6
When they returned to the farmhouse, Nadean was not there. She had not left a note. Geoff's Jeep was still parked near the garage beside their mother's station wagon. Nadean had used it to drive her to the train station so she could spend the holidays with her sisters, leaving her daughter the Mercury Colony Park to drive while she was away.
The property was fairly large. After Geoff's father had left, his mother had leased some of the acreage to neighboring farmers and outright sold off a few parcels. Taking the Jeep, the pair toured the grounds, searching the old potato shed, the windmill, the stables that had long ago been converted to storage, the north and south woods and the pond. They returned to the house to phone nearby neighbors and friends of the girl. Nobody knew anything. No one had seen her.
"But the lizard's still here, right?"
Geoff went into the garage and lifted the lid on the old chest freezer. It wasn't uncommon for friends and neighbors to present them with gifts of surplus game and fish, so the unit remained at least half full most of the time. He withdrew a long package cartoonishly plump with aluminum foil that was shaped like a huge animal cracker version of the creature he had necropsied.
"Oh, thank God!"
"Really, Sterling?" Geoff asked incredulously. "Someone might have taken my sister hostage and all you care about is an extinct chicken?"
"Give it to me."
Geoff maintained his grip on it. "It stays here until Nadean turns up. I have to know she's all right."
"Maybe she ran off with her boyfriend or somethin'."
"She would have left a note." Geoff replaced the corpse in the freezer.
"So what do we do now?"
"Wait for her to return."
"What if she's spending the night somewhere?"
"She would have left a note!"
"So let's search the house again. Maybe it blew off something when we walked by or somethin'."
McKenna sighed. "C'mon, then." He lead the way back inside and started looking for a clue that might explain his sister's absence.
It wasn't like Nadean to hide notes or play games with him. He checked the usual places—refrigerator, kitchen counter, kitchen table, near the phone….
"Maybe she put it in the mailbox," suggested Brit.
"What kind of stupid idea is that?"
The guy shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe something came up, she remembered at the last moment, jammed something in there."
There was nothing else to do but kill time. "Look upstairs again, will you?" Geoff asked, heading for the front door.
On the front porch he noticed a little more dirt than usual. It was more noticeable on the steps. Brit had pulled around to the rear of the house, so that was the door they had used upon their return from lunch. Now he saw that one of his mother's concrete flower pots had fallen from a step and broken. The soil was loose enough and the break clean enough to suggest the damage was fresh. Heart beating faster, he turned for another look at the house. Nothing else seemed untoward. Had it been locked when he'd exited? No. He searched the ground beyond the steps. It was a mixture of hard-packed dirt, marble and granite chips, a few broken oyster shells, a few clumps of weeds. His eyes detected cavities recently vacated by stones. Had someone kicked them loose? Had there been a struggle? He stood straight and gazed along the driveway. Then he heard an engine start.
Geoff jogged toward a corner of the house in time to see his Jeep spray dirt and gravel as Brit floored it and veered around him. He watched his vehicle race toward the roadway. It was forced to brake hard to avoid colliding with a passing produce truck, and then Brit "Sterling" Silver turned left and sped away.