Chapter 1
“My husband is missing. Can you find him?”
I straightened up, pressing the phone tighter against my ear. The voice was frail and thin, and I wondered if I had heard her correctly. “Did you say your husband is missing?”
“Yes. I need help finding him. Can you do that?”
“Is this an emergency? Have you tried calling the police?”
“Oh, the police,” the voice scoffed. “They can’t do anything.”
That probably meant it wasn’t an emergency, which also indicated her husband had either left on his own accord, or something else had happened to him—something unrelated to foul play. It wasn’t against the law for an adult to disappear, so unless there was evidence that he had been taken against his will, the police likely wouldn’t get involved. I suspected most of the time, in most other places, there wasn’t much in the way of a “something else” option … but this was Redemption, Wisconsin, after all. Here, disappearances were far higher than the national average.
I reached for a pen and yellow pad of paper. “When was the last time you saw him?”
There was a pause. “Well, it’s been years since I’ve seen him.”
My pen hovered over the pad. “Years?”
“Oooh, I think Emily has a new client on the phone,” Aunt Tilde said, elbowing Mildred. They had been fiddling with the coffee maker all morning, but I was unclear as to whether there was actually a problem with the equipment, or if they were just too busy talking to make any coffee. I waved at her to be quiet.
“Well, my eyes, you know. They’re not what they used to be.” She sounded apologetic, and I immediately felt bad. This poor woman probably had cataracts, or had maybe even gone blind, and my first thought was that her husband had been missing for a decade, and she was only now getting around to calling someone about it. “But I know he was here two days ago.”
“So he’s been missing for two days?”
“I think so.” There was a hitch in her voice. “I’m worried about him.”
“Of course you are, Mrs. …”
“It’s Jonasburg, but you can call me Ruth.”
I wrote her name down on the yellow pad. “Ruth, then. Can you tell me a little bit about the circumstances surrounding his disappearance? Maybe start with before he left …”
I could hear her swallow. “That’s just it. We had a … well, maybe not a fight, but definitely a disagreement, and … oh … I don’t know what I’ll do, if that really was my last interaction with him.”
“Let’s not think about that now,” I said quickly. “Why don’t we set up a time to discuss your situation in more detail? Would you be able to come to the office?”
“Oh dear, I’m really not good with driving anymore. Do you think you could come to the house?”
“Sure,” I said, quickly jotting down her address as she rattled it off. We agreed to meet later that afternoon, and I hung up the phone.
Both Mildred and Aunt Tilde were watching me closely. “So, tell us about our new client,” Aunt Tilde said excitedly.
A nurse who got bored during her retirement and decided it would be fun to open a detective agency with absolutely zero training or experience, Aunt Tilde definitely danced to the beat of her own drum. Today, she was dressed in bright pinks and purples, which didn’t clash as much as you might think with her bright-orange hair and matching glasses.
“It’s about time we got one,” Mildred chimed in, giving me a stern look over her glasses, as though our lack of clients was somehow my fault. Mildred was a retired teacher who jumped at the chance to join her old friend in her newest venture. She dressed far more conservatively than my aunt, though, in pressed pantsuits. She also had her hair done twice a week and wore a little too much perfume. Today, she was dressed in a pale-green pantsuit accented by a single strand of pearls.
“She’s not an official client yet,” I said. “She wants to see if we can help her find her husband.”
Mildred perked up. “Another cheating husband case. Hopefully, we can redeem ourselves with this one.”
“Her husband is missing,” I said. “That doesn’t mean he’s cheating.”
Mildred waved her hand. “Of course it does. What other explanation would there be?”
“We shouldn’t assume he’s cheating,” Aunt Tilde said. “That’s why we investigate.”
Mildred raised a nicely shaped eyebrow. “Okay, why do you think he’s missing, then?”
Aunt Tilde shrugged. “Maybe he got lost.”
“What, like he went to the store for cigarettes and never came home?”
“It’s possible,” Aunt Tilde insisted before letting out a sigh and relenting. “Okay, you’re probably right. He’s cheating on her.”
“Maybe we should hear the entire story before we make assumptions,” I suggested.
“I agree. We should get all the details, so we can catch him in the act,” Mildred said before flattening her lips, which were covered in bright-pink lipstick, in disapproval. “We don’t want to screw it up this time.”
“I don’t think this case is going to be like Jan’s,” I said.
“How do you know?” Mildred asked.
“Well, for one, we’re looking for a missing husband, not for proof that her husband is cheating on her,” I said.
Mildred waved her hand again. “I told you … same thing.”
Great. At this rate, I was going to have to find some excuse to keep Mildred from attending the initial meeting. I could already picture her browbeating poor Ruth and insisting her husband had run off with the grocery clerk.
“When is the meeting?” Aunt Tilde asked, as if reading my mind.
Ugh. “This afternoon.” I gave Mildred a hard look. “If you come, you can’t tell her that her husband is cheating on her. She’s very upset. They had a fight before he disappeared.”
Mildred looked miffed. “Emily, of course I wouldn’t say it. You know me better than that.”
Yes, yes, I do know you, and that’s why I’m telling you not to. I bit down on my tongue to keep the words from coming out and forced a smile instead. “I just wanted you to know what I know before the meeting. That way, we’re all on the same page.”
“Good, we should be,” Mildred said briskly. “When the time is right, we can tell her the truth about her husband. Not a minute before.”
I sighed.
