Page 46 of Code Violation

“Did he say anything before he left the shop?”

Wanda frowned. “Just that he loved me.”

They didn’t know when he might have left. Had it been yesterday afternoon after the town meeting or earlier this morning? There was no way to tell; his house was spotless.

“That damn man, he better not have done something stupid.”

Nero pretended not to notice Wanda swiping a tear from her eye.

“The house is very tidy,” Nero pointed out. “Is it always like this?”

“Rufus is very proud of keeping a neat house. It makes me smile. The man is a dream, he’s so tidy. I’ve complained that there’s no way to sneak in and change anything because it’s so darn clean.”

Mutually, they decided to head back over to the pub. They needed to include Magnus in the Find Rufus conversation and decide what next steps should be taken. Or at least, Wanda, Magnus, and Forrest did. Nero was feeling a bit like a fifth wheel.

* * *

Magnus was concerned.

“Hiking gear’s missing, huh? That’s a tad worrisome, but on the other hand, Dad’s been tramping around in those woods longer than I’ve been alive. Let’s give it another couple of hours. I’ve tried calling, but the damn man doesn’t keep his cell phone on all the time since the service is so poor anyway, and it’s going straight to messages. Since that’s not all that unusual, I don’t know that we should head straight into panic mode.”

Wanda shot him a dirty look. Magnus got the message.

“Okay.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll text Garth right now and see if he can make it in early to take over here. Then I’ll go over to Dad’s place and wait for him there. Wanda, do you want to wait with me or are you going to open the shop back up?”

Magnus grabbed his cellphone from next to the cash register and immediately began one-finger texting.

“I’m not about to re-open the shop, Magnus,” Wanda said tartly. “No one is going to care if it’s closed the rest of the day—or until we find Rufus. I’ll just go slap a sign on it and tell customers to come back another time. Rufus is more important than selling used baby carriers and shell art. I’ll meet you back at Rufus’s place. We can wait together.”

“Do you want us to wait with you?” Forrest asked.

“No,” said Wanda. “You’ll just make me more anxious with your pacing back and forth. You never could sit still, and I can’t imagine anything has changed recently.”

“Okaaay,” Forrest responded. “We have some stuff we want to do back at my place anyway.”

Nero had no idea what that stuff was, but he nodded agreeably anyway.

Magnus shot Forrest a look that said he knew exactly—or thought he did—what Nero and Forrest would be doing back at his house. Did he think Nero and Forrest were off to do the horizontal tango when Rufus was missing?

“Nero’s looking into Ned’s death. We had a few questions for Rufus since they were friends.”

Magnus seemed to accept the redirect, although Nero still suspected he knew something. Did he care? Nope. Nero was more concerned about Forrest’s reaction to Magnus knowing their private business; if nothing else, the man was definitely protective of his personal space.

“I’ll have my landline ringer on, and my cell phone too. Please call as soon as you learn anything, and we’ll head back in.”

“Is there a plan if he doesn’t turn up?” Nero asked. There should be a plan, and he wasn’t one to shy away from hard questions. None of them wanted to think about Rufus possibly injured or worse, but if he was, he needed them to have a solid plan of action.

Magnus eyed Nero, mulling over his question. Finally, he said, “It’s like three thirty in the afternoon. If he’s up there, he’ll be back down before dark.”

Up there clearly meant the woods. What if he’d been up there since yesterday? Up there and not hurt? They didn’t know when he’d left, only that he hadn’t called Wanda the night before like he normally did.

“If he doesn’t come down by dark, it’ll be too late for the likes of you and me to go up after him. If we don’t hear from him by this evening, I’ll alert Critter and Mags, not the police. He’s an adult and in fine health, so they wouldn’t be able to do anything. Both because we aren’t sure where he is and also because Chief Dear has limited resources. I doubt the new officers are qualified for search and rescue. But Critter and Mags, they know the trails almost as well as Pops does. It’s not like he can’t take care of himself, either. Aside from a lifetime of knowledge, he has every piece of hiking and survival equipment known to humankind. I’m mostly concerned because of how shaken up he seemed yesterday.”

“Do you know exactly what he was shaken up about?” Nero asked. “Did he say anything?”

Magnus looked at him. “Well, son—I guess you’re not quite young enough to be my son—but anyway, all I could get out of him was that he hadn’t expected to learn that the remains were Morgan Blass and Sarah Turner.”

Forrest nodded. “He told me that he’d always thought they’d left town for a better life than Cooper Springs had to offer, that this changed everything. That’s all he would say.”

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