CHAPTER 1
No Answer

"Hah! As if we could afford a maid — French, Polish, or otherwise," said Wilt Stevens, phone to his ear, listening to it ring in his home on the north side of town. "And `upstairs' pretty much covers the whole house; only thing lower is the basement."

They stood in the sizzling hot parking lot of Pioneer High School, surrounded by other students who had just pried their luggage from beneath the seats of a yellow school bus. It was late July, well into summer vacation, but forty-two students and six adult leaders from all over Ann Arbor had volunteered to help with cleanup efforts after a recent "freak swarm" of tornadoes ripped through several Lower Midwest states. Frax wondered about the freak part, since extreme weather seemed to be a regular news feature.

Knowing accommodations would be primitive, they had all brought sleeping bags for camping in undamaged school buildings and church basements near the worksites. Now, after a long return trip, the two friends stood by their little pile of gear on the hot black asphalt.

"Well, we've been gone, what, eight, nine days? He could have hit the lottery, bought a big house, hired a French maid, and then ran off with her." Frax grinned.

Another three rings. "Yeah, but someone else would've had to buy him the lottery ticket. He's always saying it's a game for suckers, the odds are so bad."

"OK, not a French maid then. Maybe just ran off with a plain vanilla babe."

"I almost wish. Nearly four years since Mom died, and he's never even been on a date. I'd probably vote for chocolate, myself, but at this point I'd be happy just to have a mother, even Neapolitan." Wilt was African-American like his father, tall and dark next to short and tan Frax. "Damn! It's rung way more than ten times, and now the machine doesn't even pick up. No answer at his office, either. I even tried his cell, which he only carries on trips for emergencies, and probably hasn't been turned on or charged in six months at least. I'm calling it quits." He pocketed his phone in disgust.

"Wait," said Frax, "your old man has an actual answering machine? I thought those were ancient history."

"Yeah, like my old man!"

Frax rummaged for the water bottle in his pack. Wilt's father was famously absent-minded, and hadn't responded to calls made from the last two rest stops. But there was nobody else to call. Frax lived with his Aunt Marian, who had dropped them off here at the start of the trip and was now on a two-week vacation with her boyfriend. The plan was that Frax would stay with Wilt and his father until she returned.

"So," he said, "who do we know in this crowd that lives up in the hinterlands beyond North Campus, and could give us a ride? I see Ben Sondquist with Amy Medford and Lucy what's-her-name, but it looks like they've already filled his Mom's Honda."

"Yeah," said Wilt, "and nobody else I know well enough to beg from. I vote we ride in the air-conditioned luxury of the AATA. We can get out at Plymouth Mall and only have to walk a few blocks."

Shortly they were riding in style on the near-empty bus, their sleeping bags, backpacks, and gym bags of dirty laundry perched on the seat in front of them.

"You guys from the tornado trip?" asked the driver, over the wailing sax solo on his boom box. He turned it down a bit. "You sure timed it right, missing the Art Fair; that Pioneer lot was just about paved with wheels, and our buses were totally packed."

"Dang! We completely forgot about the Art Fair," said Wilt. "But we did have lots of sweaty bodies rooting around in piles of mystery junk, so it was pretty much the same scene. Except, of course, the junk wasn't intentional."

The driver laughed. "Bet you didn't mind missing the traditional Art Fair thunderstorm, either."

"Not a bit," agreed Wilt. "We sure saw plenty of storm damage, though. Won't be art fairs down there any time soon."

Frax returned to his hypothesizing. "How about held hostage by enemy agents until he divulges his secret scientific formula?"

"Yeah, right. Like maybe a glaze formula. He's probably out in the studio right now, held hostage by a lump of clay."

Wilt's father was some kind of physics researcher at the University of Michigan, and although apparently good at his work, his real passion was pottery. He had a studio in the converted garage behind their home; Frax had never been inside it, but judging from the weird bowls and vases scattered about the house, Dr. Stevens probably shouldn't give up his day job.

"OK, since you've ruled out everything else, that only leaves one thing: Abducted by space aliens!"

The bus glided to a stop with a hiss, and the doors folded open. Bags heaved over their shoulders, the pair began to trudge up Nixon and into the subdivision. The load didn't seem like much at first, but grew heavier with every block.

Wilt grunted. "Maybe your space aliens could loan us a tractor beam about now. Or just beam us directly home."

They lumbered on. When they finally reached Wilt's street, he took one look down it and groaned. "Crap! The MacTruder, out watering her rain garden." Mrs. MacGruder lived next door, and was always intruding into everyone's business, subtle as a Mack truck. "If Dad isn't there and she gets wind of it, she may just appoint herself our guardian angel. We'll have to fake it. Follow my lead, and try not to roll your eyes when I spin some whoppers. And whatever you do, keep moving."

"Got it," said Frax. "No eye rolling."

"Hello, boys." Her voice was a scratchy cackle. "You must be just back from the new Tornado Alley. Wasn't your father there to give you a ride?"

"Hi, Mrs. MacGruder." Wilt kept a straight face. "Nope. See, his car is still here in the driveway. He was real busy when we called, so we worked out a deal: If we got home on our own, he'd treat us to pizza."

She paused only a moment, then seemed to accept this. "Well, he certainly has been keeping to himself lately. And he just lets the phone ring and ring."

"Yeah, like I said, real busy. He's been working on an important project. When he gets involved, he ignores any kind of distraction. Just lucky for us he answered when we called."

Wilt had his key out as they ascended the front steps. As soon as he had the door open he called out loudly. "Hi, Dad, we're home!" Pause. "Yeah, it was a great trip. It felt good to be making a difference." Pause. "No problem, we both like pizza."

As he closed the door behind them, Frax could no longer stifle a guffaw. "`Making a difference' my ass!" he jeered. "You are so full of shit the whites of your eyes are gonna match the rest of you. You just went for the road trip — and to flex your pecs for the babes, especially that Maggie with the Detroit Unitarian crowd."

"Not so loud! There might be windows open. Besides, she was flexing her pecs at me."

But there weren't any windows open, and the house was hot and stuffy.

"Not to point out the obvious," said Frax, "but this place sure doesn't feel lived-in. More like sealed up for vacation or something."

"Don't read too much into that," said Wilt. "Dad's a nut about energy efficiency; most of the time he uses a system he calls `thermal management', where he opens windows at night and runs the whole-house attic fan to pull in cool air, then closes things up during the day.

"Only when the weather gets really hot, as it certainly is these days, does he switch to air conditioning... sorta. A super-efficient window A/C runs in the living room, and a box fan on Slow in the hallway circulates it to the rest of the house. It's actually pretty good, especially for sleeping at night; the quiet fan and A/C purr is way softer than the roar from US-23 we get with the windows open."

But nothing was running. There was no sound at all.

"Suppose," said Frax, "there was a cold snap here last night, while we were still Down South, and he used the `thermal management' thing, then turned off the fan and shut the windows this morning before he went to work or whatever."

"Yeah, maybe. But if he's at his lab at the U, he must have taken his bike since the car's still here. Or walked to the bus, or somebody gave him a ride. Or maybe he's just out in the studio. What the hell, let's order that pizza anyway. I'm starved, plus it will help confirm our story when the MacTruder sees the delivery guy. Why don't you order, while I get the A/C and fans running."

"Antonio's? I don't have their number in my phone."

"It's on the note board in the kitchen," said Wilt, heading into the living room.

Frax went into the kitchen, where an ancient dial-type phone hung on the wall next to the cork-covered note board. On the counter nearby was an antique answering machine, which Dr. Stevens had bragged he'd found at a neighborhood yard sale and proudly restored. It used a tiny cassette tape to hold the messages. Where did he find the little tapes for this thing? The message counter was blinking `17' in red digits, and the tape appeared to be full. He really hadn't been answering calls.

But despite the old-time equipment, it didn't use an old-time land line; next to the answering machine was a flip phone connected to a small box, along with a charger and a phone cable whose other end went to a wall jack. Wilt had explained how the box used Bluetooth to talk to the hacked phone, and translated to old-style land line signals. That allowed the dial phone and answering machine to keep working after Dr. Stevens had dropped the land line when bills got too high.

Frax got the number from the note board and called. He had intended to order an Extra Large, but found Antonio's was celebrating their 25th anniversary with a two-for-one sale — 2, 4, and 1 creatively mashed up to 25. So he ordered two Large instead. After the call, he wondered if they had enough cash. He hollered, "I've only got six bucks left. How much have you got?"

"Uhh, about ten, I think," shouted Wilt from the other room, having just lugged an old window fan from the basement. "No, wait, this should be Dad's treat. Let's see if he left any money on his dresser."

Frax followed Wilt into the hall. "Hey, looks like the place has been `tossed', just like in the cop shows." The door to the hall closet stood open, and all manner of sporting goods and seldom-used items were strewn about. The master bedroom closet showed similar chaos. The dresser drawers were partly open, but there on the top of the dresser was a man's wallet.

Wilt snatched it up and looked inside. "Whatever they were after, it sure wasn't money — there must be nearly a hundred bucks here."

"You know," said Frax, "the place doesn't actually look ransacked, more like somebody packing in a hurry. See if you can tell what's missing."

Wilt poked and peered around the room. "Well, I don't know about clothes and stuff. His suitcase is still here, though." He went back into the hall. "I don't see the backpacking gear from our Isle Royale trip a couple summers ago: No tent, no packs, and his sleeping bag is missing. If Dad went on a sudden hiking trip, he must have gone with someone who had his own bag, but no pack. But I can't believe he'd leave his wallet; he'd at least need gas money. And it doesn't seem likely he'd just take off, since he really was working on some sort of hot project. That part of what I told the MacTruder was true enough."

"Can we tell that he's actually gone anywhere? I mean, he has a lab at the U, right? Maybe the project was something where he had to stay overnight to keep an eye on it."

"I suppose, but that would only explain the missing sleeping bag, not the tent or pack. So maybe he just loaned all the stuff to a friend, and he's simply at the lab right now."

But it was obvious to both of them that it wasn't so. The house really did feel sealed up, as if nobody had lived in it for at least several days.

"I just had a real scary thought," said Wilt. "He might have been working on something in his studio; he loves to experiment with glaze chemistry. I don't know if anything could give off poison gas or explode or whatever, but we'd better check."

He led through the kitchen to the back door, where the garage key always hung on a hook. It wasn't there. "I don't like the looks of this. But maybe he just forgot to put it back, and it's in his pocket at the lab. I'll get the spare from the tray on his dresser."

He was back in less than a minute. "OK, now I'm getting seriously freaked. His entire key ring was there; he would need that to get into his lab."

"Could he just be shooting the breeze with some neighbor down the block, and didn't need the lab keys?" wondered Frax. "Or maybe some friend came by and he went out for a drive. Oh, but then he'd need his house key to get back in here..."

"Yeah. Christ! Maybe Dad really is still in the studio, with the key. My stomach is doing flip-flops. C'mon, let's look and get it over with. But we don't want to tip off the MacTruder." He opened the back door, and as they started out he called over his shoulder in a loud voice, "Black notebook on the bench by the balance? Sure, Dad, we'll get it."

The door was on the left rear corner of the house. A narrow ribbon of driveway flared into a wide concrete apron in front of the two-car garage. Next door, the MacGruder property was a mirror image, except it lacked the ancient charcoal grill decorating the Stevens yard.

The windowless garage door was made of wood and looked as if it could withstand tornado winds. Frax said, "I don't see any button panel for this thing. I hope you're not gonna tell me we have to lift this monstrosity ourselves; I forgot to wear my muscle suit today."

"Or it's just wrapped about your empty head, dummy. We use the people door around to the right — that's what the key is for." That door sported painted plywood where its window had once been. Wilt inserted the key and turned. "Well, it was locked, at least, but that doesn't mean he hasn't locked it from inside. I'm feeling pretty queasy just now; I'd ask you to go first and have a look, but there's no windows so it's gonna be pitch black, and you'd never find the light switch."

He yanked the door open. No fumes wafted out to sear their eyes or lungs. No offensive odors, neither of chemistry run amok nor decaying flesh. Wilt reached in and fumbled a bit, then banks of ancient overhead fluorescent tubes flickered to life. They went inside.

It was unquestionably a pottery studio, with two big kilns, a pottery wheel, and all kinds of tools and equipment Frax couldn't identify. And of course, shelves and benches with pottery in various stages of progress.

But no Dr. Stevens anywhere, alive or dead.

"Whew!" Wilt exhaled. "I'm kinda shaky. I bet you never saw a Black guy as pale as I feel right now. Gimme a minute or twenty for my heart rate to slow down to the triple digits."

"Hey, in twenty minutes we'll be eating pizza. That oughta put some color back." Frax started for the door, but was stopped by Wilt.

"Wait, wait, we don't have a notebook to hold up for the MacTruder — oh, never mind, I'll just do a fake-out." They strolled casually out of the garage, Wilt first, and as he opened the back door to the house he hollered in, "Sorry, Dad, no notebook. Could you have left it at the lab?"