What If... Read online

  “No,” he agreed, “and it’s only eight-fifteen, and, unless she had an eight o’clock lecture or something, then she would be here.”

  Abby headed up the stairs, knocked on the brownstone door, and waited. When there was no answer, she pulled out her phone and called the woman’s cell phone number and again nothing. Frowning, she phoned the nephew. “Hi.” She identified herself on the phone. “We’re trying to locate your aunt.”

  “She should be home,” he replied, yawning.

  Maybe she’d woken him up. “Well, we’re standing outside the front door, and there’s no answer, and she’s not answering her cell phone.”

  “I’m on my way to the university,” he stated, sounding more alert. “I’ll swing by and meet you there.”

  She turned to look at Harvey. “Leon is coming here.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Leon?”

  She shrugged, just managing to hold back the flush of heat rising up her neck at instinctively using Leon’s first name. “That’s his name.”

  “You rarely use first names.”

  “Hardly an issue,” she declared flatly.

  They stood here waiting, barely talking, her mind churning with all kinds of ideas on what might have happened with the aunt, while seriously hoping it was nothing.

  But, when the nephew arrived, he looked at her with a frown on his face, as he pulled out his keys to unlock Gertrude’s door. “I presume you think something’s happened.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but we need to talk to her. We have video of everybody entering the lecture hall and want her to take a look to see if they all were her students.”

  He nodded. “That would be the fastest way of finding that out, wouldn’t it?”

  “You would think so,” she replied.

  He walked in the front door and called out, “Gertie?” No answer. “Just a sec.” And he raced up the stairs, calling out. A moment later, he reappeared on the landing, shrugged, coming downstairs again. “She’s not here.”

  She frowned at him. “Would she have gone anywhere else?”

  “Back to the university. She practically lives there.”

  “Any reason why she wouldn’t be answering her cell phone?”

  “There could be all kinds of reasons, as you well know,” he said testily. “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you, or she turned it off because too many people were calling her. Or maybe she forgot to charge it, or she forgot it at home.”

  At that, she pulled out her phone and quickly phoned the same number. But she heard no phone ringing in the house.

  He shrugged, as he joined her. “So she’s probably at the university.”

  “Where does she park her vehicle?”

  “Lots of time she walks or takes a cab. She has a vehicle, and it would be parked in the back.” He led the way to the kitchen door and pointed outside to a detached garage. “She doesn’t normally drive though, so the car is probably out there.”

  “But she can drive?”

  He nodded. “Oh yes, she has a license.”

  Noting all of that, Abby walked down to the garage and looked in through the window. “Looks like an older Mercedes.”

  “That’s hers. It’s a maroon color.”

  She nodded, as she turned to walk back. She looked over at Harvey. “I guess we’ll return to the university then.” Turning to Leon, she asked, “Does your aunt have any special haunts?”

  “No, but she does have friends on campus, so it wouldn’t be out of line to consider that she’s spending a moment, having coffee with someone. It would have been a tough night for her.”

  Back in Abby’s car, she and Harvey made the fast trip to the university. As she got out, she headed in the direction of the professor’s office.

  “Do you think she’s dead?” Harvey asked.

  “God, I hope not,” she murmured quietly, as they walked through the halls, filled with students mingling and rushing from one end to the other. “But, if we don’t find her, we’ll have to consider the alternative.”

  “Which is?”

  “That maybe she couldn’t show up for her day at the office.”

  He looked at her sharply, but she shrugged. “Hey, this is a long way from being an open-and-shut case. Anything and everything is still on the table.”

  As they got to the professor’s office, she knocked. When there was no answer, she tested the door, but it was locked. As she turned, she saw Leon coming toward them. He frowned, as she nodded at the door. “It’s locked.”

  “I have a key.”

  “Wow.” She stared at him intently. “Is that normal?”

  “For me and my aunt, yes,” he replied. “Lots of times she’s forgotten things, and I’d still been at work, and she’s asked me to pick it up here and drop it off on my way home.”

  On the surface that made a lot of sense, but, at the same time, she just wasn’t so sure. He quickly unlocked the door and let her in. She walked around and felt some relief, knowing that nobody was here. She looked up at Leon. “Can you tell if she was here anytime recently?”

  He wandered the small space. “Everything is always like this.” He raised both hands in disgust. “She’s the only person I know whose desk is always absolutely pristine. Her files are always very orderly, everything exactly as you’d always want it to be. I’ve tried myself, really tried, yet somehow I can never achieve the same thing.”

  “It does show a very strict and disciplined mind-set.”

  “True,” he murmured. “But don’t get me wrong, Detective. She’s also a very warm and caring person.”

  “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” she noted, “but the need to have her desk like this? It usually shows a need to have control in her life.”

  He studied her carefully. “That’s an interesting assessment.”

  She shrugged. “So where is she likely to be right now?”

  “That’s what I was hoping to find out when I got here,” he replied. “Normally she would be right here. But she isn’t, so I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Fine. We’ll do our best to track her down. Does she have any favorite places, like a summer getaway cabin or something? Does she have any place that she would go to get away from all this?”

  “This is it… the university,” he said, with his arms spread out. “This is her passion. She lives and breathes it.”

  “No partner ever? No children? Other siblings?”

  He shook his head. “A fiancé who died but no children. And, my parents, both her sister and her brother-in-law died decades ago.”

  She nodded quietly.

  “What is it you’re thinking, Detective?”

  “Actually I’m worried,” she said bluntly. “Two of her students were murdered, and I don’t know if any of it is connected to her. I would like to have her safe and sound here in front of me, so I don’t have to worry about where she’s gone or if somebody else has found her.”

  At that, his gaze narrowed, as he studied her intently. “You’re thinking that her life might be in danger?”

  “I’m thinking that anything is possible,” she snapped. “Including that.”

  “I did talk to her last night, after I dropped her off. She sounded fine, told me that she was tired and that she would have an early night.”

  “An early night could mean an early waking up”—she looked around—“particularly for somebody of this mind frame.”

  “Maybe she wanted to come in and get some work done, particularly if she would normally work in the evenings,” Harvey suggested. “Last night wasn’t conducive for it, so it would make sense that she would come in here to catch up.”

  She frowned at that and turned toward Leon. “You have no idea where she is, correct?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea, and now I’m getting worried myself. I checked with the friends I mentioned and neither had heard from her.”

  Abby said, “I think I’ll go over to the dean’s office.” When she saw Leo
n hesitate, she looked at him and asked, “Any reason not to?”

  “No, but while you’re there, you should ask him about some not-so-nice letters she’d received.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t mention this last night.”

  “Last night we weren’t talking about my aunt,” he replied quietly. “We were talking about students from her lecture hall.”

  Point to him for that one. “Well, if you can think of anything that’s connected to your aunt—anything unpleasant, criminal or otherwise related—I’d like to hear about it. So, tell me about these letters.”

  “There’s just been a letter writer over the last few years who has given her grief,” he explained. “I don’t have all the details. She’s always tried to just toss it off as no big deal. They weren’t threatening in any way, more like angry at her teaching style.”

  “And that might be true,” she said, “but, under the circumstances, it still bears consideration. Sometimes these letter-writing types are harmless, and sometimes they can be dangerous.”

  He nodded. “I agree with you there. That was always my experience in the industry as well.”

  At that, she stopped and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I was on the force for fifteen years. I now teach criminology here.”

  “Why here?”

  “Partly because my aunt is aging, and it’s just the two of us,” he said quietly. “Partly because I enjoy being in a university atmosphere.”

  “Are you still in law enforcement at all?”

  His lips quirked. “Yes. I work as a consultant.”

  “I knew I’d heard your name before.”

  His eyebrows shot up at that. “Interesting. I normally consult with the FBI.”

  “Right.” She nodded. “Are you the one who specializes in cults?”

  “I wouldn’t say that I intentionally specialize in cults,” he answered quietly, “but I have been brought in on quite a few cult-related cases, yes.”

  “Right, that’s probably why they all seem to think you’re a specialist. Just because you’ve helped them on a case or two.” She shook her head. “I’m in the same boat. People put me on these woo-woo cases, whatever the hell that means, and suddenly I’m a specialist too.”

  At that, he stopped, stared. “Woo-woo?”

  “Of course it’s a perfectly legal term,” she stated, with a straight face. But her eyes twinkled.

  He smiled. “A sense of humor, I like that.”

  “It’s what keeps us sane, isn’t it?” Just enough challenge was in her voice that she waited for his response.

  *

  Leon nodded quietly. “It is exactly that. It’s a tough-enough job at the best of times. It’s rather brutal, especially when there are a lot of strange cases. These deaths affect everybody.”

  “I don’t know of a case that I haven’t been affected by.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

  Leon looked over at her partner, who seemed more like a lap dog than anything. Except that intelligence beamed from behind those thick glasses. His mind was probably sharp too and his experience … priceless. “I don’t know where my aunt is. But now you’ve got me very worried.”

  She nodded. “Well, if you think of any place where she might be or if you hear from her, let me know.” With that, she handed him her business card then strolled out of the office ahead of them.

  Leon wanted to say more but wasn’t even sure what he could do. He did want to be involved in the case, but he also knew he’d get smacked down. He’d had way too many cases of his own in the past, where friends and family of the victims wanted to get involved, and he had had to stop them. The last thing you wanted was somebody getting involved that you would have to look after.

  She didn’t know that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and she also didn’t care. She wasn’t looking for his help; she was looking for answers, and, if he didn’t have one, she didn’t have any time for him. Well, good enough, he could track down his aunt just as well as she could. Hopefully better.

  The trouble was, he wasn’t exactly sure where to start because Gertrude rarely disappeared. She had only once before. She had ended a relationship with an old friend, who she’d been going out with for probably eight or nine years. When they broke up, she just up and disappeared one day. If anything, this could be a similar scenario, but he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten hold of her back then. He wasn’t even sure he had. He was pretty certain it was a case of waiting until she showed up again.

  But, in this case, that was just dangerous because the detective was right. Whatever was going on, they didn’t have any answers yet, and more questions made it dangerous for everybody involved. The last thing Leon wanted was for his aunt to get hurt. He brought out his phone and quickly called her number yet again. “Hey, it’s Leon. Please call me.”

  This time, he would keep calling, reaching out. Also he physically checked back at her place again, at noon, to see if she was there. By the end of the day, he’d checked in on the phone four or five more times. The dean had already called to ask Leon if he knew where his aunt was because she’d missed lectures, and, at this point in time, he had no answers for anybody. But he was much more worried because now it looked like she’d disappeared.

  The question was, had she gone on her own or had someone taken her?

  Chapter 4

  It had been another long day, nearing that forty-eight-hour deadline, where the leads grew cold. Abby had finished going through the video camera images, looking at every one of the students who came and left the professor’s class, checking out each of their faces, matching them when they left—or trying to. Many she couldn’t identify—with heads down, some with baseball caps, others in sunglasses. Some came in hordes; some had snuck out early before the doors were locked and didn’t have a clue what was going on. Those who had skipped Gertrude’s class yesterday could still be even more students they had missed interviewing. Abby and Harvey and the four cops had interviewed most of the others yesterday, who had been in shock, had been rounded up outside the scene of the crime, where they could be questioned. She had understood the students’ reactions. So far, she was just dealing with frustration.

  When the captain approached her desk, she looked up in surprise. “Captain, what can I do for you?”

  “How about a few answers?”

  “If I had some, I’d give them to you immediately,” she said, “but, in this case, I don’t have anything to offer.”

  “What about the coroner?”

  “Still waiting on him, and that’s adding to the frustration.”

  “He’s usually faster.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, he usually is, but, so far, there’s nothing. He’s likely waiting on tox.”

  “That could take weeks.”

  “It can, but he’s rush ordering, so hopefully that will help.”

  “Fine.” He turned and stormed off again, but that was the captain. He liked to be kept informed at the highest level, yet not bogged down by details.

  Just then her phone rang again. She looked down, picked it up, and greeted the coroner. “Hey, what have you got?”

  “What I’ve got is a whole lot of nothing,” he snapped, “as you well know.”

  “I don’t know anything at the moment,” she murmured, her heart sinking.

  “I’m assuming, from what I saw of the crime scene, you had nothing there to trace or to track down. But how the hell did two people die right in front of a whole classroom, without anybody noticing?”

  “That’s what I’m dealing with,” she said. “Yet I haven’t even started opening up the histories of every student there, and, of course, we have no motive for the crime yet either.”

  “And nobody’s stepped up and admitted they did it, I presume?”

  “No, not at all.” Abby smiled. “Wouldn’t that make our day?”

  “Well, it’s never happened so far,” he murmured, “so I highly doubt tha
t it will this time.”

  “No, it won’t, but I guess we can keep hoping.”

  “Yeah, well, you can keep hoping,” he added, “but I don’t have anything. There’s absolutely zero visible cause of death. No internal hemorrhage, no heart attack, no aneurism, no anything. So, the only thing I’ve got is that tox screen still to come.”

  “How long?”

  “I’m doing a run on a bunch of simple possibilities, which will get back to us in a couple days, but, other than that”—he sighed—“I don’t have anything, until the rest comes in, and that could be a week or two. I did check stomach contents. Coffee with cream and sugar for both victims. The rest will have to wait.”

  Abby winced at that. “So, we can’t even say if it’s a homicide at this point.”

  “I can’t yet, no.”

  “So, it’s indeterminate. That’s great,” she muttered. “Because anybody, if they had a hand in doing this, just succeeded in getting away with murder.”

  “No,” he argued, “because we will get to the bottom of it. I just don’t have any answers for you yet.” And, with that, he hung up.

  Immediately she threw down the phone.

  Harvey walked in at that moment, looked over at her. “And?”

  “And nothing,” she replied. “Unknown cause of death, tox screen still pending. Their hearts just stopped.”

  “Shit, but it’s not like we really were expecting anything different.”

  “Maybe not.” Abby’s heart sank at that expectation already. “The families are expecting answers.”

  “Yeah,” Harvey agreed, “but we can’t be concerned about the families, when we’re still figuring out how to help the victims.”

  Abby tried to throw off her mood, but it was hard. “When you think about it, we have nothing but the two victims.”

  “Right. So, we must assume that there was foul play of some kind, and that somehow, somewhere along the line, we will get the answers we need.” He lost his smile.