you meet Davy Ladd, you should hear about some of it. I'm probably the only one who can tell you.'
When the banquet was finally over, Brandon and Diana Walker drove west across town. The evening had been surprisingly fun, and Diana was still giggling.
'You were absolutely great,' she told Brandon. 'I don't know why you've ever been spooked at the idea of talking to little old ladies. You charmed the socks off every one that got within spitting distance of you.'
Brandon grinned. 'There's nothing like a little sex in the afternoon to give a guy's sagging ego a boost. But it turns out they were a pretty nice bunch of little old ladies…'
'And men,' Diana added.
'And a few men,' Brandon corrected. 'The difference between the people we met tonight and most people is that the ones at the banquet all think I'm lucky to be able to be retired at age fifty-four. Everybody else thinks I'm either crazy or some kind of laggard.'
'They haven't seen your woodpile,' Diana said.
Their mood was still light, right up until they drove up to the house in Gates Pass. 'Damn it,' Brandon said. 'It looks like Lani left every light in the house burning. One of these days she'll have to pay her own utility bills. It's going to come as a real shock.'
Brandon hit the automatic door opener and the gate on the side of the house swung open. 'She also left her bike in the middle of the damn carport. What on earth is she thinking of?'
Diana sighed, dismayed to hear Brandon's mood change from good to bad in the space of a few yards of driveway. 'Stop the car,' she said. 'I'll get out and move the bike out of the way.'
She pushed the bike up to the front of the carport, giving Brandon enough room to park his Nissan next to her Suburban. No doubt the fragile mood of the evening was irretrievably broken. One way or another, children did that to their parents with astounding regularity.
The back door was unlocked, which most likely meant that Lani was home, but that was something else that would annoy her father. When Lani was home alone, she was supposed to keep the front and back doors locked.
Shaking her head, Diana went inside and discovered that Brandon was right. Almost every light in the house was blazing, but the note for Lani that Diana had left on the counter-the Post-it containing Davy's phone number and telling Lani to call him back-was still on the counter, exactly where Diana had left it.
Through years of mothering teenagers, Diana Ladd Walker had discovered that looking in the sink and checking the most recent set of dirty dishes was usually a good way of getting a handle on who all was home, how long they'd been there, and whether or not they had dragged any visitors into the house with them.
The evidence in the sink this time left Diana puzzled. Other than the pair of champagne glasses she and Brandon had left there earlier in the afternoon, there was nothing but a pair of rubber-handled kitchen tongs. Knowing it wasn't hers, Diana picked the utensil up and examined it under the light. The gripper part was somewhat scorched. It looked as though it had been used to cook meat of some kind, but there was nothing in the kitchen-no accompanying greasy mess-that gave Diana any hint of what that might have been.
As Diana automatically moved to the phone to check for messages, she could hear Brandon walking through the rest of the house, calling for Lani and switching off lights as he went. When Diana punched in the code, she found there were a total of five messages waiting for her. That bugged her. It was Saturday night. Couldn't she and Brandon even go out to dinner without having the whole world phone in their absence?
The first message was timed in at three twenty-one. 'Lani,' a female voice said. 'This is Mrs. Allison from the museum. If you aren't able to take your shift, you should always call in as soon as possible to let us know. I know tomorrow is scheduled to be your day off. If for some reason you aren't going to be able to make your next shift on Monday, please call in on Sunday if you can. If I'm not there, leave word on the machine.'
Lani hadn't made it to work? That didn't make sense. She had left for work. How could it be that she was absent? The next message, at six-eleven, moments after Diana and Brandon had left for the banquet, was from Jessica Carpenter.
'Lani, what are you going to wear? Call me and let me know.'
'That figures,' Diana muttered as she erased that one.
The one after that was more worrisome. 'Lani,' Jessica Carpenter said. 'I thought you were going to be here by now. Mom has to go someplace after she drops me off, and if we don't leave in a few minutes, she'll be late. She says I should leave your ticket at the box office. I'll put it in an envelope with your name on it.'
The next message, at nine-fifteen, was another one from Davy. 'Hi, Mom and Dad. I'm still trying to get hold of Lani, but I guess nobody's home. Give me a call. Bye.'
The last one was from Jessica once again. 'It's intermission and you're not here. Are you mad at me or sick, or what? I'll try calling again when I get home.'
Brandon came back into the kitchen just as Diana was putting down the phone. 'Still taking messages?' he said.
'Lani didn't go to work,' Diana said. 'And she didn't go to the concert, either.'
'Didn't go to the concert?' Brandon echoed. 'Where is she then? I've gone through the whole house looking for her.'
'Hang on,' Diana told him. 'I'll call the Carpenters and see if she ever showed up there.'
The phone rang several times and then the answering machine came on. Diana left a message for them to call her as soon as possible. 'Nobody's home,' she told Brandon. 'Maybe they're all still at the concert.'
'But Lani's bike is here. Where would she be if her bike's here?'
Brandon looked grim. 'Something's wrong. I'll go back through the house and check again. Maybe I missed something. Do you have any idea what she wore when she left the house this morning?'
Diana shook her head. 'I heard the gate shut, but I didn't see her leave.'
This time they got as far as Brandon's study. Before, Brandon had simply reached into the room and switched off the light without bothering to look into the room itself. Barely a step inside the door, he stopped so abruptly that Diana almost collided with him. 'What the hell!'
Sidestepping him, Diana was able to see into the room herself. A fine spray of shattered glass covered most of the floor. In the center of the glass lay several broken picture frames. Looking beyond that, Diana saw that the wall behind Brandon's desk-his Wall of Honor as he had called it-was empty. All his service plaques, his civic honors-including his Tucson Citizen of the Year and the Detective of the Year award-the one he'd received from Parade Magazine for cracking a dead illegal alien case years before-were all on the floor, smashed beyond recognition.
'Oh, Brandon!' Diana wailed. 'What a mess. I'll go get the broom-'
'Don't touch anything and don't come into the room any farther until we get a handle on exactly what's happened here. It looks to me as though whoever it was broke into my gun case, too.'
Diana's stomach sank to her knees. She had to fight off the sudden urge to vomit. 'What about Lani…'
Brandon turned toward her, the muscles working across his tightened jaw. 'Let's don't hit panic buttons,' he advised. 'The first thing we should do is call the department and have them send somebody out to investigate.' Walking back to the kitchen, he picked up the phone. 'Did you notice anything else out of place?' he asked as he dialed. After all those years with the department, the number of the direct line into Dispatch was still embedded in his brain as well as his dialing finger.
Diana thought for a minute. 'Only that set of tongs over there in the sink. It looks as though somebody used it to cook meat or something, but I can't tell what.'
Alicia Duarte was fairly new to Dispatch, but she had been around the department long enough that Brandon Walker's name still carried a good deal of weight. Her initial response was to offer to send out a deputy.
'A deputy will be fine,' Brandon told her. 'But I think we're going to need a detective too. There's a good chance that our daughter has disappeared as well, and the two incidents are most likely related.'
'Sure thing, Sheriff Walker,' Alicia said, honoring him with the title even though it was no longer his. 'I'll get right on it.'
Brandon put down the phone and then walked over to wrap his arms around Diana. 'You heard what I said. Someone is on the way, although it'll take time for them to get here.'
'What if we've lost her?' Diana asked in a small voice. 'What if Lani's gone for good?'
'She isn't,' Brandon returned fiercely. It wasn't so much that he believed she wasn't lost. It was just that when it came to his precious Lani, believing anything else was unthinkable.
