wasn’t uphill. Shahla walked slowly, in time to the throbbing pulse in her head. Food would help, she knew. There was food at home.
She arrived at her house and opened the door with her key. Inside she was greeted with silence. “Mom,” she called. No answer. She looked at her watch. It was a little after eight. At least her mother should be up by now, even on a Sunday morning. She went into the kitchen. A few dirty dishes sat on the counter, but they were not breakfast dishes.
Shahla went upstairs. Her mother’s bed was made. She went into Kirk’s bedroom. His bed was also made. That was indicative. He wasn’t known for making his bed in the morning. That bed hadn’t been slept in. Where had they gone? As of yesterday morning, her mother had not had any plans to go anywhere.
She checked for messages on the house answering machine. There were none. She picked up the phone and called her mother’s cell phone number. She got voice mail. She said, “Mom, it’s me, Shahla. I’m home. Give me a call.” Then she checked the garage, just to make sure. The car wasn’t there.
Her mother apparently hadn’t been very worried about her, but she should at least have left her a note. Shahla looked around, but there definitely wasn’t any note. Well, she wasn’t going to worry about them, either. She would get a call from her mother or they would show up, sooner or later. Meanwhile, she would fix herself something substantial to eat.
Maybe her mother had told a neighbor where she was going. They were good friends with the Thompsons, who lived across the street and three doors north. Shahla didn’t know their phone number, so she walked over to their house and rang the bell. There was no answer. Nobody was home this morning.
Should she call Detective Croyden and tell him about the phone call last night? He wouldn’t be working today. She didn’t want to deal with anybody else. She would call him tomorrow. Anyway, the caller was probably just one of her friends playing a joke on her. Who else would know her cell phone number and her street? She had probably overreacted last night.
Shahla had a desire for action. She had been sunning herself on the beach since early afternoon. She was all alone. Jane was out of town. Lacey’s house had looked empty when Shahla walked past it. She had rung the doorbell, just in case, but there was no answer. Her mother and Kirk were who knew where. She had come to the beach because she wasn’t going to stay in the house alone any longer on a beautiful late summer day.
She should go for a workout run for cross-country, and she had worn her running shoes with that in mind, but she still had a headache, although it was improving. And she didn’t feel like doing any more homework. She felt naked without her phone, but she had left tracks so that her mother could find her. She had written a note, saying where she was. Her mother couldn’t accuse her of disappearing again. In fact, she could accuse her mother of that very thing.
She looked north along the beach and saw people playing beach volleyball, near the long pier that provided a walking path out over the water. She was too short to be good at volleyball. She was much better at running. It looked as if all the players were girls. She remembered something about a beach volleyball tournament for amateur females this weekend.
Some of the players were undoubtedly from the Bonita Beach High team. Joy should be playing. But Joy would never play volleyball again. Shahla wondered whether Martha was playing. Martha. The question of whether Martha had anything to do with Joy’s murder was unresolved. Shahla had talked to Tony about it, but nothing had ever been done, as far as she knew.
She walked along the beach path to the volleyball courts. She saw a couple of girls from the Bonita Beach team, girls she barely knew. Then she saw Martha. Martha was playing a match. She was teamed with another girl from Bonita Beach, whose name Shahla didn’t know. Martha’s bikini was too small, but Shahla had to admit, grudgingly, that she had a better figure than Shahla had previously given her credit for. In spite of the acne on her face. She and her partner seemed to be holding their own against another team.
Shahla watched the match for a few minutes. In two-person beach volleyball, it was necessary for each player to be able to do everything well: serve, dig, set, spike and block. There were no specialists here. Martha’s game had a lot of room for improvement, but she showed promise as she sprawled in the sand after digging out a hard spike with one arm. She got up in time to run to the net, jump, and hit her partner’s set for a winner.
Martha was playing better than she had any right to be. Shahla walked to a table set up on the sand. A lady at the table must be in charge of the tournament. She was doing several things at once; talking to players clustered around her, writing down scores that were being relayed to her by the referees, and making occasional announcements concerning court assignments, using a megaphone.
When she was relatively free of her duties for a moment, Shahla asked her, “How are the Bonita Beach girls doing?”
“Not bad.” The woman smiled at her. “They’ve won a couple of matches already.” She referred to her score sheets. “Dembroski and Fulton won their first two matches.”
Martha’s last name was Dembroski.
The woman continued, “It’s such a shame that Joy Tanner was killed. She and Martha were signed up as a team for this tournament. They would have been the favorites.”
Shahla was startled. Joy and Martha a beach volleyball team? But of course. They had grown up together. They knew each other’s every thought. It was logical. In fact, Joy had said something about that to Shahla. Shahla had immediately repressed it, as she had tried to do whenever Joy mentioned Martha.
Most upsetting was that it probably destroyed any motive Martha had for murdering Joy. You didn’t murder your beach volleyball partner, especially when she might be your ticket to greatness. Shahla turned away from the table in disgust. She had willed Martha to be a murder suspect, but what one wished for and what one received were often two different things.
Shahla turned around and walked back toward the beach path. Fifty yards down the path she saw somebody who seemed familiar. The short, dark hair, the compact figure. He looked like Tony. He was walking away from her so she couldn’t see his face. And he wasn’t on crutches. It couldn’t be Tony. Her imagination was playing tricks on her.
CHAPTER 32
Tony didn’t know whether all this walking was good for his knee, but he couldn’t stop himself. After he walked the length of Bonita Beach twice, he drove home and checked with the police. Still no news of Shahla. He ate something-he didn’t notice what-in his empty townhouse. So empty he imagined he heard echoes as he moved through the rooms. Maybe he should call Josh and apologize. He didn’t know where Josh was staying, but at least he had his cell phone number.
After staring at his own phone for a while, he decided not to call. He couldn’t face any more rejection right now. Without a plan, he walked out his front door. He went toward the Hotline office. Distances were not great in Bonita Beach. He walked to the building that housed the Hotline, and then he walked around it, observing the shoppers who were patronizing the adjacent stores. He didn’t go up to the office, itself. That morning, when he had been perusing the Green Book, it had felt eerie without Shahla there. If something happened to her, he was sure he could never go to the office again.
He walked back to his townhouse, getting home after dark. What now? There was no place he wanted to go. His knee was too sore to walk anymore. He couldn’t even watch television because Josh had taken the TV set. He forced himself to get a pad and pen and sit at his table to formulate a plan of action. He covered the pages with doodles, but nothing intelligible.
Shahla ate a dinner that she fixed at home. Most of it consisted of leftover lasagna, nuked in the microwave. It didn’t taste great, but it would keep her alive. She knew some of the rudiments of cooking, but it wasn’t much fun
