Chapter 4 It was one thing to say that you had started to investigate a mysterious disappearance,

and it was quite another to actually do something about it. Karen Hightower had rolled out of the office

moments earlier in a rush to get home before her 20-minute search window closed. She had insisted that she did not want

to receive updates by telephone, because she did not want her mother to know that she had hired a

detective to look for her cat. Abigail was a little uncertain about that last point, but

supposed that her client had her own reasons, and that parents were a tricky thing at times,

which she herself knew from experience. She rolled the garage door closed and sat in the gloom of the office,

rewriting her notes under the heading, The Mysterious Disappearance of Ezekiel High Tower,

having rejected the original title of The Case of the Missing Cat as being just terrible.

This took about ten minutes, and in the end, Abigail had felt that she had a pretty good

grasp of the facts as presented.

Ezekiel Hightower's disappearance might be mysterious, but this was not going to be the sort

of case where there were suspects gathered in the library,

or startling revelations of secret guilt.

This was going to require some good old-fashioned legwork, as a detective novel's like to say.

Abigail locked up the house and walked the four blocks up to Sycamore Street.

The street was familiar, although Abigail suspected that she

did not know anyone here. Kids who lived north of Osborne Avenue didn't go to Dangerfield Elementary.

They went to West Mountain Memorial, and the web of soccer practices, PTA meetings,

fall fun fairs, and various activities that required a permission slip

was different than the one that Abigail had always known. She thought about this, as she

walked west toward No. 52. Both Dangerfield and West Mountain fed into Margaret Wentworth

...