Rainy City by Earl Emerson

right away, I’m driving back up to Bellingham.”
    “You think her aunt knows something?”
    “I know she knows something. I just don’t know if it’ll help us. Or whether she’ll tell me.”
    “I thought the jig was up when Ms. Gunther and I walked in on you.”
    “I got involved in what I was reading.”
    “Was it something weird?”
    “It was private.”
    “About Burton and Melissa?”
    “Yeah. I’ll tell you if you want, but it was private.”
    She thought about it for a few moments. “Maybe I’d better not hear.”
    “Good night, Kathy.”
    “Thomas?”
    “Eh, Pancho?”
    “Do you think he’ll come back? The man in the mask? Do you think he’ll come back?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “He had something to do with Melissa, didn’t he? The burglar?”
    “The way I see it we have three basic possibilities. Either Crowell did it, or orchestrated it. Maybe he doesn’t want us to find Melissa, maybe he’s trying to throw some stumbling blocks into our path.”
    “Why?”
    “Who knows? Maybe Melissa stole something from him, something he doesn’t want anyone else in the world to see. I don’t really have a glimmer.”
    “What are the other two possibilities?”
    “Number two: that Holder broke in on his own, without Crowell’s knowledge. I told you before that Holder would do anything for a buck. And there’s a two-thousand-dollar reward for finding Melissa. It could be he just wants to derail the opposition, meaning us, only long enough so he can find her himself.”
    “What’s the third possibility?” Kathy asked.
    “That the burglary has no connection to any of this. That it was a random crime like hundreds of other random crimes across this city every day.”
    “Thomas? Maybe Melissa’s been kidnapped.”
    “I’ve thought of that. That would be a reason her father wouldn’t want us messing around. Maybe he’s trying to scrape together a ransom. Maybe they’ve threatened to kill her if he calls the police. The only trouble with that is, why would he put the ad in the newspaper?”
    Tuesday, we caught Nadisky early, hauled him out of bed and began haranguing him about his daughter. It took him only a minute to acquiesce. Kathy did the talking and this time it looked like it might stick. The story about the spilled milk was what tipped it. Tears slid from his pale blue orbs. He jumped into blue jeans, a flannel shirt and boots and was ready.
    Burton was now more dignified than I had seen him. The mouse under his eye was shrinking and he looked a whole lot better without Holder standing over him slapping his brains out.
    Before we left, I stopped him at the front door and put a hand on his narrow shoulder. “A couple other things, Burton.”
    “Sure, sure, sure,” he said, nervously. He was worried about testifying before a judge. My guess was he didn’t usually fare well in front of authority figures.
    I signaled Kathy to vamoose. It took her a moment to realize what I was saying with my eyebrows, but then she obediently walked into the kitchen.
    “You haven’t heard anything from your wife, have you?”
    Burton knit his wheat-colored brows together into a frown and shook his head. His body was stiff from the cold in the house and from the tension. “No, why? Have you?”
    I shook my head. “She know anyone in Tacoma? Either of you know anyone in Tacoma?”
    “Nobody that I can think of right off the bat. We haven’t been down in a coon’s age. Two years, maybe. I went to the writers’ conference there.”
    “How about an old boyfriend? Melissa have any old boyfriends?”
    “I didn’t feel I had the right to question her about ex-beaux.”
    It was a pretty good bet Burton was the only one on the block who used the word beaux.
    “What about the name Romano? That mean anything to you?”
    Burton combed his fingers through his shock of blond hair and shook his head. I could tell by the blank television-eyes, he was telling the truth. “What’s in Tacoma?” he asked.