Brandy and Bullets (13 page)

“Yes?”

“I’m calling regarding your friend, Norman Huffaker.”

“What about him?”

“You’ve known him for quite some time. Correct?”

“Yes. A very long time.”

His silence said that he wanted
me
to say something about Norman. But I wasn’t about to offer information concerning my friend. I broke the silence. “Is this about Norm’s work? I haven’t seen him since Thanksgiving. I assume he’s progressing nicely, is conquering his writer’s block.”

“I really don’t know, Jessica. That’s why I’m calling. Do you know where he is?”

“Know where he is? Is he missing?”

O’Neill’s laugh was designed to dismiss such a thought. He said, “We haven’t seen him for a couple of days now. Last time anyone saw him was Monday afternoon. I thought he might have decided to stay with a friend. Like you.”

“Monday? That’s three days ago, Michael. No, he hasn’t come here. You sound concerned.”

“Not at all. But I did feel it warranted calling you.”

“Maybe he went back home to California,” I offered. “Are his belongings still there?”

“Yes. That’s the odd thing. His clothes are still in his room. He even left his computer on. Next to it was a snifter that still had brandy in it.”

“Well,” I said lightly, “I’m sure he’ll turn up. I can recall a few times when Norman picked up and disappeared, much to his wife’s chagrin.” I didn’t add that such absences never lasted more than twenty-four hours, or that he always called Jill to keep her from worrying. “If I hear from him, I’ll give you a call.”

“Thank you, Jessica. And again, thank you for a lovely day.”

I hung up, opened my address book to “H” and dialed Jill Huffaker’s number in Los Angeles. She answered in her familiar singsong voice.

“Hello, Jill. It’s Jess.”

“Great minds think alike. I was just about to pick up the phone and call you.”

“Oh?”

“I spoke to Norm a couple of days ago. Monday, I guess it was. He sounded okay, although he said the script wasn’t coming along that good. I thought I’d get a report on my blocked husband from you.”

I’d hoped that Jill would have said Norm had impetuously decided to come home, that he was over his writer’s block, and didn’t need to be at Worrell any longer. I wanted to hear that. But didn’t.

“Jess?”

“What? Oh, sorry, Jill. I was distracted by something.”

“How is Norm? He said he had a wonderful time at your house on Thanksgiving.”

“Yes. We had a lovely day.”

“Is Norm—?”

“Norm is—Norm is fine, last I heard.”

My hand inadvertently moved, knocking the plate with my half-eaten scone to the floor.

“Drop something, Jess?”

“Yes. Clumsy me. Can I get back to you? I’d better clean up this mess before my bleached white wood floor looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.”

She laughed. “Sure. No rush. Say hello to my dear hubby for me.”

“I will.”

I hung up with a sigh of relief—as well as a dose of guilt for not having been forthright with my friend—and pressed an auto-dial number on my phone. Mort Metzger answered promptly. “Mort, it’s Jess. I need to talk to you.”

“I’m listening, Jessica.”

“Can I come to the office?”

“Now?”

“Yes. Right now. I think I might have to file a missing-person’s report.”

“Seems to me you might be jumpin’ the gun, Jess.”

I sat across the desk from Mort Metzger and felt my frustration level rise.

“Maybe you should talk to some more people,” he said. “You know, other friends of his. He might just have picked up and gone away for a couple of days with one of them.”

“That’s always a possibility,” I said. “But I don’t consider it a probability.”

Mort’s tiny, snide laugh was annoying. “You know how writers are, Jess. Not the most stable of people.”

“Pardon?”

“Present company excepted. Is Norman Huffaker the sort of person who’d take up with a woman on a whim?”

“I don’t think so. I spoke with his wife in California. They have a good relationship. I think.”

He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling.

“I have to admit, Morton, that your lack of a sense of urgency in this matter is disconcerting.”

“All I’m saying, Jessica, is that maybe he needed to get away from it all for a couple of days.” He’d obviously sensed my frustration with him and was attempting to soften his bedside manner. “I suggest we take it slow. Chances are your friend is just fine. But I’ll get one of the boys to make some calls. Local bed-and-breakfasts. Hotels.”

I stood firm. “Look, Mort,” I said. “Norman Huffaker is missing. No one has seen him since Monday. He’s not the type to simply disappear, at least not for this number of days. He would have called Jill, his wife. Or me. We’re wasting precious time.”

Mort leaned back, folded his hands across his chest, and fixed me over half-glasses. “You tell his wife her husband’s missing?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t want to unduly worry her. I thought—maybe he isn’t ‘missing.’ Maybe he’s just gone away for a few days.”

Mort’s expression said, That’s what I just said.

“But I changed my mind the minute I got off the phone with her. I’m worried, Mort. Michael O’Neill said Norman left all his clothing behind. And his computer was on.”

The sheriff shrugged.

“I want to file an official missing-person’s report.”

“Don’t you think that’s up to Huffaker’s wife to do? Her call?”

“I suppose so.” I took a deep breath. “Let me call her back, tell her what’s happened here, and get her permission to file a report. May I use your phone?”

He gestured to the phone on his desk. I dialed Jill’s number. “Hello?” Jill answered on the first ring. Her voice wasn’t singsong this time. It was a panicked “hello.”

“Jill. It’s Jess.”

“Jessica. Thank God it’s you. I don’t know what to do. Norman phoned me right after our conversation.” She started to cry.

“Jill. What’s wrong?”

“You won’t believe this, Jess. I sure don’t. He said—he said he was going to kill himself.” She got it out through what had become uncontrollable sobs.

“Did he say where he was?”

“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall apart like this.”

“That’s all right. You have no idea where he was calling from?”

“No. I assumed he was calling from the Worrell Institute. I called them, but they said he wasn’t there. It was so strange, Jess.”

“What was strange?”

“It didn’t—sound like Norman. He was either very drunk, or disguising his voice. Why would he want to do that?”

“I can’t imagine. Are you saying you aren’t sure it was him?”

“It was him. I mean, I think it was. He said it was him. His voice sounded—well, like his—but then it didn’t. It was such a short conversation. Less than a minute. He mumbled that he couldn’t take it any more, and that I’d be better off without him. I tried to ask where he was, but he just rambled on, almost like it was a script. He ended by saying he’d always love me. He hung up. The phone went dead. I screamed his name, but there was only a dial tone.”

“It must have been him, Jill. Why would anyone else call and say such a dreadful thing?”

“I don’t know. I need your help, Jess. What should I do?” She’d started sobbing again. “I feel so helpless. I’m so far away. I thought of getting on the next flight, but I don’t want to leave in case he calls again. I’m even afraid to be talking to you and tying up the line. I’ve got to talk to him. I had no idea he was this distraught.”

“Jill, just sit tight. I agree you shouldn’t leave in case he tries to contact you again. Chances are he will. I’ll call you at regular intervals. In the meantime, I’ll do whatever I can to find him on this end.”

“Thanks, Jess. You are a friend.”

It occurred to me when I hung up that I hadn’t told Jill about Michael O’Neill’s call that alerted me to Norm’s disappearance in the first place. Nor had I mentioned I was sitting in Sheriff Metzger’s office about to file a missing-person’s report. She would assume I was home, and might try me there. I considered calling her back right away, but decided against it. I wanted to expedite things with Mort.

I called my machine to see if I’d received any calls, hopefully one from Norm. No such luck.

Mort had left me alone in the room while I spoke with Jill. I looked through an interior window that separated his office from the main one. He was on the telephone. Judging from his expression and gestures, it was not a pleasant conversation. He slammed the receiver down into the cradle, spun around in the swivel chair, and looked at me through the glass.

I motioned for him to return. I wanted to fill him in on what I’d learned from Jill Huffaker.

“Mort,” I said as he closed the door behind him, “I really am upset at your intractability. I’ve just learned that—”

“I know,” he said, sitting heavily in his chair. “I’m sorry.”

His sudden change of tune, and apology, threw me off guard. Usually, the expression on Mort’s face was animated. But all animation was now gone. His face was one of those Magna Doodle screens on which I could have written anything.

“I’m really sorry, Jess,” he repeated.

“It’s okay. I just spoke to Norm’s wife, Jill, and I want to get the report filed and—Mort. What’s wrong?”

“Bad news, Jess,” he said. “Bobby just called in. He’s on patrol down to the Old Moose River Bridge. He came across a red BMW parked there. Engine running. Bob checked the plate with Central. Car belongs to a doctor up at the Worrell Institute. A Dr. Tomar Meti. Met him at the party when they opened the place.”

“Yes. I know him.”

“Meti filled a stolen car report this mornin’.”

“And?”

“And—Damn, Jess, I hate to break this news to you, but looks like I don’t have any choice. Bobby says there was a suicide note in the car.”

“Oh, my God,” I muttered.

“They’re puttin’ together a search team now. With this damn nor’easter bearin’ down on us today, the river is real choppy. Got a nasty blizzard due in overnight.”

“Did Bobby tell you if the note was signed?”

He nodded.

“Norman Huffaker?”

“Afraid so, Jess.”

The snowstorm that was supposed to begin overnight snuck in earlier than the weather pundits had forecast. The ground was already covered when I returned home from Mort Metzger’s office and called Jill. She was considerably calmer now, although the strain in her voice came through.

Had I felt I had a choice, I would not have elected to be the one to break the news to her about the abandoned car, and Norm’s suicide note. But I didn’t see any alternative. I could have prevailed upon Mort to make the call as Cabot Cove’s chief law enforcement officer. But not only was that unfair, it would have represented cowardice on my part. Norman and Jill Huffaker were friends. As traumatic as the news would be to Jill, having it come from a friend would hopefully soften the blow, if only a little.

Jill listened patiently as I recounted the events: Michael O’Neill’s call informing me of Norman’s disappearance ; my meeting with Mort Metzger, during which I asked that a missing-person’s report be filed; Mort’s call from his deputy about having found the car belonging to Dr. Tomar Meti, and Meti’s stolen vehicle report; and, of course, the note.

“Sheriff Metzger has the original,” I told her. “One of his deputies brought it to headquarters just as I was leaving there. Mort Jet me make a photocopy in his office. I can read it to you.”

“No, Jess. Please don’t.”

“Sure?”

“Yes. I don’t know—having someone else, even a dear friend like you, read it seems—well, wrong. Do you understand?”

“Of course I do.”

“I’ll be coming to Cabot Cove. I’ll read it then.”

“All right.”

She sighed deeply. It sounded as though she was in the room with me. “It was the drinking,” she said absently.

I said nothing.

“Drinking is a depressant, you know. In retrospect, Norm needed to be at Betty Ford’s addiction facility, not at this Worrell Institute for Creativity. He didn’t need help being creative. He was the most creative person I’ve ever known. His writer’s block wasn’t because his creative juices had dried up. It was because he’d been drinking so heavily. You know how Norm always tended to be depressed, without the help of alcohol. Some drunks get rowdy, some get happy. Norm just got more depressed. I wish I’d had the wisdom to have seen it for what it really was. Maybe I could have—”

“Don’t blame yourself, Jill.”

“I’m not assigning blame, Jess. I know that’s a futile exercise. Not rational. Stilt—”

“I’m going out to where they found the car next to the Moose River,” I said. “Sheriff Metzger doesn’t want me to, but I’d feel better seeing with my own eyes what the situation is.”

“Jess.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think that maybe Norm is—alive?”

“I think that’s a very good possibility,” I said. I lightened my voice. “He is, after all, an imaginative writer. Maybe he needed to do this for—well, for a plot or something.” I knew my statement was illogical, even absurd. But I needed to say something comforting.