by Lois Duncan
“That’s when I decided to do my own detective work. I called the office where Gavin had worked and asked if they had any idea where he might have gone. His boss wouldn’t talk to me, but the boss’s secretary did. She told me Gavin had written for a job recommendation. She couldn’t remember the town the letter came from, but she did recall it was in Texas. When she said that, it suddenly hit me that Gavin had gotten a birthday card a few months earlier from a sister in Winfield. Like you said, people who ‘disappear’ tend to keep in touch with relatives. It seemed to me that Winfield would be a good place to look for him.”
“That makes sense,” Tracy acknowledged. “But even if he’s moved here, wouldn’t it be likely he’d be going by another name?”
“I thought about that,” said Brad, “but I decided I’d check it out anyway. I called directory assistance and what do you know, they have a new listing for a G. Brummer at the Continental Arms.”
“How did the police react when you told them?” asked Tracy.
“They wouldn’t let me tell them,” Brad said bitterly. “When I tried, Lieutenant Souter said I ought to see a shrink. Mom wouldn’t give me a chance to tell her either. She started crying and said, ‘Stop this crazy scheming. Can’t you just accept the fact that your sister is gone?’ ”
“It sounds like your mother’s the one who needs a shrink,” said Tracy. “Doesn’t she want her daughter found?”
“Mom’s not exactly with it right now,” said Brad. “After Mindy was taken, she had a sort of a breakdown. It’s not the first one she’s had. She’s a fragile sort of person. She’s never been able to handle stress very well.”
He lapsed into silence, and the sounds of the April evening rose to fill the void: the wail of a baby fighting sleep in a crib by an open window, the voice of a mother calling a child to come in for his bath, the drone of a radio providing mood music for an unseen couple in the park across the street.
After a moment, Tracy said, “I bet he didn’t take your sister because he loved her. I bet he only wanted her so your mother couldn’t have her.”
“You’re right about that,” said Brad. “How did you know?”
“I’ve been through it myself,” Tracy told him. “When my own folks got divorced, my father made a big production about wanting custody. Dad’s an actor, a lot better known than my mother was. The case was written up in all the Hollywood tabloids—‘Richard Lloyd Devastated by Loss of Daughter.’ After Mother was killed, though, he pulled a total about-face. He decided he didn’t want me with him in Los Angeles. Instead, he sent me here to live with Mother’s sister and her husband.”
“I’m sure that’s how it must be now with Gavin,” said Brad. “I checked out the Continental Arms the day I got to Winfield. It’s a singles apartment complex that doesn’t allow children. If he is living there, he’s got to be keeping Mindy stashed away in a back bedroom or something so the people who run the place don’t know he’s got her.”
“If he’s living there?” Tracy repeated. “You mean you’re not certain? I thought you said you’d been over there to investigate.”
“I got as far as the entrance hall,” Brad told her. “One of the mailboxes, number two oh four, is marked Brummer-Tyler. There’s no way to tell by that whether Brummer is Gavin. If it is, I can’t run the risk of having him see me. I need to have somebody else case out the apartment and find out for sure what the situation is.”
“Then that’s why you came to the school today.”
It was a statement, but Brad responded to it as though it were a question. “Yes, I went to your school to try to find someone to help me.” It was his turn, now, to strain to make out the expression on a face half lost in shadows. “Will you help me, Tracy? Please?”
I don’t want to get involved in this, thought Tracy. I don’t want my life touched by anybody else’s. I don’t want to care about Mindy, I don’t want to care about Brad—I don’t want to invest myself in anyone again.
Considering the situation, though, she knew she had no alternative.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” she asked.
Chapter 5
WHEN SHE ENTERED THE house, Tracy was greeted by the nasal twang of a television newswoman raised in dramatic recitation of the day’s events. She shoved the door closed behind her and started across to the stairs.
“Tracy?” her aunt’s voice called from the living room. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” Tracy responded. “I’m going upstairs to bed.”
“Tracy, will you come in here, please?”
It was her uncle’s voice this time.
Turning back from the stairs, Tracy recrossed the hall to the doorway leading into the living room. Her aunt and uncle were seated in twin easy chairs in identical positions in front of the television set, looking like Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Through the Looking-Glαss.
“What is it, Uncle Cory?” she asked.
“Your aunt has been worried about you,” said her uncle. “You told her you’d be back by nine thirty. In case you haven’t noticed, this is the ten o’clock news we’re watching.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tracy. “Brad and I got talking and lost track of time.”
“That’s not a good enough excuse,” said her uncle. “When you make us a promise, we expect you to keep it. We’ve taken on the responsibility for raising you. You’re going to have to respect that and live by the rules of our home.”
“I’m sorry,” Tracy repeated. “It won’t happen again. If it’s all right with you, I’m going to go upstairs now. It’s a school night, and Aunt Rene wants me alert in class.”
Turning away from the doorway, she went back into the hall and ascended the stairway to the second floor. At the top of the stairs she turned and went down the hallway, past the blue and lavender master bedroom, past the bathroom, with its lilac deodorizer fumes, past a second small bedroom, which her aunt used as her home office, and stopped at the last door on the right.
She opened it and reached in to flick on the overhead light. The room that leapt into being was as fluffy and flowered as though it had sprung full-blown from the pages of Seventeen. Until the previous September, it had served her aunt and uncle as a combination guest and storage room, but when it had been decided that Tracy would be coming to live with them Aunt Rene had hurriedly redecorated it in a style she thought more appropriate for a teenage girl. When she had spent her first night there, Tracy, whose walls at home had been plastered with Picasso reproductions and whose bed had been covered with an Indian tapestry, had felt as though she was masquerading as Little Bo Peep.
Tonight, however, she did not notice the frills and flounces. Stepping into the room, she closed the door and locked it and went over to the window facing out onto South Cotton Road. The glow of the streetlight in front of the house illuminated the street, and she could see that Brad’s Chevy was no longer parked by the curb.
I don’t ride with people I don’t trust, she had said that evening. She had not trusted him then, and she was not sure she did now. Even so, she had promised to help him locate his sister. She did not know why, but it was something she felt compelled to do.
The lighted windows of the house across the street stared out from beneath their half lowered blinds like heavy-lidded owl eyes. A breeze stirred the filmy curtains at the sides of the window, and the oak tree in the Stevensons’ front yard rustled softly, as though its leaves were whispering secrets to each other. A renegade branch scraped the roof with a rasping sound, like fingernails searching for a clawhold on the rainspout.
Tracy stepped back from the window and pulled down the blind. A lamp with a rose-colored shade stood on the table next to the bed. She switched it on and turned off the glaring overhead. In the gentler light, the room’s assorted shades of pink became suddenly softer, the various patterns blending in a way they had not done previously.
She took her pajamas out of the top drawer of the bureau and put them on. Then she went over to the neatly made b
ed and turned back the spread, exposing pink flowered sheets.
Her mother would have referred to those sheets as “cutesy-poo.”
“Your aunt has always been one for cutesy-poo things,” she had commented once upon receiving the Stevensons’ Christmas card, which portrayed a fluffy kitten tangled up in ribbon from a gift-wrapped package. “When we were children, Rene was the type who had the days of the week embroidered on her panties.”
Danielle Lloyd had borne no resemblance to her sister.
Even back in Tracy’s own childhood, when her parents had still been together, both struggling unknowns trying to break into show business, her mother had lived in a world that was simple and elegant. Stark white walls and curtainless windows. A single rose in a crystal wineglass. Wool slacks, tailored to her slender, long-legged figure. A handbag purchased at a secondhand store but made of quality leather.
During the custody battle her father’s attorney had made an issue of the fact that his client would be able to provide his daughter with a privileged childhood.
“With her father, Tracy would be able to live graciously,” he had said.
“I live graciously, too,” Tracy’s mother had countered. “Not as expensively, I’ll grant you, but just as graciously. I don’t care how successful Richard may have become, there is no way I will ever give up my daughter.”
There is no way I will ever give up my daughter!
Her mother had spoken those words with such determination, yet now, only three years later, she was gone from Tracy’s life. In an instant’s time in a dimly lit hallway at two in the morning, while she struggled to fit her key into the lock of their Brooklyn Heights apartment, Danielle Lloyd had been robbed of her chance to see her daughter grow up.
Mother! Tracy cried silently. Oh, Mother, I miss you! She mouthed the words in the way one might offer up a prayer.
Ironically, as though in response, there was a tap on the door. “Tracy?” Aunt Rene’s voice called softly. “You aren’t asleep yet, are you?”
“No,” Tracy said to the closed door. “I’m not asleep yet.” She did not say, come in.
Despite the lack of any welcome, she could hear her aunt attempting to turn the knob. It was a moment before she seemed to take in the fact that the door was locked.
There was a short silence. Then the voice on the other side of the door said, “Tracy, I really wish you wouldn’t do this. If there was a fire, you could be trapped in there.”
Tracy went over and turned the knob, releasing the lock. She pulled the door partially open.
“Okay,” she said. “Let the fires rage; there’s no danger now. What can I do for you, Aunt Rene?”
The woman who stood in the hallway regarded her with grave concern.
“I just wanted to explain about tonight,” she said. “Uncle Cory didn’t mean to speak so harshly to you, dear. We’re both happy to know that you’re beginning to make some friends here. We want you to do all the normal things young girls do—join clubs, baby-sit, go to parties and out on dates. It’s just that we feel so terribly responsible. With your dear mother gone and your father so far away—”
“I know,” said Tracy. “It’s okay.”
“Not having had children of our own, this is all so new for us. We want so much to do everything the way we ought to. Your father did entrust you to our care, and if anything ever were to happen to you, we couldn’t live with ourselves.”
“It’s okay,” Tracy said again. “If you don’t mind, Aunt Rene, I’m awfully sleepy. Could we talk about this another time?”
“Yes, of course,” her aunt said. “Of course. You must go to bed now. I’m glad you had a nice time tonight. Your friend, Brad—he seemed very nice, so well-mannered and attractive. He really does have the most beautiful eyes and smile. Perhaps you could invite him over on the weekend. We could rent a nice movie to play on the VCR.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips across her niece’s cheek. “Sleep tight, dear, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“I won’t,” said Tracy, trying not to flinch at the cliché. “Good night, Aunt Rene.”
She closed the door and stood waiting until her aunt’s receding footsteps had run their course down the length of the hallway. Then she relocked the door and got into bed.
She switched off the bedside lamp and the room dissolved into darkness. When she closed her eyes, she could feel the weight of the blackness pressing down upon her eyelids and boring its way into her soul. The room was so heavy with silence that she could hear the thud of her own heartbeat. Even after all these months, she still had not become accustomed to the absence of sound in adjoining apartments and the lack of traffic noise in the street beneath her window.
She thought of the little girl in the yellow sundress and of the child’s mother, immobilized by loss. She tried to visualize the father, the horrendous “child-snatcher.” Even his name had an evil ring to it, like the stage name of an actor who played villains. When she pictured Gavin Brummer, what she saw was a vision of her father, back when she herself had been the age Mindy was now.
Brad was right; the man must be found and the child brought home.
He doesn’t love her, thought Tracy. It’s all just a game. A man like that has no room in his life for a child. He doesn’t deserve a daughter, and he shouldn’t have one.
The fact that she had not met him was insignificant. She did not need to meet Gavin Brummer to hate him. She knew all she needed to know about turncoat fathers, having acquired that knowledge from Richard Lloyd.
In unit twenty-three of the Trade Winds Motel, Brad lay awake also, staring into the darkness and trying to still the turmoil in his mind. When he did at last doze off he slept fitfully and lightly, caught in a semiconscious state of mental turbulence that fluctuated between rational thought and disoriented dreaming. Shortly before daybreak, he either thought or dreamed he heard Jamie speaking words that had been uttered two weeks before. “It’s not going to work,” Jamie said. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Even if you do locate Gavin, it won’t do any good.”
“Then you aren’t coming with me?” asked Brad, his heart sinking.
“No, I’m not,” Jamie said. “You mustn’t go either. No matter how hard you try, you won’t get your sister back. Tracking down Gavin would be a terrible mistake.”
“You’re the one who’s making a terrible mistake,” Brad said. “I am going to find Mindy, no matter what you and Mom say. I was counting on you to help me, but if you won’t, then I’ll just have to look for somebody who will.”
He awoke to the sound of his voice mumbling groggily, “find somebody who will,” and opened his eyes to find the dull gray light of dawn seeping through the thin slits between the Venetian blinds.
He lay for a time without moving, staring up at the ceiling, reviewing both Jamie’s statement and his own. He still could hardly believe his friend had fallen down on him. The two of them had always supported each other in everything.
In the end he had lied to Jamie, as he had to his mother. He had told them both he was going to spend spring break up at his father’s old cabin in the Pecos Mountains.
His mother had been upset at the thought of being left alone for a week. “You know how I hate being all by myself,” she had said piteously.
“I’ve got to make sure the place survived the winter all right,” Brad had told her. “There was a lot of snow this year, and it might have caused some damage. That cabin adds a lot to the value of the property. We want it to be in good shape when the time comes to sell it.”
Now, hundreds of miles away from the fresh green beauty of the Pecos Wilderness, he lay in a lumpy bed in a third-rate motel in Texas, reliving the previous evening and making plans for the day ahead. Watching the room grow slowly lighter, he tried not to listen to the sound of the Trade Winds coming to life on either side of him. Through the thin wall there came the rush of a toilet being flushed in an adjoining bathroom. Then pipes started to rattle as somebody turned on a show
er. The doors of the various units began to open and slam closed, and a car engine sputtered to life outside Brad’s window.
He made no move to get out of bed and participate in the morning activity. He knew there was nothing more he could accomplish on his own, and Tracy would not be available until school let out.
How ironic, he thought, that a stranger would listen and believe him, when the people he should have been able to count on had failed him. Well, he didn’t need any of them now—not his mother, not fair-weather Jamie, not Lieutenant Souter. Now that he had Tracy, he would not be alone anymore.
Brad drew a long breath and willed himself to relax. There was nothing to be gained by rehashing his problems.
Rolling onto his stomach, he pressed his face into a soft hollow in the lumpy pillow and sank at last into the solid state of oblivion that had eluded him throughout his restless night.
Chapter 6
THE CONTINENTAL ARMS WAS a four-sided apartment complex laid out in a rectangular design, with all the units facing out upon the landscaped, open-air recreational area at its center. The building could be entered in one of two ways, either through an underground garage or through a street-level set of double security doors. The first of the security doors led into an entrance hall, which contained a row of mailboxes labeled with the names of tenants. Visitors were required to buzz an occupant and identify themselves over an intercom. The tenant could then, if he or she chose, press a button that would release the lock on the inner door and allow the visitor entrance.
Brad had investigated the situation upon his arrival in Winfield and had come to the conclusion that the better way of gaining entrance to the building was through the underground parking area.
