Nick of Time (A Bug Man Novel) (16 page)

“See, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“He doesn’t care about the details of the wedding, Alena— he cares about
you
, or he wouldn’t be marrying you.”

“Then why doesn’t he call?”

“I don’t know—but he’ll tell you when he gets back.”

Alena seemed to consider his words for a moment, then turned away and walked to the kennel, opened the gate, and waded in among the dogs. The dogs instantly swarmed around her, clamoring for her attention, whining and pawing at her legs, begging to be selected for whatever unknown assignment their master might have in mind. Alena stood in the middle of the pack and searched among them like a lighthouse on a choppy sea; when she snapped her fingers and made a familiar smoothing gesture with both hands, all the dogs immediately fell silent and sat.

Gunner had to smile; he never ceased to be amazed at Alena’s remarkable ability to command her animals without so much as a word—and how eerie it looked when she did.
No wonder they call her a witch
, he thought.
Poor kid
.

Now Alena pointed to three of the dogs and one by one traced a line with her finger toward the truck. Each dog obediently exited the kennel and resumed a sitting position near the tailgate: Dante, the enormous black neo-mastiff; Ruckus, the scrawny little Chinese crested with the wry jaw and jutting pink tongue; and Trygg, the three-legged cadaver dog with the blue tourmaline eyes.

Gunner looked at the three dogs in disbelief. “You’re still going?”

Alena swung the kennel gate shut again. “I told you I was.”

“Did you hear anything I said?”

“I heard you,” she said. “You said Nick still wants me. You said he might not like planning a wedding, but he still wants to marry me. You said he has a reason for not calling and he’s coming back soon.”

“Then why are you still going?”

“Because I need to hear Nick say it.”

“Then let him tell you himself when he gets back.”

Alena stepped up close to Gunner and lowered her voice to a whisper. “What if he’s not coming back, Gunner? What if you’re wrong? What if he doesn’t come back tomorrow, or the next day—and that’s our wedding day. Am I supposed to stand up in front of that church all by myself and hope my fiancé decides to show up? What if he doesn’t? I couldn’t take that, Gunner—I just couldn’t. I need to look into Nick’s eyes and ask him why he didn’t call. I need to ask him why he really left. I need to know if he still wants me, and I can’t wait until our wedding day to find out.”

Gunner watched as she ordered the three dogs up onto the tailgate and back under the cover of the white camper shell. “So you’re planning to take your dogs and track him down.”

“If I have to.”

“Like some kind of escaped convict.”

“Like an escaped fiancé. That’s different.”

“And what if you do find him? What are you going to tell him when he says, ‘I told you I’d be back—why did you have to come looking for me?’ ”

“I’ll say, ‘I thought you might need my help. I thought you might be hurt or in trouble.’”

“In other words, you’re going to lie.”

“Yeah. And then I’m going to confess it and God will forgive me—and you’ll serve Communion at the wedding.”

“You little Pharisee—you’ve got the whole thing figured out, don’t you?”

She didn’t reply.

Gunner looked into the truck at the three dogs curled up together in one enormous mound of black and gray and scraggly white fur; Ruckus’s little pink head was so small that it looked like a wart on Dante’s massive shoulder. “Why those three?” he asked.

“Dante for security. Trygg—just in case.”

“What about Ruckus? What’s he good for?”

“He can do anything. He’s a great tracker—he’s got a terrific nose.” She picked up the stack of white towels sealed in plastic bags and showed them to Gunner. “Nick used my shower once; another time he got caught in the rain and had to dry off. I saved the towels, just in case. Good thing I did.”

Gunner watched her face as she carefully replaced the plastic bags. He knew there was no sense trying to talk her out of it; he knew what she was feeling, and he knew why. When Alena was just ten years old her father had mysteriously vanished one day, leaving her without apology or explanation, and when a man steps out of a little girl’s life like that it leaves a hole. Now another man was about to enter her life, and Alena needed to know if he was going to leave her too. It wasn’t fair to Nick, because Alena’s father didn’t abandon her—he was murdered. But Alena didn’t learn of her father’s fate until just a year or two ago, and by that time her issues of trust and abandonment were deeply entrenched. Now she was about to go traipsing all over the Poconos tracking down her missing fiancé with a team of trained dogs—and what would Nick think when he saw her? He said he’d be back before the wedding; all he did was miss a couple of phone calls. A man wants to be trusted—what are the prospects for a marriage without trust?

Gunner didn’t know what to pray for more—that Alena would find Nick, or that she wouldn’t. Either way, Alena was bound and determined to go, and Gunner had learned long ago that when Alena set her mind to do something, you could either get on the truck or get run over. “Do you have the cell phone Nick gave you?” he asked her.

She took it out of her pocket and showed it to him.

“Keep it with you,” he said, “and keep it charged. When Nick gets back he’ll want to call you—and he’ll probably get back before you do.”

“He’s supposed to call me again tonight,” she said. “ ‘Every night I’m gone’—that’s what he told me. Nine o’clock.”

“By that time you’ll be in Pine Summit. What are you going to tell him when he calls?”

“I’ll tell him I forgive him for not calling and I’m waiting for him at home—then I’ll jump in the truck and beat him back here.”

Gunner shook his head. “I’m not serving Communion at your wedding—I’m doing a sermon on honesty.”

Alena lifted the tailgate and closed the rear window on the camper shell. She gave Gunner a quick peck on the cheek and climbed into the cab.

“What do I tell Nick if he calls me again? What if he asks where you are?”

“He knows where I am—he left me here. Just don’t tell him I went to the Poconos, okay?”

“I won’t lie for you, Alena.”

“Just don’t tell him—that’s not the same as lying.”

“Rose is down in Endor decorating the church,” he said.

“What am I supposed to tell her?”

“Tell her to keep decorating,” Alena said. “I’ll be back—with Nick.”

“I’m performing a wedding ceremony on Saturday at six,”

he said. “Just make sure you’re back by then.”

Alena grinned. “You think I’d miss my own wedding?”

16

N
ow this is what I call a room with a view,” Nick said.

“Best view on the lake,” the man agreed.

The wall that faced the lake was made entirely of glass; on the opposite side was a sprawling teakwood deck, and a short distance beyond the deck the lake stretched left and right as far as the eye could see, glittering in the morning sun that had just cleared the tips of the pines on the far shore. The combination of direct sun and light reflecting off the lake was almost blinding. Nick shielded his eyes and looked up; the cathedral ceiling rose to a peak a good fourteen feet directly over his head, giving the room a cavernous feel. He turned and looked around the room; the furniture seemed sparse and surprisingly shabby for a room so impressive.
So the guy’s not a decorator
, he thought.
Big deal
. He still had the nicest place on the fifty-two-mile shoreline of Lake Wallenpaupack.

“They told me this was a lake house,” Nick said.

“It’s a house, and there’s the lake. What would you call it?”

“
Palace
would be more like it. What’s a place like this go for, anyway?”

The man didn’t answer.

“Just curious,” Nick said with a shrug. “I’m from out of town.”

“I bought the place a couple of years ago for 2.4 million. I thought it was a bargain.”

“Maybe the price was deflated because the previous owner dropped dead here,” Nick suggested. “Buyers can be superstitious about things like that.”

The man looked Nick over again. “I’m sorry, what did you say this is about again?”

“I’m working in conjunction with Sheriff Yanuzzi over in Pine Summit. We’re trying to clear up a few unresolved details about the previous owner’s death.”

“So you’re a cop?”

“More like a private consultant.” Nick took a business card from his wallet and handed it to him.

“North Carolina State University. You’re a college professor?”

“You have to pay the bills.” Nick looked at his notes. “Your name is Duncan Malone—is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“And you bought this place after the death of the previous owner—a Mr. George Hotchkiss.”

“That’s right.”

“Would you mind showing me the spot where Mr. Hotchkiss died?”

Malone winced. “How would I know that?”

“Because you asked the Realtor. It’s human nature—nobody wants to plant their favorite easy chair on somebody’s grave.” He opened a file folder and handed Malone a sheet of paper.

“Maybe this will jog your memory.”

“What’s this?”

“A crime scene photo. Well, a fax of a crime scene photo— that’s why it’s so grainy. But you can make out a bed and a man’s body lying beside it—that would be Mr. Hotchkiss. Do you recognize the room?”

“Yeah, I know where it is.”

“Can you show me?”

Malone led Nick down a hallway and into a bedroom at the end. The room was spacious though almost devoid of furnishings. There was an institutional-looking bed with a wood-grained laminate headboard and footboard in the center of the left wall; to the right of the bed was a nightstand with a chrome frame and plastic drawers.

“Looks like a hospital in here,” Nick said. “Was that Mr. Hotchkiss’s bed?”

“Yeah. I still need to get rid of his stuff.”

The bathroom was to the left of the bed. Nick took a look inside; there was a Jacuzzi and a shower big enough to park a car in. “Big bedroom.”

“Yeah.”

“Shame to give up a nice room like this. Your wife didn’t like the idea of sleeping in a dead man’s room?”

“I’m not married,” Malone said. “I took the room that faces the lake—much better view. I suppose the old man wasn’t much into scenery near the end; he probably just wanted it dark and quiet.”

“Makes sense.” Nick went to the left side of the bed and took out the crime scene photo again. He held the photo at arm’s length and compared it to the view before him. “Is this where the bed was when you bought the place? Have you moved anything around in here?”

“I didn’t plan to sleep here so there wasn’t much point,” Malone said. “This is pretty much how I found things.”

Nick looked at the carpet; he saw wear in the high-traffic areas—in the doorways leading to the bathroom and hallway. “You didn’t replace the carpet?”

Malone was starting to look annoyed. “Look, I can save you some time here. This is where the old man died and I haven’t changed a thing. It took all the cash I had just to get into the place, so no new carpeting and no new furniture. I left his stuff in here because it was either that or an empty room; it wasn’t bothering anything, so I was in no hurry to have it hauled away. Now would you mind telling me what this is all about? Because the guy we’re talking about died three years ago.”

“Did you know the previous owner, Mr. Malone?”

“Never met the guy. Hotchkiss had no family—I bought the house from his estate.”

“Are you familiar with the circumstances surrounding his death?”

“He died of old age. That’s what they told me.”

“There was a home-care nurse who was supposed to be looking in on him. The medical examiner thought maybe he didn’t—maybe that’s why Mr. Hotchkiss died when he did. There wasn’t sufficient proof of that, so no charges were ever filed.”