Installment #37 Jack

Installment #37 Jack

Jack cursed as the phone in his hand continued to ring. “Answer Ambrose! Where in the hell are you?”  He dialed Meg again and still the busy signal. Where was she or who was she talking too? No. Women could talk but not for hours. They had tiny bladders and would be afraid someone could hear them pee. Traffic was light this morning, but he still held to pretty much the speed limit. Still 30 minutes from the Parker place and then he would know the score.

He gripped the wheel as a black Jeep came around the curve with one wheel in his lane, but before they met the Jeep turned onto an obscure little road. Kind of hard to make that turn without swinging a little wide. So he forgave the driver. When he finally pulled in the yard at Meg’s house he was almost relieved. Everything looked alright. Well, almost alright. The dogs were in the yard, so Meg must have put them out. No, there was a doggie door!  So why weren’t they inside waiting at the kitchen door to bark at this intruder?

 He jumped quickly from his car and ran to the house. The back door was open. He entered and began calling. No answers. The doggie door had a panel keeping the dogs out! He raised the panel and they ran in and began searching frantically for Meg. Upstairs, through the house, back out in the yard. Inside, outside. There was no reason for him to search. The dogs would have alerted him if anything turned up, good or bad.

He keyed his mike and waited for the signal and then spoke into the radio, “This is unit 17 and we have a problem. Ambrose is gone and the lady of the house is missing. I want all available units up here stat! And tell Leroy to move mountains. I need the name of whoever was in Meg Parker’s computer and we don’t have a minute to waste. This is no longer a stalking case, it is probably a hostage or homicide. Or a hostage and a homicide.”

He leaned to the floor and picked up a black shiny flat rock. Ambrose had dropped his worry stone.  He called it his lucky worry stone, but Jack could not stop the next thought, “Well, Ambrose, I think your luck just ran out.”