Someone to Watch Over Me - Page 21

“I think it would be,” he said, guessing at the reason for her reluctance and overriding it.

Leigh decided he was right, and as she slid into the backseat of Officer Harwell’s car, she said as courteously as she could, “Officer Harwell, Commissioner Trumanti assured me I would have the full cooperation of everyone in the NYPD. And Mr. Valente is with me.”

Harwell said nothing until they were under way; then he flipped on the siren and glanced at Valente in the rearview mirror. “You must feel right at home back there, Valente,” he said with a malicious smile. “You’re usually in handcuffs, though, aren’t you?”

Too horrified to hide her reaction, Leigh glanced sharply at Valente. He was calmly phoning his pilot and giving him instructions, but his eyes were riveted on the back of Harwell’s head, and the expression on his face was lethal.

Chapter 15

* * *

One after another, police vehicles from the site of Leigh’s accident flew past them, light bars flashing and sirens blaring, en route to the cabin. Leigh leaned forward and angrily asked Harwell, “Did Detective Shrader tell you to go this slow, or are you doing it just to be unpleasant?”

“Detective Shrader’s orders, ma’am,” Harwell replied, but Leigh could see his smirking face in the rearview mirror, and she knew he was enjoying her frustration—probably because she’d forced him to take Michael Valente along.

“Why would he give you an order like that?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Take a guess!” O’Hara snapped.

“Okay. My guess is that Detective Shrader doesn’t know what he’s going to find, or if he’s going to find anything, and he wants a little extra time to look around and assess the scene. Family members and civilians get in the way.” As he spoke, he flipped on his turn indicators. “This is it.”

A mile after the turnoff, he pulled to a stop in the middle of a narrow mountain road crowded with police cars, including some from surrounding communities. The cabin was nowhere in sight, but a steep, narrow lane led from the road, down through the trees, and then disappeared around a bend.

Harwell got out of the car. “You stay here!” he ordered her, shouting to be heard above the roar of a hovering helicopter and the wailing siren of an approaching ambulance. “I’ll let you know what they’ve found.”

Police officers wading through the chest-high snow had created a passage of sorts with their bodies, and Leigh stood between O’Hara and Valente, watching Harwell make his way down the deep, slippery channel. More police officers arrived and trooped through the snow, but no one reappeared from around the bend below.

Leigh counted each second, waiting for someone to come up and tell her something, and when no one did, she began to feel as if she were going to explode into a million pieces.

Beside her, Valente was scowling down the lane; then he swore under his breath and looked at her. “How badly are you hurt?”

“What?”

“Your ribs?” he clarified. “Can you handle the pain if I lift you up and carry you down there?”

“Yes!” Leigh said. “But I don’t think you—”

Before she could finish, Valente put one arm beneath her knees, curved his other arm around her shoulders, and lifted her into his arms. He looked at O’Hara and nodded toward the steep path. “You go first, and I’ll walk in your footsteps. If I start to slip, try to brace me.”

The plan worked, and a few minutes later, Leigh finally had an unobstructed view of the entire scene. The picturesque stone cabin stood in a clearing at the end of the driveway, just as Logan had described it to Leigh. Fifty yards from the cabin, the land dropped off sharply, and a horde of policemen were working their way slowly downward through the trees.

Another officer was stationed on the cabin’s porch, peering inside through the open doorway. He turned in surprise as Valente put Leigh down behind him.

“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 assumed 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 accumulated 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-fashioned 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 wineglasses in the sink robbed her of her last comforting fantasy.

She turned to Shrader and Littleton, her eyes filled with anguish. “The glasses 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 assured 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.

Tags: Judith McNaught Romance
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