Cover of Night Read online

  He’d have to think about the possibilities, how he could manage it without getting caught in the riptide of Bandini’s vengeance. Maybe something would occur to him during this trip to Nowhere, Idaho, looking for a runaway accountant who might or might not already be dead.

  “Do we leave today?” Goss asked.

  6

  CATE COMPLETELY STRIPPED THE BED IN NUMBER 3, REMOVING even the blankets and mattress cover. She intended to wash everything. Mr. Layton might not be dead, but she suspected he was, and she thought it would be slightly ghoulish to remake the bed without washing all the bed linens, top to bottom. The next guest wouldn’t know, but she would.

  Her mother had taken the boys on a picnic, so the house was quiet for once. They were just a quarter of a mile away, at the picnic table Neenah Dase had installed under a big tree in her backyard, but to the boys they were on a grand adventure. Cate had watched from the window as they walked off down Trail Stop’s one real road, her mother carrying a small basket loaded with peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and lemonade, with the boys circling around her in a frenzy of excitement. For every step she took, they each took at least five, hopping and skipping and darting away to examine a bug, a rock, a leaf, then returning to their grandmother like satellites to a planet. Cate hoped they’d be nice and tired when they returned; since her mother’s arrival they’d been in high gear, and she suspected her mother was as ready for a little quiet time as she herself was.

  The phone call she’d received from National Car Rental made her feel both vaguely uneasy and vaguely depressed. The depression was because the call only verified that Mr. Layton was missing and now she felt bad that she’d been so annoyed when he didn’t return on schedule. The uneasiness…she couldn’t pinpoint the cause of that. Maybe it was just this entire situation; she’d never before had a guest go missing, and she had a growing sense that whatever had happened to Mr. Layton, it wasn’t good.

  Because she felt as if she should, she called the sheriff’s department again to report the call she’d received. She was put in touch with the same investigator, Seth Marbury. For all she knew, he was the county’s only investigator.

  “I know I’m being a bother,” she said apologetically, and explained about the phone call. “He not only didn’t come back yesterday, he didn’t return his rental car. The rental agency called here asking to speak to him, since he didn’t turn the car in. Have you found anything?”

  “Nothing. He hasn’t been reported in any accidents, and there aren’t any unidentified victims. He hasn’t been reported missing by any friends or family, either. You said he left his clothes behind? What else?”

  “It’s actually just one change of clothes. Some underwear and socks, disposable razor, some toiletries. And a plastic bag from Wal-Mart. I don’t know what’s in it.”

  “It sounds as if he didn’t leave anything important.”

  “No, nothing looks important.”

  “Mrs. Nightingale, I know you’re worried, but no crime has been committed and there’s no evidence that Mr. Layton’s had an accident. Sometimes people just walk away, for no good reason. You have his credit card number, so he didn’t run out on his bill, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He left under his own steam. He didn’t bother to check out, and he left some unimportant things behind. We’ll keep checking for an accident site along the most likely routes, but in all likelihood he just—left.”

  She couldn’t see Marbury, but Cate knew he’d shrugged. “But what about his rental car?”

  “That’s between him and the rental agency. The car hasn’t been reported stolen, so there’s nothing we can do about that, either.”

  She thanked him and hung up. There was no help there; as Marbury had pointed out, no crime had been committed. If Mr. Layton had family, either he’d been in touch with them or they hadn’t expected to hear from him yet, so he wasn’t officially missing. He had just vanished.

  Maybe she was making too much of this. Maybe Mr. Layton was fine, and he simply hadn’t bothered to come back for the few possessions he’d left here.

  She thought back over the sequence of events. Yesterday morning he’d briefly come downstairs, but as soon as he realized the dining room was full, he’d stepped back from the door and returned to his room. Sometime between then and when she’d gone upstairs to check on the twins, he’d climbed out of his bedroom window and driven away.

  At the time she’d thought he simply hadn’t wanted to eat with strangers, but given his method of departure and the fact that he hadn’t returned, she now had to wonder if perhaps he’d recognized someone in the dining room that he hadn’t wanted to let know he was here. Yesterday morning had been unusually busy, but the only stranger she could remember was Joshua Creed’s client—she couldn’t remember his name. Had Mr. Layton known him? And if he had simply wanted to avoid the man—for which she couldn’t blame him—why hadn’t he just remained in his room until Creed and his client left?

  This line of reasoning at least made her feel better, because looking at it that way made it seem far more likely Mr. Layton had done exactly as Marbury thought, and simply left without bothering to take his possessions with him. If he’d wanted to avoid what’s-his-name bad enough to climb out a window and sneak away, then leaving his stuff behind probably hadn’t bothered him at all.

  But why hadn’t he turned in his rental car, if not in Boise at least in some other town where National had an office? Cate wasn’t normally a conspiracy theorist, but Trail Stop wasn’t exactly the most-traveled-to place in the state; if someone Mr. Layton wanted to avoid had followed him here, that someone, logically, had found out he’d rented a car and where he was going. There were probably all sorts of rules against that kind of information being given out, but information was bought and sold every day, and a lot of those transactions were against the rules. So Mr. Layton had to know the car was a liability; if he wanted to continue avoiding whoever had followed him, surely he would want to get rid of it. Maybe he’d parked it somewhere and walked away, since that seemed to be his modus operandi, figuring he’d just deal with whatever extra charges were tacked onto his credit card bill—

  Something the county investigator had said rang in her mind. She had already charged Layton’s credit card, so he hadn’t run out on the bill. The same circumstance applied to the rental agency; in fact, she didn’t think you could rent a car without having a credit card. So why was the rental agency trying to track Mr. Layton down? Was that standard? She had no idea what their policy was, but a reasonable person would think they’d just keep applying charges against his credit card for at least a couple of days.

  On impulse she checked Caller ID, and frowned when she read “Unknown Name, Unknown Number.” That was inconvenient. And since when did a business block its number from showing? Not only that, the caller hadn’t given her his name. Still, she thought she should pass along what Investigator Marbury had said.

  She called Information, got National’s number, then waited for the automatic connect. On the second ring a woman’s voice said, “National Car Rental, Melanie speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Someone from your company called me a little while ago about one of my guests,” Cate said, “Jeffrey Layton. Mr. Layton didn’t return the car yesterday and this person was trying to track him down. I’m sorry, but the man who called didn’t give me his name.”

  “Someone from here called to ask about…What did you say his name was?”

  “Layton. Jeffrey Layton.” Cate spelled it for her, even though the names seemed common enough.

  “A man called you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there are only women working here today. Are you certain he called from this location?”

  “No, I’m not,” Cate admitted, wishing she’d thought to ask. “The name and number were blocked on Caller ID, but I assumed the call would have come from the office at the Boise Airport.”