High Rhymes and Misdemeanors Read online

“I’m sorry, Miss Hollister, there’s no answer.”

  “Can’t you send someone out there?” Grace demanded, her fingers tightening on the mug of hot tea she held between both hands.

  P.C. Kenton looked uncomfortable. “The thing of it is, miss,” he began to explain, “Mr. Fox left word with the Innisdale police that he’s away on business till next week. A buying trip of some sort. They’ve left a message on his machine. There’s really no point in sending anyone over.”

  And you don’t believe me anyway, Grace thought bitterly.

  She had walked for hours in the rain last night, covering miles of lonely dirt track before a dairy truck had picked her up.

  The driver clearly thought she was yet another demented Yankee tourist, and at the first village they had come to had been only too happy to hand Grace straight over to the police station.

  The police, or P.C. Kenton as it turned out, had been shocked and sympathetic. He had energetically wasted several hours with Grace exploring the country’s back roads (and getting lost several times) before finding the right deserted farmhouse. Grace’s car had been parked out front, keys hanging in the ignition. Her packed suitcases were inside.

  “My suitcases were in the house,” Grace told the constable. “They put them here for some reason.”

  “For what reason, miss?”

  Grace shook her head.

  The house itself was locked. Inside there was no sign that anyone had been there except for footsteps in the layers of dust and some rice grains on the battered table in the kitchen.

  “There will be glass from the broken window upstairs,” Grace told the constable, reading the doubt on his face.

  They trooped upstairs, and sure enough, there was a small pile of glass glittering in the dust behind the bedroom door.

  “There, you see!” Grace said triumphantly.

  P.C. Kenton nodded. He seemed more uncomfortable than reassured.

  “Shouldn’t you at least take photos of the footprints?” Grace urged.

  P.C. Kenton had obligingly taken photos, but it was clearly to humor Grace.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, miss,” P.C. Kenton added now, hastily, as though reading Grace’s face. “It’s plain as punch you’ve been through…well, something. But the thing of it is…”

  “Yes, I know,” Grace sighed. “I’ve got my car back and most of my belongings, and since there’s no trace of anyone at the farm, and I wasn’t actually harmed, why make a fuss?”

  “I never said that,” protested the constable. “Kidnapping’s a serious offense. If this was a kidnapping and not a—a—?”

  “A what?” inquired Grace. “A prank? They’ve taken my passport and my wallet. And my airline tickets.” And two romance novels, but why confuse the issue?

  P.C. Kenton suddenly brightened. “Perhaps they were terrorists, miss! Did they say anything to indicate they might be terrorists?”

  Grace shook her head. “No. I’m sure they weren’t terrorists.”

  “There are a lot of terrorists about these days.”

  “They weren’t terrorists. They weren’t pranksters either.”

  “Then you must see how it is, Miss Hollister. If they weren’t amateurs and they weren’t terrorists, then the lads who picked you up were pros. They didn’t leave so much as a cigarette butt at that farmhouse. They’ll have worn gloves, everyone does these days. You yourself said you’d only a glimpse of the back of one chap’s head. I just don’t see—we’re not Scotland Yard, miss!”

  Grace gave it up. It was no use asking a village constable to sort out attempted murder and “gewgaws.” The fact was, P.C. Kenton had his hands full with a missing cow and graffiti on a church wall. Grace thought grimly that it had never really been a plan on the part of the kidnappers to snatch her. The farmhouse room had been selected to imprison a man. A man whose wide shoulders would never squeeze through a box-sized window, and whose six-foot frame could never be supported by a half-dead tree. Perhaps, having lost Grace, her captors would return to their original plan of finding Peter Fox.

  Of “icing” Peter Fox?

  Grace set down the mug of tea and rose to her feet. “Thank you for all your help, P.C. Kenton,” she said. “I think you’re right. I think the best thing to do is put this out of my mind and get on with my vacation.”

  P.C. Kenton looked relieved. “That’s the ticket, Miss Hollister. I’m sure those two scoundrels have realized their mistake. They know the police have their description. You won’t be bothered again.”

  Right, thought Grace. The police will be looking for a giant dog and the Queen Mother. Why worry?