Free Light in Shadow by Unknown

said
    that they hadn't seen Jennifer since she was a child and had lost contact years ago. Not
    what you'd call a close family."
    "In other words, no one is going to rush to file a missing persons report."
    "Unlikely," Ethan said. "There is one more thing. I checked the legal angle. There is no divorce
    in progress."
    This was definitely the worst-case scenario, she thought. Jennifer Mason fit the classic profile
    of an abused wife who enjoyed no close contact with family or friends. What was she going to
    do now?
    She picked up a pen to give herself something to do, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles
    whitened. "Thank you for looking into the matter for me, Mr. Truax. Do I owe you anything
    more than the minimum I paid you yesterday?"
    "Oh, yeah. A lot more."
    She frowned. "How much?"
    "Let's start with some answers. What do you think happened to Jennifer Mason?"
    She said nothing.
    "Did you know her before she disappeared?"
    "No. Never met her."
    "You think Mason murdered his wife, don't you?"
    She hesitated and then nodded, saying nothing.
    "That's a fairly serious conclusion," Ethan said dryly. "Mind if I ask what it was that made you
    jump to it?"
    "Just a bad feeling I got when I went out to view his residence yesterday."
    "A bad feeling," he repeated neutrally.
    "Call it intuition."
    "Okay, I've got some respect for intuition. Been known to use it myself. Anything else?"
    Act normal. Think normal.
    "The bed in the master bedroom is gone," she said evenly. "It and a small area rug are the
    only furnishings that are missing. There's a fresh coat of paint on the walls of that room."
    His brows rose. "And that was enough to make you think Jennifer Mason had met with foul
    play?"
    She decided to try a more assertive approach. "Mr. Truax, I am a professional interior
    designer. I get the strong impression that you don't think much of my career choice, but I
    assure you that designers are, by training and inclination, observant. Something is wrong at
    the Mason residence. I'm sure of it."
    "Okay, take it easy. You sure Mason didn't sell the bed?"
    "Davis told me that his wife had taken it because it was important to her. It was a very large,
    very expensive bed, he said. But – "
    "Yeah?"
    "But I saw two full sets of three-hundred-and-twenty-thread-count Italian sheets in the linen
    closet. The sheets and pillowcases were still in the original packaging. " "So what?"
    She tapped the tip of the pen on the desk top. "Do you have any idea what two full sets of
    king-sized sheets of that quality cost? If Jennifer Mason took the bed, I'm sure she would
    have taken the sheets that she bought to go on it."
    Ethan meditated on that for a few seconds. Then he nodded. "You've got a point. Did Mason
    indicate that his wife put the bed into storage?" "No."
    "Did he say how she arranged to pick up the bed?" "No." The steady litany of questions was
    getting on her nerves. "You're the private detective here, not me."
    "Oh, yeah, that's right. I keep forgetting." He took a pen out of his pocket and wrote
    something down in the notebook. "Was there anything else that made you suspicious when
    you went through Mason's house yesterday?"
    Aside from the screaming walls? She wondered silently. Gosh, no, that was enough for some
    obscure reason. "There was one other strange thing," she offered slowly. "What?"
    "The shower curtains." "What about them?"
    "The master bath has a large, glass-walled shower and separate tub arrangement, but the
    other two bedrooms were obviously designed as guest rooms. They each have adjoining baths
    with standard combination shower-tubs with curtain enclosures. But the shower curtains in
    both of the guest baths are gone."
    He gave her a politely blank look. "Explain." "Both rooms were fully outfitted with soap, towels,
    and amenities. The shower curtains should have been there, too. But they were gone." She
    shrugged. "I just found that a little odd, that's all." He looked at her for a long time.
    "You do