The Baker's Wife (23 page)

“I'll look around outside first, see what I see. Stay here.”

She got out of the truck and walked around the front, waiting for that firm invisible hand to guide her toward the thing she needed to find. She started across the little bean-shaped lawn toward the window where she had stood months ago and lost her earring in the dirt.

The moist air slipped across her neck, and she shivered.

Your ways are mysterious to me, God, but if you'd give me a map
with point-by-point directions to Julie Mansfield right now, I'd be
grateful
.

She stood in front of the window, looking at the shrubs and the dirt under it, which had become spongy in yesterday's rain.
Or I'll settle for a subtle dose of intuition if you'd rather work that way.
That's fine too
.

Diane's arm brushed hers.

“I thought you were waiting in the truck,” Audrey said after she got her heart out of her throat.

Diane shook her head and was looking at the windows of the house, all shut against the damp. “Juliet's parents lived here when we were kids,” she said. “She and the detective live here now? Really?”

Audrey nodded. “I didn't know you were from around here.”

“I was born in this town. So was Juliet. There's a shed in the back. It used to be our clubhouse.”

“Did your clubhouse adventures ever include breaking and entering?”

“Oh, Audrey, don't. It's not worth it, believe me.”

“Are you married, Diane? Do you have kids?”

“Neither.”

“They're worth it. Their lives are worth anything I have to do.”

Diane didn't say anything.

“Show me how to get into the back?”

“The gate's over here. Are you okay? You're flushed. Ed said you had the flu.”

“Just a fever.”

Diane led her over a flower bed and onto the slab walkway between the front door and the driveway. On her way past, Audrey opened the screen and tried the doorknob, jiggling it. The hardware felt pleasantly cool on her hot fingers.

“Locked,” she said aloud.

“Jack doesn't seem the type to forget those kinds of things,” Diane said.

“No. You're right. He's”—Audrey tried to think of the right word—“systematic.”

On the other side of the garage, they gained access through a gate with a simple latch and no lock. They passed between the garage wall and the neighbor's wood-slat fence, a narrow path with precisely placed pavers marching into the backyard. Audrey saw the short chain-link fence at the far end of the property and the storage shed just inside of it, directly ahead. To the right, another small lawn was bordered by fruit trees and a small vegetable garden.

“That's the master bedroom,” Diane said, pointing at the short end of the L-shaped house. She continued down the pavers toward the shed. Audrey detoured to try the door at the back of the garage.

The knob turned easily in her hand and swung open into the darkened space.

“Diane,” she called, then motioned she would go in this way. The area was attached to the house, and even if the door that led into the main building was secure, she might find something of interest in here—if not a key.

Audrey headed toward the glowing orange light that she guessed was the garage-door opener. When she reached it, she ran her hands along the wall and found a light switch.

A bulb in the center of the rafters shone on an old compact car that Audrey didn't recognize. Maybe it was Julie's.

The interior door opened soundlessly into a clean kitchen. Diane had caught up with her. The women stepped in.

Diane glanced around the kitchen and then quickly passed through the dining room toward the front of the house.

“Look for anything that seems off,” Audrey said.

Diane pulled up short and twisted to look at Audrey. Surprise lined her brow. “Right.” Her legs took her into the living room though her eyes were trained on the hall leading to the bedrooms. “What do you mean
off
?”

“I don't know what it will be. You knew her—anything that doesn't look right by what you know about her personality, her habits?”

Audrey's eyes quickly moved over the clean kitchen counters as she followed Diane.

“I don't know if I'd catch anything out of the ordinary,” Diane said. “We've been out of touch for a while.”

She sounded apologetic.

Now that she was standing in Jack's house, Audrey realized how desperate she must seem. Unless Jack was careless or sloppy, which she had never known him to be, she should not have expected to find anything helpful here.

God, you know the truth about what happened. Please, would
you show it to me before Jack hurts the men I love so much?

The living room was immaculate and predictable: a sofa, a long coffee table, two chairs, a short coffee table between them. Planters in front of the window, bookcase bearing books, a stereo system, and half a dozen or so neatly organized framed tabletop photographs.

She turned down the hallway and flipped on the light. Diane went to look at the pictures. Audrey passed a bathroom on the left and a home office on the right. She heard the sound of Diane opening a drawer.

Audrey paused at the office, turned in at the door. This room overlooked the front yard and would have been the room where she'd heard the heartbreaking sobbing those months ago.

Grief like a whip across her back dropped her to her knees in the open doorway. She rocked forward onto her arms, her forehead meeting the dusty carpet, her mouth gasping, reminded of the intensity that had bent her over the hood of her car.

A cool metal barrel kissed her spine as she crouched.

“Who are you?” a voice demanded.

Between her illness and the devastating emotion, Audrey barely had the presence of mind to answer. “Audrey Bofinger. I'm looking for Julie.”

“Oh. You.”

The gun came off her back, and she felt the person's feet pivot near her backside.

Audrey lifted her head and turned her neck. The quick movement filled her ears with ringing and her throat with sickness. She held her breath to hold it down.

When it receded she asked, “Where's Julie?” She directed the question at the person behind her and managed to twist over onto her seat as she looked up. “Miralee.”

The name on her tongue was a miracle medicine, a fast-acting remedy that decimated Audrey's pains. The headache evaporated. The nausea slipped away. The grief became a distant impression. Audrey wiped perspiration of a broken fever off her forehead with the back of her hand.

The girl held the weapon down at her side. She was looking down the hallway.

“My friend Diane is in the living room.”

“You broke into my house.”

“Yeah, well, your father thinks I kidnapped your mom.”

“I know. Ed told me.”

Audrey wondered what had changed his mind. “I didn't know he called you. Is that why you came home?”

“No.” Her tone was flat. “I came because I can't resist a good drama.”

“Jack's taken five people hostage. My husband. Ed.”

Miralee showed no reaction to that news. “Did you kidnap my mom?”

“No.”

“Didn't think so.”

“Yeah? That was easy.”

“I'm not a difficult person to get along with. It's you churchgoers who are royal pains. My father has been wrong about everything his entire life.”

“I don't know about that.” Audrey used the doorframe to pull herself up to standing.

“But he thinks you know where to find my mom.”

Audrey nodded.

“So there. He's wrong again. This is a dumb place to start looking, wouldn't you say?”

“Will you help us look for her?” Audrey asked.

“Don't know what I can do. She won't respond to my efforts to get in touch with her. I say if she wants to be left alone, we should leave her alone.”

“What if someone's got her?”

“Show me a ransom note and I'll answer your question then.”

The pretty girl was the same age as Audrey's son and looked more like Julie than Jack, with high round cheeks and a tall forehead. Her features in their natural state were photogenic, attractive. But since leaving her high school years behind, or maybe since leaving her father's house, Miralee had sharpened her appearance to suit her personality with foundation too pale for her true complexion and cosmetics too dark for her youth. Audrey thought she might have dyed her hair as well.

An image of Miralee holding a baby, Audrey's grandbaby, popped into the front of Audrey's mind unbidden. For some reason the child was a girl. She reached out for the bundle without thinking of what she was doing, and at the same time Miralee stomped toward the living room.

Audrey glanced back into the office. The curtains were drawn, the desk clean, the computer shut down. A recliner in one corner of the room was tucked in on itself, waiting for someone to lean back in it and rest. The reading light on the adjacent table was dark.

“Get out of that cabinet,” she heard Miralee order Diane.

Now that she was feeling more like her normal self than she had in the last twenty-four hours, Audrey felt anxiety weaseling its way into her emotional state. She needed a better plan. She needed tangible information.

“Is your parents' home always this neat?” she called after Miralee.

“My father's version of it is.”

Audrey peeked into the bedroom at the end of the hall—chaotic, Miralee's she assumed—and then entered the master suite opposite it. The large room was as tidy as the rest of the house, clean as a showcase home, right down to the glistening white bathtub. As white as if Jack had committed a heinous crime and then had it professionally cleaned.

The idea was ridiculous. Jack lived by the book—and by the Book. But there he was, just a few miles away, holding her family hostage in their place of business. She wondered which scriptural passages he had used to justify this particular approach to finding “the victim.”

Could a man who'd taken a group of people hostage also be capable of murdering his wife and blaming the crime on someone else? Or was he guilty only of desperate love?

On her way out of the master bath she caught sight of the couple's nightstands. On the right side, nothing but a Bible and a pair of reading glasses. On the left, the only disorganized area in the room. The narrow table was stacked with books, a lamp that had been pushed aside and braced between the mattress and the wall, knickknacks, a water glass, and medicine bottles. No Bible in the tall stack.

Audrey wondered if partners who agreed to live by different worldviews commonly found themselves at an impasse. How much strain could accumulate before their bond snapped? How many bricks could one stack on a bridge before the span collapsed?

She picked up the pill bottles. Antibiotics, with several tablets remaining; painkillers; a third that Audrey didn't recognize. All prescribed by a Dr. Reese.

“Was your mom sick?” she called out.

The words left her tongue and entered her own ears and elicited one clear, certain answer: Julie was excruciatingly sick. As sick as Audrey had felt.

She went back out to the living room, carrying the bottles.

“Miralee, what does your mom have?”

Diane was handing a framed photograph to the girl.

“What do you mean
have
?”

“What's this medicine for?”

“How should I know?”

“Do you know a Dr. Reese?”

“Yeah. She's Mom's oncologist.”

The girl said the word the way one would say
hairstylist
or
tennis partner
.

“Your mom has cancer?”

“Maybe she still does. Ovarian. I first heard about it in the spring, but she caught it early. She had lots of treatment options then.”

“But she had surgery.”

“Did she?” A light of surprised concern passed through Miralee's eyes, then flickered out. “She was always a bit extreme when it came to her health.”

“That's not so extreme for ovarian cancer. You didn't know about it?”

“I didn't know that's what she finally chose.”

“Don't you guys talk about this kind of thing? Is it delicate for some reason?”

“Did you want to find my mom or just sit here dissecting the Mansfield psychoses?” Miralee handed the photo frame back to Diane and said, “That's Cora Jean and Harlan. Bitter old folks.”

Diane took the image in both hands as if it were more fragile than a newborn.

The weak morning light, filtered by fog and white sheers covering the windows, was just enough for Audrey to glimpse the photograph of a threesome standing in front of an old gray Ford. Julie in the middle was flanked by the aging Halls.