“Can’t you check them from here?” Sandra asked.
“Silver Acres has its own message system. I don’t think my messages can be checked remotely. If so, I haven’t figured out how to do it.”
“I can check my messages remotely. I’ll go with you.”
“Good. Then all of us can have dinner together in the Silver Acres dining room, You, Winston, Mark and me.”
“If he’s there.”
“I already ate dinner,” Winston said.
“But I bet you would like some ice cream,” I said.
“Can I have chocolate ice cream?”
Maybe this was serendipity because it would bring Sandra and Mark together.
Chapter 29
We took two cars. In spite of local rush-hour traffic we made the trip to Silver acres in ten minutes. We both parked in the parking lot near my building. My building contains four apartments and residents of several buildings use this lot, but extra parking spaces are available for visitors. Mark’s car wasn’t there.
The sun was still up, its rays slanting through the evergreen trees in the small woods between the parking lot and the buildings. The air was pleasantly cool, neither the cold of winter nor the heat of summer. We walked the short distance to my apartment, with Winston checking out several squirrels and a rabbit we encountered along the way.
Once inside, I went to my telephone and punched in the code for the answering service. The female, recorded voice informed me enthusiastically that I had two messages. The first one was from Tess, asking whether I, or Mark and I, were available to eat dinner with her in the dining room. The second message, I was told, was from an unknown number, meaning outside Silver Acres.
Mark’s voice said, “Hi, Lillian. I’m not going to be there for dinner tonight. I got a call from Donna, saying that she had some new information on the case, so I’m going to meet her for dinner. I’ll see you when I see you. Don’t wait up.”
The last was said facetiously. I hung up the phone and turned to Sandra.
“Well?” she said.
“Mark is meeting Donna for dinner because he thinks she has information for him. He’s not supposed to do this. Burt told him not to talk to her.” Of course that was a minor problem if Donna meant him harm.
Sandra’s expression showed pure panic. “Where is he meeting her?”
“He didn’t say. It may be totally innocent.” I didn’t really believe this and was already wondering how we could find them.
“Gogi, you read Donna’s poem. There’s nothing innocent about her. She’s going to kill Mark. We’ve got to stop her.”
But how? “Let’s call Albert and see if he’s free. He and I can run up to Bethany and try to find them.”
“Dad has a date tonight. I know because I talked to him last night. Besides, I’m going to go.”
“What about Winston?”
“We’ll take him with us. Or he can stay here with you and I’ll go.”
“You can’t go alone,” I said. “You don’t know your way around Bethany or where Donna’s apartment is.” I wasn’t about to be left out of this.
“Can we take your car? Mine isn’t running very well.”
“Of course.” My car was old, but it ran well. And it was roomier than Sandra’s.
“We’ll have to put the car-seat in it. Winston, where are you? We’re going for a ride in Great-Grandma’s car.”
Winston appeared from the sunroom where he had been playing with a yellow Volkswagen I had bought him. He was always ready for a ride in a real car.
“Where are my keys?” I asked. “I’d lose my head if it weren’t screwed on.” I kept them in a cupboard, but I evidently hadn’t gotten them that far when we came in. I began a frantic search for them.
“Winston, did you take Great-Grandma’s keys?” Sandra asked.
Winston ran back to the sunroom and returned with my key ring. “I didn’t lose your keys,” he said.
It took us another five minutes to get ready. Most of that time Sandra spent trying to get Winston to go potty even though he said he didn’t need to. Then she transferred the car seat from her Toyota to my Mercedes. Finally, we were ready to go. I asked Sandra to drive.
As we drove, Sandra told me how to check her messages from my cell phone. She didn’t have any. Traffic was heavy but moving. Sandra was impatient and I wanted to warn her about following too closely, but sometimes grandmothers have to keep quiet. I checked her messages again just before we got to Bethany. Still nothing.
Once in Bethany I gave her directions on how to get to Donna’s apartment. We pulled into Donna’s residential street, which was parked solid with cars.
“There’s Mark’s car,” Sandra said.
She stopped abruptly beside the car, our bodies jerking forward as they obeyed a law of physics. I turned around and saw that Winston had fallen asleep, his head leaning to one side. Even the jerk hadn’t awakened him. We were 100 feet from Donna’s apartment.
“I’ll check the car and the apartment,” I said. “You can look for a parking place.”
“I’m going to keep you in sight,” Sandra said. “Don’t go into the apartment without me.”
She remained double-parked after I exited the car. I tried the passenger-side door to Mark’s car. It was unlocked, as usual. I stuck my head inside and saw his beeper, lying on the front seat where it could be taken by anybody who wanted it. So he hadn’t gotten Sandra’s message. I didn’t see anything else of interest.
I looked for Donna’s car as I walked to the door of her apartment, but I didn’t see it. No light shone through the window from her main room. I rang the doorbell, not expecting Donna to answer. She didn’t. Remembering that the door had been unlocked when Mark and I were there, I tried the door handle. It didn’t budge.
Sandra had driven to the front of Donna’s building. I walked back to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. I said, “There’s no sign of life.”
Sandra threw up her arms in frustration. “What do we do now?”
“Put out an APB,” I said, but it was a hollow joke. Then I thought of something more practical. “Drive around the block, slowly, so I can look for Donna’s car.”
Sandra did that, but Donna’s car was nowhere in sight. What now? So far, we had been engaged in a flurry of activity, but not much thinking. It was time to think. For several minutes I tried to get my brain into gear while Sandra chattered, nervously. Then I had an idea.
“I think they might be at Club Cavalier,” I said.
“Club Cavalier?” Sandra asked, incredulously. “Why in the world would they go there?”
“Just a hunch.” I couldn’t explain it in a few words. “But we’ve got nothing to lose. If they aren’t there we’ll check some of the restaurants in town.”
I gave Sandra directions on how to get to Club Cavalier. Traffic had thinned out and it didn’t take us very long.
While we were driving, Sandra said, “I can’t understand why Mark would go with Donna to a place like that.”
“Because he’s trying to get information; because he’s trying to clear himself. Rest assured that if we find them there it’s because Donna suggested it, not him.” Sandra had been showing signs of wanting Mark back. I hoped this trip wouldn’t change her mind because she held a low opinion of strip joints. “Maybe I’m all wet,” I said. “Maybe they’re not there at all.”
When we arrived at Club Cavalier we cruised through the parking lot, looking for Donna’s Chevrolet. It wasn’t near the front door, where most of the cars were parked at this hour. I told Sandra to go around the side of building, to the additional parking.
We found Donna’s car in the back corner of the lot. I verified the license plate number to make sure it was
