now can I, Blondie?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. Ms. Ross.” His smirk belied the apology. “Now, I’ve been patient, and I’ve listened to your story with an open mind.”
So open, Isabella thought, that it had drained from his head.
“You say you and your cousin drove up here this afternoon from Boston.”
“I said we drove up from Portland.”
“Via Portland, but you live and work in Boston. You also said you came here then drove to Darkwood in separate vehicles. Why is that exactly?”
Isabella refused to let him rattle her composure. “I’ve already explained. Katie was going on to Bangor. I was stopping here. Two destinations, two vehicles.”
“And your cousin’s vehicle, like your cousin herself, is currently unaccounted for?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t suggest anything to you?”
Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “It suggests that both Katie and her car are missing.”
The sheriff’s smile grew strained. “A stronger suggestion would be that something at Darkwood Manor spooked her. When she couldn’t find you, she gave in to her fear and ran.”
“She’s not answering her cell phone.”
“Maybe she dropped it in her rush to escape. People have been known to leave all manner of personal possessions behind as they scramble back through those gates. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a believer myself, but more than a few folks hereabouts swear the manor’s haunted.”
“Oh, good.” Isabella mustered a false smile. “Here comes the ghost story. Katie wasn’t spirited away, Sheriff, and she didn’t run out on me.”
“You think someone kidnapped her and stole her car.”
“I think that’s a more plausible explanation than believing she ran from a ghost.”
Yet, in spite of herself, her conviction wavered. To bolster it, she jammed her hands in the pockets of her coat. “Whose spirit is supposed to haunt the place?”
“Take your pick. Aaron Dark, builder and owner. Aaron’s wife, Sybil, who ran off with another man. The unborn child some swear she was carrying. Hell, it could be Dark’s sister took up residence after she died, as penance for having her brother locked away.”
“Interesting. But you don’t believe any of those stories, so it can’t be fear that’s stopping you from driving out there with me.”
He gave her an insulting once-over. “Do you drink, Ms. Ross?”
She wouldn’t react, she told herself, would not lose it because some pasty-faced sheriff was either too lazy or too jittery to help her.
So instead of answering his question, she tipped her head to the side. “Tell me, Sheriff Lucas, is there something untoward going on at Darkwood Manor? Some illegal activity that might necessitate Katie’s removal from the house and cause me to be warned off?”
The sheriff’s open mouth closed with a snap. “You didn’t mention that you were warned off.”
“You didn’t give me a chance, and I’m mentioning it now.”
“Who did the warning?”
“I have no idea. A man on the cellar stairs. He told me to leave Darkwood Manor and not come back.”
The smile returned. “There you go, then. He probably told your cousin the same thing. Only unlike you, she took his advice.”
“At a dead run. Dropping her cell phone in the process. And since then, hasn’t bothered to stop and contact me. She wouldn’t do that, Sheriff—as I’ve already said.”
“What did this man of yours look like?”
“Again, no idea. He stopped me from falling down the cellar stairs, told me to leave and disappeared. If you won’t help me find Katie, you could at least help me track down this mystery man. It’s possible he saw what happened to her, and that’s why he warned me to leave.”
The sheriff’s brow furrowed. Rain streaming over the station windows gave his face a streaky look, as if it were melting.
When he didn’t speak, Isabella tried one last time to reason with him. “Sheriff Lucas, all I’m asking—”
“Is that I drive out to a deserted house with inadequate lighting in search of tire marks that will have long since washed away—if they ever existed—to look for a woman and or a mystery man that only you saw and or heard, and in the process risk breaking my neck the way you almost did in broad daylight.”
Isabella’s eyes glittered. “I take it that’s a no.”
“On all counts.” Rolling back from his desk, he stood. “Your cousin doesn’t contact you by tomorrow, I might have one of my deputies take a drive out there with you. If she shows, you’re welcome to come in and apologize for jabbering at me over nothing when I should be home eating my wife’s crab cakes and helping my kid with his algebra. Hotel charges eighty bucks a night off-season. Turn left at the end of Harbor Road if you’re looking for the highway. Your choice, Ms. Ross. You have a good night one way or the other.”
To Isabella’s astonishment, instead of ushering her out, he snatched his raincoat from a peg, crushed his hat down onto his head and stalked through the door of the small station house.
She stood there for a moment, stunned, until a thread of humor slithered in.
“Okay, then. No worries to you, too, pal. And apparently none to whoever’s in your cell block.”
Because there was definitely someone snoring away in the back. Whether deputy or prisoner, however, she didn’t care. Bottom line? Lucas was an ass. And he wasn’t going to help her find Katie.
Following the sheriff’s lead, Isabella let herself out. The street was virtually dead. The rain had let up and fog had moved in, a great swirling bank of it. Water droplets plopped onto the sidewalk behind her. To her left, a woman’s high heels tapped in the opposite direction.
She thought about the hotel across the street. Their brochures read Come Inn to the Mystic, which would have been a good tagline if the place hadn’t been a cardboard cutout of every generic hotel in rural America.
Oh, there was plenty of room for competition in this town.
Jingling her keys, she turned for her car.
“No assistance to be had, Ms. Ross?”
The silence was so pervasive, it made the words, spoken from the fog in front of her, sound like cannon fire. But even with her heart in her throat, Isabella’s restraint held.
“The ghost thing won’t work on me. I’m not in the mood for games, and I’m not leaving, so if you’re planning a repeat performance of our cellar
