On the Street Where you Live Read Online Free PDF Page A

convinced that by continuing to make the rounds ofpeople in Spring Lake he eventually would stumble upon some crucial fact, some bit of information previously overlooked, that would lead him to the truth. As a result he was a familiar figure to the neighbors of the Lawrences and to all the people who had been in contact with Martha in those last hours of her life.
    The staff of the caterer who had serviced the party at the Lawrence home the night before Martha disappeared were longtime employees. He had talked repeatedly to them, so far without garnering any helpful information.
    Most of the guests who had attended the party were locals, or summer residents who kept their homes open year-round and would come down regularly for weekends. Tommy always kept a copy of the guest list folded in his wallet. It wasn’t a big effort for him to drive to Spring Lake and look up a couple of them just to chat.
    Martha had disappeared while jogging. A few of the regular early morning joggers reported they had seen her near the North Pavilion. Each of them had been checked out thoroughly and cleared.
    Tommy Duggan sighed as he closed the file and put it back in his top drawer. He didn’t believe that some drive-by had randomly stopped in Spring Lake and waylaid Martha. He was sure that whoever had abducted her was someone she trusted.
    And I’m working on my own time, he thought sourly as he observed the contents of the lunch bag his wife had packed for him.
    The doctor had told him to take off twenty pounds. As he unwrapped a tuna on whole wheat, hedecided that Suzie was hell-bent on making the weight loss happen by starving him to death.
    Then he smiled reluctantly and admitted that it was this lousy diet that was getting to him. What he really needed was a nice thick ham and cheese on rye, with potato salad on the side. And a pickle, he added.
    As he bit into the tuna sandwich, he reminded himself that even if Osborne had just made another remark about him overdoing his efforts on the Lawrence case, Martha’s family didn’t see it that way.
    In fact Martha’s grandmother, a handsome and naturally elegant eighty-year-old, had looked happier than he’d have thought possible when he stopped in on her last week. Then she told him the good news: Martha’s sister, Christine, just had a baby.
    â€œGeorge and Amanda are so thrilled,” she told him. “It’s the first time I’ve seen either one of them really smile in the last four and a half years. I know that having a grandchild will help them get over losing Martha.”
    George and Amanda were Martha’s parents.
    Then Mrs. Lawrence had added, “Tommy, on one level we all accept that Martha is gone. She never would have voluntarily disappeared. What haunts us is the terrible possibility that some psychotic person kidnapped her and is keeping her prisoner. It would be easier if we only knew for certain that she’s gone.”
    â€œGone,” meaning dead, of course.
    She had been seen last on the boardwalk at 6:30 A.M. on September 7, four-and-a-half years ago.
    As Tommy unenthusiastically finished his sandwich,he made a decision. As of 6:00 A.M. tomorrow, he was going to become one of the joggers on the Spring Lake boardwalk.
    It would help him to shed the twenty pounds, but there was something else. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch, he was getting a feeling that sometimes came when he was working intensely on a homicide, and try as he might to escape it, it wouldn’t go away.
    He was closing in on the killer.
    His phone rang. He picked it up as he bit into the apple that was supposed to pass for dessert. It was Osborne’s secretary. “Tommy, meet the boss down at his car right away.”
    Elliot Osborne was just getting in the backseat when Tommy, puffing slightly, arrived at the reserved parking section. Osborne did not speak until the car pulled out and the driver turned on the siren.
    â€œA skeleton has