The Buzzard Table - By Margaret Maron Page 0,5

professionally during the subsequent investigation, but she and I hadn’t exactly bonded and I didn’t expect to see her again before the inevitable funeral.

“Sorry, shug,” Dwight said again, but his tone turned hopeful. “I don’t suppose you could just call and get us out of it?”

“Not at this late date.”

I heard him sigh. “I guess that means a dress shirt and silk tie.”

For work, he usually wears a soft shirt and a comfortable knit tie that comes off as soon as he gets to the office. Dinner at Mrs. Lattimore’s would surely be more formal. No footmen or finger bowls, but definitely Sunday best.

I called Kate, who confirmed the dress code. She also offered to let Cal stay with her brood till we got home. “Aunt Jane’s not up to late nights, but just to be on the safe side, why don’t you bring over his pajamas and you and Dwight ride with us?”

Until his last growth spurt, Cal and Mary Pat could wear each other’s PJs in an emergency. No more. He’s a good two inches taller than she now and almost up to my shoulder.

Dwight was later than usual getting home, which didn’t give him much time to shower and change. Just as well, because his first question was, “Where’s your car?”

“I left it at Will’s,” I said, opening his closet as he started to undress.

“Why? It’s not acting up, is it?”

“No, I finished up early today and stopped by to see him. Reese was there and offered me a lift. I thought I’d save a little gas and ride in with you tomorrow.” I held out two ties that would go with the brown wool sports jacket he would be wearing. “Which one?” I asked.

As I’d hoped, it was enough to distract him from asking more questions about why I’d left my car in town, and our talk turned to the Dobbs woman who had disappeared last week.

* * *

Rebecca Jowett had presumably gone jogging Saturday evening, taking nothing with her but her cell phone and a house key that she could tuck into the pocket of her sweatpants. She had not been seen again. Her car was still parked in the drive, her purse and iPad were on the dining table, and her husband swore that none of her clothes were missing.

A licensed Realtor who worked for a local agency, she habitually ran at least four evenings a week. Unfortunately, there was no fixed routine to her runs. Sometimes she circled the neighborhood where a new listing had lately come on the market, sometimes she took one of the trails that led from the town commons along the river to a historic house near the old cemetery. More times than not, she would loop around the cemetery and jog home through the quiet, tree-lined streets. The Jowett neighborhood boasted half-acre lots with mature trees and head-high azalea bushes; and although there were streetlights on every corner, she often ran past the houses unnoticed.

“It’s not like you could set your watch by her,” a concerned friend said.

As with every town, Dobbs has its troubled pockets of poverty and crime, yet no one could remember any incidents of violence along the routes Becca Jowett might have taken that night. Yes, someone had exposed himself to two teenage girls on the river path two summers ago, but after closely questioning all three parties, the Dobbs police officer, a sensible woman with no tolerance for sexual harassment of young girls, had concluded that the exposure was unintentional. The guilty and highly embarrassed old man had simply not stepped far enough into the bushes to relieve himself.

“Which is not to say someone didn’t lie in wait for her along the river that night,” Dwight said. Both the town police and several sheriff’s deputies had gone over all the missing woman’s usual routes and had found nothing of significance.

“Cold as it was?” I scoffed. “It must have been someone driving by. Someone she knew, because nobody gets in a car with a stranger. Unless it was her husband or a boyfriend?”

He shot me a questioning look as he jangled his keys. “You hear something I need to know about? I thought you didn’t know the Jowetts.”

“I don’t. One of our clerks—Robin Winnick? Her sister does the Jowett woman’s hair. She said her sister said that she thought the marriage was dying on the vine, and besides, aren’t husbands and boyfriends automatically at the top of the list?”

“On the top of what list?”