“I’ve got enough to last me for awhile.”
“When Callie sold the Florida property she put the proceeds into the investment account you guys had in Tampa . She gets regular reports from the company and the account is still in both your names. None of the money’s been touched, we sure didn’t want nothin’ from her. Anyway, if ya need a little cash ta hold ya over I’d be happy ta---”
“I’m good for now, Miles, but thanks. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Find her, Jack. I don’t have any faith in Jessup doin’ it.”
“I hear you,” I said. “By the way, I’ve never thanked you for looking after Callie for these past seven years. I want you to know how much I appreciate and respect what you and Betty have done.”
“You know we never had no kids of our own,” he responded. “She’s the closest thing we’ve ever had to a daughter and we love ‘er, Jack.”
“I know you do. Me, too.”
I hung up just as Kat came out of the diner.
“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” she said.
Kat struck me as a woman who probably knew her way around. I wondered if she might be able to shed some light on Miles’ feelings about Jessup. “You got somewhere you have to be?” I asked.
Her eyes brightened and she smiled prettily. “Nope, I’m done. Just the early shift today. I thought you were true blue and married,” she said.
“I am,” I confirmed. “But I wouldn’t mind some company for coffee.”
“I guess I can settle for that,” she said.
“How about the hotel?”
“Sure. I’m just going to shoot home first. I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes.”
“I’ll see you then.”
Bix and I made the short walk to the hotel. I took Miles’ advice and spoke with Carmella before arranging a room. Carmella was the hotel owner and when she learned who I was and what I was doing she didn’t waste any time. “Give Mr. Parmenter a room at the back,” she said to the clerk. “Bix won’t be a problem.”
After I thanked her she said, “I’ve always liked Callie. If there’s anything I can do to help you find her, you let me know.”
“Thanks, Carmella. I’ll keep it in mind.”
The hotel dining room was a large room and there were only two tables occupied when I went in. I sat at one as far from the others as I could get. Ten minutes later Kat arrived.
I could hardly believe she was the same woman I had met earlier. The makeup was toned down, the big hair was tamed, and she was dressed casually in jeans, a frilly blouse, and stylish boots. My look must have reflected my surprise.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “The look at the diner is for the tips. The guys are always more generous when their waitress is a little slutty.”
“Well, I for one applaud the real you.”
“You sure you’re married?” she asked flirtatiously.
“’Fraid so, kid. I’m too old for you anyway.”
“I like older men,” she countered, tilting her head. “Especially when they’re gentlemen.”
The waiter sauntered over, filled our coffee cups, and disappeared when I waived off the offer of menus.
“Kat, I need some information about some people. Think you could help me out?”
“You don’t strike me as the gossipy type,” she responded.
“The reason I needed to borrow your car today was so I could look for my wife. She’s missing. I’m real worried something bad might have happened to her.”
A look of genuine concern passed over Kat’s face. “I don’t understand. You mean she lives here in Colville?”
“Yes. My wife is Callie Parmenter.”
The look of concern changed very quickly to one of shock. “You’re Jack Parmenter?” she gasped.
“I am. Sorry to drop it on you like this. If you want to leave I’ll understand but I really do need some help and I’m hoping maybe you can give it to me.”
She was quiet while she thought things through, all the while staring at me with an incredulous look on her face. “Geez. Jack Parmenter. You’re … famous isn’t quite the word I’m looking for …”
“I can imagine. If it’s any consolation, I’m not dangerous. The things I did back then were the actions of a very distraught father who went temporarily insane for reasons that were, if not right, at least somewhat understandable.”
My words were met with more silence for several long moments.
“Do you have any children?” I asked.
She nodded. “I have a son, Devon. He’s twenty-six. Lives in Rumford. He’s a banker, married to a nurse. Bar none, the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“You must have been very young when you had him.”
She smiled pensively. “Nineteen.”
“The boy’s father around?”
Kat shook her head sadly. “He and I were high school sweethearts. He died the day before his twenty-fifth birthday. A ruptured brain aneurism.”
“Jesus. That’s a tough thing to have thrown at you.”
“If not for Devon I don’t know what I’d have done.”
I decided the most likely way to win Kat’s support would be to pull out the big guns. “Try and imagine how you would have felt if what happened to my daughter had happened to your son when he was seven,” I said quietly.
For the first time she looked at me with a measure of sympathy. “Don’t get me wrong, Jack. It’s not that I can’t understand your need for revenge. It’s just that it was so … horribly violent. I can’t relate to that kind of behavior. Frankly, it scares me.”
“I understand,” I assured her. “It scares me, too.”
She sipped her coffee, continuing to stare at me in wonder. “How can I help you with your wife?” she asked finally. Her personality seemed to have undergone a rapid and immense change. The flirtatiousness had been replaced by the concern of an intelligent, caring woman.
“I’ve heard there was a woman went missing here recently.”
“Yeah,” Kat said warily. “I knew her quite well. She worked at the hardware store here in town. Her name was Charlene Lamont.” She shifted in her chair, looking ill at ease.
“Any thoughts on what might have happened to her?”
Kat shook her head nervously. “Her husband’s a jerk. They had a kind of turbulent relationship. She wasn’t real happy.”
“What did she look like?”
“Very pretty. A knockout actually.”
“Is there any talk around town about what might have happened to her? Any gossip?”
“Oh, hell, there’s always gossip in a small town, right?”
“What kind of gossip?”
I wasn’t sure but it looked to me like a spark of panic flashed in Kat’s eyes for a second. She shook her head in a dismissive manner. “Nothing I’d care to repeat,” she said.
“What’s your opinion of the law here in town?” I asked.
There was no mistaking the look in her eyes now.
It was shock that I had asked the question. But there was also an irrefutable flicker of fear, too.
4
After we finished our coffees Kat drove off and I walked down to see what Jessup had turned up. I may not have been terribly impressed by what I had seen and heard of him so far but he was, after all, the law. Jessup wasn’t there but RJ Fordham was. “I’m Jack Parmenter,” I told the dark-haired, handsome young guy sitting behind a desk outside Jessup’s office.
“Officer Fordham,” he said in a lazy, friendly manner. “What can I do for you?”
“I reported my wife missing this afternoon to Chief Jessup. I assume you’re aware of that.”
“Right. Callie Parmenter. The Chief is looking into that matter as we speak.”
“Has he come up with any explanation for why she would have been out on Thornhill Road, or why she left her vehicle there?”
“Sorry, Mr. Parmenter, the Chief hasn’t called in yet. I can’t rightly say.”
“When you hear from him, tell him I’m staying at the hotel. I’ll be waiting to speak with him.”
“You got it,” Fordham said. As I turned to leave he called out, “You know, before you spoke to the Chief about your wife being missing, I got a call from Mitch Fuller – owns a farm out on Thornhill Road – reporting he heard gun shots. I went out there to have a look around but I didn’t find anything to shed any light on what Mr. Fuller heard.”
“I know. Jessup mentioned it to me earlier. Did Fuller have anything else to say when you got out there?”
“I didn’t see him actually. When I stopped in to talk to him he was gone. He lives on his own out there – kids are grown, wife died a few years ago. There was nobody else around to talk to. But now that we’ve got a missing person situation Chief Jessup will undoubtedly be talking to all the folks around there so maybe he’ll catch him at home.”
“You noticed the blue Ford pickup that my wife was driving, parked past the old Crandall place?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see anybody around it though. At the time I figured it probably belonged to a hunter and it was his shots that Mr. Fuller had heard.”
Not an unreasonable assumption at the time, I thought. “Please tell the Chief to call me the moment he gets back.”
“I will. By the way, Mr. Parmenter, I want you to know not everybody around here blames you for what you did to Reuben Henderson. Me included.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” I said.
When I got back to my room at the hotel I found Bix curled up in a corner. He followed me with his eyes as I stretched out on the bed. “You need to pee, Bix?”
He blinked, then continued to stare. I wondered if his apparent sadness had anything to do with the fact that he was Callie’s dog. Maybe her depression had rubbed off on him. Or maybe he just missed her.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a scenario concerning Callie’s actions today that made any kind of sense, especially now that it was possible gunfire had entered into the equation. Could it be that she had been lured to that spot under some as yet unknown pretext and then kidnapped?
But who, I wondered, would be able to get Callie to drive to a remote location without her mentioning it to the two people she trusted most in the world?
Who indeed?
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. I opened it to find Jessup standing in the hall with his Smokey Bear hat tipped back on his head, rubbing his eyes which appeared to have smoke in them from the cigarette he was holding.
“Chief,” I said, “come in.”
He entered the room, took a second or two to reflect on Bix’s presence, then sat down in the room’s only chair. He looked tired. “So,” he mumbled, “not a lot to tell you. I had a good look around and I spoke with half a dozen residents of farms in the Thornhill Road area – nobody saw a thing that’s of any help to us. Your wife seems to have disappeared into thin air.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “We both know that’s a crock,” I said. “She went with somebody – either voluntarily or not. And what about the report of gunshots out there today?”
Jessup sucked his teeth and leaned forward in his chair with his arms on his knees. “It’s not uncommon for eager hunters to try and get a jump on the season. I have no reason to believe your wife’s absence is in any way connected with that report. Personally, I find it extremely interesting that she picked the very day you were likely to show up here to vanish.”
“You think she ran away with somebody.” I said. Not a question.
“I think that, or something like it, is a distinct possibility, yeah.”
“I’ve heard there was another woman who disappeared from here recently. What about there being a connection?”
Jessup sneered. “That so called disappearance is nothing more than a young women who moved on to a more exciting life. It’s no secret around here that she was unhappy in her marriage - tired of cooking and scrubbing floors, I expect – and simply left.”
“You ever find any evidence to support that theory?” I asked.
“Never found anything to disprove it,” he countered.
It was pretty obvious Jessup attached no importance at all to the fact that Charlene Lamont no longer resided in Colville. I could only hope his attitude might change in Callie’s case.
“I checked with Miles,” I said. “Callie took nothing with her this morning. No extra clothes, no money. Nothing.”
Jessup sat back and reached for a cigarette. “Don’t mean a lot,” he said. “She can access her bank accounts from anywhere. As for clothes she can buy them anywhere, too.”
“Seems like you’ve made up your mind about this already,” I said.
“If nothing is heard from her in another thirty-six hours we’ll put out a missing person alert on her with the State boys. Not much else I can do until then.” He stood and went to the door.
“What about the pickup?” I said.
“If nothing has changed we can go out and get it in the morning.” He raised his eyebrows in an ‘anything else?’ gesture.
I hung my head in defeat. “Okay.”
He left without another word.
I looked at Bix. I hadn’t yet seen him take a whiz. He must have had the biggest bladder in the world. “Come on,” I said.
He struggled sleepily to his feet and followed me into the hall and out the back door like he was doing me a personal favor. He scouted around in the vacant lot behind the hotel for five minutes before finally deciding to do his business.
For the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening we spent the hours wandering around town. I picked up a bag of dog chow and some junk food and we ate a solemn meal together in our room.
I was up at six, in the habit of rising at that time every morning while in prison. They got you up early so they could put you down early. It was a habit I was probably going to have some trouble breaking. I slipped into my jeans and padded down the hall to the bathroom. It was shared by the five other rooms on the same floor. I didn’t know how many of the other rooms were occupied but getting up when I did pretty much assured I’d have the bathroom to myself for awhile. But I didn’t need it for long, anyway, because my shaving gear and toothbrush had been left at the Wilson place.
When I got back to the room I took Bix out the rear door of the hotel and around the side to the main street, then headed in the direction of the diner. Once there I left Bix in his usual spot and took a seat once again at the counter. Kat served me a couple of poached eggs on toast with my coffee. I figured they’d be about the safest thing on the menu.
“Anything further on Callie?” she asked.
“No. I’m going over to see Jessup when I finish up here. I talked with him yesterday afternoon but he hadn’t come up with much then.”
“Do you need to borrow my car?”
“Maybe later, thanks. I’ll let you know.”
She nodded sympathetically and moved on to serve other customers. When I was done I left some bills under my coffee cup and slipped out. Bix came slowly to his feet when he saw me and stood patiently waiting for me to untether him. He was such a well behaved animal it’s unlikely I even needed to bother with a leash for him but he didn’t seem to mind.
I called Miles from the public phone to check in.
“No word from her yet,” he reported. There was a heavy measure of sadness and worry in those few words. Miles had spent most of his life as an officer of the law, too – a good part of it right here in Colville – and I’m sure his mind was calculating all the unpleasant explanations there might be for Callie’s absence.
I didn’t want to worry him any more than necessary but I felt I had to tell him about the gunshots.
“Oh, Lord,” he moaned.
“Jessup and I will go out and get the pickup.”
“Ya don’t have to bring it back yet. Use it as long as ya want,” he said. “I’ll let ya know if we need it for anythin’.”
“Okay. Keep the faith, Miles.”
“You, too, Jack.”
Bix and I crossed the street and made our way to Jessup’s office. Bix sat outside the door while I went in. A middle-aged woman with vivid red hair and freckles sat at the reception desk. She wore a nametag pinned to her blouse that identified her as ‘Madge’. “Help you, sir?” she said.
“Chief Jessup in?”
“Sorry, he just phoned to say he’d be late getting to the office this morning. Probably be in around eleven.”
Not what I wanted to hear.
“Can Officer Fordham help?” she asked. “ He stepped out a moment ago but he should be right back.”
I thought about it but decided it’d be better that I deal with Jessup. “No, I’ll stop back around eleven. If you wouldn’t mind telling him to expect me?”
“Sure thing,” Madge said.
I took a walk with Bix to stretch my legs and burn off some nervous energy and managed to kill an hour and a half. When I arrived back at the cop-shop I pointed at Jessup before letting Madge say anything, and walked to his office door. He was drinking coffee from a heavily stained mug and dragging deeply on a cigarette. He glanced up from some papers spread out before him and gave me a bored, barely concealed, look of contempt.
“I spoke with Miles earlier,” I said. “There’s been no word from Callie. Can we drive out and get his pickup?”
He took a deep breath to demonstrate his vast patience, stood slowly, and grabbed his hat from a coat rack behind his desk. “An hour, Madge,” he said as we headed out. At the door, Jessup stopped and turned back to her. “You heard anything from John yet?”
“Not a word, Chief. And RJ says John wasn’t there yesterday when he went over to check on him.”
Jessup looked mystified. “Give him another call,” he ordered.
“Will do.”
When we were outside and Jessup saw me unhooking Bix he looked over at me. “Why don’t you leave him here?”
“I’d rather bring him along if you don’t mind,” I said.
Jessup gave me an impatient look. “Suit yourself.”
I opened the rear door for Bix and then climbed in the front passenger seat. Jessup fired up the Crown Vic and motored unhurriedly out of town.