Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (9 page)

“No,” she answered immediately.

“How can you be so sure?”

“He doesn’t live here.”

“Where does he live?”

Paula hesitated too long, her eyes darting from side to side as if looking for an answer or a way to escape. Trent and Creighton exchanged significant glances. “He’s dead,” she finally said.

Trent folded his arms and looked to me as if for confirmation. I smiled. He could interpret that any way he wanted.

Another officer came up. “We’ve searched the premises thoroughly. The child’s not here.”

“Of course he’s not here!” Paula snapped. “I told you we already looked. I wouldn’t need your help if he was safe at home!”

Fred, standing directly behind her, laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Are there any places in the neighborhood where you take your son…to visit a friend, go to a park, anything like that?”
Trent asked.

Paula lifted a shaky hand toward Fred and me. “He loves to go to the park on Maple and
twenty-first, but it’s half a mile away, too far for him to walk, and he wouldn’t know how to get there anyway. He’s just a baby.”

“Check it out,”
Trent told the officer who’d reported in regarding the search of the house.

Trent focused on Paula again. “How about somebody who takes care of your son, a baby sitter who might have picked him up to go get pizza and just neglected to tell you?”

“No. Nobody like that. I take him to Time for Kids Day Care Center when I work. Other than that, I’m always with him.”

“Anybody at the center who’s especially fond of him?”

“Everybody loves him. He’s a wonderful little boy.”

“What’s the address for the day care place?”

She gave it to him, and he snagged a female officer just coming in from the kitchen. “Check this out,” he instructed, tearing a sheet of paper out of his notebook and handing it to her. “The kid’s day care. See if anybody’s seen him, if any stranger’s been around asking about him.”

Paula emitted a strangled sound at that remark, but somehow managed to retain her stoic demeanor. “Nobody could have taken him! I’d have heard them come in!”

But she’d been sleeping awfully soundly when I called. I went cold all over at the thought of some pervert kidnapping Zach. I couldn’t begin to imagine the torment those same thoughts must be causing Paula.

“What about boy friends?”
Trent asked her. “Somebody you’re dating who really likes Zach?”

She shook her head. “I don’t date.”

He lifted a quizzical eyebrow at me, and I nodded, confirming her statement. Trent made a notation in his little book.

“You told Officer Creighton you hadn’t intended to fall asleep, that one minute you were watching your son and the next thing you remembered was the phone ringing when Ms. Powell called you.”

She drew a shaky hand across her forehead. “That’s right. We went to the park after work, then when we got home, I put Zach in his playpen and turned on cartoons. I had a headache, so I took a couple of aspirin and sat down for a few minutes before I started dinner. The next thing I knew was when Lindsay called me.”

“Did you have a drink to help get rid of the headache, a glass of wine, maybe? Could that be why you fell asleep so easily?”

“She goes to work at four in the morning!” I protested, not liking the way the questioning was headed. “Of course she was sleepy by that time! I took a nap myself.”

He scowled at me. “Do you do this ventriloquist routine professionally or just to annoy people?”

Paula sprang to her feet. “Stop it! You’re wasting time and it’s going to get dark soon! If you’re not going to look for my son, I will!”

Creighton rose beside her. “We’ve got half the Pleasant Grove Police Department looking,” he assured her. “We’ll find your son.”

She gave no indication that she’d heard him, but she did sit down again and pressed her fingertips against her temples. “I had two aspirins and a glass of water. That’s all. I guess I was more tired than I realized.”

“Are you always such a heavy sleeper?”

“No! I’m a very light sleeper. I don’t know how I could have slept through Zach’s leaving. Usually I hear him from my room if he coughs in the middle of the night.”

“Could I see the bottle of aspirin?”

“Why?” I asked.

Trent’s jaw clenched. “Because you’re giving me a headache.”

“I’ll get it.” Paula hurried from the room as if the faster she brought aspirin to Trent, the faster Zach would be found.

“What are you trying to do to her?” I demanded of
Trent.

“I’m trying to find a missing kid. What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to take care of my friend.”

“Why does she need taking care of?”

I glared at him. Why had I been glad to see him? Why had I asked the dispatcher to call him? “I need to talk to you about something that probably doesn’t have anything to do with Zach, but it might.”

“What?”

“Not now.”

Paula walked back into the room and handed
Trent a small white bottle.

“This is a vitamin bottle,” he said, turning it in his fingers.

“We buy aspirin in bulk at the shop and then we bring a few home with us when we need them,” I explained and earned myself another glare.

“Do you mind if I take a couple of them with me?”

Her hands fluttered helplessly. “Take the whole bottle. I don’t care.”

“A couple’ll do.”

“You want some water to take those with?” I asked as he slid the pills into his shirt pocket. “Or did you plan to absorb them through your shirt? I don’t think aspirins work that way.”

“Do you have any coffee made?” he asked Paula, ignoring me.

“What? Coffee? No. No, I don’t.”

“Then why don’t you go in the kitchen and make a pot.”

“I don’t want to make coffee! I want to find Zach! There’s a convenience store over on Main Street. If you want something to drink, go down there.”

“I know you don’t want to make coffee, but I want you to. You need to make it and then you need to drink some as well as offer it to the others here.”

Busy work, I thought, something for Paula to do to distract her from the problem at hand. Okay, I’d give Trent one point for that, but he was still about fifty points in the hole.

“I’ll go with you,” Creighton offered.

Paula didn’t look too happy about that, but Fred jumped into the breach. “Me, too. I could use a cup of coffee.”

Fred never drank coffee after
noon. He was pulling out all the stops in his effort to help Paula.

As soon as the three of them were out of the room,
Trent turned to me. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Let’s go out on the porch.”

Trent nodded and I followed him outside.

“First,” I said, folding my arms and trying to look authoritative…not an easy task in cut-offs and sneakers, “I want to know what the deal is with the aspirin. You’re going to have it analyzed, aren’t you? It’s aspirin, that’s all! I bought it. I put the pills in that old vitamin bottle
with my own hands and then gave it to Paula.”

“I thought you had something you wanted to talk to me about, something besides harassing me about doing my job.”

“I do, but I’m not going to tell you until you tell me why you want to have those aspirins analyzed.”

“Not going to tell me? I believe that’s withholding evidence. You could get in a lot of trouble for that.”

“Yeah, like you could get in trouble for taking evidence from the scene of the crime without proper judicial authorization.” I’ve found if you throw in enough multi-syllabic words when you don’t know what you’re talking about, people usually assume you do.

Trent didn’t. “Your friend voluntarily gave me the aspirin.”

“She didn’t say you could have it analyzed.”

“She didn’t say I couldn’t.”

“So you admit you’re going to have it analyzed.”

With a sigh, he pulled the tablets from his shirt pocket and held them in the palm of his hand. “Do these look like the pills in that bottle you have at work?”

I peered closely. “Well, they’re small, white and round. I admit, I don’t spend a lot of time looking at aspirins.”

With the tip of one wide, blunt finger, he flipped over one tablet. “It doesn’t say
aspirin
on either side, and it’s scored to break in half.”

“Who knew when I was spending all that time in college studying the Pythagorean theorem and the influence of Puritanism on early American literature, I should have been studying the proper appearance of aspirin?”

Trent closed his fingers over the pills and stuck them back into his pocket. “The chances are very slim that these are aspirin,” he snapped. “Now, if you don’t have anything to tell me about this case, I need to get back in there.”

“No way would Paula take drugs!” I protested.

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

“No.” I sighed and pointed to the vacant house across the street, explaining about the hole in the hedge. I halfway expected him to tell me I was being silly, but he didn’t.

Instead he peered intently at the house for a moment then said, “Show me.”

We went over
, and I indicated the flattened grass and the hole. “Somebody was smoking here,” I added, poking in the grass with one foot. “I found a tiny bit of filter. I don’t see it now, but it really was there.”

Again he didn’t dismiss my dubious findings. I was wearing shoes today instead of being barefoot as I’d been when he’d seen me yesterday…dirty sneakers, but shoes nevertheless. Maybe
shoes gave me more credibility.

“You might want to get your foot out of the evidence,” he said, squatting down for a closer look.

Okay, he wasn’t impressed with the shoes.

He rose and went up on the porch to try the door. It was locked. He walked slowly along the side of the house, inspecting every window. When we got to the back yard, I mentioned the broken twigs and leaves around the gate. I knew he’d find them, but I just wanted him to know that I’d noticed, too. Credibility.

As I watched him climb the steps to the porch, I thought about Henry’s reaction to that same spot, but didn’t think it was a good idea to tell Detective Trent that I had a visiting cat who was a psychic.

He came down again with no change of expression. Obviously he wasn’t as sensitive as the cat. Big surprise.

“Do you have the name of the owner?”

“Sure, I have his name, address, and phone number at home. You think this ties to Zach being missing? You think somebody kidnapped him?” I held my breath waiting for him to say
no
, hoping he’d say
no.

He leaned against one of the porch posts, folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. “Why would anyone kidnap the kid?” he asked. I should have known he’d answer my question with another question.

“How would I know? Isn’t that your job, to find out?”

“What do you know about the boy’s father?”

“Nothing.” I leaned against another post and folded my arms, too, but I’m sure I didn’t look nearly as intimidating as he did.

“This woman is your best friend, you live next door to her and work with her all day but you don’t know anything about the father of her child?”

“Paula’s not talkative.”

“You ever seen her mistreat the kid?”

I jerked away from the post and stood upright at that absurd question. “Of course not! She adores him! And you’ve seen what a gentle person she is.”

“A lot of people have problems with anger control, even people who seem to be very gentle when they’re out in public.”

“Well, Paula’s not one of them. Like you said, I’m her best friend, I live next door to her and I work with her every day. I’d know something like that. What about your Lester Mackey who had her phone number in his apartment? What’d you ever find out about him?”

“Nothing. He’s still missing. The case is still open.”

Another chill zig-zagged down my spine. “Did he—does he live close?”

Trent’s head tilted slightly to one side as he studied me intently, considering his answer. Didn’t the man ever do anything spontaneously? He was worse than Fred. “Yes,” he finally said.

“You want to define
close
or is his residence a secret?”

“Why do you want to know? Did you suddenly recover some buried memories of good old Lester?”

“I can’t recover memories of something I didn’t know in the first place. I’m thinking maybe the guy’s some freako who’s been watching Paula and Zach and decided to kidnap the kid. Don’t you think you ought to check that out?”

“I will if we don’t find the boy soon. Odds are he’s just wandered off. It happens when mothers leave the door open and don’t pay close enough attention to their kids.”

“Paula’s not like that,” I protested.