Stranger in Town

CHAPTER 6





Maddie sat on the couch with my very tired westie, Lord Berkeley, a.k.a. Boo, asleep in her lap. “Still no answer?”

“I’ve been calling him for three days now. The phone goes straight to voicemail every time.”

Maddie squinted.

“You ever have this problem with Giovanni before?”

“Never. We’ve been dating for several months now, and this is the longest we’ve gone without talking to each other.”

“Hmm. When was the last time you heard from him?”

“He called me a few days ago, saying he had some kind of urgent business to attend to in New York City. But ever since he left, I haven’t heard a word—no text, no phone call, nothing. That’s not a relationship. Not to me.”

“Maybe he’s in trouble,” Maddie said.

I shook my head. “Giovanni is the type of person who starts trouble and then later ends it.”

Maddie smacked me on the shoulder. “You’re still hung up on the whole ‘mafia’ thing, aren’t you?”

“It’s not a ‘thing,’ Maddie, it’s real. Just because he refuses to talk to me about it doesn’t make it any different.”

“But you’ve never actually seen him involved in any mafia activity, so how do you know exactly what the guy does?”

“Of course I have,” I said. “He just thinks I have no idea what anyone is talking about.”

I stared at the lake outside my bedroom window, wishing I could climb onto my inflatable raft and fall asleep under the watchful eye of the afternoon sun.

“I’m leaving for a few days,” I said.

“What—when?”

“Tomorrow morning. I took a new case yesterday.”

Maddie pushed her elbows into the comforter on my bed, propping her hands onto her cheeks. Boo slid off of her and onto one of my pillows. “Where are you off to?”

“Wyoming,” I said.

She laughed.

“You’re joking.”

“All you need is a business license.”

“What’s the case?”

“A kidnapping. Two kids.”

She opened my nightstand drawer and rifled around.

“I don’t have any gum in there,” I said.

She frowned and shut the drawer. “How old are these kids?”

“The first one was six when she was kidnapped, so she’d be eight now,” I said. “And the other is four.”

“No wonder you took the case. How could anyone say no to a couple of missing kids?”

“The police don’t have a lot of evidence from what I understand.”

“How long have they been missing?”

“The older one was taken two years ago, and the younger one, six months ago.”

“Mmmph,” Maddie said. “I don’t like those odds. You know you have almost no chance of finding them alive.”

“I know, but I have to at least try,” I said. “One piece of evidence has been nagging at me. Both parents received a coloring page in the mail leading them to believe it came from their child.”

Maddie made a face like she’d just bit into something sour. “What a cruel thing to do.”

“I don’t know what to make of it yet, but my client is convinced the coloring page was drawn by his daughter.”

“Why would someone take a person’s child and then send them reminders of it? Was there a ransom?”

I shook my head.

“There’s been no other contact with the parents of either child other than the one coloring page they each received in the mail,” I said. “I’ve been going over it all day, trying to figure out why a person with no ulterior motive would take the time to send it at all.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“There’s only one motive that comes to mind: guilt.”