Thyme to Live: A We Sisters Three Mystery (5 page)

“No.” She shook her head and gave a half-laugh. “That was kind of strange, too. We usually window shop at the boutiques, maybe find a shoe sale or pick up some accessories—you know, high-end shopping on a low-end budget.”

“Sure,” I said, nodding. I knew that particular type of shopping spree all too well, as it happened.

“But on Friday, she wanted to shop for really stupid, boring things.”

“Like what?” Victor asked.

She looked up at the ceiling and searched her memory. Then she ticked off the items on her fingers. “Like a blender; new sheets; a travel toothbrush. Oh, and fishing line, for some unknown reason. I mean, we spent the whole time in Tar-jey,” she said, placing an ironic French accent on Target’s name.

Victor had pulled a mini-notebook out of his breast pocket and was scrawling furiously with a stubby little pencil.

“Does your sister fish?” I asked him.

“Not as far as I know.” He finished scribbling his notes and turned back to Lynn. “So, after Target, what did you do?”

“Okay, well at the time, I didn’t really think anything of it ...”

“But?” he prompted.

“But, when we were waiting on line to check out, she got a call. I saw her check the number on her display and let it roll to voicemail. Whoever it was left a voicemail. When we were walking out of the store, she listened to it, and her whole face turned white, like all the blood drained out of it.” Lynn’s eyes were wide, and her voice was suddenly shaky. She picked up her glass and drained it before finishing her story. “We’d been planning to get some appetizers and drinks before my show, but she stood there staring at her phone for a minute and then said something about an emergency. She kept apologizing but said she had to go. She gave me a quick hug and then took off, almost running toward the subway station at the corner. And that was it. I figured I’d see her tomorrow at SoulCycle.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But maybe I won’t.”

“
W
here to now
?” I yawned and settled back into the passenger seat after we dropped Lynn off at her apartment. I was stuffed full of fresh pasta and good wine. My eyelids fluttered shut despite my best efforts. I struggled to lift them, but they were so heavy. Maybe a quick cat nap would help. I snuggled into the leather seat.

“I’m taking you home.”

My eyes popped open and I sprang upright. I was suddenly wide awake. “What? No, we need to run down the phone call Helena got. Weren’t you listening to Lynn? Your sister was definitely saying her goodbyes on Friday and—”

“Whoa, whoa, simmer down. Yes, I was listening. Trust me, I heard everything she said. I’m going to drop you off and then call my source at the wireless company that Helena used and ask her for a list of ingoing and outgoing calls.”

Oh, a source. It sounded so fancy. But still. I opened my mouth to argue. He took one hand off the steering wheel and held it up like a crossing guard.

“Let me finish. It’s going to take a bit of time to get anything back from her cell phone. At least a day. Probably longer. In the meantime, we both have actual jobs to show up for in the morning. And
you
are asleep on your feet. So I’m taking you home, and you’re going to meditate or whatever you do and then go to bed.”

I undercut any response I might have made by unleashing another giant yawn. He was right. I was exhausted. And, in the morning, I had not only Cate Whittier-Clay, but two other clients as well. I slumped back in defeat.

“Fine.”

Of course, it
wasn’t
fine. It was sensible and smart, but it definitely wasn’t fine. Helena was out there, somewhere, possibly injured and bleeding, almost certainly frightened. As he took the on-ramp onto FDR Drive, I took a deep breath and made one final push for going to the police. “You know, if you just reported her as a missing person, the police could be working on this, too. I’m not saying we should stop. I’m just saying we could run parallel investigations.”

He gave me a sidelong look. “Parallel investigations? Okay, Detective Field.”

I grinned but stayed the course. “Victor, I’m serious.”

“I know,” he said with a heavy sigh. “And I hear you. I don’t like it, but I think you’re right. If Gabriel was looking for her, it sounds like he’s already found her. Between the phone call and the blood ...”

I knew he couldn’t finish the sentence. And I realized that, to him, getting law enforcement involved was a concession that his sister was already dead. My stomach lurched at the thought.

“No, on second thought, we should wait another day.”

“Really?” he asked with a spark of hope that made my heart ache.

“Yeah, definitely. Let’s give your source at the phone company some time and see what she can come up with before we get the fuzz involved.”

“The fuzz?” A laugh bubbled up from his throat, which was totally my plan.

“Yep. Or the coppers, if you prefer.”

Some of the dread seemed to seep out of the air in the town car. He grinned at my silliness, but he looked unconvinced about the idea of waiting to involve the authorities—even though he’d been so against it before.

“I don’t know.”

We drove in silence for a few minutes. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat.
He was clearly mulling over my suggestion. I could almost see him weighing the benefit of keeping hope alive against getting closure.

He pulled over and parked in a loading zone near my building and turned to look at me. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I’m definitely right. Meet me back here tomorrow afternoon. I finish up with my last client at one o’clock. We’ll see if we can’t make some more progress.”

A brief smile flashed across his face, but it faded almost instantly. He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Thank you, Thyme. Thanks for helping me.” He paused and swallowed hard. “I can’t imagine doing this alone.” He leaned across the front seat and searched my face with his warm, brown eyes. I could smell his woodsy cologne.

My insides felt all melty and gooey, sort of like the core of a toasted marshmallow.

“I’m not seeing anyone either,” I yelped like an idiot. Then I unlatched my seatbelt and bolted from the car before he could respond.

A
ll morning long
, as I went through the motions with my clients, I was having an internal wrestling match with myself. Had I been in the right to convince Victor not to go to the police just yet?

I counted stretches, corrected forms, and reminded my clients to breathe. You’d be surprised how common it is for people to hold their breath while exercising. But the whole time I was training Cate, then Ella, then Marcy, I was completely wrapped up in the drama playing out in my whirring brain. It was a terrible habit, because, as I was quick to remind them, it always pays to be mindful of the task at hand. Whether that task was washing the dishes or performing asanas. You get more out of every activity if you’re truly present.

In this case, though, it seemed I was incapable of taking my own advice. Even after I finished up with Marcy and popped into the deli across the street from her office for a bowl of surprisingly tasty carrot-avocado soup, I ate mindlessly. By the time I was yanked back to reality by the sound of my spoon scraping the bottom of the empty bowl, I decided that we definitely needed to go to the police ASAP. I deposited my bowl and spoon in the dirty bin and marched off in the direction of my place, my mind made up.

Victor and his borrowed town car were waiting for me when I reached the corner. The Lincoln was parked dangerously close to a fire hydrant to my eye. Its driver leaned against the hood, legs and arms crossed.

“You’re early,” I said as a joined him beside the car.

“We’ve got lots to do,” he chirped back.

Surprised by his cheery tone, I took a close look at him. He was positively vibrating with energy.

“What’s going on? Did your source at the wireless company come through already?”

“Sort of,” he said as he pulled open the passenger door and waved me toward the car. “Do you need to drop anything off at your place or can we go now? I’ll fill you in on the way.”

I slid into the passenger seat by way of answer. He shut the door behind me and jogged around to the driver’s seat. As he started the engine I said, “Can I at least have a hint as to where we’re headed?”

“Back to Helena’s.”

“Really?” I gnawed on my lower lip, glad that Sage wasn’t around to see and call me out on it. She’d made it her mission in life to stop me from biting my nails; she didn’t know I’d simply substituted chewing on my lip during trying times.

He glanced at me. “Something’s on your mind. Spill it.”

I shook my head. I wanted to hear what new development had him so excited before I decided to burst his bubble. “You first.”

“My friend at the wireless company is still working to pull Helena’s records, but she told me something that makes me think we may not even need her to.”

I sat up a little straighter. “Really? What’s that?”

“Helena’s phone is still in her apartment.” He swerved right, hard, to avoid a taxicab. I grabbed the door handle as we careened into the next lane over.

I waited until the crescendo of angry horns honking in our wake died down, then I asked, “They can tell where her phone is?” I realized it was a stupid question even as I formed the words.

They, whoever
they
are, can tell everything about a girl. It was downright creepy.

He nodded and kept his eyes on the traffic. “I asked my source to triangulate her location, but she didn’t even have to. Helena’s phone hasn’t moved. It’s sitting in her apartment, according to the GPS location. There’ve been no outgoing calls since Friday.”

“Good thing her battery didn’t die.”

He laughed. “I’m pretty sure they can tell where a phone is even if it’s turned off or the battery is dead.”

I could tell from the cadence of his voice that he was really excited about this development. I chomped down harder on my lower lip and tried to silence the misgiving that was taking shape in my mind. Unfortunately, the thought ran around inside my mind like a hamster on a wheel—frantic, relentless, and noisy.

I cleared my throat. “Umm ... if Helena left of her own volition don’t you think she’d have taken her phone with her?” I asked as gingerly as I could.

To my way of thinking, the fact that her phone was in the apartment was more proof that she was dead or—at best—had been abducted by her psycho ex-husband.

But he shook his head, rejecting my theory. “No, no. See, that’s the thing. She got an upsetting call on Friday when she was with Lynn, right?”

“Yeah.”

“If that call was from Gabriel, then she knew it was just a matter of time until he showed up at her place. She could have ditched the phone and taken off.”

“Okay, that’s plausible,” I allowed, “but she also could’ve gone home and been ambushed by—”

“I know. Look, I just want to go to the apartment. I think it’s worth checking to see if we can find the phone.”

“Why’s the phone so important to you if Helena doesn’t have it?” I was still confused by his enthusiasm.

“If we can find the phone I don’t need Mar—” he stopped himself before he blurted out his source’s name. “I don’t need my contact at the wireless company to take the risk of pulling Helena’s call log and setting off whatever red flags that might set off. We’ll have a log of all her incoming and outgoing calls right there on her phone. We’ll be able to see who called her on Friday.”

I could see the logic, but it also seemed as though he was grasping at straws. I mean, I guess when the options are your sister’s dead or has decided to vanish without a trace, you grasped at whatever straws you could.

“Okay,” I agreed lamely. I’d humor him for now.

“Did Cate say anything this morning?”

“Cate? You mean Cate Whittier-Clay?” I asked, blinking in confusion at the sudden change of topics.

“Yes. Did she mention Helena?”

I wasn’t sure how to break it to him that his sister’s employer viewed her, me, and everyone else who worked for her as entirely fungible. The new nanny, Janie, had shown up right on time and, as far as Cate was concerned, that was the end of the issue. Audra did seem to be missing Helena quite a bit, but Janie was taking special care to keep her busy and let her share her feelings about her old nanny. Audra would be okay in the end. I mean, as okay as a child raised in the hothouse flower environment of the Whittier-Clay penthouse could be.

I roused myself from my musing about Audra’s upbringing, when I realized he was waiting for an answer. “Ms. Whittier-Clay and I don’t talk much,” I explained.
That
was an understatement. Mainly she groaned and complained, and I offered motivation and encouragement. We didn’t chitchat. Before I could give him the short version of Cate Whittier-Clay’s philosophy regarding making friends and influencing people, we reached Helena’s apartment.

But instead of parking in the front, he snaked around to the bumpy back alley lined with rusty old dumpsters, trash cans, and weeds. He pulled over and parked on a piece of broken cement between a dented metal trash can a la Oscar the Grouch and a mostly dead thorny bush.

I gave him a look as he cut the engine. “I don’t think this is a parking spot.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” he agreed. “But, since we’re about to commit a breaking and entering, I don’t think a parking violation is our biggest concern.”

“Hang on. You want to break into her apartment?”

“There’s no other way in. We locked her door behind us when we left yesterday.”

“At the risk of sounding obvious, you could take another shot at the super. Or start buzzing apartments again until we find another lonely person who wants to talk to a reporter.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I got a weird vibe from that super, and now that we know Gabriel might have tracked down Helena, I’m wondering if he bought that guy off. I don’t want to risk tipping him off. And we don’t have time to play reporter. Don’t worry though, I’ve got a plan.”

“Even so, you still shouldn’t park the car right here.”

He threw me a look. “Why not?”

“Don’t you watch movies? Most serial killers are caught by observant meter maids. I assume the same applies to other criminals, too.”

He rolled his eyes. “Wait here,” he instructed.

I loitered beside the dumpster trying not to breathe too deeply while he moved the car down the alley and parked it a few buildings away.

V
ictor’s plan was
—not to put too fine a point on it—a terrible one. I had plenty of time to consider its many shortcomings as I climbed. After he’d explained his idea, he boosted me in his hands so that I could reach the fire escape. Luckily for his deficient plan, I had enough upper body strength and flexibility to pull myself from the bottom rung to a position where I could scramble up the rungs like a monkey. It occurred to me that most sidekicks, including the long-limbed Lynn, would have had a hard time executing that move.

Sadly, though, my acrobatic maneuver was probably the best part of the plan because the rest of it involved me breaking into Helena’s apartment through the window then buzzing Victor in. He’d said to walk straight through the apartment, hit the buzzer to let him in, and unlock her door. He planned to hang around in the alley until I was about halfway up and then head to the front door of the building to wait for me to buzz him in.

I twisted and glanced down behind me to confirm that he’d gone around to the front.

Whoa.

The ground looked very far away, and it occurred to me that jagged edges of cracked cement would hardly provide a pillowy cushion if I were to slip and fall. I gripped the metal ladder a little more tightly. Peeling paint flaked off in my hands and decades of dirt and grime fell off with it.

I moved up to the next rung and shifted my hands up as well. As I did, I felt something sticky.

Ugh.

I was almost afraid to look. Best-case scenario it would be disgusting New York City pigeon poop. I didn’t really want to contemplate what the worst-case scenario would be. I paused in my climb to wipe my hand on the side of my pants, but when I pulled away from the railing I nearly lost my balance. My hand was covered, not with bird crap, but with brownish-red
stuff.
It looked like rust, but it felt viscous.

I climbed a few more rungs and another rusty spot caught my eye. I looked more closely at the metal ladder. There were rust-colored handprints on both sides spaced about six inches apart vertically.
Helena’s blood.

She must have used the fire escape to flee the apartment. Both my heart and my mind began to race as I pictured the scene: Gabriel had surprised her at the apartment; they’d struggled; she’d been injured but had managed to climb down the fire escape. My stomach lurched at the image.

I kept climbing and was careful not to put my hands in any more of the bloody spots. I ignored the bile rising in my throat. I couldn’t afford to freak out now. When I reached the landing outside Helena’s window, a hot breeze kicked up and blew a long strand of hair into my eyes. Reflexively I used my bloody right hand to push the hair away and caught an unmistakable whiff of chocolate.

I’d always heard that blood smelled like copper, but Helena’s apparently smelled exactly like baking cocoa. Trust me. For all Rosemary’s vegan, holistic, natural food philosophy, my oldest sister could make a mean dessert. I know the smell of chocolate.

I sniffed again. Definitely chocolate. Not quite believing what I was about to do, I cautiously raised my hand to my mouth and tentatively licked my index finger. Yep, chocolate. Bitter chocolate, probably cocoa powder, mixed with
something
, but not blood. I stood there for a long moment, trying to place the tang that cut through the cocoa taste and hoping it wasn’t some dreadfully toxic pollutant.

I’d have to figure it out later. I had to break into the apartment and let Victor in. I reached into my pocket for the rubber mallet he’d given me.

Three quick taps
, he’d told me.
Cover your face, but the glass should break inward.

I didn’t want to know how a
New York Times
reporter knew so much about breaking into an apartment. I eyed the bedroom window.

Here goes nothing,
I thought. I raised the mallet and averted my face. Then I was struck by an idea: if Helena had climbed down the fire escape, which she clearly had, she wouldn’t have been able to lock the window behind her. So unless Gabriel had locked it after she left, her bedroom window might still be open.

I returned the mallet to my pocket. It was worth a shot to at least check before I engaged in destruction of property. I put my fingers under the ledge and pushed up hard on the heavy, splintered frame. It groaned, but sure enough, gave way. Feeling more than a little delighted that my hunch had paid off, I scrunched up and lowered one leg into the apartment, balancing on the steam radiator under the windowsill.

I limboed inside. As I closed the window behind me I noticed another rust-red handprint that Victor and I hadn’t seen yesterday. I hurried through the bedroom out to the kitchen. The buzzer was right where Victor had said I’d find it—on an intercom mounted near the door. I placed the mallet on the counter, hit the buzzer, then flipped the lock on the door to the right to disengage it for him. Then I hurried back down the hall to the bedroom. I had a hunch to run down before he got there.

I wanted to confirm my suspicion that it wasn’t blood on Helena’s bedding. I raced into the bedroom and pulled open the bifold closet doors. Then I lifted the comforter from the closet floor and inspected it. It still looked ghoulish and ghastly, as though it had been stained with evidence of a violent struggle, but now that I had theory about the so-called blood, I brought my face closer to the stain and sniffed. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, chocolate. And that tang? It sort of reminded me of ketchup.

Who would combine ketchup and chocolate? I shuddered. Then I thought back to the summer I was fifteen. Sage was seventeen and secretly dating Lucian, a college drama student spending his vacation doing summer stock at the community theater. The Seaside Playhouse had staged
Hamlet
that summer, and one weekend, before he and Sage had disappeared to swap spit in the barn behind our property, Lucian had shown us how to make blender stage blood on a budget. Ketchup and cocoa powder were the main ingredients.