Deep Down (I) by Karen Harper Page B

crazy.”
    “Chigger bites take longer to show up, so I’m betting on P.I. Well, misery loves company.”
    “You, too?”
    She nodded. “Drew, did you stop at King Wah’s to check whether my mother and Vern Tarver went there on what may have been their last date?”
    “You got it,” he said, looking impressed. “If I ever get the funds to hire a deputy, I’ll keep you in mind. Yeah, that was part of my motive, and to ask nonchalantly if Peter Sung had been around lately. It just so happens he was in Highboro off and on last week, but—supposedly—didn’t set foot in Deep Down.”
    “Strange—so close and yet so far. Then, my mother could have seen him, or vice versa.”
    “Yep. As for Mariah and Vern, the waitress I talked with recalled them because she knows Vern.”
    “I guess everybody knows Vern.”
    “You’d better sit down for the rest of this.”
    They stood looking at each other as he handed her the warm sack of food. “Go ahead,” she said, not budging. “Tell me.”
    “The waitress says they came in all lovey-dovey but had some sort of argument and were barely speaking when they went out.”
    “Vern told me they didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything.”
    “But the waitress thinks it was supposed to be a special night. He had flowers for her—store-bought ones—and took out a little box that maybe had a ring.”
    “An engagement ring? I can’t believe that. She would have said something about it to me if they were getting that serious.”
    “Maybe he was, she wasn’t.”
    “Her thinking of marriage would shock me. Nothing against Vern, big man about town that he is, but she just never showed the slightest inclination to get close to a man after my father died.”
    “At any rate, though I’m still just grasping at straws, more than one lovers’ quarrel has turned ugly. And if he harmed her, it wouldn’t be unusual for him to then be the one who reports her missing as he did.”
    She set the sack of food on the dining room table, then slumped in a chair, before looking back up at him. “I can’t thank you enough,” she said, “for all you’re doing to help find her. I know as time passes, it gets harder, beyond the golden window of twenty-four hours or whatever they call that.”
    “In most places, law enforcement won’t even look for a missing adult for a week, maybe longer. But there’s no way she left Deep Down on her own. Jess, thank you for hanging in emotionally, so you can help. And for making it easy for us to work together after—after all this time. So,” he said, clapping his hands once, “I got the Kung Pao Deluxe and the waitress’s name in case we need her later.”
    “To testify at a murder trial?” she blurted and jumped up to go out into the kitchen. “No, I’m not going to get hysterical. You can wash up out here, if you want, or use the bathroom.” Forcing herself to keep busy, she got plates and utensils out while he washed his hands at the sink. “Peter Sung’s favorite place around there, huh?” she asked, terrified to stop talking and moving, because she might collapse. She got out tall glasses and poured herbal tea over ice cubes. “I’ve only met him once. He seemed a very happy, clever man, very much in charge.”
    “Personable and generous,” he said as he carried the iced tea to the table and seated himself. “But then, he ought to be. By working through Vern, I figure he’s legally hauling hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sang out of here every year for the New York-based Kulong family to export to China. So if he glad-hands locals with whiskey or gives out those lucky ginseng roots on a chain as if they were rabbit’s feet, it’s a small price for him to pay.”
    “He hasn’t tried to get you on his side with gifts?”
    “Yeah, can you imagine? I didn’t take the cut crystal decanter of whiskey—Scottish whiskey, no less. The guy has very diverse interests, most of them expensive. Vern says Sung’s hobby is