or tied up so she can’t make any sounds, let’s look carefully.”
I nodded. “And even if she isn’t here, maybe there’s some clue as to where he’s taken her.”
“Mrs. Mullinax is away from the house,” Grimaldi said, as we walked into the foyer. “Yung could be with her.”
“Put out a… what did you call it? BOLO?...on her car. If she’s doing something legit, it’s probably parked at the spa or the country club.”
Grimaldi nodded. “Go that way.” She pointed with the hand that held the phone. “I’ll go this way. Open all the doors, look into all the closets.”
“You don’t have to tell me how to snoop,” I told her. “I’m an expert at this.”
Looking through other people’s houses has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s why I went into real estate, so I’d have an excuse to go into other people’s houses to see how they lived.
This was the first time I’d searched a house looking for a missing person, though. I opened all the doors, including the ones of the wardrobe in the spare bedroom, and even lifted the lid of the heavy steamer trunk that sat in the middle of the parlor with a flower arrangement and a stack of magazines on it. But the gravity of the occasion didn’t keep me from enjoying the experience. Mrs. Mullinax, or maybe it was Mr. Mullinax, had great taste, and enough money to indulge it. I grew up with antiques, so I’m used to seeing them. I’m also pretty well versed in assessing how much they’re worth, and Mrs. Mullinax hadn’t spared any expense. Daffodil Hill Farm was a lovely specimen of Victorian farmhouse.
But it didn’t contain Leslie Yung.
“She’s not here,” I told Grimaldi when we met on the upstairs landing. “I checked under the beds and everything.”
She nodded. “Would this place have a basement?”
“You didn’t come across it in the kitchen?” The access stairs are usually there. I guess in the old days, before refrigeration, the cook probably kept things like potatoes and onions in the cool darkness below the house. “Then there’s most likely just an outside hatch somewhere. Let’s look.”
Art Mullinax gave us a look when we came back out of the house empty-handed, but he told us, nicely enough, that the access to the area under the house was on the side. “Look out for the spiders,” he adviced us, with a semi-malicious smirk.
I’m not a fan of spiders, and part of me wanted to call Rafe over so he could do the honors. But Grimaldi wasn’t the type to let fear of a few creepy crawlies keep her from doing her job. She pulled open the small door in the foundation and went down on all fours to go through.
“Do you see anything?” I wanted to know, bent in half as I tried to peer through the low aperture.
“Too much. A lot of rotted planks, some old windows, an old plastic tarp—we might want to take that with us, just in case he wrapped Jurgensson’s body in it for the trip into the woods—what looks like a raccoon skeleton…”
“No sign of Yung?”
“No,” Grimaldi said, crawling back through the hole. “It’s all open under there, so nowhere to hide anything. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been there in decades.”
“It doesn’t seem like a good place to hide an abduction victim, anyway. Too exposed, with all these people here, and if she woke up, or got free, she could just crawl away.”
“He didn’t know the place would be crawling with cops,” Grimaldi said, brushing herself off. “I’m sure Bob didn’t warn him they were coming back with a warrant. But you have a point.”
“The outbuildings next, then?”
“And the trunk of the car,” Grimaldi said. “I should have checked there first.”
Well, yes. That was the logical place to look. If Mullinax had been driving the gray car when he picked up Leslie Yung, the trunk of the gray car was probably where he would have stashed her.
“Would you mind opening the trunk of your car, Mr. Mullinax?” Grimaldi called up to him.
He stared at her a moment, and I thought he was going to refuse. Then he shrugged, and pulled a keychain out of his pocket. He pointed it at the sedan and pushed the button. The car beeped, and the lid unlocked.
Grimaldi headed for it. I scurried behind, and even Rafe moved over to us to see.
“Nothing in the house?”
Grimaldi shook her head. “There’s an old tarp in the crawlspace that could be related