The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [96]
Then she went looking. Dellyn wasn’t in the drafty sun porch at the Education Building she used as a makeshift office. She wasn’t at the barn in the administration area, where she had a corner to store plants and tools. Chloe looped through the historic site proper on foot, checking each of the gardens Dellyn maintained. No luck.
“Well, shit,” Chloe muttered, as she scanned the last garden. With almost six hundred acres of trails and roads, it wasn’t hard to miss someone. But Chloe had nabbed every interpreter she could find and asked if they’d seen Dellyn. No one had.
By the time Chloe got back to the parking lot, it was 4:30. She drove to Dellyn’s house. She was going to make sure her friend was OK, even if Simon Sabatola was there with an army of lawyers.
At the house, no one answered Chloe’s knock. The garden was empty, too.
Chloe stood on the front step, hugging her arms across her chest. Maybe Dellyn had run to the grocery store for peanut butter.
Or … maybe she was in the house, unwilling—or unable—to respond.
Chloe unlocked the door with the key Dellyn had given her. When she went inside she almost tripped over a pile of mail that had been shoved through the old-fashioned door slot, but managed to side-step without trampling anything. “Dellyn?” she yelled. “It’s me, Chloe. Are you here?”
No answer. Something bitter slid up Chloe’s throat as she began a quick circle of the downstairs rooms. The last time she’d entered a friend’s home like this, she’d found the man dead in a pool of blood.
No similar scenes downstairs today. Chloe pounded up to the second floor. She felt uncomfortable intruding into Dellyn’s bedroom, but she did it anyway. Finally she checked the attic, poking around among the piles of cartons and haphazard storage of antiques.
Nothing. Chloe sagged with relief. Thank God.
But … no. Dellyn wasn’t in the house, but that didn’t mean she was OK. Shit, Chloe thought. Dellyn, where are you?
_____
Roelke got to Roxie’s Roost about four-thirty. Several vets were swapping tales of their service days. A young couple played darts in the corner. And Simon Sabatola was parked on a bar stool with a shot glass in front of him.
Roxie tossed a nervous gaze toward Roelke. He ignored her and headed toward the middle of the bar, then paused and veered, as if just noticing someone he knew. “Mr. Sabatola!” he said, sliding onto the stool beside the businessman. “Good afternoon, sir.”
Simon Sabatola squinted at him through reddened eyes, then looked back at the glass of amber liquid. “Hello, officer.”
“Please—it’s just Roelke.” He raised his voice and ordered a beer and a glass of water.
Sabatola emptied his shot. “And give me another.”
Roelke didn’t speak again until Roxie had delivered the drinks and disappeared again. Then he leaned toward Sabatola. “I hope the materials I dropped off with your secretary yesterday proved helpful.”
“Nothing is helpful.” Sabatola spoke with the precise care of someone trying to pretend he was still sober. “Today I should be celebrating my wedding anniversary. And instead …” He picked one hand up in a vague gesture: Look where I am, what I’m doing.
“Oh man, that’s tough.”
“My wife was a beautiful woman.”
“I’ve seen pictures.” Roelke shook his head, half admiring and half sympathetic. “It’s hard to understand why a gorgeous woman like that, living in a beautiful home, with a successful husband to be proud of …”
Sabatola ran one finger around the rim of his shot glass. “She had every reason to be happy.”
“From what I could see, you’d given her everything any woman could ask for.”
Sabatola drained his glass.
“I mean, you’ve clearly been working your ass off to help build AgriFutures. Did your wife understand that?”
Sabatola remained silent. For a moment Roelke thought he’d gone