Nervous Water by William G. Tapply Page A

Charles Street and fetched my car. I drove out to Madison, and it was a little after ten when I turned onto Church Street. It was a drizzly summer morning, and the trees that lined the narrow street arched overhead. They hung heavy with moisture and formed a dripping green tunnel. I drove slowly past the school on the right and then Howard Litchfield’s house on the left, and when Hurley’s house came into sight, I saw, as I’d expected, that the Lexus SUV was gone. So were the Dodge pickup and the Chevy with the carseat.
    Cassie’s red Saab was still there, exactly where it had been two days earlier.
    Hurley, I assumed, had driven to his dental office to inflict pain and poverty upon his patients. His son and daughter and grandchild had apparently returned to wherever they lived.
    If Cassie had been away for the weekend, she’d be back now. I had no particular expectation that Hurley would give her my message, but even if he had, it wasn’t a sure bet that she’d bother returning my call.
    I didn’t want to leave a telephone message with Hurley about Uncle Moze being in the hospital. I wanted to tell Cassie about it face-to-face, just the two of us.
    If she was home now, she was home alone.
    I pulled in beside the Saab. The soft rain dripping off the trees streaked the yellow pollen on the red car.
    I sat there for a minute, looking for some sign of life from inside the house. When I saw none, I got out, walked up to the front door, and rang the bell.
    I heard it chime hollowly inside. After a couple of minutes I tried again.
    Nobody home.
    I stood there at the front door and looked around. I could make out the roofline of Howard Litchfield’s house next door through the screen of maple trees that separated the two properties. A thick stand of hardwoods and evergreens lined the other side of Hurley’s property. Across the street, the soccer fields were mud-puddled and empty of players.
    I felt sneaky and tricky and ready for action, the way I used to feel when I was a kid emerging from a darkened movie theater on a Saturday afternoon after a double bill of western gunslinging and World War II combat. Kid Coyne, fastest gun in Durango. Sergeant Coyne, sharpshooting jungle sniper.
    I didn’t know about the Madison cops. Maybe if they cruised down Church Street on this Monday morning and saw a strange BMW parked in Hurley’s driveway, they’d stop and investigate. If so, I’d tell them the essential truth. I was Cassie’s cousin, wondering if she was home. That was her car in the driveway, wasn’t it?
    I tried the front-door knob. It was locked, of course. I made a slow circuit of the house. There were two side doors, two sets of sliders off the back and side decks, a cellar door, and the garage doors. All were locked.
    I shaded my eyes, peeked in several windows, and saw nothing but abstract paintings on the walls and modern furniture on the floors. It didn’t look that comfortable.
    I was prepared to slip inside and take my chances with an alarm system if one of the doors was unlocked. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I did want to look. I thought I’d know it when I saw it. Some clue to Cassie’s whereabouts.
    If the police came, I figured I could talk my way out of an entering charge.
    But I wasn’t about to break in. I was pretty sure I couldn’t talk my way out of both breaking and entering.
    I ended up back in the driveway. I walked slowly around the Saab. I saw no red blinking light under the dashboard or any decal on the window indicating that it was equipped with a car alarm, so I tried the door handle. It was unlocked. I guessed folks didn’t bother locking their cars in Madison, where an out-of-towner going the wrong way on Church Street constituted a crime wave.
    I pulled open the Saab’s door and slipped into the passenger seat. There was no briefcase, no address book, no folder containing important documents,