Azure Secrets

by Patricia Rice

  She had high expectations of persuading Dinah to let her take over more of the kitchen once she learned the ropes. She’d finally landed in a place where the cook didn’t mind her eccentricities. That was a joy to wake up to each morning.

  So Fee dragged her backpack into the front room, rummaged for clothes, and studied the huge TV. She hadn’t watched TV in so long, she wasn’t even sure she knew how to turn it on. Out of curiosity, she located the remote and hit the switch, muting it before it could wake her host.

  The talking heads from the city smiled and looked pretty just as she remembered. Watching for the weather, she pulled jeans up under her nightshirt. She’d shower in her own place after she got the muffins in the oven.

  About to pull the nightshirt over her head, she froze at the blurry picture on the big screen. She dived for the remote and turned the sound back on. It blared loud enough to wake the dead.

  “The search still continues for little three-year-old Stacy Gonzalez and her dog. The toddler and dog were reported abducted by the nanny on Tuesday—”

  Staring in horror at the screen, Fee still knew when Monty staggered out of bed to stand behind her. He was swearing under his breath until he, too, saw the image.

  “Sukey,” Fee whispered, not wanting him to acknowledge what she was seeing.

  “Yup, Sukey,” he agreed. “Stupid red bandana, curly tail, and all.” He picked up a cordless phone on the desk and hit speed dial while watching the news anchor talk about rewards and posters.

  Abducted—Tuesday? She’d grabbed the dog Sunday night.

  Stacy Gonzalez?

  The story moved on. Fee sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees, stupidly waiting for more. There hadn’t been any toddlers in that alley. A child would have cried when the dog ran away. Where was the child?

  Gonzalez? She shuddered, trying to block out memories.

  Maybe the dog had been abducted first?

  “Walker, pull up your computer now,” Monty shouted into the phone. “Find the news stories on the kid stolen by her nanny last week. No, I’m not telling you why until you see the pictures.”

  A week, the child may have been gone a whole week.

  Fee was pretty sure Peggy had married—and divorced—a Gonzalez. As a social worker, Peggy had never changed her maiden name, but her husband had some relation to Felix, and there was this nagging memory. . . Sukey had definitely been behind Felix’s restaurant. Could Stacy be. . . ?

  Fee rested her head on her knees and began rocking back and forth. A little kid would cry for her parents. The people with her would hate the crying. They’d hurt her. They might shove her in a closet and forget about her. Or worse.

  Because it was the dog they wanted, the dog with the key.

  People who enjoyed running over mothers didn’t care about kids.

  Monty was talking with Walker about the key and the dog. Hillvale had both. They didn’t have the little girl.

  Monty hung up.

  She needed to get moving. She had muffins to bake.

  Big muscular arms lifted and hugged her. The lodge probably had a gym, she thought irrelevantly, curling up against his wide chest. Fighting the terrors, she pounded her fists against him. He tightened his hold so she couldn’t flail harder.

  “Walker is calling the feds right now.” He spoke in a low, reassuring voice, as if he understood her meltdown. “We’ll hand over the key we found. There’s nothing else we can do, babe. We’ll find that old bandana and collar Sukey wore. Aaron had them, but he couldn’t pick up any images besides the groomer. The feds will take it from there.”

  She shook her head violently. “No, that won’t work. What did they do with the little girl? Why take the girl if it’s Sukey they want? Can we trade the key for the girl? Do you have any idea how that poor child is feeling right now? She’s been without her parents all week!” Abruptly, Fee pushed away. “Find out if that’s Peggy’s daughter!”

  Monty stared at her as if she were crazed while she rummaged in her backpack for a sweatshirt and pulled it on over her nightshirt. “Peggy’s daughter?” he asked warily.

  “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I need to talk to the Lucys. We may need Sukey back. If we put the bandana back around her neck and send pictures to the news. . .”

  Monty caught her elbows and lifted her off her feet so she had to meet his eyes. He hadn’t shaved and looked enough like a desperado to force her to shut up. “Enough people have died already. You are not bringing the damned Lucys into this.”

  “Who took care of you when you were three?” she spat back, kicking and squirming until he put her down again.

  “I don’t remember when I was three. Do you?” He stalked off to the bedroom, presumably to dress.

  “I was six.” She pulled on her aging Nikes. Forgetting to keep her head down and her mouth shut, she practically shouted. “And yes, I remember. You don’t forget being torn from everything and everyone you ever knew. And I was in safe hands. That baby isn’t, not if killers are looking for her dog. Even if she’s not Peggy’s, we have to do something. Does Roper live at the lodge? I want to talk with him.” Picking up her backpack and walking stick, she started for the door.

  Monty intercepted her. He’d managed to pull on jeans and a shirt, although it was half unbuttoned. “Let Walker do it. You told him Roper smells like fish. That’s all you can do. Walker is the professional. And I can’t see how Roper could have anything to do with a kidnapping.”

  “That’s what I want to find out.” She ground her teeth to keep from ranting. “He and his friend were outside when someone stole Sukey from the pantry. They were in the vicinity when Francois was shot. They’re not nice people. How many not-nice people do you have in Hillvale?”

  “A lot. Take my word for it. This town was founded by not-nice people. And if they were nice when they came up here, they turned not-nice later. And Lucys keep telling me that like attracts like, so there we are. Hillvale attracts not-nice.”

  Hillvale attracted not-nice people? When? How? Fee grappled with this revelation as Monty buttoned his shirt. She thought she’d left the bad guys down in Waterville.

  He blocked the door so she couldn’t rush past him. “I’ll scare people half to death looking like this. Why don’t you open Dinah’s, let the Lucys come to you? Just give me five minutes to shave, and I’ll take you down.”

  She could walk the distance in twenty minutes or less. If she had her bicycle. . .

  With a sigh, she admitted waiting five minutes was safer. Not-nice people? Like fishy-smelling Roper, right. She grudgingly let Monty wash while she put her backpack together. Clutching her new walking stick, she wished she could do something useful besides smell food. Maybe she should start slapping fishy-smelling people with fish. She was useless.

  For Peggy, she had to do better. Peggy had been one of the Good Ones.

  The walking stick vibrated. With nothing better to do except lose her mind with worry, Fee held it loosely, watching it bob up and down, then sway back and forth, until it picked a direction. Throwing on her backpack, she followed the tug out the door, down the secluded walk, to the parking lot.

  She’d followed it to another walkway when Monty caught up with her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, taking her backpack and dropping it over his shoulder.

  “Following the stick. Who lives down that sidewalk?” She nodded at the hedge hiding the end of the walkway.

  “It leads to the rear of the lodge and my mother’s suite. My parents added it on to the original building when they decided to live up here. How do you follow a stick?”

  “It tugs, kind of like a divining rod, I imagine.” She hooked the stick’s leather strap over her wrist and turned back to the parking lot. “I don’t know how it works, but I’m guessing it isn’t telling me where to find gold.”

  “The Lucys will tell you it finds evil, although Sam and Harvey once found water. Whatever, sticks have never found gold, even if wealth is the r
oot of all evil.” He unlocked the car doors and threw her bag inside. “Walker will have told Sam already. The Lucys will be gathering by the time we arrive. Can you keep them in order or do I need to preside?”

  “Preside?” Fee tugged her hoodie around her, shivering in the pre-dawn chill. She was desperately trying to think of muffins and not a baby girl.

  “They’ll want a town hall meeting. It turns into a free-for-all unless someone stands up and controls the situation. I don’t think they’ll talk much in front of any strangers in the café, so you have time to think about it.”

  “I don’t need time to think about it,” she said with asperity. “I couldn’t stand in front of a meeting if my life depended on it, much less persuade anyone to listen to me—or speak coherently if even a miracle happened, and they all waited for me to talk.”

  “Practice,” he repeated from last night. “You could learn to do it. But an emergency meeting may not be the best time. They’ll hate listening to me, so you need to stand at my side, at the very least.”

  “Why would they hate listening to you? You’re the mayor! That’s what you’re supposed to do.” Trying not to come unraveled, she reached for her pack as he parked the car in the nearly empty lot.

  “I’m a Null,” he said impatiently. “I am not a Lucy and this will be a Lucy meeting, not an official town gathering. If I try to declare it a town meeting, they’ll take it to Cass’s.”

  “A Null! Like a mundane? Okay, this town is now officially weirder than I am, and I expect Harry Potter to fly in on a broom at any minute.” She got out and headed for the café. There were no lights on, so Dinah wasn’t in yet.

  “You’re carrying a divining rod,” he said, catching up with her. “Don’t scoff. Hillvale could be divided between Episcopalians and Lutherans, conservatives or liberals like any other small town. We just adopted our own terminology.”

  She shot him a look of surprise. “And you’re okay with this? You’re not laughing up your sleeve at the weirdoes?”

  “I’ve lived with them all my life. Lucys do weird things, yes. That doesn’t mean those things aren’t effective. I just want whatever works. If they want to chant and dance naked around an imaginary hole in the ground, who am I to say that doesn’t call spirits who can tell us the secrets of the universe?” He took her keys and unlocked the door for her. “I’ve seen Keegan turn pebbles into diamonds, so I’m not laughing.”

  “I’m not doing any naked dancing.” Once inside the café, Fee didn’t turn on the front lighting but wound her way to the kitchen door and found the light switch there.

  “I don’t suppose you could start the coffee first?” he called after her, respecting the barrier of the door.

  She stuck her head back out. “You can’t do coffee? Practice,” she said maliciously. “It just takes practice.”

  She showed him where the utensils and the grounds were kept, told him the measurements, and left him to it.

  They had the muffins baking and the coffee ready by the time Dinah entered the rear door. Sam switched on the lights as she arrived through the front.

  Dinah dived into her bread and merely frowned when Sam came back to grab an apron. Since the cook didn’t carry a stick, Fee had to guess Dinah was just normally talented and not paranormally so. If Fee meant to live here, she’d have to learn the terminology.

  She was a Lucy. With a magic stick. She might have a real family of friends who could help, if she didn’t blow it. She desperately needed them to help her now.

  Biting her bottom lip, she let instinct take over as she mixed a batch of oatmeal-raisin muffins to boost Monty’s confidence, because the man who had everything lacked self-assurance.

  She mixed another batch of honey-bran for the Lucys, because they needed. . . she didn’t have a word for it, just the smell. Unity?

  Mixing for a group was wholly different from preparing a meal for an individual. She had to aim for a middle ground on the cinnamon and vanilla, choose a little brown sugar to go with the honey. . .

  By the time the kitchen was redolent of baking breads and frying eggs, the café had reached capacity. Pulling out the muffins, Fee looked up with surprise at the amount of noise from the front. She didn’t think it was even light out yet. Normally when they opened, there were only a few stragglers looking for coffee and donuts. And Orville, looking for eggs.

  “I got it from here,” Dinah said. “You go see what’s rattling their cages and keep the orders moving. Sunday morning and they all got hangovers, you’d think they’d stay home.”

  Fee carried the tray of muffins to the baked goods display on the counter. As she filled the case, she checked to see who was here. Monty was sitting with Harvey and Aaron. The police chief was nowhere to be seen, so he must be in his office, working the phone.

  At this hour, the customers were wholly locals. Cass wasn’t here, but most of the other Lucys she knew were, including Tullah, who seldom ate at the café. There wasn’t even a full house to make as much noise as she’d heard from the kitchen.

  An unusual blast of sound emanated from the far wall. Fee jumped nervously. Glancing past the mural, she watched Keegan fastening a bolt. A moment’s study revealed Mariah wielding a remote control to turn down the volume. They were installing a television! Of course they were.

  “Mariah ran cable over here,” Sam whispered. “I’m thinking it’s totally illegal. You’ll need to persuade Monty that Dinah’s rent ought to cover cable. She can’t afford it.”

  Fee’s eyebrows soared at the assumption that she could persuade the mayor to do any such thing. But Mariah was calling up local news, and heart in throat, Fee tried to watch.

  She poured coffee and tea and filled water glasses while everyone listened to the story that she’d already seen. One station reported that the parents didn’t wish to be interviewed, but they flashed a picture of the young nanny.

  Peggy couldn’t afford a nanny. Maybe this Stacy wasn’t her daughter. The commentators were talking about parents in seclusion. . . Maybe it was just a horrible coincidence that Peggy died on the same day a girl about the age of Peggy’s was reportedly kidnapped. There were millions of people named Gonzalez.

  Fee couldn’t make herself believe in coincidences. “I found Sukey on Sunday,” she insisted to anyone listening. “Would the parents not know the dog was missing then? If that’s Sukey, why are they saying the kidnapping wasn’t reported until Tuesday?”

  The day Peggy had died. She couldn’t make it work in her head.

  “Maybe the nanny is an illegal,” Aaron suggested. “The parents didn’t tell the cops at first because they didn’t want to get arrested.”

  “They’re not telling us everything,” Monty agreed. “What are the chances that there was a ransom note, and they tried dealing with the kidnappers on their own?”

  The news anchor was talking about the grandparents offering a reward. They showed a well-dressed, white-haired couple with slightly Asian features. The money offered indicated they weren’t poor. Peggy was Caucasian and pretty poor. Gonzalez. . . didn’t sound Asian. Maybe they were all adopted, even little Stacy. Maybe Peggy worked in Social Services because she’d been adopted.

  Fee delivered eggs to the appropriate people and passed muffins around. In her head, she was trying to put together Sukey in Waterville with these elderly people from San Francisco and the woman chasing Sukey yesterday in Hillvale. None of it fit.

  Everyone agreed the image of the Yorkie-Pekinese mix with the kidnapped child had to be Sukey.

  “Does anyone know anything about the grandparents offering the reward?” Fee asked, because she was stuck on her memory and not the news reporting.

  “Wi-fi password Dinah,” Mariah called. “Go for it.”

  She’d installed an internet connection too?

  Fee blinked as Lucys in Gypsy skirts, widow’s veil, designer suits, and camouflage pulled out their usually useless cells and began typing—on wi-fi. She loved these people!

  She fill
ed cups and glasses while even Sam worked her phone instead of the counter.

  “Maternal grandparents,” Mariah called triumphantly. “Randall and Maria Lee from San Francisco.”

  Everyone groaned over Mariah’s speed but kept typing on their phones.

  Not Peggy’s parents. She’d been a Fontaine, from Waterville. Her ex had been the Gonzalez. “Paternal grandparents?” Fee asked, afraid to say it too loudly, because it looked like she was on the wrong track.

  Mariah carried over her phone and showed a blurry image of a plump, respectable-looking Hispanic man talking to several other men in business suits. “I can’t find the paternal grandmother. The pic is pretty old but the short guy is labeled Eduardo Gonzalez.”

  Fee enlarged it. Her hand began to shake. This started to make a little more sense. “He used to come in the diner where I worked. He knew Felix.”

  “The diner where the drug lords hang out?” Monty asked, instantly at the counter and taking the phone to study it.

  Fee nodded, hugging her elbows and wishing for an over-sized chai latte. “He’s older now than in that picture. He was one of the fishy ones, the kind who arrived in a big car with minions. Look up his son. See if he wasn’t once married to Peggy.”

  The café exploded with voices.

  Twenty-four

  Sunday, mid-morning

  Monty leaned against the podium installed in the old church. The building had been many things over the years, but it had recently been converted to a meeting place and art gallery. Behind him was the enormous triptych of Hillvale depicting a day ten years ago when he and Kurt had decided to invest in the town instead of their anticipated careers.

  It had been painted by a prescient Lucy, Lucinda Malcolm—fifty years before the event itself. The painting had helped them solve a murder.