved a spare house key from beneath a rock beside the front porch steps and carefully replaced it as soon as he had unlocked the door.
The house felt cool, and when Dwight automatically checked the thermostat in the hall, he found it set at sixty-five degrees.
“We turn it down during the day if we’re both gone,”
Cal said. “Saves on heating oil.” He hurried past Dwight, through the kitchen, and out to the utility room to the dog’s crate. “I better let Bandit out for a few minutes.”
More cold air swept in when he opened the door. The little dog bounded outside and immediately headed for the bushes along the back fence.
Upstairs, Cal pulled his suitcase, a bright red rollerboard, from the closet and rummaged through his dresser for the clothes he wanted to put in it.
“Pajamas, underwear, and socks,” said Dwight, opening drawers. “Your heavy blue sweater and maybe your sneakers, too, since we didn’t get any snow down there.”
“I’ll go let Bandit in and pack up some food for him,”
said Cal.
While his son went down to take care of the dog, Dwight packed the things he thought Cal would need.
“And don’t forget your backpack if you have home-work,” he called down the stairs.
As he zipped shut the red bag, he remembered toothbrush and toothpaste and went to find them in the bathroom next door.
He had no intention of snooping, but the door to Jonna’s bedroom was open and he saw an unfamiliar picture of her with Cal that must have been taken around Christmastime because they both wore red sweaters and Jonna held a sprig of red-berried holly.
He pushed the door wider to take a closer look at Cal’s snaggletoothed grin and saw that Jonna’s bed, a chaste double bed, was neatly made with nothing out of place.
Still the perfect housekeeper—unlike Deborah, who thought it was a waste of good time to do more than pull up the covers on a bed you were going to crawl back into that same night.
Not that Deborah was a slob; merely that she never worried about a little disorder. Their house was for living, not a place to be kept pristine enough to show to prospective buyers at a moment’s notice.
A second framed picture was a family snapshot of Jonna, her older sister Pamela, and their parents that had been taken when the girls were still quite young. Dwight had almost forgotten it and he looked closely at the man who had accidentally shot himself before Jonna’s second birthday.
Cal’s grandfather. There seemed to be nothing physical of Mr. Shay in either daughter. The way Jonna looked now, she could almost have posed for this old picture of her mother. Dwight set it back on the dresser, obscurely pleased that Cal took after his side of the family.
He looked around again. There was very little of the personal about this room beyond those two photographs.
Everything else was tidied away into closed drawers and closets. It could be an ad for a furniture store. Again, he thought of the snapshots that cluttered the wide ledge of the headboard on the bed that he and Deborah shared. It was a jumble of brothers and nieces and nephews, of Cal and him laughing in the rain, of her mother and Mr.
Kezzie on a long-ago summer day, of Mr. Kezzie and his own mother dancing at his and Deborah’s wedding less than a month ago.
He was pulled from those thoughts by the barking dog. Stuffing Cal’s toothbrush and comb into a side pocket of the rollerboard, Dwight went downstairs.
