by Diane Hoh
Officer Blount’s face reddened and he was about to respond when Officer Adelphi said calmly, “Everyone’s looking for her. Most of the other security officers, the Twin Falls police force, volunteers from campus and from town. Hundreds of people are looking for her. But,” she added just as calmly, “if I were you, I don’t think I’d volunteer right now.”
That caught Nora by surprise. Of course she was going to volunteer. She couldn’t wait to get out there and join the search. She needed desperately to feel like she was doing something to help. “But you said I was free to go.”
“You are. But we didn’t question you without reason, Ms. Mulgrew. As we told you earlier, the housekeeper and some other people mentioned your name. You must know how rumors spread on campus. I’m afraid that if you went to the Donner house now, you wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms. Go home, get some rest. There are plenty of people searching for the little girl.”
Nora stared at her in horror. She wasn’t going to be allowed to help search for Mindy?
Of course not. How could she have been so stupid? Hadn’t the parade of day care workers passing by her window told her anything? By now, everyone on campus and in town knew Nora Mulgrew was suspected, at least a little, in the kidnapping of Mindy Donner. That kind of juicy rumor spread on campus like fire in an oil refinery. If even one person on campus said aloud that they thought she had done it, sooner or later everyone on campus would repeat what they’d heard, whether or not they believed it. Wasn’t that the way rumors worked?
“I don’t believe this is happening,” Nora murmured as she left the office. “I don’t believe this!”
But the terrible truth was, she did believe it.
And she didn’t know what to do about it.
Chapter 4
IT WAS DARK BY the time Nora emerged from the security offices to a campus lit only by the round, old-fashioned globes marching on tall, black poles along the campus walkways. It was still hot, but a light breeze stirred the wisps of hair around her face.
She didn’t know where to go. How could she sit in her room at Nightingale Hall knowing that Mindy was missing and she wasn’t doing anything to help find her? But she knew the officer was right. Mary wouldn’t let her in the front door, not after that look she’d given Nora when she passed by the window.
It was so unfair. If anyone wanted to find Mindy and return her to her father, it was Nora Mulgrew. And she wasn’t going to be allowed to help.
“Nora?” A voice came out of the darkness from behind her.
Nora turned to see Lucas Grafton and Amy Tarantino standing under one of the pole lights. “Hi,” Lucas said, approaching her, “we came to see if you wanted to go eat with us. You were in there so long, you must be starving. The volunteers looking for Mindy are taking their dinner breaks on shifts, and this is ours. Come with us.”
They wanted her to go eat with them? But …
“Look,” he said when they were standing in front of her, “we know you’re not involved in this. So do Sabra and Fitz. They’re waiting for us at Vinnie’s. Come on, Nora, you have to eat.”
Nora hesitated. His kindness touched her. He didn’t know any more about her than anyone else did, but while others might be judging her unfairly, Lucas wasn’t. But walk into a restaurant? Now? There would be stares, whispers.
Nora liked Vinnie’s, a local pizzeria. It was a warm,” welcoming, noisy restaurant that wrapped its arms around you the minute you walked in the door. It was always crowded, full of laughter and talk and music from the jukebox, and it smelled heavenly. If you didn’t feel like eating, there was a poolroom at the back where people gathered, sometimes just to talk. She had gone there more than once when she really hadn’t felt like company, just because it was such a nice place to be.
But now …
“Lucas is right,” Amy said. Her eyes were still red and swollen from crying, but she sent Nora a weak smile. “You do have to eat. Vinnie’s won’t be crowded, because so many people are out searching. Anyway, you can’t hide in your room, Nora. You haven’t done anything wrong. Please come.”
“I wasn’t going to hide in my room,” Nora said. “I want to look for Mindy.”
The two exchanged an embarrassed glance.
“Okay, okay, I get the message!” She wasn’t going to be allowed to help. “That housekeeper would never let me on the grounds, anyway.” The bitter thought filled Nora with renewed anger.
She had so many questions. Why had the housekeeper implicated her? Had someone actually seen Mindy being taken from the yard? What was being done to find her? Lucas and Amy might be able to answer those questions for her.
Besides, why should she hide? Like Amy said, she hadn’t done anything wrong.
Nora lifted her head and tightened her mouth. “Let’s go eat!” she said defiantly. She would figure out a way to prove that she’d had nothing to do with Mindy’s disappearance. Until then, she wasn’t scurrying for cover like a criminal.
Her bravado lasted until they walked through the door of Vinnie’s. The atmosphere was very different tonight. No music pouring from the jukebox, no laughter, very little chatter, and the restaurant’s round tables were sparsely occupied. Instead of feeling warm and welcoming, the room was charged with tension and anxiety. Nora felt it the moment she walked in. And she felt that tension increase when heads looked up and people saw her standing in the doorway.
She kept her back straight, shoulders high, as she followed Lucas and Amy to the table in the center where Sabra and Fitz sat. If there were whispers, she couldn’t hear them. But she could feel them, little insects of gossip flying around the room, stinging her, biting her skin, crawling up her back.
She did not sit with her back to the occupied tables. She faced them.
No one could answer her questions. She found that out soon enough. All Lucas knew was that the housekeeper had told security about Nora showing up at the front door that morning with a toy for Mindy. “She said,” Lucas told her when they had ordered, “that she let you play with Mindy for a while, and that she heard you yelling at her. She said that’s when she came out and made you go home.”
“I didn’t yell at Mindy,” Nora said, flushing angrily. “She was whining and I had a migraine, so I asked her to stop, that’s all.” She frowned. “Didn’t the housekeeper tell security that she trusted me enough to let me stay with Mindy while she went next door?”
“She said she never left the house,” Lucas answered.
Nora gasped. “That’s not true! She went next door. And she was gone more than half an hour.”
Amy shrugged. “She probably didn’t want Professor Donner to know that she’d left Mindy alone. I mean,” she added hastily, “with you. Afraid she’d get fired or something. So she didn’t tell the truth.”
“I don’t see what difference that would make,” Sabra said. “Whether the housekeeper left the house or not. Mindy wasn’t taken while the housekeeper was gone, so it’s not important, is it?”
“Of course it’s important!” Nora said hotly. “It would tell the police that this morning at ten o’clock, the housekeeper didn’t think I was a dangerous criminal. It would prove that I was with Mindy for over half an hour with no one else there. If I was going to kidnap her, that would have been the perfect time. So why didn’t I? Why did I supposedly wait until later and return to the house to do it when the housekeeper was there? That doesn’t make any sense. No wonder those security officers didn’t believe anything I said. She’s lying! She has to tell the truth.” Her voice had risen. People were staring at her again.
“Nora, chill out,” Sabra warned in a low voice. “You want people to think you’ve really lost it?”
Nora fell silent then, sinking back in her chair, fighting tears of frustration.
“I have to talk to that housekeeper,” she murmured as their pizza arrived. “I have to make her tell the truth.”
“Don’t go over there,” Fitz warned, selecting a steaming hot slice and placing it
on Nora’s plate. “Eat! Don’t go near that place, and that’s an order.”
Nora didn’t lift a hand toward her plate. “Why not? Would it look too much like the criminal returning to the scene of the crime?” she asked bitterly.
Fitz nodded. “That’s exactly what it would look like. Besides, the housekeeper won’t talk to you. She’s come too close to accusing you outright. Stopped just short of saying she actually saw you carrying Mindy out of the yard.”
Nora’s anger simmered. She had never done anything to Mary except maybe inadvertently steal a little of Mindy’s affection. Was that so terrible? It hadn’t been deliberate. The punishment Mary had designed for her seemed much more severe than the innocent crime.
“Oh-oh, trouble approaching on the right!” Sabra murmured from behind a slice of pizza.
Nora looked to her right. Here came Marjorie Dumas, two friends in tow. Marjorie’s eyes glittered, and her stocky form marched toward the table with a sense of purpose.
“So, Nora,” she said when they arrived, “where are you hiding Mindy? What a dumb thing to do! You know the FBI will be called in if they don’t find her tonight, right? You think you’re so clever, you can mess with the FBI and get away with it?”
Nora didn’t even look up. She kept her eyes on the center of the table, as if she were studying the pizza to see how it had been put together. “Go away, Marjorie. Crawl back into your dark little hole and don’t come out until next spring.”
Marjorie’s round cheeks turned scarlet. “Very amusing. We’ll see who’s laughing when you get carted off to a jail cell. You wanted Mindy all to yourself, didn’t you, Nora? Giving her all those presents, spending so much time with her, so the rest of us hardly got to play with her at all.”
Nora sipped from her Coke glass, willing her hand not to shake. “You sound like a three-year-old yourself. What’s wrong, none of the other kids will play with you? Small wonder.” She spoke calmly, but inside she was seething. The quiet in the room had intensified and she knew people around them were listening to every word. It was humiliating.
“Well, we’ll see,” was all Marjorie could think of to say. She turned then and left, stomping out of the restaurant like the petulant child Nora had accused her of being.
Nora couldn’t stand to sit there another minute. So many pairs of eyes staring at her, some disapproving, some curious, some laden with mistrust. She pushed her chair back and jumped to her feet. “Thanks for inviting me,” she said, “but I’ve got to go. I … I have things to do.”
“No, you don’t,” Fitz argued, looking up at her with concerned eyes. “Sit down.”
“I’m going, too,” Sabra said, standing up and brushing a lock of dark hair away from her face. “I hate not knowing what’s going on. Is everybody else ready to leave? Maybe they’ve found Mindy by now. That would be good, right?”
“We’d have heard,” Lucas pointed out. “Someone would have come in and announced it. No one has.” But he, too, got up, a pizza slice in his hands. “I’m ready. I’ll just take my portable meal with me.”
Fitz and Amy decided to stay. “We’ve got ten minutes left on our break,” Fitz said, “and I’m using them. Call me selfish, but I can’t do my part if my stomach’s empty, and I hate eating on the run. See you later.”
There was a painful, awkward moment outside as Sabra and Lucas prepared to drive back to the search sites, and they realized that Nora couldn’t go with them.
“I’m sorry, Nora,” Sabra said, and Lucas nodded agreement.
“It’s okay,” Nora lied. “Really, I do have stuff to do. I’ll keep the radio on so I’ll know what’s happening. Good luck, you guys. I’ll … I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
But she had every intention, as they waved good-bye and climbed into Lucas’s car, of doing far more than that. Mindy Donner was missing, and Nora wasn’t going to be sitting in her room at Nightingale Hall doing nothing more than crossing her stupid fingers.
When the car had pulled away and its lights had disappeared up the highway, Nora headed straight back to campus, walking fast along the road. The temperature had cooled enough to make walking possible without fear of another headache coming on. The sky overhead, clear that morning, was clouding up quickly.
Please don’t let it rain, Nora prayed as she hurried along the berm, not with Mindy out there somewhere. Don’t let it rain!
Once she got to campus, she went straight to the day care center. Closed on a Saturday evening, there would be no one there to shoo her away, to frown at her disapprovingly as she entered the front yard.
When she was standing inside the high, wooden fence, the yard filled with the shadowy bulk of a wooden playscape and sculpted, heavy stone dinosaurs in primary colors of red, yellow, green, and blue for the children to ride and sit on, Nora tried to think of why she had come here. Maybe some instinct had told her she might learn something here, something about why Mindy had been taken from her own yard.
She wouldn’t have left with just anyone, Nora thought, moving around in front of the heavy wooden swing set to stand in the center of the lawn. Mindy was too smart for that. So the kidnapper had to be someone she knows well. Really well. The people who work here are the ones who know her best. She spends more time with us, with the staff here, than she does at home. She would have gone with one of us.
Who? Who did Mindy trust enough to reach up and take their hand and accompany them away from her own house?
It was very quiet at the center, a long, low building painted forest green, with pale yellow shutters and bright yellow front door. Works of art in fingerpaint and watercolor and crayon had been taped to the windows. The building was dark now, except for a light over the front door. Nora looked at it wistfully, wondering if she’d ever be allowed inside again. Her boss, Helen, would know now that she had visited Mindy at her house that morning. Visiting one of her young charges at home showed a definite disregard for Helen’s warning not to “get involved.” She wouldn’t like it.
Nora half-turned, her eyes scanning the darkness for some sign, some clue, something to tell her she’d come to the right place, and as she turned, the silence was broken by a jingling sound and then by a faint swishing noise to her right. Her head automatically swiveled toward their source.
The heavy wooden swing came at her with great force, slamming into her right temple like a hammer. The blow knocked her off her feet and sideways. Her body landed on the soft, thick grass, but the back of her skull struck one of the heavy curved horns on the red stone stegosaurus directly behind her.
Without a sound, Nora’s eyes closed and her body went limp.
Dispassionate eyes from beyond the swing set watched without emotion as Nora flew backward and collided with the stone dinosaur.
Then, satisfied footsteps hurried away from the day care center.
Leaving Nora behind, unconscious.
Chapter 5
“AH, I SEE YOU’RE awake. Good. We can get on with our story. I brought you some milk and cookies. You sit up and eat them like a nice girl and I’ll sit here in the rocking chair and tell you more of my story.
“The woman in the gray coat drove for a long, long time. The child cried until it fell asleep. When it woke up, it wasn’t back home in its own bed. It was in a tiny cabin, set so far back into the woods that there wasn’t even a road leading to it, only a rough trail created by the woman’s truck. The woman’s house wasn’t big and roomy and bright with sunshine, like the house in the country with the pony and the rabbits. It was dark and dreary. And it was very cold, with a penetrating chill that made the child’s bones ache.
“The cabin had no front porch where you could play on a rainy day. It had only two steps made out of overturned wooden crates, leading to the door. Then you were inside. But the inside was only two rooms. One was a kitchen with a big old black stove and a sink on white metal legs underneath a small window curtained in red and white checks on one side, a sofa and an old faded brown chair and a low coffee tabl
e piled high with old magazines at the end closest to the front door.
“The other room was small, and very dim. There was a white iron bed surrounded by stacks of old books and magazines. There was a small, lumpy-looking cot stationed against one wall. Small twin windows sat very high in the wall so that no one could see in. The room smelled musty, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in a long time, and that odor mixed unpleasantly with cooking smells because there was no door between the bedroom and the kitchen.
“There was no television set. Only a small, brown radio sitting on top of the refrigerator.
“‘It’s not so bad, is it, precious child?’ the woman asked. ‘I tried to fix it up some. I made those pretty curtains you see at the window, bought the material in town and sewed them by hand. You’ll sleep in my bedroom, on that nice little cot. Gets pretty cold in there sometimes, but I’ve got lots of quilts. Made those myself, too, out of scraps.’ The woman laughed. ‘That’s one thing we’ve got plenty of around here, scraps. Most everything’s scraps. But that’s okay. We won’t mind, will we? We’ll have each other. Now, let’s take your things off and get you settled.’
“The child cried and cried, for days, and begged the woman to take her home, but the woman always said the same thing, she always said, ‘I’ve been alone too long. I don’t have to be alone anymore, because I have you. This is your home now.’
“The child knew that it wasn’t. Not this cold, tiny cabin with no other children to play with, no mommy and daddy, no rabbits, no pony, no other children. This wasn’t home.
“Where were mommy and daddy? Why didn’t they come to get their child?
“‘They don’t want you anymore,’ the woman said one night in a tired voice. ‘I didn’t want to tell you, but you just won’t let up, you just won’t stop that crying and whining and I can’t stand it anymore, it’s not supposed to be like this, we’re supposed to be happy, just the two of us here in our little house. So I have to tell you. Your mommy and daddy asked me to take care of you because they only have enough time for one child and they wanted the other one the most. So they gave you to me. Forever.’
