rage into the teeth of the storm, but he made himself take a couple of minutes to search the cabin.
Footprints told part of the story. Isabella had entered the cabin. He could see her small, muddy prints on the floor. Two people in running shoes had entered through the back door, gone down the hall to the bathroom and then returned to the front room.
He went out through the kitchen into the backyard. Fresh tire tracks yielded more information. Walker did not own a car. The heavy tread belonged to an SUV.
He had missed something, he was sure of it. The fever searing his blood was making him careless. He had to stop and think or he would not stand a chance in hell of helping Isabella.
He went back into the cabin and stood quietly for a moment, opening his senses without trying to focus. The residue of some familiar currents of energy shivered in the atmosphere. He recognized them. One of the missing Victorian gadgets. That was how they had grabbed Isabella.
He saw the corner of the business card sticking out from under the rug. He picked it up. The name on the card confirmed his theory of the case.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered again.
He finally became aware of the small crowd forming on the front porch of the cabin. He looked through the open door and saw that half the town had followed him.
Henry stepped forward. “What’s wrong, Jones? What happened to Isabella and Walker?”
“They’ve been kidnapped,” Fallon said.
The knot of people stared at him, dumbfounded.
“Who would want to kidnap Walker and Isabella?” Marge demanded. “It’s not like they’re rich. There’s no one to pay a ransom.”
“This isn’t about money,” Fallon said. “It’s about those damn Bridewell curiosities. Walker must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to see. I think Isabella was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so she was taken, too.”
“It wasn’t an accident that they took her,” Patty said. “She had a feeling that Walker was in trouble. That’s why she came here today to check on him. She thought maybe he was ill.”
“What do we do now?” Violet asked. “Call the cops? It will take hours for them to get here, assuming they will even take a missing persons call seriously.”
“I know who took Walker and Isabella,” Fallon said. “Odds are they are still alive and will stay that way until nightfall. The person who is behind this has been very careful about not leaving any evidence. There’s no reason she would change her pattern now. She’s got a companion, someone to do the heavy lifting. They’ll wait until dark and then they’ll do what we plan to do with Lasher’s skeleton.”
“Dump them into the ocean?” Marge asked, horrified.
“Yes,” Fallon said. “They won’t want to drive far with a couple of kidnap victims in the back of an SUV. Too much risk of being pulled over by a cop. They’ll stash Walker and Isabella somewhere until it’s safe to get rid of them.”
Marge looked at him, her face deeply shadowed with anxiety. “You keep saying she. You think that a woman took Isabella and Walker?”
“Her real name is Dr. Sylvia Tremont,” Fallon said. “She’s a curator at the Arcane museum in L.A. Everyone thinks she’s on sabbatical in London. She’s not. She’s working real estate over in Willow Creek under the name Norma Spaulding.”
33
Spaulding Properties was housed in a quaint, weathered commercial building on the main street of Willow Creek. The “Closed” sign showed in the window. Fallon walked past the entrance without pausing, as though he were headed to the drugstore on the corner.
When he reached the narrow strip of muddy grass that separated the premises of the real estate business from the restaurant next door, he turned quickly and went around to the back door of Spaulding Properties.
The rear door was locked, but that did not come as a surprise. Fallon reached inside his jacket and removed one of the electronic lock picks that he handed out like candy to J&J agents. It took less than three seconds to open the door. Whatever secrets Sylvia Tremont was hiding, she was not concealing them inside the office.
The back room of Spaulding Properties was remarkably uncluttered. There were no reams of paper, no stacks of printed brochures or any business machines. It had taken less than two minutes on the computer to discover that Norma Spaulding had not closed a sale in the four weeks that the office had been open.