Hard To Bear (4 page)

             
“Good morning, Frederick. How am I doing, you ask? I hate my life, that’s how I’m doing.”

             
“Wow, you’re awfully bitter for first thing in the morning. Usually it takes you ‘til quitting time to start the full on self-pity wallow.  What’s up?”

             
“That stupid bear shifter was supposed to meet me for breakfast for an interview so I could do a stupid puff piece on him, and he never showed. He sent his secretary with a copy of his resume instead.”

             
“You seem awfully cranky considering it’s a stupid story that you don’t even want to write. I noticed that you kept his picture open your computer ever since you got here. Are you sure there’s not a little more to it than that?” He raised a questioning eyebrow.

             
“Shut up, is all I have to say about that.” She turned back to her computer with a glower, and he turned back to his computer with a smug look.

             
Of course, he wasn’t going to let it go that easily.  “If you want some distraction, you know where to look. Once you’ve gone coyote, you’ll never go back.”  He turned her way and waggled his eyebrows hopefully, a leer stretching across his face.

             
She wasn’t even going to dignify that with an answer.  And no, she did not have a crush on the big dumb bear. Okay, maybe a teeny little crush.  It was probably just as well that he’d stood her up, because she sensed that spending any time in his presence could be dangerous. Not because of his height, or his fangs, or his claws, or his massive strength.  She feared the way he made her heart pound faster.

             
Bettina waved at her and walked over. “I didn’t over-water my plant today.  It hasn’t started dying again.  Thanks for the tip.”

             
Frederick swiveled his chair to face Bettina. “I’ve got a good tip for you.  Coyote shifters are in right now.  Once you go coyote, you’ll never go back.” He winked and leered at her.

             
Fortunately for Frederick, small town girls apparently fell for lines like that.  Bettina tittered, blushed red, and scampered back to her desk.

             
Coral leaned forward and grabbed Frederick’s shirt collar.

             
“What the-urk!” he gurgled.

             
“Bettina is a nice girl.  And she actually kind of likes you.  If you hurt her, you will make me very angry.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”  Coral let her wolf face ripple over her, fangs briefly descending, before she let Frederick go and he fell back in his chair.

             
“She likes me?” he said in wonder, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

             
“Living proof that there’s no accounting for taste.”

             
“So, by the way, you’ve got good news and bad news,” Frederick added. “Which would you like first?”

             
“Oh, give them both to me. I’m a big girl, I can take it.  Don’t make any fat jokes or I’ll hit you.”

             
“You are a vivacious vision of voluptuousness.  Okay, your crazy old lady friend from yesterday is heading in the front door, and you are covering a bachelor auction tonight. I get to go with you.”

             
Coral looked at him. “I thought there was supposed to be good news in there somewhere.”

             
“The bachelor auction? You get to ogle a couple of dozen handsome men?”

             
She sighed impatiently.  She wasn’t in the mood to check out hot men.  Her self esteem had just been stomped on, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the bear. And she wanted to be covering real news stories, not more fluff.

             
“Why isn’t the society page reporter covering this?” she grumbled.

             
“Stomach flu,” Frederick shrugged, and turned back to his computer.

             
Blanche marched up to her.  Today she was wearing a purple velour track suit with sequined sneakers.

             
She plopped herself into the seat at an empty desk next to Coral.  “So, I hear the bear stood you up this morning,” she announced. “What are we going to do about it?”

             
“What? Oh, good God. My sister warned me about this town.  She told me that if a mosquito sneezed on the north end of town, everyone on the south end of the town would know about it before it finished wiping its nose.  Or something like that.”

             
“I offered to help take her mind off it, but she turned me down,” Frederick volunteered.

             
Blanche gave him a dismissive glance. “I would too,” she said, and suddenly Coral felt considerably warmer towards her.

             
Maybelle, who was sitting at her desk nearby clipping out articles to file, arched an eyebrow. “That would be a first,” she said tartly.

             
Before the two dueling spinsters could get into it again, Coral said quickly, “Anyway, it’s no big deal. It would have been a boring interview anyway.  What? Why are you staring at me?”

             
Maybelle and Blanche glanced at each other and shook their heads.

             
“Ah, youth! They’re so naïve.  Clearly, the bear has the hots for you, but he’s too scared to act on it,” Blanche said. “I’m not sure why, but I plan to get to the bottom of it.  He shouldn’t have stood you up, though.  We should get back at him. I could sneak into his house and put itching powder in his undershorts.”

             
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Coral said hastily.  Fun, and well-deserved, but not necessary.

             
“I could leave a box of brownies laced with ex-lax on his porch,” Maybelle offered.

             
“Ladies! I am shocked!” Coral protested. “Shocked, I tell you!”

             
“The itching powder is a good plan,” Maybelle said to Blanche, ignoring Coral completely.  “However, I think-oh, there’s someone to see you, Coral.”

             
A wan-looking woman with circles under her eyes was making her way towards Coral’s desk.  She looked to be in her fifties, with bedraggled brown hair yanked back into a ponytail.  She wore a t-shirt and jeans that were clearly too big for her, as if she’d recently lost weight.

             
“Can I help you?” Coral asked.

             
“You’re the new reporter, right?  I wanted to know if anyone had heard anything more about Adrian,” the woman said.

             
Adrian Freidman was the reporter who she was replacing.  He’d apparently taken off abruptly several weeks earlier, which was why the internship had opened up.

             
“Not that I know of,” she said, puzzled. “Have you checked with the sheriff’s department?”

             
The woman burst into tears. “They’re giving me the runaround,” she sniffled. “You have to understand, I know my son, and he simply would not disappear like that.   The note was fake.  Why do you think it was typewritten? Because he didn’t write it.”

             
“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about a note. Have a seat.”  She pulled up an empty chair for the woman, and sat down to face her.

             
“My name is Molly Freidman,” the woman said dolefully. She pulled a crumpled up handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her eyes.

“Coral Colby,” she said.  “Tell me what you know so far.”

              “My son had worked here for several months when he just disappeared.  didn’t come in to work one day, and he always shows up on time, so by mid morning, when he didn’t answer his phone, your boss went by the house he was renting to check on him. When nobody answered the door, your boss called the sheriff’s office.” Tears welled in the woman’s eyes.  Coral grabbed a box of tissues from her desk and handed it to her, and the woman blew her nose noisily and tossed the wadded up tissue into the trash can. 

“Thank you,” she said shakily.   “
They got the landlord to let them in, and the place was empty.  His clothing and suitcase were gone. There was a typewritten note saying that he needed to travel for a while to figure out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.”

             
“And you don’t think there’s any possibility the note was legitimate? I understand that he’s your son, but kids don’t always tell their parents everything.  If he was having second thoughts about his career, maybe he wanted to work it out on his own.”

             
“No, he was very excited about being a reporter, and he even said that he was working on some big story, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.  Being a newspaper reporter had been his dream his whole life.  And we talked all the time. We talked the night before he disappeared, and he was in a great mood.  When he disappeared, I came here from Cleveland, where we’re from, and filed a missing person’s report, and they acted like I was over-reacting.  Then I went and looked at his apartment.  Somebody had searched it.   There were rugs pushed back, chairs knocked over.  I asked his landlord, and he said that he’d heard someone breaking in there and chased them off with a shotgun, but he didn’t get a good look at them.  I told the sheriff’s department, and they said that somebody had probably broken in because they knew it was vacant now.  What I think is, someone kidnapped him, and they broke in because they were looking for something.”

             
Coral frowned, wondering if the woman was just a stressed-out parent or if there was something more going on. 

“
I found out more,” Molly said, running her shaking hand through her hair. “I found out that two other people from Blue Moon Junction have disappeared recently.  Did anyone tell you about that?”

             
“No,” Coral said, perking up. Now this sounded like a story.  She glanced across the room, and saw the publisher, Mr. Brewster, in his office, waving at her. He was making some kind of hand gesture at her. He was circling his finger at his temple, indicating the woman was crazy.

             
“David Bollinger was out of town on a business trip a few weeks ago,”  the woman said.  “His wife reported him missing. The police say that it’s because he and his wife were going through a rough patch, and he just wanted to disappear and start over – but he’s got two teenagers in high school.  Would he just completely disappear like that, without saying goodbye, when he could easily have filed for divorce? It was his teenaged son who filed the missing person’s report.   And then Marie Kirby, a schoolteacher, went on a backpacking trip to Europe recently and her family lost all contact with her.”

             
“How did you find this out?”

             
“Because I’ve been staying in town ever since my son’s disappearance, asking all around,” the woman said. “I talked to both of these families and they say that this is completely out of character for these people to disappear. Just like my son.”

             
“My sister, Ginger, has some psychic powers.  She works with the sheriff’s office here as a Certified Post Death Communicator.  Was she called in on any of these cases?”

The woman shrugged
wearily.  “The police told me that she was.  According to them, she said that my son was still alive.  I spoke to the families of the other missing people.  She also did not find any indication that they were dead.”

             
Coral wished she could ask Ginger about it. Unfortunately, the tropical island where Ginger and Marigold were basking their big pregnant selves did not have cell phone service.

             
“Well, I will say this, Ginger is excellent at what she does,” Coral said. “She’s never made a mistake. If they were dead, she could sense it.” Ginger’s power was the ability to communicate with the recently deceased. If she handled an object that they’d recently handled, or went to their home or any place that they’d spent a lot of time, she could gain access to them and speak to them before they died.

             
“Then where is he?” Molly pleaded.   “This doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll go
to the sheriff’s office and ask if they’re making any progress,” Coral promised. “I’ll ask them about the other disappearances as well.”

             
Molly wrote down her phone number. “Will you call me as soon you find out anything?”

             
“I will,” Coral promised.

After Molly left, Frederick glanced over at her. “Just so you know, I’ve heard about that woman.  She’s apparently nuts.”

              “There’s something…” Maybelle shook her head. “Something about those two other people who disappeared, that’s nagging at me. It’ll come to me.”

             
Blanche nodded. “I hate to admit that the old prude is right, but I guess there’s a first time for anything.  There is some connection between the two, I just can’t quite recall what it is at the moment.”