Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,52
the way they had at the Shell station in Boerne. The boy Dennis had interviewed no longer worked there; he had moved to Georgia a few months after the flood with his family. Abby had been disappointed, but when she’d looked at Kate, she could have sworn Kate had looked relieved.
“Slow down,” Kate said. “It’s got to be on this block somewhere. There!” She gestured at a ranch-style home, dark brown brick with cream-colored trim on an oversized lot. The house was low-slung, rambling, yet somehow sharply urban in its design.
Abby pulled into the driveway. “It looks deserted,” she said, and she wasn’t sure why she had that impression. The grass was cut, the shrubbery was trimmed. There was no clutter of newspapers crowding the front door.
“What’s the plan?” Kate asked. “Do we just go up and knock and then what? I left my religious literature at home.”
Abby made a face. “Ha-ha,” she said.
They rang the front door bell and listened to it echo through the empty rooms. Abby walked back down the porch steps. “I’m going to look in the backyard.”
“Abby,” Kate protested, “I don’t think—”
“Yoo-hoo!” a woman called, crossing the street toward Abby and Kate. “Are you reporters or police?” she asked as she got closer.
“Friends,” Abby said.
“Avon calling,” Kate said at the same time, and Abby gave her a look.
“Well,” the woman said, touching her tightly permed gray hair, “if you’re looking for the Sandovals, they’re gone.”
“I’m an old friend of Sherry’s,” Abby said quickly. “We were in school together, but we’ve lost touch. I’ve just heard of all her difficulties. The divorce must have been so hard for her. I wanted to stop by, see if there was anything I could do to help.”
“Oh, but she and Adam aren’t divorced, dear,” the woman said.
Abby’s breath shallowed. “Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. I’ve lived here forty-three years. I brought the Sandovals an apple pie the day they moved in.”
“So they’ve moved out now?” Kate asked.
The woman looked at her. “Don’t you keep up with the news? Adam Sandoval is a wanted man. He and his wife have left the country, you mark my word. He went first and she followed him. I told the police when they were over here snooping around that they’re probably sipping cocktails on the Riviera about now, living on all that loot Adam stole from those poor children. I’m telling you, you would never have known Adam was that sort from his—”
“Did you ever see this man over here?” Abby pulled the family photograph she had shown to Peg, the waitress at Griff’s, from her purse and pointed at Nick. The woman looked closely at it.
“I might have. There was a man with hair that same dark shade over here a few times. Drove a yellow Corvette. It might have been this fellow.”
Abby’s breath stopped. She could see it, that Nick would rent a car so he wouldn’t be recognized. A Corvette would suit him. Hadn’t he talked occasionally about owning one? “How—how tall was the man you saw? Do you know?”
“Abby, no. Come on.” Kate slipped her hand under Abby’s elbow. She thanked the woman. Abby didn’t protest when Kate put her into the passenger seat of the BMW and said she would drive.
“That woman is nothing more than a neighborhood gossip,” Kate said as they drove away. “It’s no good listening to her.”
Abby didn’t answer; she rested her head against the seat back. Nick had lied to her about the Sandovals. They weren’t divorced; there hadn’t been money woes, and somehow, knowing this made all the rest of it plausible—that it was Nick the neighbor had seen driving the yellow Corvette, that it was Nick with Adam on the surveillance tape outside the bank. He could have done it, driven here to San Antonio and back home in a day once, twice, a hundred times, and she’d never have been the wiser. You had to pursue it; you wanted to know. A voice in her brain taunted her. But she felt sick and so afraid. Suppose he was involved with Adam and she uncovered the proof of it? What would she do then? Turn him in, her own husband?
* * *
“Please come with me,” Kate said.
They had left San Antonio without shopping for groceries the day before, and Kate was insisting Abby accompany her now, but she said no, that she hadn’t slept well and wanted to lie down for a bit. In truth it was another idea entirely