Page 36 of The Shadow Friends

Chapter 15

Thursday

It took another day for Maggie’s doctors and the CDC to finally sign off on her discharge. At four the next afternoon, she left the hospital at last, wearing a seasonally inappropriate summer dress that Declan had brought from her house. She preferred jeans and flannel shirts these days, yet a dress was what he’d chosen to pull out of her closet when he’d been told she needed a change of clothes. Leave it to a man to choose something pretty rather than practical.

They drove straight to the Slocums’ house, and when Ben answered the door, his eyebrow lifted at the unusual sight of Maggie in a dress. “Looking good for someone who was just on death’s door, Mags. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“How is Lloyd doing?” she asked quietly.

“Having a tough time. He’s looking shaky, and he hasn’t even had a drink.”

“Any new developments?” asked Declan as they stepped into the house.

“I’ll let Lloyd fill you in on the latest. He’s out on the back deck.”

They walked through the house, which was pristine as always. Ingrid Slocum was a meticulous housekeeper, as one would expect from a woman who’d spent her career paying attention to details, no matter how small. But this evening, there was something different about the house, something missing: the scent of cooking. Whenever Maggie visited the Slocums, there were usually delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen, where Lloyd worked his culinary magic with his spatulas and knives, pots and pans. Only a few nights ago, she and Declan had dined here on Lloyd’s luscious coq au vin. Tonight, though, Maggie smelled only furniture polish.

They stepped out onto the back deck, where the potted herbs that Ingrid set out every June were now looking wilted and in need of watering. It was yet another clue that something was amiss in this house. Looking just as wilted was Lloyd, who sat slumped in a deck chair, his head in his hand.

“She’s never done this before,” he murmured. “Never left without giving me a heads-up first. Instead, she leaves me a note. A stupid note!”

“Lloyd,” said Maggie.

He looked up. “Finally. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“We’re going to find her, okay?”

“I can use all the help I can get.”

Maggie sat down to face Lloyd, and she placed her hand on his. Even on this cool fall evening, his skin felt hot, almost feverish. “Can I see this note she left you?”

“Show her, Ben,” said Lloyd. “I found it on the kitchen table when I got home last night.”

Ben handed Maggie the sheet of paper. It was standard printer paper, unexceptional. The message, in blue ink, was in Ingrid’s precise and unadorned handwriting.

I need to leave. I’ll explain later.

Maggie looked up. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” said Lloyd.

Maggie glanced at Ben, who gave a sad shake of his head.

“She left out the most important part,” said Lloyd.

“What do you mean?”

“‘I promise I’ll be back.’ That’s what she’d tell me when she was still with the Agency and she had to leave town for a while. She couldn’t always tell me where she was going, or why, but she always made that promise, even though we both knew things could go wrong. I understood the nature of her work, of course I did, but it was our own little mantra. ‘I promise I’ll be back.’ She didn’t write that this time.”

“Lloyd,” Maggie said gently. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Tuesday morning, when I left for New York. I wasn’t keen on driving all the way down there, just to speak to some knife manufacturer, but she insisted. She said we needed to know where the stiletto was made. I told her I could consult him right from our kitchen table, but she wanted it done face-to-face.”

“Did anything seem different about her? Was she upset, preoccupied?”

“Of course she was preoccupied! The conference was canceled. Her guest speaker was dead in the hospital. And she found a woman with a stiletto in her eye. Anyone would be upset.”

“Even Ingrid?” said Declan.