Free Bring Back Her Body by Stuart Brock Page B

silence.
    “Let’s try the caretaker’s side,” Lisa suggested.
    But that was dark and their knocking raised no one. Cain said, “Maybe he saw us and is hiding out.”
    “Not Toby, if he didn’t want to have anything to do with you he’d tell you so with a gun. He wouldn’t hit you but he’d come close.”
    “To hell with Toby,” Cain said and went back to the front door. He rattled the knob but it held. Swearing softly, he circled the house, throwing the beam of his pencil flashlight on the windows. He made the full circuit and found Lisa by the porch. “Tight as a drum,” he said.
    “What did you expect to find — Paula?”
    “Maybe. Maybe Toby. How do I know?” Cain demanded. “It was your idea we come.”
    “Why so it was,” she said. She started for the car, a frown marring her forehead. “I guess we go get our glad rags on for Munger after all.”
    Cain hated to give up. He scowled at his car and then at the garage in front of which it was parked. And because he was stubborn, he tried the garage door; it slid upward with no fuss.
    “No car,” he said. His light swept the interior, hovered and stopped near the back. “Look …”
    Standing on end was the crude coffin he had shut Toby in the night before. Cain went up to it and Lisa followed. He reached out to open it and let his hand fall back. “Locked,” he said. He bent down. “That’s a different lock than the one last night, I’ll swear it.” He gave Lisa the flashlight and had her hold it while he tugged at the lock.
    “I suppose Toby put on another. He’d have kicked the other one to pieces getting out.”
    “Probably. But why put on another?” Cain demanded. “The thing had served his purpose.”
    “Toby does odd …” She stopped. “My God!”
    Cain heard it too, a shrill, metallic shriek, rising in pitch to the point of agony. It stopped abruptly. Cain was out of the garage and heading for the house, Lisa following. She stopped as the sound rose once more and then was cut off. It was shorter this time but the pain of it made her ears ache. She hurried to catch Cain.
    She saw his long legs take him around the corner of the house. There was a crashing sound before she reached it and then she heard Cain’s footsteps hammering from inside. When she made the corner all was quiet again. Then a light came on, flooding out through a downstairs window. Lisa stopped. The French windows of the library were open. In a moment she saw why: Cain had kicked them in with his big feet to gain entry.
    In slacks, sweater, and sneakers, Lisa was as agile as most men. Without hesitation, she ran forward, jumped, caught the sill and pulled herself belly down over it. She tumbled into the room and scrambled to her feet. The light came from the hall. She listened a moment, thinking she heard footsteps again but the noise she made out was indefinable, hard to locate.
    In the hall she noticed a light on above, shining down from the landing through the stairwell. Then the lights went out — all of them. She hurried upstairs, getting out the flashlight, and taking the steps two at a time and then pausing on the landing for breath. Three doors faced her — the two bedrooms and the bath. She tried the bath first. It was empty, though the steamy smell of a recent bath or shower hung in the air. She saw a crumpled towel by the wet bathmat on the floor and that was all. Turning she tried the bedroom to her left.
    The door opened onto blackness. Quickly she aimed her light inside. She saw the unmade, empty bed, the masculine clothing strewn about. Toby’s room. She shut the door and tried the other. It gave easily. The line of bunks, two-tiered along two walls, the dressers, the chairs — all were impersonal. But, she noted, some of the bunks were messed up, unmade.
    No one. She felt the rising panic threatening to choke her and involuntarily she felt her throat constrict and then the sound come out. “Cain!” My God, she thought, I sound like a