“I thought it was raining.”
“It started after we ran away. Earlier it was sunny.”
“Louisa! It could have been his belt buckle or something! Jeez, I don’t believe this. You must have gotten really spooked last night.” She shook her head and picked up her sandwich.
“Well, I did,” I admitted. “And it's been more than twelve hours and I haven’t heard from Bob.”
“Have you checked your message machine at home this morning?” she said around a bite of sandwich.
I shook my head. “I haven’t been back home, remember? I came straight here.”
“Use my phone and call your machine and have it play your messages.”
“It can do that?”
She stared at me. “What planet have you been living on? Just call it up and when the machine picks up, punch in your code—” She broke off when she saw my expression. “You have no idea what your code is. Of course.”
I ate another carrot stick. Finally I said, “Can you drive me to Bob’s so I can get my car back? Or I guess I should call the police from here and tell them about the guy that chased me.”
“In a few minutes. First I want you to go over again what happened last night. You stopped at the Food Right, and he went in and you stayed in the car?” I nodded. “What time was this?”
“I wasn’t wearing my watch. We went to the four o’clock movie and had dinner out at the winery, so it was probably eight thirty or a little later.”
“How long before he came out?”
“Maybe five minutes. I don’t know. I was playing with the radio.”
“And he came out with a woman?”
I described again how they had been walking close together and gotten in the same side of the car, and that I had followed as soon as I was able to get into the driver’s seat.
“And you’re sure it was that Mercedes you followed all the way to the highway?” She took a bite of sandwich and frowned as she chewed.
“I'm sure,” I told her, “though I didn’t see if they got on the highway or went straight because I was busy with your police chief. Why do you ask?”
She swallowed. “He’s not my police chief. And I'm just grasping at straws. It's no wonder Ed couldn’t do anything, there’s nothing to get hold of. How about when you were at Bob’s house this morning? Did you see any clues?”
I shrugged. “How the heck would I know if something is a clue or not?”
“But you searched the house?” I nodded, and she asked, “What did you see?”
“He doesn’t own much stuff. Or maybe he didn’t move it all here from High Cross. I was sort of looking for his computer, in case he had contacts listed on it, but I didn’t find one.” I thought about Bob’s house. “I didn’t go through everything, but I didn’t see any pictures, no photos I mean, no letters, no bills even. I looked in his dresser—”
“Any interesting undies?” she asked brightly.
“No,” I made a face at her. “Just normal old boxers, although one pair did have pictures of canaries on the fabric. But they looked pretty new so maybe he doesn’t wear them.” I remembered the ostentatiously expensive silk briefs that my husband had preferred. Boxers with canaries on them seemed incredibly wholesome by comparison.
“How about his checkbook? If we got his old address in High Cross from the checks we might be able to find out something about him.”
Her question made me realize something. “You know, I've never seen him pay for anything that wasn’t with cash.” I thought back over the past two weeks. “I mean, I use my debit card all the time, and before that I always wrote checks. And I use my card to get cash at the ATM.”
Kay was nodding. “Hmm, no credit or debit cards used. Could it be a guy thing? How did Roger pay for stuff?”
“He preferred to have someone else pay if he could manage it. Otherwise he used his American Express card.”
“One more way Bob is nothing like Roger,” she said. “When someone is on the run in books and movies they avoid using cards for fear of being traced that way.”
“On the run?” I repeated. “What are you suggesting?”
She shrugged and gave me a quick look. “We don’t know a whole lot about Bob,” she said. “He could be anyone or anything. He seems to have plenty of free time, and he’s a little young to have retired. Maybe he’s a writer, and maybe he’s not. I think you’re wrong about him being a reporter. I couldn’t find anything on the Internet in any paper by someone with that name—”
“Kay! You looked him up on the Internet?” I decided not to mention that I had done the same thing.
“Of course. He has an awfully common name. It could be an alias.”
“If it is, he could actually be a reporter. Or the prince of a small Balkan country for all we know.”
“Right. A prince would be good, you could be Princess Louisa, that has a nice Victorian sound—” She broke off as I made gagging gestures, then went on, “—or maybe he’s independently wealthy like you and wants to keep it quiet—”
“Hardly wealthy,” I countered. “I just have low expenses. Having no house payment makes a big difference.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I like Bob, but being kidnapped out of a grocery store is not normal behavior, at least not for anyone I've ever known.”
This was a telling point; Kay’s circle of acquaintances is wide.
“I still think it's odd that I couldn’t find a computer,” I said. “How can anyone can be a writer these days without one?”
“That is strange. I guess some people still write in longhand but wouldn’t a freelance writer need to be online? Have you seen him with a laptop? How about in his car?” I shook my head, and she continued. “The prince theory is looking better. Could a laptop be what the guy was looking for in your car? Maybe Bob has files on one that he’s blackmailing someone with—”
I sat up straighter in my chair. “Bob is not blackmailing anyone,” I said, scowling at my cousin. “Maybe that man was a panhandler looking for loose change. Maybe—”
“Okay, okay, keep your shirt on,” she said. “I don’t think Bob’s a blackmailer. I'm just speculating. We know next to nothing about him, and only what he himself has told us.”
We ate in silence.
“How about the guy searching your car?” she finally asked.
“What about him?”
“What did he look like? Could he have been Bob?”
“No. Why would Bob search my car? Plus, this guy had a completely different body type, and anyway, Jack was really growling. He’d never growl at Bob. This guy was as tall as Bob but way wider.”
“Wider like fat?”
I shook my head. “No. Broad shoulders and long arms. He had on a sport coat and khakis, but you could put him in a gorilla suit and he’d be completely convincing.”
“And he really followed you?”
“Yes. I'm sure it was him. We found this old barn built into a hillside, and I was on the upper level when I heard someone downstairs. So we hid, and then the door opened upstairs just a few feet from where we were.”
“Good lord,” Kay breathed, patting her chest.
“Jack knew it was the same person. I've never heard him growl before. I was scared,” I admitted.
“Sheesh, I'm getting scared too. You hid behind some hay?”
I nodded, recalling the sheer terror I'd felt crammed behind those bales, waiting to be found by a large man with a gun in his waistband. Or a really shiny belt buckle. Either would have been enough to subdue me.
“How did you hide well enough that he couldn’t find you?”
“If he’d kept looking, he’d have found us.” I stopped and shuddered, remembering. “I was about to sneeze and had to pinch my nose shut.”
“Sneeze? Isn’t that kind of a cliché?”
“Totally,” I said, “but my nose has no shame. When I moved, one of the boards squeaked, and a mouse ran out and he must have thought that was the squeak. Oh, and then a dog barked outside, close by. And he left.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but I would have wet my pants if it had been me,” Kay admitted. “Not that I'd have run off in the first place, but still.”