Carolina Moon

interviews, and the facts he gleaned from them, on separate pages. “Why’d you happen to go by her place today?”
    “She applied for a job at my store.”
    “That so?” He cocked a brow. “I thought she had herself a job. Teaching at the high school.”
    “Yes, so she told me.” Answer the questions exactly, she reminded herself. Don’t add, don’t elaborate. “Not full-time until fall, though, and she wanted something part-time to supplement her income. And to keep her busy, I think. She seemed to have a lot of energy.”
    “Uh-huh. So you went on and hired her.”
    “No, not immediately. She gave me references.” Wrote them down, she remembered, along with her address, on the clipboard. The clipboard that she’d left on the counter when her father had come in. Oh God. Oh God.
    “Well, that’s a sensible thing. Didn’t know you were hiring at your place.”
    “I hadn’t really thought about it, until she came in. She was persuasive. I took some time to go over my budget and decided I could afford light part-time help. I checked her references this morning, then I called her. I got her machine and left a message.”
    “Um-hmm.” He’d already heard her message, and the ones from Wade’s office. The one from her upstairs neighbor, the one from Lissy Frazier. Sherry Bellows had been a popular lady. “Then you decided to go on over in person.”
    “After I closed for the day, I wanted a walk. I decided I’d take one through the park and drop by her apartment. That way, if she was in, I could discuss the job with her.”
    “You went over there with Faith Lavelle?”
    “No. I went over alone. I ran into Faith outside the building, the back of the building. She said Sherry’s dog had been injured earlier in the day. He’d been hit by a car and Wade had treated him. She’d come over as a favor to Wade, as they’d been unable to reach her.”
    “So you got there at the same time.”
    “Yes, more or less. That would have been around six-thirty, as I closed up and left the shop about six-ten or six-fifteen.”
    “And when Miss Bellows didn’t answer, you went on in looking for her.”
    “No. Neither of us went inside.”
    “But you saw something that worried you.” He looked up from his pad. She sat perfectly still, kept her eyes on his, and said nothing. “You were worried enough to call the police.”
    “She didn’t return my call, though she appeared to be very eager for the job. She didn’t return Wade’s, though it was obvious to me from our one and only meeting that she adored her dog. Her blinds were shut, the door was closed. I called the police. Neither Faith nor I went inside. Neither of us saw anything. So I can’t tell you anything.”
    He sat back, gnawed on his pencil. “Did you try the door?”
    “No.”
    “It wasn’t locked.” He let the silence hang, filled the time by getting out his pack of gum, offering it to Tory. When she shook her head he took out a stick, unwrapped it, carefully folded the wrapper.
    Tory’s heart began to dance in her chest.
    “So …” Carl D. folded the gum as carefully as he had its wrapper, slipped it into his mouth. “You two had gone over. Now, knowing Faith Lavelle, I’d say she’d have poked her head in—curiosity if nothing else. What’s this new teacher got in her place, that kind of thing.”
    “She didn’t.”
    “You knocked? Called out?”
    “No, we—” She broke off, fell silent.
    “You just stopped there at the door and decided to call the police.” He let out a sigh. “You’re going to make me pull some teeth here. Now, I’m a simple man, got simple ways. And I’ve been a cop more’n twenty years. Cop’s got instincts, gets hunches in the gut. Can’t always explain them. They just are. Could be you got like a hunch today outside the door of Sherry Bellows’s apartment.”
    “It’s possible.”
    “Some people tend toward hunches. You might say you had one eighteen years ago when you led us to Hope Lavelle. You had more of them up in New York. A lot of people were glad you did.”
    His voice was kind, a soft roll of words, but his eyes, she noted, were watchful. “What happened in New York has nothing to do with this.”
    “It has to do with you. Six kids got back home because you had hunches.”
    “And one didn’t.”
    “Six did,” Carl D. repeated.
    “I can’t tell you any more than I’ve told you.”
    “Maybe you can’t. Strikes me as more that you won’t. I was there eighteen