late.”
“That’s not much to get frantic over.”
“I know. I tried to get her to tell me where she had to go, who she was seeing, but she wouldn’t say. Hannah can be… well, she can be stubborn sometimes.”
Yeah, I thought, I’ll bet. “I don’t suppose she said anything about the phone call either?”
“No. As soon as I poured the gas into her tank, she drove off.” He frowned, as if he’d just remembered something. “There was a sleeping bag in the back seat,” he said.
“Sleeping bag?”
“Yes. I noticed it just before she drove away. She’s not the kind to go out camping, not Hannah. It must have belonged to her late husband. But what was she doing with it in her car?”
I shook my head; there was nothing to be gained by trying to answer questions like that. “Was that the last time you saw or spoke to her?”
“The last time, yes.”
I pulled one of the chairs out from the table and straddled it with my arms resting on its back. “She called me, too, on Friday night,” I said, “and left a message on my answering machine. I don’t know what time-she didn’t say-but it had to have been before eight-thirty. That was when I got home from Oroville and checked the machine.”
Runquist quit pacing. “Why would she call you? You live in San Francisco; how could you do anything for her that I couldn’t?”
Another rhetorical question. I said, “All she said was that she wanted me to get in touch with her right away and that it was important.”
“Did you try to call her that night?”
“No. I was tired and I thought it was only that she was upset about her father. I called twice yesterday; no answer either time.”
Runquist finished his wine, went immediately to the refrigerator and emptied the bottle into his glass, and started to work on that.
I asked him, “Are you sure Mrs. Peterson hasn’t been home since Friday night?”
“Not positive, no. But I called again at ten-thirty that night and she wasn’t there. I should have gone over and waited for her but I didn’t. I didn’t go to her place until yesterday morning, after I tried calling twice more and still didn’t get an answer.”
“You have a key to her house?”
“Yes. We’re engaged, I told you that.”
“I’m just asking, Mr. Runquist.”
“Her bed hadn’t been slept in,” he said.
“Was everything in order inside the house?”
“As far as I could tell, it was.”
“Did you check to see if any of her clothes or other belongings were missing?”
“Yes,” he said. “Everything was still there. Her suitcases, too-I made sure of that.”
“What did you do then?”
“Talked to her neighbors. None of them had seen her. Then I came back here and called everyone I could think of that she knows; none of them had seen or talked to her either. That was when I started to get scared. I even drove up to the house we’re building in the mountains. When she still hadn’t turned up by six o’clock I went to the police. I told you on the phone what they said.”
“Did you check her house again this morning?”
“Before I called you,” he said. “Her bed still hadn’t been slept in, and nothing had been touched.”
I got up from the chair. “It might be a good idea if I had a look at the house,” I said. “Would you mind going over there with me, letting me in?”
“No, of course not. Anything you want.”
He finished his wine, plunked the glass down on the table, and led me out to the front porch. The jack-o’- lantern grinned at us from the table-an incongruity in the bright Sunday morning sunshine. It made me think, in spite of myself, of witches and goblins and things that went bump on dark nights.
Chapter 18
Hannah Peterson’s house was on Lovall Valley Road, out near the Buena Vista Winery. It was a modern ranch-style surrounded by a redwood fence, with plenty of lawn in front, an attached two-car garage, and a swimming pool glinting at the rear. On one side were acres of gold and scarlet grape vines stretching off into the distance; on the other side was a fenced pasture with a couple of horses grazing in it. A FOR SALE sign similar to the one at Runquist’s place was imbedded in the middle of the lawn.
I parked in the driveway, and Runquist and I got out and went over onto a porch studded with old oak wine barrels that had been turned into planters for ferns and other decorative plants. He used his key to unlock the front door. “Hannah!” he called as we stepped inside. “Hannah!” But his voice echoed emptily in the stillness.
Runquist took me from room to room. As he’d said earlier, nothing was out of order; the place, in fact, was immaculate-the kind of house I had never felt comfortable in because there was no personality to it, no sense of the individual who occupied it. Swedish Modern furniture, carpeting and drapes and accessories that complimented it perfectly; pictures hung just so, ashtrays and lamps and vases arranged just so, the tile and fixtures in the kitchen and bathrooms gleaming. No books or magazines anywhere; people who don’t read always put me off a little. It was like walking through a museum exhibit. The only thing that gave any indication that I was in a house belonging to Hannah Peterson was a huge, impressionistic painting of an ancient steam train that hung in the family room at the rear.
I opened closet and cabinet doors at random, with Runquist’s tacit consent. I did not expect to find anything, and I didn’t. The closets and cabinets were as clean and neat as the rest of the place.
In the master bedroom, the spread over the bed was rumpled and pulled down at one corner; that was the only thing I had noticed anywhere that was out of place. I asked Runquist, “How do you know Mrs. Peterson didn’t sleep here the past two nights? Was the bed like this on Friday?”
“Yes., She was lying down when I got here; that’s how the spread got pulled around like that. If she’d slept here either night she’d have made the bed when she got up. She’s compulsive that way.”
We started back to the front room. “Mrs. Peterson’s late husband left her this house, is that right?” I asked.
“Right. Joe Peterson. He built it for her.”
“Built it himself, you mean?”
“Yes. He was in the construction business.”
“Did you know him?”
“Only by name. He died three years ago. Heart attack; he was twenty-five years older than Hannah.”
We reentered the living room. I said, “You told me you talked to the neighbors yesterday. Just the immediate neighbors or what?”
“Everybody who lives within a block of here. There aren’t that many; this is almost the country out here. None of them saw her at any time on Friday night.”
“Does she normally park her car in the driveway?”
“No. Inside the garage.”
I nodded, and he moved away from me in that restless way of his and started a turn around the immaculate living room. Only it wasn’t quite as immaculate as I’d first thought; I noticed now, as Runquist paced in front of the fireplace, that in the middle of the hearth there was a small pile of ashes and charred paper overlain with cigarette butts. The rest of the bricks in there had been swept clean.
I went over and knelt down and poked through the pile. Some of the pieces of paper were not completely charred; they were glossy-like the remains of photographs that had been torn up and then set afire. I fished out the largest of the unburnt pieces. It was the bottom third of a color snapshot, showing the legs of a man and a woman
