Someone To Watch Over Me Part 11

"You can't go in there," he informed her. "Detective Shrader's orders."

"I'm Mrs. Manning," Leigh argued. "I want to know if my husband is inside!

" She was prepared to try to push past him, but Detective Littleton appeared in the doorway and answered her question. "There's no one here, Mrs. Manning.

I'm sorry," she added. "I was planning to go up to the road and tell you myself, as soon as we finished a preliminary search of the area."

Devastated, Leigh sagged against the doorframe. "This must be the wrong place..."

"I don't think so. There are some things inside that may belong to your husband. I'd like you to tell me if you can identify anything." As she stepped aside to allow Leigh past, she looked at Valente and politely said, "You'll have to wait out here, sir."

Inside, the empty little cabin was as bone-chillingly cold as the interior of a freezer, and almost as dark. Dampness had permeated the stone floors and walls, and the only available light came through a small, grimy window on her right.

Leigh blinked, trying to adjust from the dazzling brightness outside to the gloom within.

To her left, two doorways off the main room opened into a kitchen and bathroom respectively, and opposite her, a third doorway, in the corner, opened into a room Leigh a.s.sumed was a bedroom. Adjoining that doorway, to the right, and occupying most of the wall directly in front of her, was a fireplace, its stones blackened with decades of acc.u.mulated soot. Lying on the floor in front of it, Leigh saw a dark green sleeping bag, still rolled up and neatly tied. She rushed over to it and bent down to see it better; then she looked over her shoulder at Littleton and Shrader, who were standing side by side. "This looks like one of ours!"

"Are you certain it's yours?" Shrader asked.

Sleeping bags all looked pretty much alike to Leigh and she hadn't actually seen this one for years. "I think so. I'm not positive."

"Do you and your husband own more than one sleeping bag?"

"Yes, we have two of them. They're identical."

Looking for something more identifiable, she stood up and walked into the empty bedroom; then she glanced into the bathroom, which was also empty.

Unaware of how closely she was being observed, Leigh went into the kitchen next. A big, old-fas.h.i.+oned porcelain sink on steel legs stood against the far wall, an open paper bag on the floor beneath it. Spread out on the drain board were items Logan had bought for the day. Leigh felt a lump in her throat as she looked at the boxes of Logan's favorite crackers, an open package of cheese, and a deli sandwich still wrapped in plastic wrap. In addition to the bottled water Leigh had asked for, he'd also brought a bottle of champagne and a bottle of chardonnay. Because he'd wanted to celebrate the occasion with her that night...

Lined up on the windowsill above the sink was a roll of paper towels, a bottle of liquid detergent, a box of wooden matches, and a can of insecticide. A new broom with the price tag still attached was propped against the wall near the back door.

Everything Leigh saw reminded her poignantly of Logan and their conversation the morning he left, but until she stepped closer and looked into the sink, she had clung to the frail hope that this was the wrong place, that Logan was still safe and snug in some other cabin. Two Baccarat crystal winegla.s.ses in the sink robbed her of her last comforting fantasy.

She turned to Shrader and Littleton, her eyes filled with anguish. "The gla.s.ses are ours." Driven by a sudden, overpowering urge to search for Logan and rescue him herself, she brushed past the two detectives and returned to the bedroom. She was reaching for the closet door when Shrader barked, "Don't touch anything, Mrs. Manning!"

Leigh jerked her hand back. "Did you look in the closet? Maybe Logan is-"

"Your husband isn't in there," Detective Littleton a.s.sured her.

"No, of course not," Leigh said, but she was rambling now, talking to stop herself from thinking about the unthinkable. "Why would Logan hide in a closet? He was obviously here, though, and he-" She broke off as a sudden realization gave her momentary hope. "But his car isn't here. He must have gone somewhere else-"

Shrader ruthlessly demolished her logic and her hope. "Your husband was driving a white Jeep, wasn't he?" When Leigh nodded, he shrugged and said in a matter-of-fact voice, "Well, when I stand in the doorway over there and look out, all I see are a whole lot of white hills. A white Jeep, covered in a few inches of snow, could look just like one of those."

That was the last thing Leigh wanted to hear anyone say. She wrapped her arms around herself and concentrated on not losing her grip on her emotions. In the living room, she went over to the window and watched the police searching the wooded hillside. They weren't really looking for Logan down there, she realized. Logan had disappeared almost six days ago. They were looking for his body.

Her own body began to shake so hard she had to clutch the window frame to keep herself from sliding to the floor. "It was so cold the night of the blizzard,"

she whispered brokenly. "Did he have wood to build a fire? I haven't seen any wood. I hope he wasn't cold-"

"There is plenty of wood stacked outside the kitchen door," Detective Littleton tried to rea.s.sure her.

Leigh wasn't rea.s.sured. She'd just realized the implications behind Shrader's warning. "Why don't you want me to touch anything?" she whispered.

"Since we have no idea what happened to your husband," Shrader said, "we're following standard procedure-"

It was Michael Valente who lost control-his temper erupted against Shrader and he brushed past the startled officer on the porch. "You're either a s.a.d.i.s.t or a moron!" he said, stalking into the house and going to Leigh's side. "Listen to me," he told her. "That a.s.shole doesn't know any more about what happened to Logan than you do! There's a chance he's s...o...b..und somewhere else, waiting for someone to dig him out. Maybe he got hurt and can't walk out on his own.

Whatever the case, the best thing you can do now is let me take you home. Let the police do whatever it is they think they need to do here."

Surprisingly, Detective Littleton seconded that idea. "He's right, Mrs.

Manning. It would be best if you left now. We have a wide area to search, and we'll phone you in the city the instant we find any clue to what happened here."

Leigh stared at her, sick with fear that Valente had alienated both detectives so completely that they'd never tell her anything. "Do you promise you'll call, no matter what?"

"I promise."

"Even if it's just to tell me you don't know anything else?"

"Even then," Littleton agreed. "I'll call you tonight." She walked to the doorway and waited for Leigh and Valente to step outside on the porch; then she nodded at one of the police officers standing there. "Officer Tierney here will drive you back to your helicopter, just tell him where it is."

When they left, Sam Littleton motioned to another NYPD officer standing nearby, brus.h.i.+ng packed snow off his legs and jacket. "Get some rolls of crime-scene tape and start blocking off the area from that point there-" She pointed to the end of the driveway visible from the house.

"Don't you want it up at the road, too?"

"No, it would only arouse curiosity and invite attention, but I want an officer stationed up there around the clock until CSU has been here and gone. No one gets down here without permission from Detective Shrader or me."

"Got it," he replied, turning to leave.

"One more thing-Ask one of the local departments if we can borrow a generator. We're going to need lights and heat down here."

"Anything else?"

Sam gave him a beguiling smile. "Since you asked, two cups of hot coffee would be very nice."

"I'll see what I can do."

SHRADER was on the phone with Holland, making arrangements for a crime scene unit to be sent to the cabin ASAP. When he finished his call, he gave Sam a ferocious scowl, which, on Shrader, looked so much like his happy face that Sam wasn't certain whether he was amused or angry. "Valente called me an a.s.shole!" he exclaimed, and Sam realized he was actually delighted.

"He did," she agreed, "-and you were."

"Yeah, but you know what I found out?"

Sam shoved her hands in her pockets and grinned. "That he also thinks you're a s.a.d.i.s.tic moron?"

"Besides that."

Sam tipped her head to the side. "I give up. What else did you discover? "

"The Feds call Valente the Ice Man-but I found out he has a warm, soft, sensitive spot. It's Mrs. Logan Manning. Our people are going to find that very interesting." He crouched down in front of the fireplace and took a pen out of his pocket. "I don't know how she's made it as an actress onstage."

"You don't think she can act?" Sam uttered in surprise.

Shrader gave a sharp bark of laughter. "h.e.l.l, yes, she can act! She gave us an Academy Award performance in the hospital and again right here. The problem is she doesn't seem to remember her lines. In the hospital Wednesday morning, she got all righteous and indignant when I asked her about Valente's phone message. Today, two days later, she shows up in his private helicopter and he carries her down here in his arms."

Since they'd already covered this topic on the way here from the accident site, Sam said nothing.

"In order to be a good liar, you've got to have a good memory," Shrader declared as he poked around in the ashes. "This looks like ordinary wood ash to me, probably oak. The problem with Mrs. Manning," he continued, "is that she not only has a bad memory, she also has a real bad sense of direction. She was twelve miles south of here when her car went over the embankment, and she was heading south, not north. That means... what?" He looked over his shoulder and lifted his brows, waiting for Sam to fill in his verbal blank.

"Is this a quiz?" she said with amus.e.m.e.nt. "It means it looks as if she was on her way back home, not on her way here, when she went off the road."

"Right. Now, what bothers you about this place? Anything stand out?"

It dawned on Sam that this was the first case they'd started on together, and that Shrader was truly trying to get a sense of how observant she was. "There are several things that stand out. First, someone swept this floor very clean, very recently, which is why you didn't bother to keep everyone out of here. You already knew CSU wouldn't be able to get any footprints off this stone, not only because it's been swept, but because it's too uneven."

"Good. What else?"

"You let Valente walk in here, in the impossible hope that CSU could somehow lift a partial print of his shoes and that they'd match up with a print somewhere else on the stone floor in here."

"So I'm a dreamer."

"By the way, in case you didn't notice, Mrs. Manning left at least a partial print on that window."

He pushed himself to his feet, dusted off his hands, and tucked the pen in his pocket. "She put her hand on the frame, not the gla.s.s. I was watching."

"I think her hand slid over onto the gla.s.s when she turned around."

Shrader's eyes narrowed. "If you're certain, make a note of it."

"I will." Turning, she walked into the kitchen. "Are you going to say anything to Tierney? He let Valente get past him and walk in here."

"You bet your sweet a.s.s I am! Sorry-no personal, inappropriate, or offensive s.e.xual connotation was intended."

"None taken," Sam a.s.sured him gravely, but her mind was on the gla.s.ses in the kitchen sink. Those gla.s.ses seemed as odd to her as the single sleeping bag seemed to Shrader, and she said that aloud.

"What bothers you about the gla.s.ses?" he asked.

"Why are they in the sink? The bottles of water weren't opened, neither was the bottle of champagne or the bottle of chardonnay. So if the gla.s.ses were unused, why did he put them in the sink?"

"He probably figured they'd be safer there, less likely to get broken."

Sam didn't argue.

CHAPTER 16.

at eleven-fifteen Sat.u.r.day morning, and so it was Joe O'Hara who answered the kitchen phone and took the call from Dr. Sheila Winters. He recognized her name immediately, partly because she'd phoned in a prescription for Leigh Manning a few days before, but also because Brenna had several times referred to her as a very close friend of the Mannings.

"I'd like to speak to Mrs. Manning," Dr. Winters told him.

O'Hara hesitated and then reluctantly recited the excuse Hilda, Brenna, and he had been told to make to anyone who called with a similar request. "I'm sorry, Dr. Winters, but Mrs. Manning isn't taking phone calls today. She's resting."

Callers-except for reporters-always accepted that and politely left messages, but not this caller. As if she'd picked up on O'Hara's reluctance to brush off her call, she began chatting with him. "Who is this?"

"Joe O'Hara. I'm Mrs. Manning's chauffeur."

"I thought it might be you! You're also a bodyguard, aren't you?"

"If necessary, yes."

"Leigh and Logan told me how happy they were to have you working for them for the next few months. As things stand right now, I'm especially glad you're there." She was so warm, and genuinely concerned, that Joe instinctively liked and trusted her. "Is she really resting?" Dr. Winters asked abruptly.

Joe leaned back and peered past the dining room into the living room, where the subject of the discussion was staring at a framed photograph of her husband on a sailboat, her face so tense and forlorn that it was heartbreaking.

"She isn't resting, is she?" Dr. Winters guessed from his hesitation.

"No."

"I'd like to come over and see her this morning. Do you think that would be a good idea? "

"Maybe so," he said; then he remembered Brenna's saying she wished Dr.

Winters had been allowed to come over yesterday, and he strengthened his reply.

"Yes," he said. "I do."

"How could we work it out?"

Joe tucked his chin close to the phone and lowered his voice. "Well, if you were to tell me that you're coming over this morning-and that you won't take no for an answer when you get here-then I'd have to tell Mrs. Manning that, and I don't think she's in any condition to put up much of an argument about anything right now."

"I see," Dr. Winters said with a smile in her voice, and then she became very stern and coolly professional. "This is Dr. Winters," she informed him as if they hadn't already been talking, "and I'm coming over in a few minutes to see Mrs.

Manning. Please tell her that I will not take no for an answer when I get there!"

"Yes, ma'am. I'll give her the message," O'Hara said. He was hanging up the phone when Hilda's gruff voice made him twist around in surprise. "Who were you talking to?"

"Dr. Winters. She insisted on coming over. She said she won't take no for an answer."

Hilda glared at him in disdain. "Sure, and this dustcloth I'm holding is really a hand puppet! "

O'Hara glowered back at her. "You callin' me a liar?"