“You sure you don’t want to stay over with us tonight?” Sandy Radcliff asked when the last biscuit had been eaten and Dwight had refused the offer of dessert. “Jimmy can bunk in with Nick and you could have his room.”
“Thanks, Sandy, but I ought to check on Cal’s dog.
Besides, if there’s any chance at all that Jonna might bring him home tonight . . .”
It was only eight-thirty and Sandy and Paul were good friends, but Dwight was too beat to spend the evening making small talk.
“You go and get a good night’s rest,” Sandy said.
“Things will look better in the morning, right, hon?”
“Sure thing,” said Paul. “I’ll call if we hear anything.”
“Thanks, pal,” he said and trudged out through the freezing rain to his truck for the short drive over to Jonna’s house, which was still dark and empty when he got there.
The stone with the door key beneath it was frozen to the ground. He pried it up, then nearly slipped going up the ice-glazed steps. All the same, when he had unlocked the front door, he went back into the rain and sleet to replace the key in the weary hope that Cal might find his way back and need it.
Inside, Cal’s rollerboard and backpack lay at the foot of the stairs just where they had left them. Only hours ago.
It seemed more like a week.
Bandit gave a welcoming bark from his crate in the utility room and Dwight let him out into the backyard for a few minutes, then dumped dog food into an empty bowl. As soon as the terrier finished eating, he trotted through the house and up the stairs to Cal’s room.
Dwight followed.
The thermostat was still set at sixty-five, and he didn’t bother turning it up because he never slept well in a warm room.
He had intended to find pillows and blankets and bed down on the couch, but there was Cal’s unmade bed with Bandit curled up at the foot in what must be his usual place, so after using the bathroom, Dwight shucked off his jacket, pants, and shirt, checked that the safety was on before he put his gun under the pillow, then switched off the light and crawled in beneath the comforter.
It felt so good to lie down and stretch out that he let his mind go blank with sheer exhaustion while frozen raindrops beat against the window outside.
He was almost asleep when he remembered the conflicting reports of how Jonna was dressed today. A neigh-7 bor down the street had said she was wearing a red jacket and a white toboggan when she left home in midmorning on Thursday. The next-door neighbor said she had on a blue hooded parka when she took Cal this afternoon.
Despite his protesting muscles, he heaved himself out of bed, switched on lights, and went into Jonna’s room.
There was no red jacket in her closet.
With Bandit at his heels, he went back downstairs and checked out both the front closet and the coat hooks in the utility room.
No red jacket. No blue parka either.
So where had she changed coats? At her work?
Too tired to keep worrying at the puzzle, he went back to Cal’s room. Within minutes he was sound asleep.
He awoke at first light the next morning from troubled dreams, his T-shirt and the sheet beneath him damp with sweat. Sometime during the night, he had pushed off the comforter, but it was not enough. The room was inexpli-cably hot and stuffy. He rolled over and saw that the door was closed even though he had left it open. Hot air rushed up through the floor vent beneath the window.
And where was the dog?
Automatically, his hand went to the gun beneath his pillow. With all his senses on full alert, he slid on his pants and eased open the door. The house was silent, but a welcome rush of cooler air swept past him.
“Jonna?” he called. “Cal?”
No answer.
Bandit barked from the foot of the stairs and he hurried down, the gun still in his hand.
The front door stood slightly ajar, which explained why the heating system was working overtime. Chilled by more than the cold north wind whipping through, Dwight clearly remembered locking that door behind him when he came in last night. And something else was wrong. His eyes swept the entry area.
Cal’s backpack was still there but his wheeled suitcase was unzipped and the sweater that Dwight had packed for him was now gone.
Jonna must have come back during the night, heard him snoring, and took what she came for without waking him. Surely it was not for a sweater alone?
He walked through the house to see what else she might have taken. He had no idea what clothes she owned, but there did not seem to be any gaps in her closet. All the drawers were still closed and did not appear to have sustained a hasty rummage. After a thorough examination of the house, the only other sign that she had been there was the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.
The sliding mirror was half open, and despite his exhaustion, he was almost positive that he would have noticed had it been that way when he splashed water on his face last night. There were empty spaces on the glass
