Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9) (33 page)

Lauren followed Harriet into Lois’s entryway.

“Maybe he was running late and left without stopping.”

Lois pointed out the front window and down the street.

“My neighbor was hosting her bridge group, so James had to park down the street. Look, his car is still there. Besides, he left Cyrano here. He’d never leave without his dog.”

Harriet and Lauren both looked, and sure enough, James’s white catering van sat at the curb at the end of the street.

“What’s in the woods?” Lauren asked.

“Behind our house, it’s just trees and the creek. Years ago, Maudene Price lived on the part behind Sandra’s house and the two houses beyond. I think the county took it over for back taxes when she died, and they deeded it over to the city to expand the creek restoration project. I think salmon come up the lower end of the creek. Nowhere near here, but the city is restoring the habitat anyway.”

Harriet paced across the entry hall into the living room and back.

“Are there any structures back there?”

“The house pretty much fell apart before all the legal work was done. I think Sandra’s husband tried to fight it in court. He wasn’t successful, but he managed to drag it out quite a few years.”

“Did they clear the site?”

“No, some kids set the remains on fire years ago. The foundation and stone fireplace are still there.”

“Can we access that area from your yard?” Harriet asked.

“It’s a little bushy in a couple of places, but you can get there. It’d be better if you were wearing jeans.”

“Yeah, well. We don’t have time for a wardrobe change.” Harriet said.

Lois led them from the living room to the kitchen. Harriet’s phone rang before they reached the back door. She glanced at the screen, prepared to send the caller to voicemail, but hesitated when she recognized Detective Morse’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hey, I just wanted to let you know something happened at your cave. It was going to take so long to get surveillance equipment, I decided to buy a game-cam at the sporting goods store and strap it to a tree, pointed at the cave mouth.”

“And?”

“You and Lauren stumbled across something major. My game cam wasn’t sophisticated enough to be monitoring it real-time. It required me to take a thumb drive, download the data from the camera, and carry it back to a computer. I finally did that today, and it was a revelation.

“Someone stashed a group of people there for three days earlier this week. They brought them in on Monday morning and took them out Thursday morning. Unfortunately, the image of the vehicle they came in wasn’t very clear—the techs are working on trying to clean it up, but for now we don’t have anything. The people wielding the guns were wearing black clothes and black ski masks. I just wanted to reiterate that you and Lauren need to stay clear of that area.”

“Wow.”

“What?” Lauren asked.

“I’m putting you on speaker,” Harriet told the detective. “Lauren’s here, and we’re with Lois…”

“Fletcher,” Lois whispered.

“Lois Fletcher,” Harriet said. “We’ve got a situation here ourselves.”

“And that is?”

Harriet explained about the missing chef.

“Stay put, I’m coming over.”

Detective Morse took less than ten minutes to arrive. Harriet had spent the time pacing from the front room to the back door and back again, while Lauren texted Beth, Mavis and Connie.

Lois held the front door open as soon as Morse parked at the curb.

“I’m Lois. James is the son of my best friend. He came by today and asked if he could go through my yard to access the green space. He said he’d stop on his way back, and he never came, and his van is still parked down the street,” she blurted without pausing for breath.

Morse looked at Harriet.

“And what, exactly, was he looking for?”

Harriet explained about the pipe, the vent theory, and their discovery that the green space bordered Fogg Park.

Morse looked thoughtful.

“That’s all pretty preposterous. I mean, a vent coming from the green space to the park? I know there are stories of tunnels across the Mexican border or from taverns in a town to the shipping docks for shanghai purposes, but out in the middle of the woods? What would be the reason for that?”

No one said anything. Morse put her hands in her back pants pockets.

“Having said that, I wouldn’t have guessed anyone was holding people in a cave in Foggy Point. There’s nothing to connect that with Chef James, that I know of, but he does appear to be missing. I’m going to call for some backup to search the woods, and we’ll start an official missing person report, even though it hasn’t been twenty-four hours.”

Harriet stepped over and stood toe-to-toe with her.

“I want to help.”

“You know I can’t let you do that. If James is out in the woods hurt, or if there’s evidence that will help us find him, we need trained officers to handle it. The best thing you can do is go down to the station and tell the duty officer all you can about James’s whereabouts before he disappeared. I need to call people and get things started. It’s going to be dark soon.”

Morse made a series of phone calls and barked orders to whoever was on the other end of them. Foggy Point PD cruisers pulled up in front of Lois’s house, and a pair of evidence technicians walked down the street to James’s van.

Harriet sat with Lauren and Lois in the living room.

“We can’t just sit here.”

Lois’s eyes grew wide.

“The police told us to stay in here out of their way.”

“Actually, she didn’t,” Lauren told her. “She wanted Harriet to go to the police station to tell them about James’s disappearance. Only she didn’t go, because she realized Morse was trying to get us out of here. She knew that because we’ve already told Morse everything we know about James’s disappearance, which is pretty much nothing. We also have history with Jane. She tells us all the time to keep our noses out of police business.”

Harriet sighed.

“I’d stick my nose in now if I thought it would help find James. Unfortunately, this time, Jane is right. They’re professionals in searching, so we don’t have much to contribute.”

“I’m sure James isn’t lying out there hurt,” Lois said. “He knows every inch of those woods. Besides, they aren’t that big—it’s maybe eight acres. If he’d sprained his ankle, all he’d have to do is holler. We’d hear him from here if he was calling out.”

“Or, to state the obvious,” Lauren said, “he’d use his cell phone.”

Harriet’s shoulders slumped.

“I’ve been calling his cell phone since before we left the prize ceremony. It goes straight to voicemail.”

“Would you gals like some tea or a soda?” Lois asked.

“I’d like some water,” Lauren told her.

“I’ll have tea,” Harriet said.

Lauren turned in her seat so her body blocked Harriet from Lois in the kitchen and the police in the dining room.

“Okay, what are you thinking? I know you don’t want tea at a time like this.”

Harriet took a deep breath.

“This might be another wild-goose chase, but I can’t help but think this has something to do with the vent or tunnel or whatever it is sticking out of the hill in Fogg Park. The fact that someone is using the cave to house people makes me believe even more that there could be an underground place of some sort.”

“So, how does that help us with the James situation? Are we going to go to the vent and try to tap Morse code or something?”

“Be serious. I don’t know Morse code, and I’m pretty sure you don’t, either. But, am I remembering right—at dinner a couple of weeks ago you said you were working on software that went with a sewer-scoping camera?”

“I see where you’re going. Yes, I still have one of the cameras to test the software with. It’s currently in the sewer line in front of my apartment. My landlord has been letting me test my program. I can get it out but it will take fifteen minutes or so. You’ll have to hose it off as I pull it out.”

“Let’s go get started.”

“We don’t know that the vent actually goes anywhere.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Lois came back with their tea and water. Harriet took a sip then set the cup down on the coffee table.

“Thanks, we’ve got to go check something out.”

Lauren led the way back to the car.

“This all raises the question of what’s going on. Who on earth would be trafficking people in Foggy Point?”

Harriet slid into the passenger seat.

“I’ve been thinking about that. Molly and Amber disappeared from this street, and now James has disappeared from the same street. Sandra Price’s mother owned the property where he disappeared. Doesn’t it seem like the Price name is coming up a lot in this whole situation?”

“It does seem weird, but Sandra Price? She always says how people keep harassing her because her daughter was killed and the body was never found. Are we joining the harassers? I mean, what about the whole serial-killer thing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe all this has nothing to do with Amber and what happened to Molly before. Molly was trying to find out what happened back then, but maybe in the process she stumbled into something new and unrelated.”

“And deadly?’

“Yes, and deadly.”

Harriet tried to call James again. Again, nothing. She slammed her phone onto the seat beside her.

“James wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t been trying to help me.”

Lauren glanced over at her.

“Don’t even go there. James is a big boy, and he’s resourceful. You can’t run a restaurant as well as he does and not know how to deal with difficult situations.”

“This isn’t a kale delivery that didn’t come or table linens that are wrinkled. Someone has James, and that same someone probably killed Molly.”

“Let’s not borrow trouble. Let’s just worry about getting the camera and sending it down the vent.”

They drove the remainder of the trip in silence.

Lauren slid the camera and its short cable connection into a pillowcase and handed Harriet a metal reel with the cable spooled around it.

“I’ll have to burn this pillowcase when this adventure is over.”

“Small price to pay if we find James. Let’s go.”

Lauren drove as fast as she dared, but it felt like an hour before she pulled her car to the curb next to the restrooms in Fogg Park. Harriet was out of the car before Lauren had killed the engine. She rushed down the path toward the homeless camp lugging the spool of camera cable. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and it was rapidly turning dark.

She nearly knocked Joyce down when she came around a bend in the path.

“What’s the hurry?” Joyce asked. “And what it that?”

“We need to get back to the vent you showed us. My friend’s life depends on it.”

Thankfully she didn’t ask any questions.

“Let me get a decent light.” Joyce hurried back down the trail to her camp, returning a moment later with a large spotlight. “Follow me.”

Lauren stumbled over a root and turned her ankle, but kept going as they followed Joyce through the woods for what seemed an eternity before they finally reached the clearing at the base of the bluff.

“Hopefully, we have enough cable to reach whatever is at the other end of this opening.”

Lauren swung her messenger bag from her back and pulled out her laptop and the camera. Harriet brought the spool of cable over, and together they hooked the camera to one end of the cable and the laptop to the other. Joyce began clearing weeds and vines from the vent opening and the surrounding area.

“Can I help?” said a masculine voice from the trail.

Joyce put her hand to her heart.

“Oh, Max. You gave me a start.”

“I was out looking for owls when I heard something crashing through the woods, so I took a deer trail over and came to investigate. And here you are, scaring the animals. Why are you in such a hurry?”

Joyce explained, and Max helped her finish clearing the opening.

Lauren brought the camera to the vent and set it down.

“Here goes nothing.” She handed the cable to Harriet. “As soon as I get the image on my computer, start feeding the camera into the hole.”