Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense

Chapter Thirteen





“S-M-I-T-H.” Diana finished spelling her sister’s name to the operator at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.

“Sorry, we have no one here by that name,” the answer came back.

Diana hung up the phone and checked off the last of a dozen hospitals within a twenty-mile radius where she’d called. There was nothing left to do but contact the police.

She dialed 911. Her call was routed to an officer with a gravelly voice.

“I want to report”—her voice caught—“a missing person. My sister. Ashley Highsmith.”

“And you are—?” His Boston accent turned “are” into “ah.”

“Diana. Her sister.” Haltingly she managed to explain the situation to the officer.

“So you last saw your sister downtown at—”

“I wasn’t there. She was. I saw her in video footage that was on the Internet. And she called me from Copley Square at six.”

“Okay. Friday. That’s—”

“Three days ago. I wasn’t worried at first. I mean, I know she’s a grown-up. She lives alone. Owns her own condo. Has a great job. But she’s supposed to be at work and she’s not in her office. They don’t know where she is.”

“Was she—?”

“Sure, at times she’s a little flaky but she wouldn’t just disappear like that.” Diana knew she probably sounded hysterical but she couldn’t stop herself. “And she left her laptop at my house and she hasn’t come back for it. And she’s not at work or”—she cleared her throat and tightened her fingers around the phone—“I don’t know where she is. None of her friends know where she is. It’s been three days without a word.” Finally she took a breath.

The officer made conciliatory noises. Then: “Could you come down here and file a report? Bring a photograph of your sister?”

Briefly Diana envisioned herself at the wheel of the Hummer. Crashing.

“Wouldn’t it be faster if I e-mailed you a picture?”

“That works too. But there are forms, and questions—”

Diana rushed on. “I asked one of her neighbors to look for her car. It wasn’t in the parking lot. And she said there are flyers stuck in her door. Flyers that came days ago. Days ago!” She choked up and her vision blurred.

“You have keys to her apartment?” the officer asked.

Diana gulped. “Yes.”

“But you haven’t gone there and checked for her?”

“I . . .” Panic welled up in her. “I can’t find the key.”

There was a long pause. “And you can’t come in person and file a report?”

Diana wiped a skim of cold sweat from her forehead. “I’m laid up with a stomach virus.”

There was longer silence on the other end of the line.

Finally Diana said, “Listen, I can’t come. I just can’t. What difference does it make why? This isn’t about me. My sister is missing. Something’s wrong. I know it.” She hiccuped a sob, snagged a tissue, and blew her nose.

“Tell you what,” the officer said. “We’ll send a patrol car over to your sister’s place. Check things out. Talk to the neighbors. Ascertain whether there’s anything to be concerned about.”

If she could, she would have reached through the phone and hugged the guy. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I’ll call you as soon as we know something. But depending on what we find, you may have to come in.”

Diana couldn’t come up with a reply to that.

Diana paced her house while she waited for the police to call back. She straightened. Washed the dishes that were in the sink. Finally she sat down at her computer and scrolled through header after header of Ashley’s unread e-mail messages.

There she found the most recent message that Ashley had actually opened. It was from APRITCHARD, it was dated Friday at 4:33 P.M.—just before Ashley would have left to meet Aaron at the bar. Diana opened it.

C U @BOUCHEE—LVG WORK NOW

That would be the jerk himself. Aaron, looked like his last name was Pritchard.

He’s been weirding me out, Ashley had said. Checking up like he’s some kind of control freak.

Diana looked up Mr. Control Freak on Google. Back came links to a bunch of social and business networking Web sites. She clicked on the Facebook link. There were three Aaron Pritchards on Facebook. One in Bend, Oregon. The second one had a photo of what looked like an eight-year-old boy. The third one had to be him. His public profile pegged him as an investment banker. Single. Interested in dating. The photo was of a handsome guy with a well-tended beard. He was shirtless, on his back, bench-pressing what looked like fifty-pound dumbbells. Ick.

She’d send him a message, but what to say? She wanted to find out what he knew, not scare him away. She typed:

Hi, Aaron –

I’m Diana, Ashley’s sister. A friend of mine just came into some money and Ash said you’d be a good person for her to talk to. She wants to make the right decision. Needs to decide soon.

She ended with the number of her prepaid cell phone and hit send. She set the cell phone down on the desk. Beside it, her landline sat mute.

She checked the time. Did We’ll send a patrol car over mean right this very second? Even if it did, fifteen minutes was too soon to hear back. She hoped that an officer was at least on the way over to Ashley’s apartment.

Diana turned her attention back to Ashley’s e-mail. She sifted through the unread messages. There were Facebook and LinkedIn updates. A party invitation. A reply to a back-and-forth about a friend’s wedding shower that Ashley was helping to organize. Lots of ads and travel offers.

Diana stopped when she got to a message dated Sunday with the subject line “Everything okay?” Opened it. It was from Janine Gagne, a friend Diana vaguely remembered Ashley mentioning.

Guess you must have forgotten all about me. Sunday brunch at the Centre Street Cafe, your fave??? Hope he’s cute.

;-(

Diana stared out into space. Even if there was a new man in her life, Ashley would never have stood up a friend.

Were the police at Ashley’s apartment yet? Were they talking to the super? Diana imagined them trying Ashley’s door and finding it unlocked. As they opened the door, the menus that Mrs. Fiddler had said were stuck in the jamb fluttered to the ground . . .

An hour later, Diana was holding Ashley’s lipstick and staring at the phone, willing it to ring when her intruder alarm went off. She bashed the button that silenced the Klaxon. Echoey silence followed. She felt a stone drop into her belly when she saw, in the front video monitors, a police cruiser parked in front of the house. A uniformed officer was striding up her walk. The doorbell rang.

Why come and not telephone? Diana pushed away the obvious answer. As she made her way to the door, she felt as if she were moving through sludge.

The doorbell rang again.

Hands shaking, she fumbled opening the dead bolts, pinched her finger removing the security bar, and finally punched the security pass code. She pulled the door open.

The officer filled the doorway—not so much with bulk as with uniformed presence. Before she could say anything, he said, “Diana Highsmith?”

Diana recognized the gravelly voice. “You’re the officer I talked to on the phone?”

He nodded. “Officer Wayne Gruder. Your sister doesn’t appear to be in her apartment.”

Appear to be? Was that good news or bad?

“But her mailbox has been emptied,” he added.

Only Ashley had the key to her mailbox. Diana’s hand flew to her throat. “Thank God, she’s back!”

From the way his sharp eyes probed her reaction, she knew there was more than just an all clear. “So why the hell hasn’t she returned my calls?”

He suppressed a smile, then his look turned somber again. “The thing is, she’s not answering her door. I knocked. Rang the bell three or four times. I haven’t got probable cause to bust down the door.”

“Maybe she came and rushed out again?” Diana said.

“That’s possible,” Officer Gruder said, giving her a long level look.

A chill passed through her. “You think she could be there? Inside? And won’t . . . or can’t answer the door?”

“I have no way of knowing. But you seemed so concerned. And you said you have a key.”

“I do. Of course I do. And that would be the wise thing to do, wouldn’t it?” Her voice sounded robotic. “Go over and let myself in and just see what’s up.”

“Seems wise. ” He seemed infinitely patient. Diana couldn’t help thinking it sounded as if he were talking to a child. “But if it was my sister, I’d want to check to be sure. In person. It’s a reasonable thing to do.”

He stood to one side, as if he were waiting for her to come with him.

Diana took a step back, even though she knew she had to go. She had no choice. She looked past him to the police cruiser parked at the curb.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

All she had to do was get from here to there. Beyond her electronic fence, but just a few steps beyond, barely farther than she pushed herself every day. This was the moment that she’d been training for. First she needed to find the key to Ashley’s apartment.

“Just give me a minute,” she said.

She forced herself to slow down, to move deliberately and breathe evenly as she walked into her bedroom. She found her wallet in the top drawer of her bureau and stuffed it into her pants pocket. Scooped her key ring from a bowl. Checked that the key to Ashley’s apartment was still on it.

Stay in control.

Then she continued into her office. From there, she armed all the doors and punched in the code that would activate the inside security system. Thirty seconds. That was how long she had to get out and lock the front door.

“Quite a setup.” The voice came from behind her.

Raw panic surged through her and she spun around. Officer Gruder had followed her into her office. Diana clapped her hand over her mouth and the scream she hadn’t realized she was making stopped.

Gruder’s eyes widened and his hands flew up in a gesture of surrender. He stumbled, tripping over his own feet in his haste to back out of the room and down the hall toward the front of the house.

Diana sat in her desk chair, gasping for breath.

“Sorry if I startled you,” he called.

Sorry? What the hell was the matter with him, violating her space? Had she invited him in? Surely it wasn’t standard procedure to follow a citizen, deep into her home.

“I’m going outside. I’ll wait for you by the car,” he added.

She steadied herself against the desk. She had to stop overreacting to every unexpected thing that happened. She couldn’t afford for this police officer to dismiss her as a nutcase.

“That sound okay?” Gruder’s voice came from farther away.

“Okay,” she managed to call out, her voice hoarse. “I’ll be right there. I just have to . . .” She remembered the alarm. It would go off any second. She raced to the keypad. What the hell was the code to cancel? Her mind had gone blank.

When the eight-digit code finally came to her, her fingers felt like fat sausages. Twice she keyed it in wrong and had to start over. Again she tried. Just as she was about to press in the final number, a deafening Klaxon started, blaring from speakers both inside and outside the house.

Moments later, her phone rang. She grabbed it. “Ashley?” She had to hold her hand over her ear to block out the clanging. “Ashley?”

“Twenty-three Linden Place?” said a woman’s voice.

“Yes?” Diana shouted.

“This is Metro Security. Verifying an alarm.”

Of course. This was what they were supposed to do. “It’s a false alarm. Can you turn the damned thing off?”

“I need your name and verbal password?”

“What?”

“The name on the account?”

Diana gulped for air. “Diana Highsmith.”

“Password?”

She cupped her hand over the receiver. “Daniel.”

“Thank you. Verified.”

An instant later, the alarm fell silent.

“Thank God,” Diana whispered.

She hung up the phone and lifted the shade to look out the front window. Officer Gruder was out front by the patrol car, waiting for her as promised, apparently unfazed by the alarm. She slipped the pill bottle from her pocket, took out a pill, and rolled it between her fingers. But that didn’t help. She still felt jumpy, on the verge of a meltdown.

Another whole pill would knock her out. She broke the pill and swallowed half of it dry. Automatic pilot, she told herself. Don’t think, just do.

She set the alarm again. At the last moment, she remembered to grab Ashley’s laptop.