A Fairy Tale (6 page)

“I’m sorry, no, but they’re in the chorus of
Emma: The Musical
.”

Tanaka turned to Michael. “And what about you? When did you see her last?”

“She came up yesterday evening before she left for the theater bring me some soup. She left Beau with me for the night and said she’d come by in the morning to walk him.”

“She didn’t come by?”

“No, but I didn’t notice it at the time. I was kind of out of it. I fell asleep on the sofa, and Beau woke me up this morning when he wanted to go out. I took him for a walk, then I fed him, ate something, and I fell asleep again. Next thing I knew, Sophie was knocking on the door.”

“Did you hear Emily come home last night?”

Michael shook his head. “Nope, but she could have had a wild party down there and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

Tanaka consulted his notebook. “Now, Sophie, Michael said you knew Emily was missing when she didn’t show up for the matinee.”

“That’s right.”

“You flew to New York from—where, exactly?”

“Maybelle, Louisiana. It’s about forty miles northeast of Shreveport.”

“Michael called us soon after three. The matinee started at two. How could you have known to come before anyone knew she was missing?”

Michael wanted to groan out loud. He hadn’t even registered the time incongruities.

He wasn’t the only one to react to the question. For the first time during this interview, Sophie’s steely composure faltered. It wasn’t an extreme reaction, just an overall tensing and a tightening of the muscles around her eyes, and for a split second, she broke eye contact with Tanaka, but it was more of a response than she’d shown thus far. She looked mildly furious, and Michael wouldn’t have been surprised if Tanaka had turned to stone from her glare.

She lifted her chin ever so slightly, fixed Tanaka with her steady gaze, and said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, then, I had a feeling.” She said it simply and directly, without stammering or looking at all embarrassed.

Tanaka raised his eyebrows and smirked. “A
feeling
?”

“A wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-knowing-something’s-horribly-wrong feeling.”

“You mean a nightmare?”

She shook her head. “No. A feeling. That’s the only way I can describe it. I knew something was wrong with Emily.”

Tanaka cocked his head, radiating skepticism. “You flew to New York from Louisiana because you had a ‘feeling’ something was wrong with your sister?”

“My feelings tend to be accurate. It’s a family trait. For instance, my father died of a heart attack in his office. I was out shopping with my grandmother, and right there, in the middle of the store, we looked at each other and knew something was wrong, so we headed to his office. We got there before his secretary found him. So, yes, a feeling is enough for me to take action.” She shrugged. “I figured if I was wrong, Emily and I could have a good laugh and spend some time together, but if I was right, then the sooner I got here, the better.” Her voice took on a sharp, challenging tone. “And, as it turns out, I was right, wasn’t I?”

Michael was an expert at detecting lies. He spent a good part of his working days asking people questions and trying to figure out how much of what they said was true. Over the years, he’d learned to spot all the little clues that indicated a lie, from body language to facial expression to tone of voice and even the way things were phrased. And it looked to him like Sophie was telling the truth. This wasn’t an elaborate cover-up.

Tanaka seemed to have the same assessment. His eyes widened, then after a momentary pause, he said, “When did you have this feeling?”

“At about half past one, my time, so that would have been two thirty here.”

“So whatever happened to her would have happened at about that time?”

“That is the way it seems to work, yes.”

“And whatever that was would have been bad?”

“I’m afraid so. She was terrified, and it was like she was calling me to come help.”

“She hasn’t mentioned any stalkers or overzealous fans, has she? To either of you?”

“I don’t think she’d tell me,” Sophie said. “She wouldn’t want me to worry.”

“She would tell me,” Michael said, “but she hasn’t mentioned anything.” That earned him a quick glance from Sophie, the first time she’d acknowledged his existence since the interview began. “She once said she was glad to have a cop living upstairs,” he explained.

“You haven’t received any ransom demands, have you?” Tanaka asked.

“I believe that’s the sort of thing I would have mentioned up front,” she drawled dryly.

Tanaka got Sophie’s contact information, flipped his notebook closed, then said, “Thank you for your time, and for your honesty. Now, I’d better get a look at Emily’s apartment. I’ll have to take her computer so we can see if there’s anyone she’s been communicating with.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course. Detective Murray has a key.”

Michael stood with some effort. He was long overdue for a painkiller, and he felt like someone was stabbing him repeatedly in the upper chest with a chisel. It would be good to turn the key and the situation over to Tanaka so he could return to the blissful oblivion of his sofa.

Sophie went with the two men to the door. “Once you’ve looked around, would it be okay if I stayed in Emily’s apartment?” she asked.

“That depends on what we find there,” Tanaka said. “It may be a crime scene.”

“You think you’ll find her body in there,” Sophie inferred.

Tanaka flinched at her directness. “That is a possibility. The fact that no one’s seen her since last night doesn’t mean she didn’t come home last night.”

That didn’t stop Sophie from following them down the stairs. When Tanaka turned to glare at her while Michael unlocked the door, she said, “I know I can’t go inside, but I have to know.”

“Wait out here. You, too,” he added to Michael. “In this case, you’re a civilian.” It didn’t take Tanaka very long to go through the studio apartment. He came back to the door a moment later. “She’s not here,” he announced, “but I can’t let you in until I’ve checked things out.”

She nodded her assent. “Maybe I’ll go find something for dinner. I’ve been traveling all day and I’m suddenly starving.”

Michael reached through the doorway and took two keys off the row of hooks just inside Emily’s door. “Here’s Emily’s key to my place, so you can let yourself in when you get back,” he said, handing it to her. “And this one opens the front door.”

“Thank you,” she said before running upstairs.

Once she was gone, Tanaka said, “You wanna help me poke around?”

“I thought I was a civilian here.”

“Now I know it’s not a crime scene, and you’d know better than I would if anything’s different or missing.”

There wasn’t that much to search. While Michael scanned the one-room apartment for anything that seemed out of place, he asked, “So, Tank, what did you think of her?”

“Very pretty, in spite of her feet. Great legs.”

“That’s not what I meant. Don’t you think she’s kind of, well, odd?”

“Oh, you mean the woo-woo stuff? That ‘feeling’?”

“That, and other things.” He heard the front door close, went to the window, and saw the ballerina umbrella gliding rapidly down the sidewalk.

“Well, quite frankly, she scares the sh–heck out of me. That was one freaky stare. Her eyes are weird.”

“You’re allowed to curse in front of me. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Then I’d be lying, and I’d be corrupting the Reverend Saint Michael into lying, and that’s worse than having to put a dollar in the jar.”

Michael had long since given up fighting his department nickname and all the nonsense that went with it, so he asked, “What’s weird about her eyes?”

“Didn’t you notice? They’re two different colors. One’s blue and one’s gray. I thought it was just the light at first, but the way she was staring at me, I couldn’t help but see it. It was like I saw a different face depending on which eye I focused on.” He shuddered.

Michael couldn’t help but smile, in spite of the situation. “I never thought I’d see the day someone could make
you
sweat in an interview.”

Instead of responding to that, Tanaka said, “Emily must be old school—a landline and a machine,” and hit the “play” button on Emily’s answering machine.

“Hey, Em, it’s Sophie,” Sophie’s voice said, sounding much less steady than Michael had heard it so far. “I know it’s really early, and you probably hate me for waking you up if you’re there, but I got one of those feelings again, like when Daddy died, or that time before with you, and I’m on my way to New York. If you are around and I’m just being silly and paranoid, call my cell. I’ll be changing planes in Atlanta, so that’ll be your last chance to tell me to turn back. They’re calling my flight now, so I have to go.” Her voice took on a strained quality, like she was close to tears. “Call me, Emily. I love you.”

The call clicked off, then the robotic voice of the machine gave the time stamp as seven thirty a.m., Wednesday. “Her story checks out,” Tanaka said. There was another message from Sophie a couple of hours later, followed by one from a friend an hour after that and three from the show’s stage manager, starting at one. “All these messages back up what she said. So she really did know in the middle of the night, all the way from Louisiana, that her sister was in trouble. Holy s–wow. That is freaky. I’ve dealt with a few of those psychics who volunteer to help in investigations, and none of them have been that accurate.”

Michael thought the message also meant that Sophie was human, after all. She was as scared and worried as anyone might be in this situation, even if she hid it well. He took a framed photo off the bookcase to get a better look. The picture showed two little girls in ballet outfits. The older one, maybe about seven, stood tall and proud, her hair slicked back into a tight bun. The younger one, no more than three, was still pudgy with baby fat, and there was a bow stuck in her short curls. Her fingers clutched her sister’s skirt. “I think it has something to do with them being family,” he said. “It’s not like she gets the Bat Signal whenever random people are in trouble.”

“I didn’t want to put you on the spot in front of the sister, but I have to ask, what’s the nature of your relationship with the missing girl?” Tanaka asked as he searched a drawer.

“She’s my downstairs neighbor.”

“Her dog is at home in your place, and you have keys to each other’s apartments. Look, I’m not prying into your personal life, but you know how these things go. There’s no hiding anything in an investigation like this, and it’s better if you come clean with it now.”

“Yeah, I know, the husband, lover, or boyfriend is the first suspect. But there’s nothing to come clean about. She’s just my neighbor. You met Sophie. Now imagine her taller and more extroverted. If she wants to look after you, there’s not much you can do to stop her that doesn’t involve physical violence or moving out in the middle of the night.”

“Uh, huh.”

“Gene, I’m married. There’s nothing going on.”

Tanaka turned to face him directly. “Rev, don’t you think it’s time you moved on? It’s been, what, seven years?”

“They found that girl in California after eighteen years.
Alive
.”

“That’s why you’re so keen on this case, isn’t it? You find this girl, and it gives you hope.”

“I’m so keen on this case because it’s my downstairs neighbor, and I’ll be stuck with her inanimate bulldog if you don’t find her.”

Tanaka opened the laptop on the desk in front of the window. “Hey, she left her computer on, and the e-mail’s still up. I won’t need the geeks to hack in.”

Michael leaned over his shoulder. “Anything good?”

“No ransom notes or creepy stalker messages that I can see. Still, I’ll take it and let the tech guys give it a once-over. I hope they come across something. Otherwise, it’s like this girl disappeared into thin air.”

“And those cases are nearly impossible to solve.” As Michael knew all too well.

New York City, The Upper West Side

4:10 p.m.

Sophie forced back a rising tide of panic as she hurried down the sidewalk. She’d wasted far too much time talking to policemen who couldn’t do anything because this was way beyond their jurisdiction. If she’d known that the dog was being cared for, she could have gone to a hotel instead of to Emily’s apartment and avoided the police entirely.

Then again, it would have looked awfully suspicious if she’d been in town while her sister was missing and she hadn’t contacted the police. It wasn’t as though the police were likely to get in her way, since they’d be looking in all the wrong places.

In the meantime, she had other things to worry about. She didn’t think the waves of fear assaulting her senses were just her worry-fueled imagination. Wherever she was, Emily was in danger and afraid. Sophie bit down hard on the inside of her lip to keep herself from screaming out loud from the frustration of not being able to act immediately. Sitting through that police interview while feeling that fear had been sheer torture.

It was hours before twilight, when she might be able to find a way into the Realm, so she couldn’t stage a rescue immediately, but she could buy some time. Emily knew better than to eat the food where she was, and she might be able to hold out longer if she had human food. Sophie stopped at a corner grocery and bought a couple of energy bars, a packet of roasted peanuts, a bottle of water, and a half-pint container of cream, then hurried to Central Park, the most likely place in the city to have what she needed.

She doubted she’d find what she was looking for too close to the street, so she walked until the traffic noises faded and looked for an oak on a hilltop. When she found one, she investigated the roots. The ground was muddy after a day of rain, and she slipped and skidded as she searched. At last she found a hole in the earth under one of the larger roots.

She lifted her skirt, wrapping it around her thighs to keep it from dragging in the mud, then knelt on the ground and opened the cream carton. She poured a small amount on the ground inside the hole and set the open container nearby. “Good Neighbor, I bring you this offering,” she said softly, hoping this worked. She hadn’t ever tried it, but she’d read a number of mentions in her research. As she waited for a response, she considered whether she might be able to squeeze through the hole and make it directly into the Realm without having to find a gateway. It would be messy, and it would require braving the Borderlands, but it would mean less waiting.