“Not a word,” Mr. Daley replied. “And yeah. Her car is gone.” His face was lined with soot and rivered with water, or tears. He held his cell phone in one hand, and his attention alternated between its tiny screen and the tragic real-life image in front of us. “We’ll never dance again, I’m sure of it.”
“You will, of course you will.” Watson put a hand on Daley’s back, comforting. “Things are never as bad as they seem. Look, there’s no ambulance, so the firefighters must not think anyone is inside. And they’ll be able to save the house, I bet.”
I nodded, agreeing. “Unless they have—” I hesitated, not wishing to add another layer of fear. “Unless they have already transported her?”
Arthur Daley shook his head and waved a hand toward the drenched firefighters, some now coiling their hoses in the fire’s endgame. His dinner jacket, the one he’d worn in dance class, glistened with water droplets. “The one in the white hat told me they’d checked inside. No one home, and no trace of anyone,” he said. “So where is she?”
A voice broke in. “Annabelle Holmes, of course you’re here.” Officer Jake Lester stomped up to us, in full uniform, soaked and scowling. “Why is it you’re always on the scene of disaster?”
“I might say the same for you, Jake,” I replied. We have a somewhat contentious relationship, me the only private eye in town, and him the town’s newest cop.
“You know anything? About this Penelope Moran?” He pretended to poke me in the arm. “You better tell me, Holmes.”
“Never met her,” I said, telling the truth. “No, indeed.”
As he tramped off to do his policely duties, an ugly thought crossed my mind. What if Ms. Moran had set the fire herself, then disappeared to let it burn? But for what reason? Why would the last surviving member of a venerated family attempt to destroy the last vestiges of her beloved childhood home?
Another ugly thought: had Arthur Daley set it? He’d admitted he was here earlier, although he had texted Ms. Moran that he wasn’t—a lie. I tried casting him as the villain of the piece, but only briefly. If he had unsavory designs on Ms. Moran, or her family manse, he would not have reported the cryptic emails to Watson and me.
Which meant either the fire was an accident, or someone capable of sending intimidating emails had made good on their threats.
I thought of the second enigmatic message: Police officer police officer police officer. If you don’t do whatever it is, I shall tell the police, that pictogram seemed to warn. Tell the police what?
Someone was blackmailing Ms. Moran; I’d thought that from the beginning. Why else send a message that only the receiver can understand? Because if caught, the sender can easily deny the purpose, and no court of law could prove otherwise.
“There is nothing to do but wait,” I instructed Arthur Daley over the grumble of a fire truck’s throbbing engine. “Go home, Arthur. Let the firefighters finish. If you hear from Ms. Moran, notify me instantly. If not . . . well, sir, let me think. It is what I do best.”
There would be no sleep for me. Or Watson either, who insisted on accompanying me back to our offices. We sat side by side, staring out our front window into the glow of the streetlights. Watson poured a brandy, a stout Haut Armagnac given to us by a grateful client, and this night, I joined her. The heady liquor did nothing to salve my fears.
“I’m exhausted,” Watson said. “From dancing. And the rest of it. Where’s Penelope Moran, do you think?”
I felt, though I would never say it, that we had failed. Failed Mr. Daley, who came to us for answers. And failed Ms. Moran, a graceful young woman we had seen only in a romantic dance, who now had disappeared, her family home in shambles.
“Watson, what are our tangible facts?” I asked. Sometimes it is beneficial to speak a conundrum out loud. I have discovered the subconscious somehow provides answers when the questions become real.
“The emails. Whatever they mean. And Stoke Moran,” she added. “I Googled it, by the way. ‘Stoke’ means ‘estate,’ did you know that? Built around 1810. I looked up the Morans, too. Seems like they both died twenty-some years ago. I couldn’t find a will, though. Penelope Moran would have been—”
“A child,” I said. The night seemed especially dark, and our puzzle—along with Ms. Moran’s fate—increasingly bleak.
“A series of cryptic emails,” I went on, hoping to dispel my melancholy with cogitation. “For which we can endlessly conjure meaning, none of which we can ever prove. A woman in distress, who, though there is no sign of foul play or abduction, now seems to have disappeared. A suspicious fire that almost destroys her family home.”
Who what where, I often say to myself. In this case, the “where” was the secluded home of the Morans, left to the only remaining heir, little Penelope. If she were no longer alive, what would happen to the estate?
“He calls her Penny.” Watson swirled the dark liquid in her snifter.
Making something out of nothing is a pitfall of our business. When answers are urgently needed, sometimes the range of the search produces incorrect ones. Sometimes our initial responses are wrong.