The Baker's Wife (22 page)
“It wasn't rigged like he said?”
“No. It was lucky . . . well. He's probably done something about that now.”
“Did he take everyone's phones?”
“I don't know. Maybe? He didn't ask me for one.”
“He knows you don't own one.” Audrey frowned at her.
“How'd he know that?”
“He's a detective, Diane. How do you think
I
found out that you lied to him about Julie's phone?”
Diane pursed her lips together and wouldn't look at her.
“You shouldn't have done that.”
“People tell me that a lot.”
Audrey pointed at her own cell phone. “Here, try calling Geoff. He's on the speed dial, number two.” She waited impatiently for Diane to figure out the basic commands of the phone.
“Straight to voice mail. Didn't even ring.”
“Try Ed. Number three.”
Diane pushed the necessary buttons and got the same result.
“The landline?” She gave her the number. No answer. “I need a way to talk to them!”
The headlights were reflecting off the moisture in the air and glaring back at her. She turned off the lamps so that all she had on were the parking lights, and the pounding in her head eased up just enough for her to choose her course.
“We can't go to the bakery,” she said to Diane.
“Why not?”
“Jack's there because he has no idea where Julie is. That means the police don't have a clue either.”
“I don't understand why we shouldn't go talk to them.”
“If no one knows where she is, talking about what we don't know is a waste of time.”
“They might be able to tell you
something
.”
“Like what? Their goal as I guess it is to get Jack under control. They're not going to give me a briefing on Julie's case. I'm a suspect!”
Diane was silent for a few seconds, then she nodded. “Ohhhh. So you think Jack knew you'd go talk to them, and with his demands plus a threat against your family, they'd send you on your way, and then they'd follow you to see what you would do.”
Audrey hadn't considered it that way at all. It was an unpleasant possibility. Until then she hadn't thought that the police would be anything but an ally. But she said, “Exactly.”
“Maybe it will look really bad if you don't go talk to them at all.”
Yes, maybe it would. But six hours wasn't enough time for her to worry about that. When she reached Meridian Road, she turned left instead of right.
“You don't know where Juliet is?” Diane asked.
“No, I don't. I wish I did.”
“It's cold out there,” Diane said. “Not like in your bakery.”
She must have meant something more than what was obvious, Audrey thought. “If you'd be more comfortable I can drop you off at the police station firstâ”
“What are you going to do?” Diane asked. And through the doubting tone, Audrey believed she heard anticipation rather than fear in the woman's voice. A dare. A hope.
“I'm going to Jack's house.”
“Okay.” A few seconds passed. “You should expect police to be there, just so you know.”
“I don't, actually. We don't have that big a police force in this town.”
“Why Jack's house? If he doesn't know where Julie is, wouldn't he have turned it inside out looking for clues? At least his buddies would have.”
“Maybe I think he knows where Julie is.” That should have been enough of a surprise to drop on Diane's head, but the woman didn't even raise an eyebrow. And so Audrey added, “Also, the last time I was at his home something really strange happened. Maybe I can get it to happen again.”
Secretly, she doubted it.
The involved parties have accepted my demands and will comply by 1230
hours. Five souls praying for the safe return of all. Please stand by to aid
victim and secure suspect upon arrival. I need no further assistance
.
Jack pressed
SEND
on his phone and delivered the e-mail to Captain Wilson. His methods, while drastic, would be justified as most efficient when it came to ending his wife's ordeal. Julie would come home and return to work; their routines would resume; God would end their suffering and fulfill his promises. Jack's colleagues' hands would be clean; Bofinger's wife would be punished appropriately.
The storage room had a concrete floor with a drain at the center, and walls of cinder block that had been painted white. Floor-to-ceiling stainless-steel racks on wheels were lined up in the space like library book stacks. Jack instructed Ed and the cowering girl, a nerd with her notebooks, to push aside the racks in the center so they might have room to sit. That task would occupy them for a while.
He put the Mexican woman in the one empty corner out of reach of potential projectiles. Jack sat opposite her on an empty five-gallon bucket, which he'd overturned and positioned in the doorway, his back to the kitchen. He attached a silencer to the end of his gun. Wilson, now alerted to “the situation,” would only get uptight and start acting recklessly if he heard any guns going off. Jack hadn't expected to send off a round already.
Coach said, “I heard a cat.”
He lay on the floor with his foot elevated on a bag of wheat flour. His neck and shoulders twisted so he could see, upside down, through the storeroom door and into the kitchen. A small pile of bloody dish towels was accumulating at his side. Estrella slipped out of her apron and sweater and covered the man with them both, a wasted gesture on this cold slab of floor. Geoff continued to apply pressure to the wound.
“Better not let the health department see this,” Jack said to Geoff, gesturing to the red droplets on the sacks. “Or any cats.”
A sweat broke out on Coach's forehead. “I really hate cats.”
“Aren't you concerned about what the police department will think?” Geoff asked Jack.
“They're not very interested in your work here,” Jack said. “Get the man some Tylenol. Where's your first-aid kit?”
“Estrella, in that cabinet,” Geoff said, pointing to the doors behind her.
The set of rolling shelves rattled with cooking utensils as it shifted under the kids' weight.
“The police can't support what you're doing,” Geoff continued while Estrella found the white box bearing a little red cross on the lid.
“Drastic methods are hard to support before they're proven effective.”
“I would like to see thees man say so to a judge,” Estrella said to Geoff.
“If you don't keep silent, you might miss that opportunity,” Jack said to her. Then to Geoff, “We can be done with this whenever you say the word. The right word.”
Estrella handed Coach some tablets.
“I wasn't lying to you when I said I don't know what happened to Julie,” Geoff said.
“Your wife doesn't confide in you? That's some marriage bond you've got.”
The phone in the kitchen rang.
“Audrey doesn't have anything to hide.” The baker applied one more clean towel to the coach's foot and secured it with some of the duct tape from the roll Jack had tossed onto the floor.
Coach said, “Julie confided in me more than she did in you, Jack.”
“When? All those times you took her out clubbing? Did you think I wouldn't find out about that?”
“What? We didn't go clubbing.”
“Then what do you call those nights out at The Barley Field?”
“It was a retirement party for the athletic director.
One
night. All the staff from Mazy went.”
“But you and my wife were joined at the hip, from what I heard. You know my fellow officers like to end shifts there too? Yeah, I think you knew.”
“For crying out loud, Jack. She was just being supportive. Like a sponsor.”
“I think the pain is clouding your mind,” Jack snapped. “Maybe a little brandy or rum will take the edge off. Any of your recipes call for that stuff, Geoff?”
The baker ignored him.
Coach said, “She's a good woman. I've lost track of how many times her kindness kept me sober.”
“Julie has a soft spot for dogs.”
“You're the best evidence of that.”
Jack called upon his years of experience as an officer to maintain an outwardly unaffected poise. It wasn't good that he'd already lost his cool before he'd even set everything in motion. On the bright side, it seemed that shooting Coach in the foot might have been providential. If the man was belligerent now, how much trouble might he have caused if still standing?
“I'm sure your knowledge of my wife is limited.”
“Like yours, you mean.”
“You're not lying in a very safe position to insult me.”
“Julie is my friend. She and I spend more hours together at the school than the two of you spend together in your home. That's a simple matter of number crunching, Jack.”
“But she didn't marry you, did she?”
“All I'm saying is, depressed people need sympathetic ears. Their spouses can't always provide those. Not in the same way someone who's been there can.”
“My wife is not depressed!”
“That, right there, is exactly my point.”
The girl with the Bofinger boy whispered something to him. They leaned shoulder to shoulder as they pushed a second shelf unit against the wall.
“If you have something to say, let's all hear it,” Jack said to her. The girl started crying again.
Geoff said to Coach, “Did Julie ever seem afraid to you? Like she feared someone might hurt her?”
“Fishing for alibis, are we?” Jack said.
“No,” Coach said to Geoff. “She wasn't afraid, she was clinically depressed. Diagnosed by her doctor.”
“If my wife was sad it's only because she hasn't been saved yet.”
Estrella snorted. “Thees man can't be serious.”
“As my bleeding foot,” Coach said.
All eyes turned to Jack. These people disgusted him. Their hearts and minds were dense. “Depression is a spiritual sickness.”
“It's physical,” Coach said, “and Christians aren't any more immune to it than the common cold. I've struggled with itâand more.”
“Then I question the depth of your faith,” Jack said.
“I thought Mrs. Mansfield was depressed.” The snuffling teenage girl seemed unable to stop her outburst. “Even though she tried not to show it.”
“What's your name?” Jack asked her. He put a hand on her shoulder and turned her away from Ed. Ed warned Jack off with his superhero laser-eye gaze. Jack pointed at the remaining unit that need to be pushed aside, and Ed went to it. In the corner of his heart, Jack felt sorry for this girl and feared what sins Ed might lead her into if she wasn't wary. That, however, was out of his hands.
“Your name,” he repeated.
“Leslie,” she said.
“Leslie, even if you're legally an adultâ”
“I turn eighteen nextâ”
“âyou have a lot to learn about adult behavior. The age of adulthood ought to be raised to twenty-five and probably will be one of these days. A girl our daughter's age is the last person my wife would confide in. The last.”
“She didn't have to tell me anything,” Leslie whispered. “I could just see it.”
“Well, that's evidence enough for me!”
Geoff couldn't resist derailing the conversation at this point, seeing that Jack was taking the upper hand. “Maybe it would be more helpful ifâ”
“You've never been very good at saving people from themselves,” Jack said. “Stop trying. Stick to playing with your flour and water.”
“If you want to know what happened to Julie, consider that all the people in this room know herâeveryone except Estrella. If we pool our information, maybe something helpful will open up.”
“I know everything I need to know,” Jack said, returning to his bucket perch. “I didn't come here to do more investigating.”
From somewhere in the dining room a cat mewed.
Nothing about Jack's house appeared as it had on the spring day when Audrey had last come. The sunshine warmth seemed forbidden here, excommunicated from the property. Flowerpots contained only caked soil and dry plant skeletons abandoned at summer's end.
Audrey didn't see any police.
“How are you going to get in?” Diane asked.
Audrey's mind had been focused on how her body might react to arriving here. So far, she'd sensed no change in her previous achy condition.