When Luke got to where Kira's truck was parked he found that Enos was already there with Cooter. When Luke saw the truck it looked as if his cousin had just stepped away for a moment. There was no indication of where she was now or what might have happened to her. Enos was in the process of checking if there were any fingerprints on the vehicle that shouldn't be there. He'll check any that he finds against those of the family that were on file from Boss and Rosco's years of trying to set the various Dukes up to take the fall for Boss's assorted plots.
"So, Enos, what's next? Do you contact the State Police or what?" Luke asked as Enos finished dusting for prints and prepared to head back to the courthouse.
"I'm afraid not, Luke," Enos said just a bit uneasily since he knew that his friend wouldn't like the only answers that he had at the moment.
"Why the hell not?"
"Because other than the fact that we don't know where Kira is, there's no evidence of a crime."
Luke's eyes widened with frustration. "The fact that she's missing isn't enough!?"
Enos shook his head. "It's not a crime for a grown adult to go missing. In fact, most missing adults are that way by choice. If a body decides to disappear of their own volition there ain't nothing for law enforcement to do about it."
"But she ain't disappeared because she wanted to!" Luke insisted.
"I don't think so, either. But there is no real evidence to back that up. Until we have some we have to look at it as any other missing person's case." Enos headed toward his patrol car and paused to add, "I'll ask around to see if anyone saw Kira with any strangers or can think of anything that seemed off when they saw her today. If you or the family can find anything that might indicate that Kira didn't disappear on her own I'll look into it. I promise. I'm sorry Luke. There's just not much that I can legally do until we know that there's been a crime committed."
Luke exhaled heavily before he nodded his understanding. He then asked Cooter to help him to drive Kira's truck over to the Community Center. Delivering the baked goods that she'd bought earlier in the day would cover for his absence if the kids had noticed that he'd been gone. He wasn't sure what he was going to say to the rest of the family.
When the pair arrived back at the Halloween party it was time for the costume contest. He watched as various friends and neighbors all were recognized for the most imaginative and creative costumes but he wasn't really paying any attention. He slipped up next to his cousin dressed as the Scarecrow and whispered, "Enos took prints but there's nothing he can do until we can prove that Kira's disappearance wasn't willingly. Have you been able to reach her, yet?"
"No. Luke, I'm worried. There is no way that she would have disappeared on these kids right now. I don't care what it looks like, Kira didn't take off on her own." Bo ground his teeth in frustration.
"After the party we'll look around at the house to see if there is anything that can help us figure out what's happened there," Luke said as he noticed both his uncle and his other cousins eye him as they made their way as inconspicuously as possible. He knew that he'd have to fill the rest of the family in on what he knew, as well as what they didn't know, without letting on to the kids that their mother might be in trouble.
Kim volunteered to look through the bedroom to see if there was anything that would indicate why Kira was missing while Jebb put his children to bed. Kim figured that it would be best if another woman looked through the private belongings of her missing sister-in-law. Daisy had offered but both she and Jo had their own children to tend to after the party. They needed to be put to bed since they had school the next morning. When Kim sat on the edge of the bed, she pulled out the drawer from the nightstand and found a nearly empty bottle of moonshine and frowned. She'd spoken with Jesse a couple of weeks ago when he was concerned about finding Kira drinking a glass of the clear liquid in the middle of the day. Kim had been certain that the elder Duke had been overly concerned with the incident. But now that she found that he sister-in-law had hidden a bottle in her bedroom the young woman wasn't quite so sure. Kim headed back downstairs where the men had looked through various papers on Kira's office desk and looked dejected. Neither Bo nor Luke had found anything.
Luke looked up when the brunette walked into the kitchen. "Did you find anything?"
Kim bit her lip before shaking her head. "Nothing that would say anything for sure. But I did find another, nearly empty bottle, of shine in her nightstand."
Luke closed his eyes. Jesse had discussed with the family his concerns for his niece. "Whatever you do, don't tell that to Enos. It might be enough to make him think that the last few months has been too much for her. He already told me that he thinks that most missing people are missing because they want to be."
"Luke, you know that Kira wouldn't leave them kids upstairs!" Bo insisted angrily.
"I know that. And you know that. But Enos has to look at things from the Law Enforcement perspective," Luke assured his cousin. "Let's keep lookin'. There's got to be somethin' that we're missin'."
Upstairs Jebb was having quite the time getting the three children ready for bed. It didn't make any sense to the children that their mother hadn't come to the party and now she wasn't around to tuck them in for the night. Jebb read an additional two stories to Crystal until she fell asleep. The boys were harder to get to settle for the night. When he walked into the bedroom he saw where Mikey had opened the window since he liked to listen to the sounds of the night as he drifted off to sleep. Over on the other side of the room Jay was pulling out an extra blanket from the foot locker at the end of his bed where extra bedding for his bed was kept. Jebb felt that this was likely a common occurrence for the boys since it was clear that by their actions that they were well used to the routine. When Jebb walked into the room both boys turned to him and asked the one question that he didn't have an answer to.
"Where's Momma?"
Jebb thought about lying to them. To tell them that she was with a friend, with a new client, or just about anything but the truth. But given how his credibility was already suffering with his children, especially with Jay, he didn't think that lying was in his best interest.
"To be honest, I don't know. That's what your uncles and I are goin' to try to figure out." Jebb then asked, "Have you seen anything that would seem unusual to you? You know, before I came back home?"
Mikey and Jay thought for a moment before the eldest said, "She stares at that letter in her office a lot."
"What letter?" Jebb wondered aloud since he'd mainly seen Kira's office door closed when he was here. But it made sense that when she had been home alone with the kids that she'd keep the door open so that she could listen for the children while working.
Mikey shrugged, "Don't know. She puts it under her calendar when she sees us coming."
"Do you know who the letter is from?"
Mikey shook his head as he said, "No, but she always seems worried when she reads it. She hides it as soon as she notices us."
Jay replied, "I thought it was from you."
"I never wrote her a letter." When Jebb heard himself admit that he'd not once sent Kira a letter while he was gone he realized how callus it sounded. He hadn't even written her back in response to the letter that she'd sent him to tell him that she didn't expect him back, that he could live his life as he wanted. Looking back, now, he found it hard to believe that he'd just allowed his family here in Hazzard to become out of sight out of mind. "I'll go see if there is anything to the letter. Thanks. Now get some sleep."
Jebb walked out of the room and stayed in the hallway for a moment, looking into each room through the cracked doors. He didn't want to close them completely so that he could hear if the kids got up later on. After taking a deep breath he knew that he needed to see if there was anything to the letter that the boys had mentioned. He took the back set of stairs toward the kitchen and bypassed his cousins as they were discussing what they have, or haven't, found that might would indicate where the missing Duke was.
When Jebb walked past Luke and started toward Kira's desk he told the younger man that they'd already searched Kira's desk. When he saw Jebb lift the calendar up off of the desk and pull out a slip of paper Luke came up short. Jebb read the paper and saw that it was a letter from the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. It was informing Kira of the release of a man that she must have had something to do with putting behind bars. When he saw the name, while not familiar to him, he felt a pressure in his head as he had an overwhelming urge to start knocking over chairs, tables, even the refrigerator in the next room. Who was this man? What had he done to have been in prison? What connection did he have to his wife? Did he have something to do with her disappearance?
"Jebb." Luke called out to his cousin once more. "Jebb, can you hear me? Snap out of it, Buddy."
Jebb finally looked up from the paper in his hand and saw that his cousins and Kim were all looking at him. "Huh?"
"You were out of it for a few moments, Jebb. Can you tell us what you saw?" Kim asked as she appeared to be taking his pulse.
"I, uh, I don't know. It was like I was seeing myself tear the kitchen apart. It felt like a memory. But why would I have done that? Why remember it now if I did?"
Luke lifted his chin to indicate towards the paper in his cousin's hands. "What's that?"
Jebb looked back down at the letter that his sons had told him about. "Mikey and Jay told me that Kira's been reading over this letter and would hide it when anyone came in. I thought it might be connected to today. Its from the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Who is Shawn Kyle?"
"What?" Bo ripped the paper from his cousin's hands and quickly read the letter that informed Kira that the man who was once her adopted brother (damn he didn't deserve that title) had been released from prison earlier in the month. "Oh God! Luke, he's out!"
Jebb didn't like the look on his cousins' faces as they both read the letter before Kim asked the same question that was burning in his own mind.
"Who is he? What did he do?"
"Darlin," Bo answered. "He hired some goons to kill Kira back when she was pregnant because of a clause in her adopted father's will about kids born after he died. He wanted to make sure that she didn't give birth. The goons decided to kidnap her instead of outright kill her, though, to try to squeeze him for more money. That was the most nerve-wracking three days of my whole life." Bo looked at Jebb and despite the fact that he'd still not really forgiven him for being with a woman who wasn't Kira over the weekend he saw that the man was lost in the current situation and felt sorry for him. "In all of our lives. We almost didn't find her in time and when we did, she was in labor with the boys. And the reason you feel like tearing the kitchen apart is because you did when it looked like we wouldn't find Kira. Hearing Uncle Jesse tell it later on, you completely lost it."
Luke picked the phone up and called Enos. The town's sheriff needed to know what they've found. They now had reason to believe that Kira didn't disappear on her own and could be in real danger. Enos assured that he'd contact the parole officer in charge of Shawn Kyle as soon as he could. With it being late at night, though, he didn't expect a call back and to learn anything for the night. Luke then called Jesse to let him know what they had found before the Dukes all went home for the night.
Jebb went upstairs and headed to his temporary bedroom across the hall from the one that he'd shared with Kira for nearly a decade. After learning of some of the harrowing incidents that the two of them had gone through just to have their children going into the spare room just didn't feel right any longer. Why hadn't anyone told him about some of the things that he and Kira had endured during their marriage? Had they just wanted him to remember the good? Did they not think that he could handle knowing about everything?
Jebb stripped down to his shorts and laid down on the bed in the room that was devoid of any real personal belongings. After all, up until this past weekend it had been Kira's sewing room. A bed was in the room as a spare for when extended family came to visit; like for Thanksgiving. The bed was too firm, too cold, and too empty. Had it felt that way the night before? Hadn't he been fairly comfortable in the room before tonight?