When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery by Christine Barber Page A

after three rounds of reading Green Eggs and Ham.
    She sighed as she walked into the kitchen, where Nick was cleaning up the dinner dishes. His back was to her as he washed a pan in the sink. She pulled him close from behind in a little hug.
    “Hey,” he said, turning around and kissing the top of her head. “How’d it go?”
    She said in a singsong voice, “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam-I-Am.” Her husband laughed and hugged her tight before turning back to the dishes. She started spooning mashed potatoes into a plastic container while her husband moved on to load the dishwasher.
    “Don’t forget we have that thing the day after tomorrow,” Natalie said as she tried to squish the last of the potatoes into the container.
    “What thing?” he asked.
    “That thing,” she said. “You know, the thing…”
    “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
    “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” she said, sighing. “Hang on. It’ll come to me…”
    “You mean go get your sister at the airport?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Thank you. I just could not get that to come out of my mouth—wait, honey, what are you doing?” She walked over to the dishwasher, which he’d opened and was loading utensils into.
    “What do you mean?”
    “How many times have we talked about the knives?” she said as she picked up a large butcher knife that was sticking, blade out, of the lower basket of the dishwasher.
    “What about them?”
    “Honey, the knives go point side down,” she said, putting the knife back in the basket, tip first. “Remember that man I told you about who died after tripping and falling on the knives sticking out of the dishwasher? That could be one of us—or the kids.”
    “All right,” Nick said. “Whatever.”
    “I’m serious.”
    “I know you’re serious,” he said. “Just like you were serious about the childproof lock on the toilet in case one of them fell in and drowned.”
    “That reminds me, I got that alarm for the boys’ bedroom door,” she said. “We need to put that up tonight.”
    “Let me guess, there was some accident where a kid got out of his room at night and died.”
    “It’s not funny,” she said. “That really happened. There was a little girl in Florida who was able to open her bedroom door and walk outside and they never found her…”
    “The boys just figured out how to turn a doorknob last week.”
    “And Devon just learned how to get out of his crib. During his nap today, he got up three times, opened their bedroom door and came running out. If I’d been asleep, I would have never heard him get up, and he could have gotten into who knows what.”
    “That’s why we have the baby monitor in their room,” he said.
    “That only works when they cry,” she said, replacing the last of the knives. “Otherwise, I can’t hear what they’re doing. If we’d had an alarm on their door, it would just tell us when they opened it.”
    Nick sighed and kept loading the dishwasher.
    “Listen,” she said. “Let’s just get it done tonight. It should only take a few minutes. Then we can watch a movie. I’ll even sit through Fight Club. ”
    *   *   *
    After clearing it with their boss, Police Chief Bill Kline, Gil called Lucy’s cell phone. When she answered on the second ring, he said, “Hello, this is Santa Fe Police Detective Gil Montoya.”
    “Hello, Santa Fe Police Detective Gil Montoya. This is journalist and firefighter extraordinaire Lucy Newroe.”
    “Are you making fun of me?”
    “For the record, let’s just assume I’m always making fun of you,” she said. “And by the way, you can just say, ‘Hi, this is Gil,’ from now on. I feel we have moved past using titles, don’t you?”
    “I need some advice,” he said.
    “What kind of advice? Financial? Career?”
    “The media kind,” Gil said. “We have a missing person that we’d like the public’s help in finding.”
    “How big of a deal do you want to