Daddy's Gone a Hunting

52

Mark Sloane was enjoying his new job. He realized that every morning he was looking forward to getting to work with a vigor that he had not felt for the last several years in his old firm in Chicago.

He liked his condo and had spent Monday evening unpacking paintings and artifacts that he had gathered on his annual overseas vacations.

Then he had grouped them on the floor below the walls where he intended to hang them. The ones that belonged on the shelves of the second bedroom, which he had turned into a den, were already in place. The room had its own full bath and the most comfortable pullout couch he could buy. He had purchased it hoping that his mother would visit him several times a year.

After running into Jessie on Monday evening, Mark had been aware all day Tuesday that Kate Connelly had had a setback and had been running a fever. He realized that his concern for a new neighbor he had never really met was tied in with his visit with Nick Greco and their discussion about Tracey’s disappearance. It was as though all the emotional scar tissue that he had formed over the years had suddenly been sliced open.

It was the minute-to-minute waiting, and hoping, and praying that he knew was going on in the lives of Hannah Connelly and her closest friend, Jessie Carlson. There was something about their shared heartsick concern for Hannah’s sister, Kate, that reminded him of the day his mother had received the call about Tracey.

The exact moment when that call came was etched in his mind even though he had been only ten years old. He had stayed home from school because he had a heavy cold, and he had been sitting at the kitchen table with his mother. She had just made a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich for him when the phone had rung.

“Missing!” That was the word he had heard his mother utter, her voice quivering, and he had known right away that it had to be about Tracey.

And then the waiting had begun. The waiting that was still going on.

On Tuesday evening Mark did go to the gym. He signed up as a member and did a solid hour-and-a-half workout that relieved the tension in his back and neck. After he had showered and changed, he shoved his exercise clothes into a duffel bag and dropped it off at home. Then, not feeling like grilling the steak that was in the refrigerator, he instead opened his iPhone and did a Web search. Tommy’s Bistro was still listed as a pub, located only four blocks from his apartment.

They’ve probably just kept the name of the place, he thought, as he put on his windbreaker. I can’t believe the same owner would still be there after nearly thirty years.

He had not reached his front door before his cell phone rang. It was Nick Greco. “You’ll never guess where I’m headed,” Mark told him. “Tommy’s Bistro, the place where Tracey worked, is just four blocks from here. I’m going there for dinner and maybe if, by any chance, the old owner is still around, I’ll try to talk to him. He was the one who was so worried about Tracey that he went looking for her when she didn’t show up for work.”

“Then I’ve caught you just in time,” Greco said. “I just received a call from one of my friends in the department. They’ll be announcing in the next few minutes that they’ve made an arrest in the murder of another twenty-three-year-old actress who disappeared last month and was found dead. She was strangled.”

“I don’t understand,” Mark said. “Nick, what are you telling me?”

“The alleged killer’s name is Harry Simon. He’s fifty-three years old and-can you believe it-he works in the kitchen at Tommy’s Bistro. And he’s been there for thirty years! Like all the other employees, he was questioned when Tracey disappeared but he seemed to have an airtight alibi at the time. Now maybe we’ll find out if that so-called airtight alibi still holds up all these years later.”