the vehicle.’
Hattie Spencer briefly examined the paper McCabe offered, then looked up at him. ‘May I take my groceries inside, or do you want to search those as well?’
‘Yes, but please don’t take anything else. I’ll have one of my men help you.’
‘Don’t bother, Detective.’ She gathered up half a dozen plastic bags from Hannaford’s and carried them to the kitchen door McCabe had used to leave the house three days before.
From the kitchen, Hattie Spencer called Philip’s cell. ‘The police are here. That detective McCabe and some others. They want to search my car. The Lexus.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Did they show you a warrant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alright. Don’t say anything to them. Nothing at all. I’ll call George Renquist. Then I’ll come back.’
Philip hung up. Hattie stood holding the dead phone for a minute. He sounded so calm. Philip always sounded calm. Finally she, too, hung up. She walked through the house and stood by the big front window watching the scene on the driveway.
She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. Her world, the one she had so carefully constructed, so carefully cared for, for twenty years, seemed to be closing in on her. The men outside with their cars and vans and official pieces of paper were storming the barricades, and there was nothing she could do about it. Across the street she could see that nosy little suck-up Ellen Markham staring from the front step of her house. She was going to love telling her money-grubbing lawyer husband all about it tonight at dinner. As well as her friends, whoever they might be.
‘Imagine!’ Hattie could hear them saying. ‘The police were at the Spencers’ half the day. I hear it has to do with the murder of that girl. Katie Dubois? What do you suppose they were looking for?’
Yes, by tonight it would be all over Portland. Hattie went to the burled walnut drinks cupboard and filled a cut crystal water goblet about halfway up with gin. She could take their snide innuendos. She was tougher than that. She walked back to the window with the drink and resumed her vigil as she sipped. She wondered what they were looking for, what they might find. What exactly did happen last week while she was up in Blue Hill? She had a feeling she might know.
Philip’s car, the black BMW, turned into the driveway. It stopped behind the car that blocked the Lexus. A uniformed cop directed Philip to park on the street. He did, but when he emerged his face showed that strange, quiet rage she knew so well. He walked over to McCabe and the pudgy lawyer McCabe had with him. Bert Lump. Philip said something. McCabe handed Philip the warrant. He looked at it and said something else. She guessed he was quietly threatening them. That was Philip’s way. Letting them know how many important people he knew. Then their attorney, George Renquist, arrived. George looked at the warrant and said something to Philip. Philip and George turned away from the police. George said something. Philip disagreed. He walked toward the house. The front door opened and closed. He walked past the drawing room and climbed the stairs. She called to him. ‘Philip?’ He looked down at her but said nothing. He walked to the bedroom and closed the door. Hattie returned to her post by the window, sipped her gin, and watched a tow truck pull the Lexus up and onto its bed. Then they drove it away.
40
Wednesday 6:00 P.M.
McCabe followed the Lexus back to the police garage, then went upstairs to the detectives’ bullpen to wait while Jacobi’s team did their thing. He spotted Jack Batchelder at his desk. Jack was holding a half-eaten meatball sandwich in two hands, a paper napkin tucked in his collar to protect his shirt. He looked up, midbite. ‘What d’ya need, Mike?’ he asked.
‘Those open missing persons cases I asked you to check? How’re you doing with that?’
Batchelder sighed. McCabe guessed he wasn’t happy having his dinner interrupted. Jack carefully wrapped the remains of his sandwich in the waxed paper it’d come in, wiped his hands on the napkin, then reached for a file on his desk.
‘Your upper lip,’ said McCabe.
‘What?’
‘Your upper lip. Tomato sauce.’ McCabe pointed to the same spot on his own lip.
Batchelder reddened, then swiped at his mouth with the napkin. ‘Better?’ he asked.
‘Perfect. Now, what did you find?’
‘At first, not a whole lot. I went through all our open missing persons cases for the last three years.’
‘No young blond female athletes?’
‘Nothing even close. So I e-mailed every other department in the state.’
‘And?’
‘We found one. Couple of hours ago MSP sent over the file. Young snowboarder named Wendy Branca turned up missing last December at Sunday River. She was never found. I haven’t had a chance to review the whole file yet.’
‘Blond?’
‘Yeah. Blond and beautiful.’
McCabe took the file from Batchelder. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Thanks, Jack. Good job.’ He went to his own desk, opened the file, and began reading. Wendy Branca was a twenty-four-year-old sales rep for WMND, a Portland country music station. She was indeed blond and beautiful — and an athlete. An expert and avid snowboarder, she was good enough to have been an instructor at Breckinridge, in Colorado, a couple of seasons after college.
Last December, before Christmas, Wendy and a couple of girlfriends went up to Sunday River for a weekend of boarding and prospecting for guys. Saturday night they headed for a place called Giggles, which featured a big bar scene for the twenty-something crowd. All three women started the evening off with a couple of appletinis. The idea of actually drinking something called an appletini made McCabe cringe. After that the women started circulating. They talked and danced with a bunch of different guys. At some point, no one knew exactly when, Wendy disappeared.
Her friends told detectives they hadn’t worried. They just assumed Wendy got lucky and left with someone. Not that unusual, they said. Wendy attracted men like flies, and she liked having fun. They figured she’d turn up at the motel either later that night or, if things clicked, sometime the next morning.
When she wasn’t back by 10:00 A.M., one of the friends started calling her cell. Each time the message kicked in right away. Still they weren’t worried. They figured she’d turned the phone off because she didn’t want to be bothered. They left Wendy’s stuff with the motel desk clerk, checked out, and headed to the mountain. At 5:00 P.M. they stopped back at the motel and discovered her stuff was still there. That’s when they called the Bethel police.
The local cops talked to the motel manager and everybody who worked at Giggles. No one at the bar remembered Wendy except for one of the bartenders and a guy who played guitar in the band. He remembered her because A, she was ‘a hottie,’ and B, she kept requesting Dixie Chicks songs. Seems he hated the Dixie Chicks. Neither the guitar player nor the bartender saw who she left with.
After twenty-four hours Wendy still hadn’t turned up. The Bethel cops ran out of ideas and called in the state police. Teams of MSP detectives interviewed every male who’d paid with a credit card at Giggles that night. They also showed Wendy’s picture around at every other bar and motel in the area to see if she’d been spotted anywhere else. She hadn’t. They broadened the search to include men who paid with a credit card either at the ski area for lift tickets or at condos or motels within a twenty-mile radius. Still nothing. They checked with Cingular, who showed no activity on Wendy’s phone since early Saturday evening. The phone had been turned off since then. Detectives interviewed every known family member, friend, and acquaintance plus all of Wendy’s former boyfriends and lovers. Still nothing.
A massive search of the area yielded no results either. According to a Press Herald reporter, Wendy Branca
