Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

the pain of his shattered leg; he wasn’t taking more to deal with nightmares. Now when he woke, heart pounding, brain searing, drenched with sweat, he reached for Maggie.
     
    But it wasn’t a dream that woke him this time.
     
    He rolled away from his wife and fumbled for the phone. “Hunter,”
    he said, keeping his voice low.
     
    Margred was already stirring, her warm, rounded body shifting under the covers, her hand finding the small of his back as he swung his legs out of bed.
     
    Antonia’s voice pierced the fog of sleep. Caleb listened grimly, a bad feeling in his gut.
     
    “I’ll be right over. Take him upstairs.” He sat up straighter. “No, don’t touch anything.”
     
    “What is it?” Margred asked as he crossed to the dresser.
     
    “Regina Barone.” Caleb tugged on a shirt. “She didn’t come home last night.”
     
    “She— But—” Margred’s eyes widened. “What happened?”
     
    Caleb sat on the edge of the bed to tie his shoes. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
     
    *
     
    81
    More than an hour after his phone had rung in the dark, Caleb still didn’t know if he’d been called to a crime scene.
     
    Nothing in his initial walk-through suggested Regina was the victim of violence. No mark of forced entry, no sign of a struggle, no ominous note to suggest suicide or kidnapping. No vandalism, no robbery. The previous day’s receipts were neatly totaled, the bank deposit bag in plain sight beside the untouched register. Everything was clean, everything—except for a mop lying flat in the work aisle— in its place. That was the good news.
     
    The bad news was that Regina was simply gone. Vanished. And until the state’s evidence team arrived to process the scene, Caleb had almost nothing to go on.
     
    He stood in the middle of the missing woman’s living room, a shabby space brightened by the red blanket over the back of the couch, the bits of green and gold sea glass hanging in the windows. The sun was just beginning to rim the edges with light.
     
    Caleb rubbed his face with his hand. It was going to be a long day.
     
    Antonia scowled. “I’m not taking that boy anywhere. I just got him down fifteen minutes ago.”
     
    “I doubt he’s sleeping,” Caleb said.
     
    He had spoken to Nick only briefly before going downstairs to rope off the perimeter, stretching yellow crime scene tape across the sidewalk in front and around the parking strip out back. And wouldn’t that give the early morning fishermen something to talk about.
     
    The boy had been crying but clear. He remembered the apartment door had been locked and the kitchen door unlocked but closed. No, he hadn’t seen his mother since dinnertime. After the movie. Seven? His big eyes sought Caleb’s for confirmation. Reassurance. “She’s okay, isn’t she?” he’d asked. “You’ll find her.”
     
    Caleb didn’t have the answer the boy wanted. “That’s my job,” he’d said gently.
     
    Antonia’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “Boy’s better off in his own bed.”
     
    82
     
    “He would be,” Caleb agreed. “If I didn’t have to process the apartment.”
     
    “Why? You heard Nick. She never came home last night.”
     
    “We think she never came home. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from her things.”
     
    “What things?”
     
    He owed her an explanation. If not as Regina’s mother, then as his boss the mayor. “Address book. Cell phone records. Credit card statements. If we have a record of who she knows—”
     
    “Christ Jesus, Cal, we know everybody she knows. And we know who did this. That homeless guy, Jericho something. You need to go after him.”
     
    “I will,” Caleb promised. “As soon as I leave here. Right now I need you to take Nick back to your place and wait.”
     
    “Who’s going to open the restaurant?”
     
    “Nobody. You’re closed until I can release the scene.”
     
    Antonia’s hard mouth trembled. “You think she’s dead.”
     
    “I’m not assuming anything at this point,” Caleb said evenly. Kinder to keep what he hoped, what he feared, to himself. “Maybe she took a walk. Visited a friend. But I’ve got to process the scene while the potential for evidence is still there.”
     
    He didn’t tell her that anything he found was unlikely to narrow the field of suspects. There wasn’t a soul on the island who didn’t eat at Antonia’s, whose prints or presence couldn’t be explained away.
     
    “And what