Cold Case, Hot Accomplice

“I’ve got it covered.” Josie stepped back to the stove and turned down the flames beneath the boiling chicken that would later be deboned and prepared as chicken salad for the lunch fare. “I’ve called in Allie and Nancy to waitress. Greg will help me out here in the kitchen, and Gus said he’d try to show up a little early this afternoon to help with anything we need and with closing up.”

She moved closer to Roxy, her brown eyes soft with sympathy. “We have this, Roxy. For as long as you need us, we’ll all pull together and keep this place running just as if you were here snapping the whip.”

Roxy smiled faintly, knowing that she was, indeed, a tough taskmaster. She was first and foremost a businesswoman, driven and determined to succeed.

“You know I have full confidence in you to keep the standards high and service impeccable,” Roxy said. “Besides, I’m hoping we’ll figure things out this morning, or at least by the end of the day, and Aunt Liz will be home and I’ll be back in the kitchen in the morning.”

“Are you meeting up with your sisters?”

“No, I insisted they open the store today as usual. There’s no point in all three of us running amok trying to find answers. Besides, Marlene hasn’t been herself since her divorce, and Sheri would be too shy and polite to demand things get done unless somebody threatened one of her woodland creatures.”

Josie shot her a wry grin. “And we know you don’t have that problem. Actually, Marlene called me a little while ago and said she’d been up all night and had baked some pies and pastries to bring in this morning.”

Roxy looked at her in surprise, although she supposed she shouldn’t be startled. Marlene had always been at Aunt Liz’s side when she baked goodies and had at one time dreamed of opening her own bakery, a dream that had seemed to die along with her marriage.

“She said she’ll bring in the baked goodies every morning until your aunt can do it again,” Josie said.

Roxy’s heart expanded with love for her sister, who had probably been up all night worrying and had used that time to make sure Roxy had what she needed for her business.

Josie looked at the large clock on the kitchen wall. “Actually, she should be here anytime.”

It was just after six-thirty, and so Roxy sat at the prep table to wait for her sister and tried not to focus on how wrong everything felt.

She should be cooking, waiting for Aunt Liz to arrive, while Marlene should be in bed, snoozing until heading into the roadside shop at noon. Roxy should be cutting up vegetables or adding a secret herb to a soup or planning new specialties.

Sheri was probably already outside, filling squirrel and bird feeders and taking care of all the other woodland creatures that brought her far more comfort than people ever had.

Sheri had been a stutterer for the first twelve years of her life, and Roxy couldn’t count the number of times she’d beaten up some ignorant bully for making fun of her kid sister. The stutter had gradually gone away and now only appeared when she was particularly stressed or excited.

A knock on the back door signaled Marlene’s arrival. Roxy hurried to let her sister in, as her arms were filled with pie carriers and boxed pastries.

“Let me take those from you,” Roxy said, noting that Marlene looked utterly exhausted. Dark circles shadowed the porcelain skin beneath her eyes, although the long blond hair that fell to her shoulders was clean and silky. Her lips quivered slightly as she attempted a smile.

“You didn’t need to do this, Marlene,” Roxy said as she and her sister placed the baked goods on a nearby table.

“I know, but I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t just do nothing, so I drove to Aunt Liz’s and used her kitchen to bake. I can do this for you, Roxy, at least until Aunt Liz comes back. It will make me feel useful, and I don’t mind at all.”

“But you can’t get up early in the morning and bake for me and then be at the store all day,” Roxy said.

“Sheri and I have already figured it all out so that I can bake in the morning and work the evening shift at the store. All you have to know is that you can depend on me for the baked goods every morning until things are back to normal.” Marlene’s eyes deepened to a midnight blue and shimmered with a hint of unshed tears. “Things will get back to normal, won’t they, Roxy?”

Roxy grabbed her sister into a tight embrace. “I’ll find her, Marlene. One way or another, I’ll see that she gets home. Don’t I always fix everything? I swear I’m going to fix this, and everything will be back to normal,” Roxy exclaimed fervently.

She released her hold on her sister. “Now go home and try to get some sleep. I’ll check in at the store later this evening, and if I find out something before then, I’ll call either you or Sheri.”

She and Marlene shared a final hug, and then Marlene left through the back door. Roxy forced a smile at Josie. “I’m going to take off, too.”

It was close to seven, and she wanted to be sitting in the police station waiting room when Steve decided to show up for work. There was no way she intended for him to take this slow and easy. She wanted action, and sooner rather than later.

* * *

Steve had awakened long before dawn with thoughts of Liz Marcoli racing through his brain. Thank God it wasn’t winter. The weather in Wolf Creek could be brutal in those months, and she wouldn’t have lasted a night out on the streets or wandering in the woods.

Maybe she had haunted his dreams because she was the same age as Steve’s mother, and he was very close to his mom. Most Sundays he ate lunch at the condo she’d moved into a couple of months before. There had been so much grief in the past two years that he knew his mother worried about him as he did her.

The unexpected death of his father eight months ago from a heart attack had hopefully been the last in a string of tragedies for what was left of the Kincaid family.

At six he rolled out of bed, downed two cups of coffee and then showered and dressed for the day. First thing this morning he intended to talk to Chief Krause and get the okay to pursue the Marcoli case.

He had nothing pressing on his desk, and once he had the chief’s okay, the day would be spent interviewing anyone and everyone who knew Liz Marcoli. What he hoped was that somebody he spoke to today might know something that the three sisters Liz had raised didn’t know about her.

Normally he wasn’t due into his office until eight, but it was just after seven when he pulled up and parked, eager to get the day started.

As he walked in the front door, a rivulet of dismayed shock rode up his back at the sight of Roxy seated in one of the plastic chairs in the outer area.

She jumped to her feet, looking as surprised to see him as he was to see her. “You’re early,” she said.

“And you’re earlier,” he replied with an inward sigh. He’d hoped to get some plan in place, some action taken before he saw her or spoke to her again.

She followed him through the door that led to the inner sanctum and planted herself in the chair in front of his desk. “So the night has passed, and we still don’t have any answers. What’s your plan?”

“The first thing on my agenda is to get a cup of coffee. Would you like one?”

He was unsurprised by the slight flare of irritation that sparked in her eyes, and he wondered if she had any idea how sexy she looked with her T-shirt stretched across her full breasts, a faint pink flush filling her cheeks and her dark hair a curly halo around her head.

She sat back in the chair, and the hint of irritation disappeared. “Sure. A cup of coffee sounds fine. It will help to fortify us as we organize the search party.”

He nodded and got up from his chair to go into the small break room where the coffeepot was located. He hated to give her the news, but he knew there would be no search party. The woods around the small town were too thick and massive and the resources of the department far too small to warrant an official search party in a case where they couldn’t even be sure at this point that any foul play had actually occurred.

He hadn’t asked her how she drank her coffee, so he grabbed the two foam cups, a packet of fake sugar and another of powdered creamer and then returned to the desk. The day had only just begun, and already he knew it was going to be a long one.

“I didn’t know how you drank it, so I brought some cream and sugar,” he said as he placed a cup in front of her.

“Thanks,” she said grudgingly. “Black is fine.”

“Just give me a minute to check in with my chief, and I’ll be right back.”

She half rose from the chair, as if expecting that he intended to pull a disappearing act on her. “I’ll be right back,” he repeated and then headed for the chief’s office.

It took him only a few minutes of conversation with his boss to get the okay to conduct an investigation into Liz Marcoli’s disappearance.

He returned to his chair and Roxy looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to wave a magic wand and fix her world.

It was only on closer examination of her lovely features that he saw the shadows beneath her eyes and the overall exhaustion that had her shoulders slumped slightly forward. Despite the obvious weariness, a white-hot energy emanated from her, an energy that warned him to tread carefully.

At least she appeared relatively calm at the moment, but Roxy’s temper was legendary and he didn’t want to be the one who stirred it up. It would do neither of them any good for her to get angry.

“Did you sleep last night?” he asked.