“Where the hell are you, you idiot?” she muttered. At that moment, he suddenly burst out of a group of trees about twenty yards in front of her. She drove closer and stopped, switching off the engine while she watched him work his way through the tangled landscape. Once he reached her, he hopped in swiftly.
He touched her face, giving a sigh of relief. “I was about to call for backup.”
“Backup?”
“Well, I guess I should have said I was about to call the cops, but since you’re still kind of an almost-cop, I said backup.”
“I should have left you here, you idiot. I got caught traipsing around out there.”
“Yeah, I saw you with some guy.”
“I ran into him in a tomato field. I was trespassing, but he was decent about it.”
“Tell me everything.”
“It’s a nice house, clean as a whistle. He says he lives there with seven other people. They’re doing their best to live off the land. It’s a commune.”
“What were the others like?”
“I didn’t see any of the others.”
“Then where the hell were they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they have day jobs before they turn back into hippies at night. He didn’t threaten me in any way, I didn’t see any marijuana growing in the midst of his tomatoes. So…all that, and I didn’t really get a damned thing.”
“We need to find out who owns the place,” David said.
“The guy told me his name was Caleb Harrison.”
“Biblical.”
“He said the place had nothing to do with religion. I know all kinds of guys down here named Jesus—it’s a popular Hispanic name, you know—and they’re not religious fanatics in the least.”
“I think we should look around some more.”
“I think we should get off this road and then argue about where to go from here,” Ashley said firmly, turning the key in the ignition again.
David didn’t get a chance to answer. There was a thump on the back of the car.
Ashley twisted in her seat. There was a tall man in cover-alls and a straw hat behind them, staring at them with narrowed eyes.
He was carrying a shotgun.
CHAPTER 16
There was little to be done at Cassie Sewell’s last known residence. A family was now renting the three-bedroom apartment, and the wife assured the police that when they had rented, the last occupant had been out completely. The walls had been repainted, and new carpeting had been put down.
A crime scene unit would still test to see if she had met her demise in the apartment itself.
Jake doubted that she had. He was certain Cassie had quit her job, cleaned out her home, gone on…and then met her fate.
When they finished at the apartment, leaving the crime scene inspectors there to do their work, Jake and Marty stood outside in the sunshine for a few minutes.
“Want me to go back and follow the paper trail?” Marty asked.
“Yes, find out to whom she wrote her last check and where she made her last credit card purchases. She had a car, a BMW, which seems to have disappeared, as well. Check the history on that.”
“What are you going to do?” Marty asked him.
“Go for a drive.”
“A drive?”
“I’m going to take a look at all the properties that were listed,” Jake told him. Then he added, “Hey, I forgot to thank you for getting the off-duty guys at the hospital for me.”
“Personally I think it’s unnecessary, but if it’s what they want, hey, who knows? Maybe someone is out to get the kid.”
“Well, thanks anyway.”
“Not a problem. I’ll go get on the real case now.”
“Call me with anything pertinent.”
“Ditto,” Marty told him.
That was what he meant to do. But after Marty had headed back toward headquarters, Jake decided to stop back by the Gwendolyn. Passing Nick’s, he saw a number of customers parked in the lot and a few diners out on the terrace. He walked along the dock, waving to Sandy, who was seated on the deck of his boat, legs stretched out in the sun. The old geezer looked good, tanned and athletic. A life spent fishing and sailing could turn the skin brown and wrinkle it one hell of a lot, but apparently it kept a man fit, as well.
Sandy waved back to him, eased his hat over his white head and leaned back.
Jake climbed aboard his boat, irritated that he was apprehensive every time he did so now. Once inside, however, he was certain that everything was just as he had left it—including the mess. Coffee cup in the sink, bed torn askew…and a piece of red lace sticking out from underneath his pillow. He’d seen to it that Ashley had gotten her purse back, but sending Sandy over with her underwear would have been tasteless in the extreme. He’d thrown the wisps of silk and lace beneath his pillow, instead.