Through the Darkness (24 page)

I found a parking spot under a large tulip poplar and made my way quickly inside. Clients stood two deep at the reception desk where Heather and another girl I didn't recognize signed people in. I waited until Heather returned to the desk after launching a blonde with a generous derriere off on her spa journey, before taking her aside.

“Is Dante in?” I asked.

Heather shook her head. “Not right now. He's off somewhere, meeting with the security people to see if they can't get the system up and running ASAP.”

I showed her the photographs of Joanna Barnhorst. “The police are looking for this woman in connection with my grandson's disappearance,” I said, stretching the truth just a tad. “Do you recognize her?”

Heather squinted at the picture, wrinkling up her smooth German brow. “Sorry, Hannah. I've never seen this woman before. I'm quite sure of it.”

I tried not to let the disappointment show on my face. “Well, thanks, anyway.”

The other receptionist didn't recognize Joanna, either.

Alison Dutton was a better bet. I found her in the gift shop, assisting a customer who was trying on a track suit. “Not many women could carry off a shade of yellow like that,” she was assuring the woman as I walked in, “but on you, with your coloring, it's perfect!”

Alison turned to me for corroboration. “What do you think, Hannah?”

The track suit was a bilious yellow, reflecting its color onto the woman's face and making her look terminally ill. “I'm stunned,” I said, truthfully.

“Well, okay then,” the woman chirped. “I'll take it.”

After she had made her purchase, leaving with the track suit artfully wrapped in tissue paper, lovingly placed in a signature green spa shopping bag, its handles tied together with curled gold ribbon, I showed Joanna's pictures to Alison. “I don't know her,” she said, “but she does look kind of familiar. Maybe she came here for an interview or something?”

“Interview?” I stared past Alison to a stacked display of forest green spa mugs, my brain churning.

Interview.

Had Joanna Barnhorst been the owner of that head that popped around the office door looking for Dante last Monday, the day I was reviewing résumés? I was certain I'd not seen her name among the applications I had examined, but perhaps her application and been among an earlier batch.

If that woman had been Joanna, after I'd informed her that Dante was in the conference room, had she actually been able to see him that day?

And what would compel a woman who had simply come to the spa for a job interview suddenly to decide to snatch Timmy? It wasn't making a whole lot of sense.

Unless. The needle on my suspicionometer was pegging the meter again.

Unless Dante knew more about Timmy's disappearance than he had been prepared to admit.

Suddenly I realized that Alison was talking to me. “Did I say something helpful?”

My mind snapped back. “Thank you, Alison. You may have just made my day.”

I had been thinking that if someone,
anyone
, could place Joanna Barnhorst at Spa Paradiso on Monday with some degree of certainty, perhaps the FBI would be willing to move in on her.

Alison smiled. “Anything I can do to help, just ask.”

I thanked Alison again, then trotted down to the gym, where I found Norman Salterelli bench pressing two hundred pounds without breaking a sweat. I waited semipatiently while he completed twenty reps, slid off the bench, and began dabbing at his face with the towel he kept perpetually draped around his neck. “Hey, Hannah. Haven't seen you around for a couple of days. No surprise, that. Any news?”

“Nothing good, I'm afraid, but I've got a couple of pictures to show you that might help.” I eased them out of the envelope. “I'm wondering if you saw this woman hanging around the spa anywhere.”

Norman flicked his towel over a Bowflex machine and let it hang there. “Let me see.” He studied the pictures for a long time, looking puzzled, as if they were written in a foreign language. He tapped Joanna Barnhorst's image with a sausage index finger. “Nice looking woman, but no, never seen her.”

“Like leaving the spa on the day Timmy disappeared?” I prodded.

“No. I would have remembered
her
.”

“Well, thanks, anyway.” I flashed him a grateful smile and tried to hide my disappointment.

My next stop was Bellissima, where Wally Jessop was shuttling between one beauty shop customer whose head was encased in an aluminum foil cap, and another, a brunette, who was apparently considering a new hairstyle. After dabbing highlights with a paintbrush at bits of hair sticking out of holes in the older woman's foil cap, Wally turned to the brunette, running his fingers through her hair, playing with it, fluffing it up, teasing at it with his fingers.

Standing behind the woman, Wally bent at the waist, stared at her reflection in the mirror, and spoke directly into her ear. “You have natcherwy curwy hair, Mrs. Bwown, and you should never, never bwow it dwy.” Wally turned to shine his pearly whites on me. “I'm twying to talk Mrs. Bwown into a henna winse,” he lisped, “and a cut that's short and sassy.”

Clearly, I was supposed to agree with him. “You're the expert, Wally,” I said, wondering where his French accent had gotten to.

“You think so?” mused the brunette, soon-to-be-redhead, in the chair. She studied her reflection thoughtfully.

While she remained paralyzed with indecision, I pulled out my photos and passed them to Wally.

Holding the photos between an elegant thumb and forefinger, Wally drew me behind the reception desk, looking serious. Once he saw the photos, though, his face lit up. “Sure, I know her,” Wally said, abandoning his fashionable lisp. “That's Joanna Kerr. She went to Haverford with us.”

“Kerr? Not Barnhorst?”

“If she's Barnhorst now, she could have married, I suppose. It's been eight years since we graduated.”

“Have you seen Joanna here at the spa, Wally?”

“No, but I'm not exactly the beating heart of the enterprise, tucked away over here in Bellissima.”

Wally raised a just-a-minute finger and excused himself to send the lady wearing the tin hat off to sit under a heat hood. When I had his attention again, I asked, “Can you think of any reason why Joanna would show up here at Paradiso?”

Wally shrugged. “If she came to see anybody, it'd be Dante. Before he met Emily, he and Joanna were an item.”

“An item?” I repeated dumbly.

“Yeah, you know, they were going steady,” he explained, as if I were a doddering septuagenarian who didn't understand the slang.

“I see.” My stomach clenched as it appeared that my suspicions about my son-in-law were about to be confirmed. “Does Emily know Joanna, then?”

Wally looked up from the sales slip he was filling out with pen in large block letters. “I doubt it. After Dante met Em, he continued dating Joanna for a while, but then he and Em got serious and he broke it off.”

“Was Joanna okay with that?”

Wally shrugged. “Who knows. She didn't come gunning for Dante with an AK-47 or anything, so I suppose she was okay with it. She dropped out of school soon afterward anyway, and we lost touch.”

I thought about all the other Haverford alums Dante had gathered together to work at his spa. “Does François know her, too?”

“Probably. Why don't you ask him?”

“I will.” I touched his arm. “Thanks, Wally.”

“Don't mention it.”

I started to go, but then turned back to the brunette in the chair. “Ma'am?”

She raised a languid eyebrow. “Yes?”

“About the winse,” I said. “Go for it!”

I caught François, the chef, in the postlunch, preteatime lull, piping salmon mousse onto round rice crackers that he had arranged on a platter decorated with fresh pansies. When I walked in, he offered me one—a cracker, not a pansy.

“Thanks!” I snatched it off the platter like a starving orphan and slid it into my mouth whole. “God, that's good,” I mumbled around a mouth full of crumbs. “Can I have another one?”

François grinned and proffered the platter. “Sure.”

“Wally says you might know this woman,” I said, still chewing. “I'm pretty sure she came to the spa last Monday.” I waved one of Joanna's photos in his general direction.

François put down the piping cone, wiped his hands on his apron, and took the picture from me. “Joanna Kerr?”

“Apparently.”

“We went to Haverford together.” He passed the picture back to me. “Word got out among the old 'Fords about the good things Dante was planning to do at Paradiso, and she came to apply for a job.”

“What job did she apply for, then?”

François began arranging curls of red pepper on top of each artfully moussed cracker. “You'll have to ask Dante about that. Joanna's recently divorced, moved here from Baltimore. She needs to find work. You know the drill. A degree in philosophy from Haverford. Not exactly your most marketable skill.” He grinned.

I knew about marketable skills. My degree was in French literature from Oberlin. I had to earn a master's in library science before I got a job that paid real money.

“But wait a minute,” I said. “Wally just told me that Joanna dropped out of school.”

François opened the refrigerator and slid the finished platter of crackers onto an empty shelf. “She did, for a semester. She came back and graduated a year later.”

“But, what could she do here, François?”

“Don't know what she discussed with Dante, but when she stopped by the kitchen, she told me she'd be willing to do anything. Only opening I had was for a salad person. Would have given it to her, too, but when Emily got wind of it at staff meeting, she had a fit and fell in it.”

“Emily knows her, then?”

“Knows
of
her, but I don't think they've ever met.” His eyebrows danced mischieviously. “Dante dated them both for a while, but when he got serious about Em, he broke it off with Joanna.” He began working on a second platter, this one covered with triangles of what looked like crustless cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches. “Em was at Bryn Mawr and Joanna at Haverford, so unless they had classes together, or got onto the Blue Bus shuttle at the same time, there's no reason they would have run into each other.”

“I see,” I muttered, thinking that I may have just learned the reason for Friday's argument outside Garnelle's massage room door that resulted in damage to a certain valuable spa lounge chair.

“François, I'm pretty sure I saw Joanna here late Monday morning. When I was in the office, a woman who looked a lot like her stuck her head in and asked for Dante.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you think of any reason why Joanna would have taken Timmy?”

“Joanna?” François snorted. “No way. Unless she's gone fucking nuts.”

And that was exactly what I was afraid of.

As I drove away from Paradiso, Georgina reached
me on my cell to say that Emily had finished terrorizing West Annapolis and was on her way home. I was heading that direction myself when my cell phone burbled again.

“I need to talk to you, Mrs. Ives.” It was Special Agent Amanda Crisp, and she sounded serious.

“Just a minute.” I figured she wasn't calling with good news. Rather than have a heart attack and crash my car, I pulled into the Bay Ridge shopping center, parked in front of Giant, and cut my engine. “It's bad news, isn't it?”

“No, sorry. I didn't mean to alarm you. It's just that there's something I'd like to discuss.”

“I want to talk to you, too, Agent Crisp,” I said, thinking of the envelope of photographs that sat on the car seat next to me. “When and where?”

“I haven't had lunch yet.”

“Neither have I. Do you know Grumps?” I suggested, naming a quirky local restaurant in the Hillsmere shopping center nearby.

“I know it well,” she said. “We used to stop there for coffee when we were camping out at your daughter's. I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“Can you tell me what this is about?”

“Order me a burger. See you in twenty minutes, Mrs. Ives.”

Grumps Café serves the best hamburgers in town. When I arrived there five minutes later, I marched straight up to the counter and ordered two cheeseburgers, ice tea, and chips. The cashier handed me a toy frog with
19
written in marker pen on his shiny rubber chest, and pointed me to a booth.

While I waited for the burgers, or Amanda, whichever came first, I worried. What could Amanda want to see me about? Privately? She'd once called me a loose cannon, and warned me to keep my nose out of FBI business. Perhaps she felt I needed a refresher course.