by Diane Hoh
But when a shadowy figure did appear, a voice quickly said, “Nora? Is that you?”
“Lucas!” Nora climbed shakily to her feet. “Lucas, did you see him? He must have passed you. He just left!”
Lucas wasn’t alone. Amy, Sabra, and Fitz were right behind him. Fitz carried a large flashlight. Its beam lit up most of the barn. “Did I see who?” Lucas asked as they all arrived at Nora’s side. “Who just left? And what are you doing with that pitchfork?”
“The kidnapper, that’s who,” Nora answered the first question. “He must have gone right by you. He was up in the loft.” She pointed. All eyes followed her trembling hand. “He threw this pitchfork at me.” She looked down at the fork she was holding. Under the flashlight’s glow, she could see that the tool was small, clearly built for children’s hands. But it wasn’t a toy. The tines were made of strong metal, not plastic. And it hadn’t felt like a toy when it impaled her arm.
“Did it hit you in the arm?” Sabra asked, pointing. “It’s bleeding, and your raincoat is torn.”
“Yes. He threw it at me, and then he jumped out that little door at the end of the loft. I thought he was coming back in here to finish the job, but you guys showed up instead.”
All eyes returned to the shadowed hayloft.
“What’s going on here?” Officer Jonah Reardon’s voice said as he entered the barn. He had returned to inform her there were no fingerprints on the box of nail clippings, not even hers, which meant that she wasn’t under arrest … for now. He listened attentively as she told him what had happened.
“Take her inside,” Reardon told the others when Nora had finished her frightening story. “If Mrs. Coates is home, have her take a look at that arm. That looks nasty. I’ll check out the loft. See what I can find.”
On the way to the house, Nora said, “I thought you guys were looking for Mindy. What are you doing here? Has she been found?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not yet. Wish I could tell you different, but I can’t. We decided to meet here so we could check up on you. Our shift is over. Another team has taken over.”
Fitz held the back door open. “We didn’t expect to find you in the barn with a pitchfork in your hands. You sure you’re okay?”
Nora had no idea if she was okay or not. It didn’t seem important. “I can’t believe none of you saw him,” she complained, sitting down in one of the wooden kitchen chairs. “Where could he have gone when he jumped from the hayloft?”
“Into the woods, maybe,” Amy suggested, taking a seat opposite Nora. Her dark, curly hair, rain-moistened, clung to her forehead and cheeks. “He could have disappeared into the trees and undergrowth just as I came around the house.”
Nora frowned. “Weren’t you all together? Didn’t you get here at the same time?”
“No.” Fitz pulled up a chair next to Amy. “We were all on separate search teams. But we arranged to meet here when we were replaced by a fresh team. So, tell us again what you were doing out in the barn.”
Amy and Sabra went in search of the housemother while Nora repeated the sequence of events. When Mrs. Coates arrived, in robe and slippers, pink foam rollers in her hair, she disinfected and bandaged Nora’s arm. The puncture wound hurt, but the sharp metal tine had missed the bone.
“If that really was the kidnapper in the barn with you,” Amy said thoughtfully, “then … where was Mindy?”
A sobering question, and an important one.
“Tied up, maybe?” Lucas ventured when Nora didn’t answer. “Or locked in somewhere?”
The images his suggestions conjured up were distasteful to all of them. Clever, adorable Mindy, tied up, maybe gagged?
Perhaps to offset the frightening pictures torturing all of them, Fitz said, “Maybe that wasn’t Mindy’s kidnapper in the barn, Nora. Maybe it was somebody else, someone with a really sick sense of humor. I’ve read about people like that in other kidnappings … the lunatic fringe who take advantage of someone’s misery to get attention.”
Nora’s mind heard again the telephoned accusation: “Kid-snatcher!” Doubt swept over her. She’d been so sure the voice in the barn had belonged to Mindy’s captor. “But he faked Mindy’s voice,” she protested aloud. “Why would he do that, if he wasn’t involved in the kidnapping?”
Fitz shrugged. “Like I said, the lunatic fringe. Everyone knows she’s missing, anyway. And anyone can imitate a kid’s voice. It’s easy.”
“You know, Nora,” Amy added reluctantly, “a lot of people on campus think you took Mindy because you were so attached to her and kept saying you’d always wanted a sister. Other people say you did it to get back at Helen for lecturing you in front of everyone last week. Telling you not to spend so much time with Mindy. Maybe the guy in the barn was one of those people.”
“Cut it out, Amy!” Sabra said sharply. “You’re scaring Nora.”
“Oh, I’m scared, all right,” Nora admitted, standing up. “Which is why I’m going to my room right now. Maybe I’ll feel safe there. But it’s not Amy who’s scaring me. It’s … it’s everything.”
“We’ll come with you,” Lucas offered. “And wait with you until that cop comes back and tells us if he found anything in the hayloft.”
Any other time, Nora would have declined their company, sent them away. But not tonight. Tonight, she was in no hurry to be alone.
All the way up the stairs, Lucas and Fitz made half-joking comments about the “creepy atmosphere” in Nightingale Hall, and Sabra said, “No wonder they call it Nightmare Hall. The perfect name, if you ask me.”
Nora didn’t argue. It was beginning to seem like the perfect name.
She was in such a hurry to return to the safety of her room that she never saw the note.
It was Amy who found it, lying just inside Nora’s door. “Nora?” She bent to pick up the piece of paper. “Someone left you a message.”
The only friends Nora had on campus were already with her, here, in this room. If one of them had slid the note under the door, they would be saying so, now. Lucas or Sabra or Fitz would see the note in Amy’s hand and one of them would say, “Oh, that’s mine. I left it earlier, Nora. You must have already gone out to the barn.”
But no one said that.
“Nora?” Amy repeated, extending the note.
“Don’t read it!” Nora said frantically. “Don’t look at it, throw it out.”
But Amy was already looking down, already reading aloud. GIVE THE KID BACK OR YOUR LIFE WONT BE WORTH TWO CENTS!
It was signed, A FRIEND TO ALL CHILDREN EVERYWHERE.
Amy finished reading and lifted her head, her dark eyes wide with chagrin. “Oh, Nora, I’m sorry. You were right. I shouldn’t have read it.”
“Yes,” Fitz said, walking over to take the note from Amy’s hand, “you should have.” He scanned the paper quickly, then tossed it into the wicker wastebasket. “It’s like I said, Nora. Some sicko, torturing you. Probably the same creep who was in the barn.”
“I don’t think you should throw that note away,” Lucas said, striding over to the basket to pluck free the offending piece of paper. “We can give it to that cop when he comes … whoa, what’s this?”
Nora, sitting on her bed, looked up at the change in his tone of voice.
Lucas was holding the crumpled piece of paper in his left hand. In his right, he held a small pink shoe.
A sneaker.
A very small sneaker.
A very small pink sneaker, with Velcro fasteners for little fingers that had not yet conquered the intricacies of tying laces.
Nora recognized the shoe immediately.
So did Amy and Sabra. “That’s Mindy’s!” they breathed almost simultaneously.
“No,” Nora said in a flat voice, standing up, her hands at her mouth, “no, it can’t be! Not in my wastebasket, in my room, it’s not, it’s not!”
“Probably another sick joke,” Fitz said. “It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.”
Sabra reached out then to t
ake the shoe from Lucas. She glanced inside the small, pink sneaker. “It’s Mindy’s, all right,” she said, looking up to meet Nora’s eyes. “Her name tag’s inside. M.L.D. Mindy Louise Donner. Mindy.”
No one said a word.
A few silent seconds later, Jonah Reardon’s voice said, “What’s going on?” Fitz had left the door open and Reardon had walked in without knocking. “Sorry I was gone so long,” he said. “Hated to give up. But I didn’t find a thing.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Lucas said, “We did.” He held up the note and the sneaker.
“It’s hers?” the officer asked, moving forward to take the shoe from Lucas. “Where’d you find it?”
“In my wastebasket,” Nora answered. She didn’t like the way the other four were looking at her. They’d been supportive up until now, far more so than she would have expected, considering how little they knew of her. But now she could see new questions in their eyes. They were as stunned by the discovery of the shoe as she was, but she had an advantage over them. She knew she had never put that shoe there. They couldn’t know that, not really.
“Anyone could have put this shoe here, Nora,” Jonah Reardon surprised her by saying. “In fact, if someone is trying to throw suspicion your way, and the box of fingernail clippings suggests just that, this really was a pretty dumb move. He’s expecting the police to believe that you’d be stupid enough to leave this kind of evidence lying around if you were the real kidnapper?”
“It wasn’t exactly lying around, officer,” Amy pointed out. “It was sort of hidden in Nora’s wastebasket.”
“It wasn’t hidden, Amy,” Lucas disagreed. “I saw it right away.”
“Sorry,” Amy apologized, flushing slightly. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
But Nora wasn’t convinced. It had sounded to her as if Amy had said exactly what she’d been thinking.
“Look,” Reardon said, “I’ll have to take the shoe downtown. And the note. The captain needs to know about these things. But I checked that wastebasket myself today and there was no shoe in it then. Seems pretty obvious to me that it was planted there.”
Buoyed by his support, Nora showed him the child’s pitchfork. “First a swing,” he murmured, “now a child’s gardening tool. Whoever is doing this wants to make sure the message is clear, right? That his attacks are somehow connected to the Donner girl’s disappearance?”
“Couldn’t it just be someone who thinks Nora is guilty and is trying to punish her, like the note implies?” Fitz asked.
Reardon nodded. “Could be. But there’s been no announcement in the media about any suspects at all, so it would have to be someone from campus, someone who’s heard the rumors. Anyone got any ideas?”
They all exchanged dubious glances and shrugged.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Nora said in a dull, emotionless voice. She was so tired, and she especially hated having attention focused on her when everyone’s energy should be concentrated on finding Mindy.
“I don’t, either,” Amy echoed.
“You,” Reardon said to Nora, “are staying in this room. Get some sleep. I’m going to take this stuff to the station. Lock the door when we leave. It’s late, and there’s no place you need to go. I’m coming back here when I’ve turned this stuff in,” holding up the shoe and the note, “to make sure you stay put.”
“I don’t need police protection,” Nora argued. “You should be out looking for Mindy, not playing guardian angel to me. I’m fine.” The throbbing in her injured arm and the knot on the back of her head disagreed with her, but she ignored them. “Besides, if you park that police car in front of Nightingale Hall, everyone passing by will think it’s because I’m a suspect. They’ll think you’re making sure I don’t try to escape.”
“Maybe. But the loose cannon who used you for pitchfork target practice in the barn will see the car, too. And he’ll think twice about coming after you again.”
When he had gone, the heels of his boots echoing sharply along the hall until he hit the carpeted stairs, Amy turned to Nora and said, “Well, your own personal protector! Good going, Nora. And he’s cute! Where’d you find him?”
“I didn’t find him. He found me.” Nora told them about the runaway swing at the daycare center. “The weird thing,” she added, sitting back down on her bed, “is that he seems pretty sure that I didn’t snatch Mindy. I mean, I’m grateful, but I don’t get it. He hardly knows me.”
“Well,” Lucas said loyally, “we don’t know you very well, either, but we know you didn’t do it.”
Nora waited for loud, enthusiastic agreement from the other three. It didn’t come, although they did nod almost automatically.
Never mind. She had other things to think about. “They’ll keep searching all night long, won’t they?” Her head was throbbing wickedly now. She needed to sleep. But how could she do that with Mindy still missing?
“All night,” Fitz confirmed.
“They replaced us,” Amy told Nora, “because they wanted teams that weren’t too tired to be alert. We’re supposed to go home and sleep and go back in the morning.”
Nora looked so stricken at the thought that Mindy might not have been found by morning, that Lucas quickly amended, “But I’m sure they’ll have found her by then, Nora. They will.”
Promising to call her the minute they heard anything, the four left.
Nightingale Hall seemed more deserted than it ever had when they had gone. Nora had always liked the peace and quiet of the house. She had valued it. Now she was beginning to fear and despise it.
She locked the door, turned off the light, and retreated to her bed. It was still raining lightly outside, the drops making a faint rapping sound against the glass of her open window.
Nora lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. How had Mindy’s sneaker made its way into Nora Mulgrew’s wastebasket! Was it really Mindy’s shoe? Anyone could put a name tag into a pink sneaker. Was it supposed to be another message, like the sinister note and phone call? Or was it just another attempt to make her look guilty, like the box of fingernail clippings?
If that really was Mindy’s shoe, and she’d been wearing it when she was taken, only one person could have placed it in the wastebasket. The real kidnapper.
Nora fought the impulse to phone Mary at the Donner house and ask which shoes Mindy had been wearing that day. She had more than one pair. It seemed like a really important question.
But even if the housekeeper were willing to answer the question, it was much too late to call now. It would have to wait until morning.
The kidnapping, and the attacks on her at the day care center and again in the barn were connected, Nora was convinced of that. She didn’t know how or why, but she knew they were.
Her head began to throb viciously. Oh no, not another migraine.
Nora wrestled with her fear and worry over Mindy until the first faint rays of dawn turned her room a smoky silver. Then, against her will, her eyes closed and she sank into an exhausted, fitful sleep.
In her sleep, she heard again the taunting, falsetto voice calling her name repeatedly.
So when she awakened to a room filled with bright sunshine and heard her name being shouted, it took her a while to realize that she was awake, she wasn’t dreaming, and someone really was calling her name. From outside.
That same someone was pounding ferociously on Nightingale Hall’s front door.
Chapter 9
NORA BOLTED UPRIGHT IN bed. Someone was pounding on the front door and shouting her name. It was Sunday morning. Mrs. Coates went to church on Sunday. She never locked the front door. If Lucas, Amy, Sabra, or Fitz had come rushing to Nightingale Hall to present the good news that Mindy had been found, they would have burst into the house without knocking and run right up to her room.
So it wasn’t any of them shouting her name on the front porch.
But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be good news. Jonah Reardon had promised to let
her know when Mindy had been found. Maybe that was him on the front porch yelling up at her to let him in.
Nora jumped out of bed and yanked on shorts and a T-shirt. “I’m coming!” she shouted out the open window, but the pounding continued.
She ran down the stairs, fingers on both hands crossed behind her back. “Please, please, please!” she whispered as she hurried to the front door. “Let this be Jonah Reardon, smiling and telling me that Mindy is home, safe and sound, where she belongs.”
She yanked the door wide open.
The man who had been pounding so frantically and shouting Nora’s name was Professor Keith Donner. Mindy’s father.
He looked terrible. He was ordinarily a nice-looking man. Now, his eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, he needed a shave, his thinning dark hair was uncombed, his face pale and drawn. “Do you know where my daughter is?” he asked Nora in a hoarse, shaky voice. “Do you? If you do, please tell me, please!”
Nora was too startled to speak at first. Then, when she realized what he had said, too horrified.
“If you know anything, anything at all,” Professor Donner continued, brushing past Nora to stand in the entry hall, “you have to tell me.” His tan slacks were wrinkled, as if he’d slept in them, his white shirt dotted with coffee stains from cups held with trembling hands. But it was his eyes that made Nora bleed inside. They were tortured, filled with panic and fear for his missing child.
“I don’t know anything, Professor Donner,” she answered, struggling to keep the hurt out of her voice. She couldn’t blame the distraught man for clutching at straws. But he had to know that if she had the tiniest bit of information about Mindy, she’d tell. He just wasn’t thinking straight in his terror for his daughter. “I wish I did, but …”
“I don’t believe you.”
The statement, uttered in a low, desperate voice, caught Nora off guard. Then, when the words sank in, her jaw dropped, and she stared at him, thinking that perhaps she hadn’t heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”
“I said, I don’t believe you. I overheard some of the searchers talking. Your name kept coming up. And I know how attached you were to my little girl.” His voice broke, then gained strength again. “I thought it was a good thing, you giving her special attention, visiting her at the house, giving her those toys, while her mother was in the hospital. A good thing. But now I think you decided she was being neglected, not getting enough attention while her mother is sick, and that upset you, so you took her from us.” The hot sun was shining directly down upon the front of the house. Beads of perspiration dotted the professor’s forehead, “If you did that, Nora, you have to tell me. You have to tell me where you’ve hidden her. I won’t press charges, I give you my word, I know you thought you were doing the right thing for Mindy.” He was pleading now, begging. “But she belongs at home, Nora, you know that, you know she does. Just tell me where you’re hiding her. I’ll go get her, and I won’t even tell the police where I found her. I just want her back. They won’t know anything, I promise.”
