Early in the evening at the Inn, Hodges and Mancoat were surprised by a knock at their door. Sheila Cadotte stood at the doorway holding a bottle of red wine and a six-pack of Leinenkugel’s Creamy Dark.
The grin across Mancoat’s face wouldn’t quit as he opened his arms wide and bowed as he showed her in.
“Ms. Cadotte, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company… and the liquid sustenance?” Hodges asked.
Cadotte giggled as she popped the cork on the bottle of cabernet she had brought for Hodges and twisted off the caps of two beers for her and Mancoat.
Hodges went to the cupboard, found a cheap wine glass and held it out for Cadotte to pour. She did it with a smile and then showed him the label.
“Ah, Balnaves Cabernet Sauvignon, from Australia. A civilized choice, no doubt,” Hodges said
“Better be, I paid thirty-nine bucks for this stuff, Jasper…before tax.”
Hodges nodded in appreciation. “Well, thank you very much. Shall we sit at the table and discuss what the reason is for our apparent celebration?” He winked and edged himself into a chair.
Mancoat and Cadotte tipped their beers and joined him.
“This is wonderful, Sheila. Creamy Dark is one of my favorites,” Mancoat said.
“Be truthful, Earl, they’re all you’re favorites,” Hodges quipped.
Cadotte placed her beer on the table and went to her bag. She held several copies of news articles in her hands and spread them on the table evenly. “Read through these, wait, on second thought, that would take too long, I’ll summarize for you. The long and the short of it, god I love that expression, don’t you?” she said. Neither Hodges or Mancoat responded, but only stared at her.
“Well, guess, the feeling is not mutual on the expression,” she said. Hodges sighed and rapped his fingers on the table. She took note and continued. “I started looking into the past articles about the disappearances of all three of the victims, some of which I had written, and looked at possible links between the three people.”
Mancoat was getting excited, “And you found some! What are they?”
The smile disappeared from Cadotte’s face and her expression changed to a cringe. “Well, not exactly links between the victims where they knew each other,” she said.
“I am confused,” Hodges said as he stopped rapping his knuckles on the table and placed his chin in his hand and rested his elbow on the table. “Was it another person they had in common, that they all knew?”
Cadotte’s smile returned. “Possibly,” she said in a teasing voice.
Mancoat popped in. “Somebody, we ran into as we’ve talked to people?”
Cadotte’s extended her hands and did a wavering motion, palm up, palm down while she tilted her head from side to side.
“Someone we should interview that we haven’t thought of yet?” Hodges guessed, feeling embarrassed that he had been sucked into a twenty-question guessing game. Cadotte hesitated in her response.
A frustrated Mancoat blurted, “Come on, tell us what you got, Sheila. Seth’s out there, maybe still alive.”
Sheila put her hands down and sat on her chair. “Okay, okay.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t resist having a little fun. This is what I’ve got.” She plucked three articles from the pile and placed them separately from the others. “Each of these articles is about one of the victims. So, there’s one about Seth, the most recent, one about Cassie Bandleson, the second person to disappear, and the first one to go missing, Tom Hecimovich.” She looked at Mancoat and Hodges. They both looked back with expressions that said, ‘get on with it’. “Well, it turns out that all three victims, uh, missing persons, might have stayed at the North Star Motel.” She winked and smiled.
Mancoat’s mouth opened and stayed open for several moments until he said, “That’s it, that’s the link? Might have stayed at the North Star Motel? And why do you say might have stayed at the North Star Motel? I don’t understand how you get a might out of your articles, and how a might, helps us!”
Hodges, ignoring Mancoat, leaned back and appeared to contemplate what Cadotte had said. “Explain further, Ms. Cadotte… please.”
Cadotte dug underneath the larger stack of articles and found a topographical map. She pointed. “Here’s the lake in Tettegouch where Hecimovich supposedly fell out of the boat and was swept down to Lake Superior.” Her finger traced a pathway two miles away where Hodges and Mancoat had postulated that Bandleson could have been abducted, but then her finger traced the thirty miles back to Palisade Head where they thought Seth Tryton had been last known to have visited. “And then, look at the location of the North Star Motel, it’s pretty much in the middle of the three disappearances.”
No comments:
Post a Comment