“You can’t come inside like this,” Shelley hissed at me. “Get out or I’ll call the cops.”
“Maybe you should,” I said. “When they show up, I’ll let them know that they should probably do a welfare check on your husband. Several people have mentioned that you might be holding him here against his will.”
Shelley’s face contorted in fury. “I said get out.”
“I’ll go when I’m good and ready,” I told her. “Jimmy!” I called again. “Are you here?”
Again there was no answer, making me hope that Twink and I had made it to the house before the boy had.
“Shut the hell up or you’ll wake him,” Shelley snarled, and she wasn’t talking about waking Jimmy. She was talking about Roger, and that’s when I noticed the collection of luggage parked on the far side of the entryway. Shelley was dressed to go somewhere, all right, because she was going somewhere.
“Taking a trip?” I asked.
“None of your business,” she snapped.
“Maybe I’m making it my business.”
“If you really want to know, I’m going to Anchorage for a couple of days. Nadine and Dunk will be staying here to look after Roger.”
“Going there to sell off a few more of his properties?” I asked innocently.
Of course, I shouldn’t have goaded her. It’s like one of those fight scenes on TV where one guy has the drop on another. Then the second guy says, “Go ahead and shoot me,” and is surprised as all heck when that’s what happens and he gets shot. But now that I was fairly sure Jimmy Danielson wasn’t inside the residence, I was willing to take that risk. For one thing, I doubted she was armed. Shelley’s tight-fitting clothing was designed for maximum effect in showing off her considerable assets, leaving little to the imagination and no room at all for a concealed weapon. Besides, maybe I could provoke her into saying or doing something stupid, because angry people tend to do stupid things.
Shelley was staring at me in absolute fury when the ping of an arriving text came in on my phone. Feigning indifference, I pulled the device out of my pocket and checked the screen. The text was from Twink:
Got your missing kid in the car. He’s eating my dessert. Come when ready.
Bless Twink’s heart! I barely managed to avoid heaving a sigh of relief. With Jimmy clearly out of danger, I decided to take another swipe at Shelley.
“Since Jimmy isn’t here,” I said, pocketing the phone, “just so you know, a lot of Roger’s friends are beginning to ask questions about what’s going on with him.”
Shelley tried to keep her face expressionless, but it didn’t quite work. Having dropped what I regarded as an appropriate exit line, I turned on my heel and beat it out the still-open door behind me. As the heavy oaken door slammed shut, I couldn’t help but smile.
She’d heard me, all right. Shelley Hollander Loveday Adams was on notice now, because she’d heard me loud and clear.
Chapter 30
I was concerned about what I would find once I got to the Travelall. Would Jimmy be upset because he was being held captive by a strange woman? Would I find a kid who thought he was being kidnapped by people he didn’t know? What I found instead was a calm middle-schooler sitting in the rear passenger seat, happily chowing down on Twink’s generous serving of AJ’s sticky pudding.
“I told him he couldn’t go inside because his grandfather’s ill,” Twink explained. “He said he was hungry, so I gave him my dessert. Where to?” she added.
I thought about Shelley’s luggage sitting packed and ready to go. Obviously she was headed out of town, and I wondered if my parting remarks might have accelerated her departure. If so, I wanted to have some idea where she was headed.
“Shelley may be leaving soon,” I said to Twink. “Pull off the road somewhere out of sight but close enough for us to still be able to see the driveway. If she leaves the house, I want to know which direction she’s going.”
Then I turned around and studied our passenger. “Hello, Jimmy,” I said. “Your mom’s really worried about you.”
“I don’t care. If I’m not supposed to lie, she shouldn’t either,” he replied. “But she did. When we did an ancestry thing in social studies, we were supposed to write an essay about our grandparents. I don’t know any of my grandparents. Mom said her mother died of cancer and that all my other grandparents died on accident, but it’s not true. Why did she lie?”