“You have to keep on the phone company, Abby.”
“Okay.”
“Love you, babe.”
“Love you, too, Marco.”
I hung up and unplugged the phone from the jack, then looked at the address Rafe had printed out. “Sixteen forty-three Gray Heron Drive, New Buffalo, Michigan. Can you pull it up on a Google map?”
In a few keystrokes, Rafe brought up a map, and I leaned over to study it. “Looks like about an hour’s drive from here.”
“I say we go check it out,” he said, starting to rise.
I pushed him back down. “Marco gave me firm instructions that I was not to let you talk me into leaving the apartment.”
“But I thought-”
I put my hand over his mouth. “Wait for it… Okay. I say we go check it out.”
“If you insist.”
This time, I drove the Corvette, but I took the precaution of wearing my black wool cap with my hair tucked up beneath it. I wasn’t about to take any chances of being spotted. With my hair color, it was like waving a red flag.
We headed north toward Lake Michigan, then took Route 20 around the bottom of the lake and crossed the Indiana state line into Michigan, following the Red Arrow Highway up to New Buffalo. Using the map Rafe had printed out, we located a development called Heron Cove, where hundreds of identical town houses were situated cheek by jowl on looping streets with a golf course at the center.
Deep into the development, I finally found Gray Heron Drive. The mailboxes were at the curbs, with brass numerals running vertically down thick wooden posts to indicate the addresses. I slowed in front of the mailbox marked 1643 and studied the two-story brick and cedar town house it belonged to.
“No lights on inside or out,” I said. “Either the owner isn’t home or is asleep.”
Rafe checked his watch. “It’s not even nine o’clock yet. I’ll go with not home.”
I parked in a visitor’s parking area down the block, and sat in the car, deciding what to do. Did I ring the bell and see if anyone answered the door? Talk to neighbors to find out the identity of the town house’s occupants? What would Marco do?
Rafe opened the door and got out.
“Where are you going?” I called.
“To see who lives at that address.”
I jumped out of the car, shut the door, and hurried after him. “We need a plan.”
“I don’t know the person who lives there,” Rafe called over his shoulder, “and she doesn’t know me, so what’s the harm in knocking on the door?”
“But the person might know me, and that might not be a good thing.”
“Then stay out of sight.”
Rafe was not a chip off Marco’s block; that was certain. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to talk to the neighbors first?”
“That’s the girly way to do it.” He started up the sidewalk to the front door of 1643, so I dashed for a nearby shrub and crouched behind it-in two inches of snow.
Rafe knocked, waited, rang the bell several times, and waited some more.
“No one’s home,” I called. “Let’s go.”
“What do you know?” he said. “It’s not locked.”
Unlocked door? No one answering? I knew what Marco would do. He’d phone the police. I peeked around the shrub and saw Rafe step inside the house.
Exactly what I would have done.
I jumped up and ran after him. “Wait, Rafe! Don’t touch anything!”
“Hello?” he called. “Anyone home? I’m coming in now.”
By the time I stepped inside, the younger Salvare was checking out the living room of the narrow, two-story home. “Look at that giant TV,” he said. “Someone has some big bucks.”
I left the door partway open in case we had to make a run for it. “Don’t touch anything with your bare fingers. You don’t want to leave prints.”
“I have a delivery,” Rafe called, standing in the kitchen doorway.
He used the edge of his jacket to flip the light switch on. I peered under his arm and saw a kitchen filled with high-end appliances-Bosch, Viking-with lots of black marble counter space and tall, cream-colored cabinets. On the island sat a glossy red dinner plate containing a half-eaten pork chop and a mound of mashed potatoes, with an open beer bottle beside it.
“Looks like someone didn’t clean his plate,” I said. I pulled up my coat sleeve and used my wrist to test the temperature of the bottle. Warm. I touched the potatoes with a knuckle. Cold.
Rafe used his jacket again to open a door and peer through the doorway. “One-car garage, no car.”
Front door was open, car was gone, and dinner was half eaten. “We’d better leave, Rafe. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“It’ll take just a moment to check out the upstairs.”
It took just a moment to fall off a cliff, too.
“Delivery,” Rafe announced again, leading the way up the oak staircase. He proceeded cautiously, pausing to listen every few steps as he repeated his call.
A clock in the entryway began to chime. When it struck ten, I realized my mistake. “Rafe, we’re on Eastern time here!” I whispered. “Someone could be asleep up there.”
“Too late now,” he whispered back, and stepped around a corner. Hearing nothing, I followed.
The first doorway opened into an opulent bathroom, with more black marble counters and double sinks, gold fixtures, a glassed-in shower-for-two, and a big Jacuzzi tub. I used a tissue to open a cabinet below one sink and saw the usual cleaning products, roll of paper towels, extra toilet paper, and the same beneath the other sink.
In a medicine cabinet in the side wall next to one sink I found an assortment of bandages, skin lotions, and over-the-counter cold remedies. The medicine cabinet on the opposite side had toothpaste, mouthwash, shaving cream, and men’s deodorant.
I pulled out the drawers below the under-sink cabinets, but save for traces of loose face powder, a few long, golden blond hairs, and smudges of lipstick, they’d been cleaned out.
“Looks like two people live here,” I said, “but it’s odd that all the woman’s products are gone and not the man’s.”
“Maybe she ran away with another guy,” Rafe said. “Maybe her husband hasn’t come home yet.”
“Maybe we should leave before he gets here.”
But Rafe was already through the next doorway into a bedroom decorated in beige and blue. “Don’t leave prints!” I reminded him.
“Nothing in the closet or dresser,” Rafe reported. “Must be a guest room.”
Across the hall was a second bedroom done in pinks and purples, silks and satins, with a plump, quilted silk head-board and a pile of furry throw pillows. I opened one of two closets opposite the bed to find a row of empty hangers. Rafe opened the other closet and found men’s clothing-jeans, plaid work shirts, corduroy jackets, and the like-most of it folded and stacked on shelving.
“The guy must work with his hands,” Rafe said. “No suits, ties, or dress shoes.”
He checked a drawer in the bedside table. “Magazine, box of tissues, phone book… Aw, look. A Valentine.” Rafe opened it, then showed it to me.
Beneath the verse was a signature scrawled in large, heavy handwriting: Tom.
Harding?
“Hello?” I heard a man call from downstairs. “Who’s up there?”
I glanced at Rafe in shock. He motioned for me to stay quiet. “Who’s down there?”
“You first,” came a male voice.
