Grace Westphalen was sixty-nine—two years older than Nellie. A woman of many acquaintances but few real friends. Her sister had always been her best friend. No eccentricities. Certainly no enemies.
“When did you last see Grace?” Jack asked.
“Monday night. I finished watching Johnny Carson, and when I looked in to say good night, she was propped up in bed reading. That was the last time I saw her.” Nellie’s lower lip trembled for an instant, then she got control of it. “Perhaps the last time I’ll ever see her.”
Jack looked to Gia. “No signs of foul play?”
“I didn’t get here until late Tuesday,” Gia said with a shrug. “But I do know the police couldn’t figure out how Grace got out without tripping the alarm.”
“You’ve got the place wired?” he asked Nellie.
“Wired? Oh, you mean the burglar alarm system. Yes. And it was set—at least for downstairs. We’ve had so many false alarms over the years, however, that we had the upper floors disconnected.”
“What do you mean, ’false alarms’?”
“Well, sometimes we’d forget and get up at night to open a window. The racket is terrifying. So now when we set the system, only the downstairs doors and windows are activated.”
“Which means Grace couldn’t have left by the downstairs doors or windows without tripping an alarm…” A thought struck him. “Wait—all these systems have delays so you can arm it and get out the door without setting it off. That must have been what she did. She just walked out.”
“But her key to the system is still upstairs on her dresser. And all her clothes are in her closets.”
“May I see?”
“By all means, do come and look,” Nellie said, rising. They all trooped upstairs.
Jack found the small, frilly-feminine bedroom nauseating. Everything seemed to be pink or have a lace ruffle, or both.
The pair of French doors at the far end of the room claimed his attention immediately. He opened them and found himself on a card-table-sized balcony rimmed with a waist-high wrought iron railing, overlooking the backyard. A good dozen feet below was a rose garden. In a shady corner sat the playhouse Vicky had mentioned; it looked far too heavy to have been dragged under the window, and it would have flattened all the rose bushes if it had. Anyone wanting to climb up here had to bring a ladder with him or be one hell of a jumper.
“The police find any marks in the dirt down there?”
Nellie shook her head. “They thought someone might have used a ladder, but there was no sign. The ground is so hard and dry, with no rain—”
Eunice the maid appeared at the door. “Telephone, mum.”
Nellie excused herself and left Jack and Gia alone in the room.
“A locked room mystery,” he said. “I feel like Sherlock Holmes.”
He got down on his knees and examined the carpet for specks of dirt, but found none. He looked under the bed; only a pair of slippers there.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for clues. I’m supposed to be a detective, remember?”
“I don’t think a woman’s disappearance is anything to joke about,” Gia said, the frost returning to her words now that Nellie was out of earshot.
“I’m not joking, nor am I taking it lightly. But you’ve got to admit the whole thing has the air of a British drawing room mystery about it. I mean, either Aunt Grace had an extra alarm key made and ran off into the night in her nightie—a pink and frilly one, I’ll bet—or she jumped off her little balcony here in that same nightie, or someone climbed up the wall, knocked her out, and carried her off without a sound. None of those explanations seem too plausible. “
Gia appeared to be listening intently. That was something, at least.
He went over to the dressing table and glanced at the perfume bottles. There were dozens of them; some names were familiar, most were not. He wandered into the private bathroom and was there confronted by another array of bottles: Metamucil, Philips Milk of Magnesia, Haley’s M-O, Pericolace, Surfak, Ex-Lax and more. One bottle stood off to the side. Jack picked it up. It was clear glass, with a thick green fluid inside. The cap was the metal twist-off type, enameled white. All it needed was a Smirnoff label and it could have been an airline vodka bottle.
“Know what this is?”
“Ask Nellie.”
Jack screwed off the cap and sniffed. At least he was sure of one thing: It wasn’t perfume. The smell was heavily herbal, and not particularly pleasant.
As Nellie returned, she appeared to be finding it increasingly difficult to hide her anxiety. “That was the police. I rang up the detective in charge a while ago and he just told me that they have nothing new on Grace.”
Jack handed her the bottle.
“What’s this?”
Nellie looked it over, momentarily puzzled, then her face brightened.
“Oh, yes. Grace picked this up Monday. I’m not sure where, but she said it was a new product being test marketed, and this was a free sample.”
“But what’s it for?”
“It’s a physic.”
“Pardon?”
“A physic. A cathartic. A laxative. Grace was very concerned—obsessed, you might say—with regulating her bowels. She’s had that sort of problem all her life.”
Jack took the bottle back. Something about an unlabeled bottle amid all the brand names intrigued him.
“May I keep this?”
“Certainly.”
Jack looked around a while longer, for appearances more than anything else. He didn’t have the faintest idea how he was even going to begin looking for Grace Westphalen.
“Please remember to do two things,” he told Nellie as he started downstairs. “Keep me informed of any leads the police turn up, and don’t breathe a word of my involvement to the police.”
“Very well. But where are you going to start?”
He smiled—reassuringly, he hoped. “I’ve already started. I’ll have to do some thinking and then start looking.” He fingered the bottle in his pocket. Something about it…
They left Nellie on the second floor, standing and gazing into her sister’s empty room. Vicky came running in from the kitchen as Jack reached the bottom step. She held an orange section in her outstretched hand.
“Do the orange mouth! Do the orange mouth!”
He laughed, delighted that she remembered. “Sure!” He shoved the section into his mouth and clamped his teeth behind the skin. Then he gave Vicky a big orange grin. She clapped and laughed.
“Isn’t Jack funny, Mom? Isn’t he the funniest?”
“He’s a riot, Vicky.”
Jack pulled the orange slice from his mouth. “Where’s that doll you wanted to introduce me to?”
Vicky slapped the side of her head dramatically. “Ms. Jelliroll! She’s out back. I’ll go—”
“Jack doesn’t have time, honey,” Gia said from behind him. “Maybe next trip, okay?”
Vicky smiled and Jack noticed that a second tooth was starting to fill the gap left by her missing milk tooth.
“Okay. You coming back soon, Jack?”
“Real soon, Vicks.”
He hoisted her onto his hip and carried her to the front door, where he put her down and kissed her.
“See ya.” He glanced up at Gia. “You, too.”
She pulled Vicky back against the front of her jeans. “Yeah.”
As Jack went down the front steps, he thought the door slammed with unnecessary force.
12
Vicky pulled Gia to the window and together they watched Jack stroll out of sight.
“He’s going to find Aunt Grace, isn’t he?”
“He says he’s going to try.”
“He’ll do it.”
“Please don’t get your hopes up, honey,” she said, kneeling behind Vicky and enfolding her in her arms. “We may never find her.”