The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (21 page)

“No, but . . . I’m buying trouble. I probably won’t get hired. But one of us has to do
something.
We can’t raise two children on Lance’s sanctuary income and what a few adjunct classes can bring in.”

“Have you and Lance talked about this at all?”

I shook my head. Mama was right. Adopting the twins was the most impulsive decision we’d ever made in our lives. I didn’t regret it for a moment. But I wished we’d spent a little more time getting ready to be parents.

The phone rang again. “Wow. Three calls in one ride. You’re getting to be quite the twenty-first-century gal,” Natasha teased.

It was Lance. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“Honey, are you almost home?”

“Ten minutes out. What’s up?”

“Drive faster. I’ve got the Forresters coming back, and Drew swears . . .”

“Go back, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t find William! Drew swears his Project Lifesaver bracelet is in the house, but what if it isn’t attached to his arm anymore? Trudy’s almost here. I’ve looked everywhere. I can’t find the damned thing. I can’t
find him.
Sara’s sitting on the couch, and her eyes are huge, and I can see she’s reliving the last time he got lost.”

“I’m coming. Calm down. I’ll be there. Nobody broke into our house and took him. And he didn’t go out either, if you didn’t hear the alarm. If Drew says the bracelet’s inside, then it’s inside
on William.
Sit down and make a list of all the places you’ve already looked, and when I get there, we’ll start all over and go room to room methodically.”

“But honey, what if we’ve lost him forever?”

My heart wanted to panic, but my voice locked into calm. “He’s fine, Lance. We need to find him, but he’s okay.” This was almost always how I acted in a crisis. As long as there was action to be taken, I asserted control, analyzed, and organized. It was only when completely helpless that I fell apart. In contrast, when we couldn’t do anything at all in a bad situation, Lance drew himself together and asserted calm. When Gary murdered Art, all I could do was cry. But Lance started dealing with it right away.

At this moment, there was plenty we could do. And Lance’s hysterics were surely making Sara’s fears worse. I needed to get home to her as much as him. I urged the car forward above the speed limit, only to see blue lights in my rearview mirror as I exited the bypass.

“Not right
now
,” I muttered, aiming my car for the side of the road.

The cop car blasted its horn when I slowed down, and I glanced in my rearview mirror. It was Drew, and he was waving me ahead, not pulling me over. I was getting a police escort home to find my kid.

Dear Nora:

I can’t ever find my car keys. Please don’t tell me to hang them on a hook by the door. I can never remember which one I used last. And please don’t tell me to have one certain bowl or something, because I’ve tried that, and I could never remember where I put it.

Lost in the Sticks

Dear Lost
,

Get a bike.

Nora

After several hours of searching, I was all out of actions, reduced to a weeping puddle on the couch while Lance directed traffic and assured me, “We’re going to find him honey. The device is in the house. The kid is in the house. He’s going to be fine.” Our roles had utterly reversed.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” I groaned.

“Twice,” Sara added, because that was how I had phrased the statement the last time I said it. She was curled between Natalie and me, sucking her hand, then wiping it dry on my pants.

“Obviously, we’re missing something.” Lance paced out to the kitchen, where Mama had brewed a pot of the new stuff that everyone agreed tasted like road tar or battery acid.

“Think about your house,” Adam advised me. “I know you haven’t lived here long, but imagine its layout, and try to picture the tiny spaces. What would appeal to a child who likes to squeeze down little and hide?”

“We’ve looked under beds, in the tops of closets, and even in the attic, though I’ve got no idea how he would have gotten there. I’ve emptied every cupboard and cabinet, and he won’t come out. The only thing left is inside one of those packing boxes in . . .”

“I think we’ve got something down here!” my father called from the basement.

Lance scooped up Sara and pounded down the stairs ahead of me. Daddy and Drew had muscled our few remaining moving boxes out from the wall, checking each as they went. Reaching them without stepping on our belongings was hazardous going. And they had to shush the crowd of us twice so we could hear what they had found.

Although the basement is finished, it had clearly been in need of some repair since before Stan bought us the house. Our boxes served to cover over a couple of small gaps between pieces of drywall. Daddy thought he had seen something behind one of these gaps, so he tapped gently. Nearly at once, his tap was echoed. Once we fell silent, he continued rapping back and forth for a few moments, until Lance burst out, “William, is that you?”

“Are you stuck, William?” I asked at the same time.

An aching silence, nothing, then three more taps. Drew turned his light into the crack. “I still can’t see a thing. If it is him, I’ll be damned if I know how he got in.”

“Of course it’s him! Our walls don’t have an echo. Let’s get him
out
,” said Lance. He set Sara down and reached for the crack. “I’ll pull this whole wall down if I have to.” He gave a mighty heave, but instead of breaking off a portion of drywall, he caused a creaking rip running the length of the wall. “Look at that.”

Drew shone his light along the length of the tear, which ran smoothly to the other chink in the drywall we had been concealing with boxes. Lance yanked again, and a whole panel peeled free and flopped open, revealing, alongside several nests of spiders, one William, curled into a ball. “Somebody had themselves a regular little hidey hole, didn’t they?”

While Drew followed the tiny tunnel to see where it originated, my father fingered the rusty inner hinges Lance had folded down. Even with the panel lowered, William was still trapped behind a lip of real drywall. He knocked again, with the back of one hand. “William,” he said in a conversational, if muffled voice, “is that you? William, are you stuck?” Then, he went on to add, “William, would you like some help there, buddy? We don’t want to be playing in the salt mines all day.”

“Looks like it goes into the furnace closet, like it was originally supposed to be part of the ducts but never got hooked to the central system,” Drew called. “There’s a grate pushed out onto the floor behind the furnace itself. That hole is
tiny
! How did he get
in
there?”

Lance didn’t answer him. “Let’s see what we can do.” Lance grabbed some of the real drywall and pulled. A handful came away in crumbling clumps. He repeated the maneuver with similar results. The going was made slower because William was pressed right up against both sides of the wall, making it hard to keep from grabbing
him
as well or else suffocating him with plaster dust. Eventually, though, he popped free, and Sara threw herself on top of him as soon as he rolled out.

He seemed unhurt, if somewhat dazed by his adventure, and when he got tired of Sara’s clinging, he pulled away and darted upstairs calling, “I bet she’s hungry. Would he like a little dinner?” William frequently mixed up gender pronouns in this way, treating them interchangeably.

Lance chased after him, but I remained on the floor, stroking Sara’s back while she sobbed the tears she had held in all afternoon.

“His Project Lifesaver band saved his life,” I said. “I want to kiss whoever put it on him in the first place.”

“Nelly Penobscott, of course,” said Natalie. “His mother and uncle took horrible care of the equipment, though, and he was with us a little while before we got it functioning in our house. I didn’t sleep until we did. You can see why.”

“We wouldn’t have known where to look! We would have been sure he was gone. We would have . . .”

“. . . found him for you by the middle of the night if we had to tear your house down one piece at a time,” Drew said. “But it would have been hours from now, and he might have hurt himself getting free. Those little bands save people. I don’t know why more places don’t use them. If you all will excuse me, I’ve got a report to fill out and Hugh Marsland’s wife probably still in my office to deal with.”

“Nothing good there?”

“Ah, poor thing, I shouldn’t sound so callous. We’re all worried about him. She got a nasty letter. Supposedly photographic evidence he left her. He’s standing on the beach with some trophy girl. It’s an obvious digital creation. She doesn’t understand there’s not a thing I can do I’m not already doing. I put the picture in a baggie and labeled it, then looked at it through a magnifying glass to make her feel better before I sent it off as evidence.”

“He’s missing?”

“The whole thing is weird, Noel. I sent the picture down the pipe, but I doubt it will do any good. Maybe somebody can trace the postmark.”

“Can I ask a weird question?” We hadn’t been paying attention to Natasha, the only other one who lingered to comfort Sara with me after Mama and Daddy followed Lance up the stairs.

“Ask away. I may not answer, but you can
always
ask,” Drew told her.

“What’s the beach babe look like?”

“Hugh’s digital girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“You know. Typical specimen. Blonde, fake tan, red bikini.”

“Heart tattoo on her hip? Is she turned away from the camera looking back over her shoulder?”

“Y-e-s-s.” Drew turned a one-syllable word into three. “How did
you
know?”

“Definitely digitally altered. You should get a copy to the feds. Stay put. I’ll get you the original.”

“You’ll what?”

Upstairs, Trudy called a greeting to the house along with, “It looks like I missed all the fun! I’m so glad you found him safe.”

“I’ll get you the original,” said Natasha. “But you have to promise not to shred it to pieces and at least try to get it back to me.”

“Natasha, I’m not following you,” Drew said.

“Do I have to spell it out? The woman in the picture is my
mother
, and it was originally Terry Dalton with her. It was another one of those weird things Gary’s guys used to do. When somebody was a danger to the organization, they killed him, then put a photo of his head on the picture in place of Terry’s and glued the new picture to his face when they buried him, so he’d have a cute piece of tail to look at while he rotted.”

Drew whistled. “Why in the hell did
you
hang onto it? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Because I took it in the first place. It’s one of my last decent pictures of her on the only vacation we ever took together.”

Drew accepted the photograph when she gave it to him. He gave her a receipt, but said, “I don’t know when, or if, it’s coming home.”

Tasha nodded. From her complacent manner, I guessed this wasn’t her only copy.

When she had left the room, I said, “Drew, I don’t think William is the one in real danger. I think he was only ever a lure to draw out Natasha. She’s the one I’m scared for.”

Drew nodded. “So am I. More and more, so am I.”

Later, Merry arrived, looking wan and thin.
You’ve certainly lost weight!
“You look wonderful,” I said.
You look like hell.
Her face was pale and pinched, like weight loss didn’t sit any better with her than being overweight had done.

She half-smiled at me. “Wonderful,” she echoed.

She didn’t say anything else, not even when she looked in on William, and she left soon after. “She could have waited until morning,” Drew remarked.

Later still, after Drew and even Trudy had gone, all five of us sat squeezed together on the couch, William still shedding dust onto everything he touched. He needed a bath but had rejected the idea of taking one, and we were loath to force the issue, since he had endured the entire episode without wetting himself, largely convinced this was another round of Adam’s dungeons and salt mines game, which seemed to be an elaborate form of hide and seek requiring each person to perform a chore when found.

“I thought they had him again,” Natasha said. “If I hadn’t already spent all afternoon so frantic for Gran, I’d have had an anxiety attack.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” Lance went on stroking William’s hair, brushing dust out with his fingers.

“Yeah. Would have slowed everybody down,” she agreed.

“That’s
not
what I meant.”

Sara wiped her hand on my pants again, as she had been doing all afternoon. “I think I need a question?” she informed me. Like William, most of Sara’s sentences ended in the same lilting, questioning tone.

“Okay,” said Lance. “Shoot.”

“Shoot a doodle,” Sara echoed.

When she didn’t say anything else, Lance face-palmed himself for accidentally derailing her. “I meant ask your question,” he clarified.

“Yeah. Okay. Here’s the thing? You guys are great at bringing William back to me and stuff?” She stopped again and put her hand back in her mouth.

“Is that the question?” I finally asked.
And is the answer, “You’re welcome”?

She nodded and went on slurping her fingers. “And,” she suddenly added, “We like you because you make good macaroni.” Clearly her nod was meant to be a shake. This time, we waited her out, and I resisted the urge to prod. “But we kind of already have a mom? And she’s a famous actress? I’m a little worried we’ll go home to her when you get rid of us and maybe get to keep Lance but not Noel?”
Ah. The question at last.

When Sara said “famous actress,” Natasha sagged into the back of the couch. When Sara said our names, Lance and I flinched. The twins were supposed to call us Mom and Dad. But so far, the closest either could come was, “Person-who-is-not-my-mom, please I need a macaroni?” It wasn’t discourtesy keeping the twins from using the titles. In their minds, we simply
weren’t
their parents. Although they clearly didn’t know what to
do
with us, neither of them resisted our company.