Ray expected to see Sharon sitting at the kitchen table when he came in, watching Oprah on the small TV on the counter, or reading the Free Press. He rolled his suitcase across the wood floor through the dining room, down a hallway into their bedroom. She wasn't in there either. He bet she was at Costco or getting her hair done. She had to have her hair colored more often to get rid of the dark roots after going blonde. He didn't know why she did it. What would possess a woman to change her natural hair color at age thirty-eight? He wasn't sure if he liked it or not. He'd only seen it once. Now he'd have a chance to get used to it, that and a lot of other things.
He went to the kitchen and got a beer and went back to the bedroom and put his clothes away, hung up his suits, put trees in his black dress shoes, threw his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper. Ray had his own closet and Sharon had hers. His was neat and orderly like his life with the Service, and hers was a mess.
He carried his empty suitcase through the living room. He was going to take it upstairs to the attic. They lived in a bungalow in Beverly Hills. He stopped and put the suitcase on the floor in the front hall. There was a pile of mail, days' worth on the carpet, shoved through the slot in the door by the mailman. He got on his knees and scooped up the envelopes and magazines and took them into the kitchen.
He sat at the table shuffling through the mail. There were bills from US Bank Visa, DTE Energy, Honda, Verizon Wireless, Green Trees Lawn Care and half a dozen more including a letter from Pat, Sharon's sister in New Jersey. He checked the postmark on each envelope, a couple of them going back to October 5th, three days earlier.
Ray was trying to remember the last time he talked to Sharon and thought it was October 1st, a few days before he was dismissed from the Service. He was going to call and tell Sharon but decided to just show up and surprise her.
He went through her magazines: People, Rolling Stone, Vibe, Scene and Murder Dog. Sharon told him she had to read them to stay current with the music scene.
He said, " Murder Dog?"
She said, "Where else are you going to learn about Snap and Crunk and Hyphy?"
He said, "What the hell're you talking about." The words sounding like what you heard when you ate cereal.
She said, "Current trends in music, dawg. It's time to broaden your musical horizons. Take a break from the old stuff."
She was talking about what he liked, Marshall Tucker and Hank Williams Junior and Neil Young. She said, "How'd a guy from Motown get turned on by country in the first place."
He thought of it as rock not country.
She said, "You want to get contemporary? Check out the Ying Yang Twinz and Soulja Boy." She said it serious and then broke into a big grin.
He said, "Yeah, fix me up, then who knows, I may sign up for breakdancing lessons."
"You're about twenty years too late."
Ray glanced at the answering machine and saw the orange message light blinking. He hadn't noticed it before. He got up and looked. There were eleven messages. He pushed the play button and listened to all of them, checking the date and time of each call.
DeAnn, Sharon's boss, said, "When are you planning to come back? I have to tell our clients something."
Lisa from Dr Lambrecht's office was confirming an appointment. Barry from Balboa Capital had to talk to Ray immediately about a home-run stock opportunity.
Pat, Sharon's sister, said, "You're being very mysterious. Is this a vacation? Is Ray going with you?"
The next one was from Sharon's mother, Annette. "I got your email. Where are you going? Is it a business trip?"
Ronni Keating from SKBK Sotheby's was wondering if they were interested in selling their house. She had a potential buyer.
A TruGreen salesman started his pitch and Ray hit the skip button.
He heard a man's voice say, "Hey, babe, you there? Call me."
Ray didn't recognize the voice. He played it back and wrote down the number, a 586 area code, which meant it came from somewhere on the east side.
According to the dates on the answering machine, Sharon hadn't checked the messages for three days. And that was unusual, she'd get up from the dinner table when the phone rang just to see if she was missing an important call.
Ray tried Sharon's cell number. It went right to voice mail: "This is Sharon, please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
He went into the bedroom and looked around. The bed was made, six pillows, two rows of three lined up across the headboard. Her reading glasses were on the table on her side of the bed. He checked her closet, scanned her clothes, shoes and purses. The shelves were full. Nothing seemed to be missing. Not that he could tell with any certainty if anything was. He went in the bathroom and saw her toothbrush on the counter in a ceramic cup, makeup brushes next to it in a clay bowl. No woman would leave town without her makeup. He knew that much.
He went out to the garage and opened the side door and looked in. Her car, a silver Honda Accord, was gone. He went back in the kitchen, opened the Verizon bill, checking the list of phone numbers. Thirty calls, he counted them, were to a number with a 586 area code in Harrison Township. It was different than the one he'd copied from the answering machine.
He called Jim Teegarden, an old friend who was still with the Service, the Office of Protective Research, OPR, in downtown Detroit. Teeg and his colleagues gathered intelligence about individuals or groups who might pose a threat to the president, vice president or any other high-level protectee. Their paths had crossed on a number of occasions over the years when Ray was on protective detail.
Teeg was a devout Catholic, and one night over drinks he told Ray his surname was sacrilegious. There's only one Pope and he's in Rome. I think you should change your name to Cardinal or Bishop. He said it with such conviction Ray thought he was serious until Teeg started laughing.
Ray said, "You Catholics sure have a wicked sense of humor, don't you?"
"I'm sorry to hear about what happened," Teegarden said.
Ray said, "Don't be. It's a blessing in disguise. I'd had enough."
"Why didn't you stay on, take a job with uniform?"
"Wear one of those fancy outfits, and guard a foreign embassy, you think that sounds like me?"
"You always did have an interesting way of looking at things," Teegarden said. "What's Sharon think, having you home all the time now?"
"Are you kidding? She loves it," Ray said. "Hey, I'm hoping you can help me out with something. Some guy's been calling Sharon, stalking her. I've got the phone number but I need the name and address."
"Why don't you call the police?"
"You know how it works," Ray said. "They won't do anything till a crime's been committed. I'd rather not wait that long."
"All right. What's the number?"
Ray said, "There are two."