“Thanks,” Zachary tried to put all the appreciation he could into his voice. “I know it’s a pain in the neck. Hopefully, I’ll have a new car and be able to drive soon. Once everything goes through.”
“Yeah. Then hopefully you can avoid getting yourself killed.”
She said it flippantly, but he hoped she was right. He’d had enough of threats and near-death experiences. If Kenzie were right, and the case that he was supposed to drop was the Bond case, then he needed to take care in his approach. Walking up to Spencer’s door might not be the best approach.
Kenzie picked him up in good time, and they met Molly outside the house.
“Do you have a key?” Zachary asked. “I’m not sure ringing the doorbell is particularly safe.”
She frowned at him, shaking her head. “How is ringing the doorbell not safe?” she challenged. “You think you’re going to get electrocuted?”
“No,” Zachary said lamely, as they walked up the sidewalk. He dropped his voice so that Molly wouldn’t hear as she marched up the sidewalk ahead of them. “More likely stabbed in the eye.”
Kenzie glared at him. “That’s not funny.”
“No.”
Molly rang the doorbell. When there was no answer after a few tries, she called both Isabella’s and Spencer’s cell phones, but couldn’t get ahold of either one of them. She looked at Zachary.
“I don’t know where they could be. They didn’t say that they were going on vacation or running any errands. They both like their routines, and this is where they always are in the afternoon.”
“You don’t have a key?”
Molly finally produced one. “I never use it. One of them is always here…”
“She gave it to you in case of emergencies, right? And I think this is an emergency.”
“Just because they’re not answering the door, that doesn’t mean that it’s an emergency,” Molly disagreed. She fit the key into the lock and turned it. “You don’t think that she’s done something, do you?”
“You said she’d been doing better.”
“She has. I’m… just not sure…” Molly picked up the pace and hurried as quickly as she could without losing her poise. They reached the studio right behind her. It was empty.
“Where is she?”
“Maybe she’s sick. In bed. Or in the shower.” Kenzie rattled off a few possibilities.
Molly looked suddenly drawn and gray, sick with worry. “She would have told me if she was sick…”
Zachary led the way toward the master bedroom, and Molly and Kenzie followed. It was obvious that she wasn’t in the bedroom either. The bed was neatly made. It hadn’t been touched since Spencer had stretched the sheets taut that morning.
But there was something different. There was an easel set up in front of the window on a carpet of newspapers, the sunlight streaming from outside. Zachary walked around it to see what painting Isabella had been working on. The canvas was untouched.
The three of them stood there, looking around at the rest of the room. Looking for anything that was out of place or might give an indication of where Isabella might have gone.
It all looked as it had last time Zachary had been there, other than the easel. Spencer’s side of the closet neat and orderly. Isabella’s side looking like a bomb had gone off. Just as it had the day of Declan’s disappearance, Spencer’s light summer jacket hung in a prominent position.
Spencer wouldn’t go out without his jacket. That was what Isabella had said. Of course, it was winter, and he would be wearing a heavier coat at those temperatures.
His blue jacket.
The one that had hung in his closet to give him an alibi the day of the murder.
When Zachary had visited the house the first time, that blue jacket had been hanging on a peg at the front door. It didn’t belong in the bedroom closet. That was why it stood out in Isabella’s memory.
She hadn’t been able to paint the color blue since Declan drowned.
“The blue coat,” Zachary said, pointing to it. “He’s copying the day that Declan drowned. He had put the coat there so that Isabella would think he was home, but he wasn’t. He is the one who took Declan from the back yard.” Zachary looked at his watch. “Declan disappeared from the house around four o’clock and died at about five.”
“What do you mean he’s copying the day of the crime?” Molly demanded. “Why would he do that?”
“Because it worked the first time, and because he’s obsessive. If it worked the first time, then he has to copy every detail for it to work again.”
“To work again? Declan is dead. Are you saying he’s having some kind of breakdown?”
Zachary stared at her. How could she not understand what was going on?
But Kenzie had figured it out. She grabbed Zachary by the arm.
“We’d better find them,” she said urgently.
Zachary nodded. He and Kenzie led the way back out of the house. Out the back door. They followed the fresh prints in the snow. Molly followed behind, murmuring in confusion that she still didn’t understand what was going on.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The snow made it difficult to move quickly to the pond. The sun was already dipping below the horizon. Zachary’s heart raced as they followed the trail in the snow to the little pond. It was frozen over. Spencer was in the middle, working at breaking a hole in the ice with a hatchet. Isabella lay beside him, half-sitting and half-reclined.
“Izzy!” Molly shouted out, finally getting an inkling of the danger her daughter was in.
Kenzie prevented her from dashing out onto the ice. “It’s not safe,” she warned. “We don’t know how thin the ice is. You could all go into the freezing water.”
Molly froze, her eyes wide, wanting to rescue her daughter, but unable to do anything.
“Stay back!” Spencer ordered, looking up from his work.
“How’s it going, Spencer?” Zachary asked casually, as if they had just run into each other by coincidence on the street.
“Just stay back and leave me alone. I have to do this.”
“I talked to Dr.
