by Jan Coffey
Nate took a sip. “Can I have the recipe? My ’67 Mustang could use this.”
She shot him a “not amused” look and walked out of the room. Nate ended up following her again. “Can we sit and talk for a few minutes?”
“I never sit.”
“Okay. Then could I sit and talk and you listen?” His knee was starting to throb.
The coffee sloshed over the edge of the cup when she turned to him. “My answer is still the same, Agent Murtaugh. What’s going on with that little boy changes nothing. Even if you convinced me that the Schuyler flag was destroyed, I wouldn’t be interested in helping you.”
“Will you change your mind if I got another agent involved?” At her incredulous look, he rephrased the question. “I mean, is it me that you don’t want to work with?”
“No, and no.” She took a long sip of her drink. “Shouldn’t your friend have called by now?”
There were half a dozen cars in various states of disrepair parked in the body shop lot. In the chain-link-fenced yard to the back of the cinder-block building, rusting cars and trucks were piled up in tilting stacks. Graffiti messages of No Trespassing and Dog Will Bite! covered the gate. A single floodlight mounted high on an old telephone pole shone starkly on the immediate area around the gate.
Chris crouched low in the back seat of a windowless station wagon close to the gate. His gaze never wavered more than a few seconds at a time from the phone booth leaning up against a utility pole near the road. The box of Lucky Charms was propped between his knees. He’d made a little game for himself of popping one stale moon or heart or shamrock into his mouth any time a car went by. He wasn’t making any dent at all in what was left in the box.
A while ago—he didn’t know how long it was, maybe an hour or more—the phone had started ringing. At exactly the same time, Chris had seen a muddy car pull off the road and slowly circle the lot. He’d been scared enough to pee in his pants again. Piling all the garbage in the back seat on top of him, he’d fit himself in the small space behind the passenger’s seat.
It had been a miracle that he’d found his way to the body shop and the phone. He’d walked through the woods in the dark forever. But they tracked him down somehow.
The phone kept ringing, and after a while he heard the car drive off down the road. It took a few minutes for Chris to get himself to look up. The lot was empty. All was quiet except for a noisy mosquito buzzing around his ear. He wondered if the person who was calling had been Miss Littlefield. But he was too scared to get out and walk to the booth. Besides, the phone had stopped ringing.
There were no cars coming now. There hadn’t been for a while. Chris cheated and popped a fistful into his mouth. His stomach was growling, and his mouth was almost too dry to swallow the cereal. He looked at the tall soda machine next to the dark glass windows of the station and reached into his pocket, counting the change. Fifty-five cents was all that he had left after the phone calls he’d made to Miss Littlefield. And to think he’d felt so rich finding all that change just by scrounging under the seats of the cars in the outer lot.
The coins in his hand dropped onto the floor when a pickup truck pulled into the lot. The truck parked next to the phone booth under the light. Chris slid down in the seat and watched the man behind the wheel look around at the cars. The truck’s windows were down, and from this distance Chris couldn’t see the man’s face too well, but he could tell he wasn’t wearing any suit or tie, or anything like that.
He slid down farther and pressed his face against the torn vinyl of the seat when the stranger opened his door and stepped out. Scrambling in the small space, Chris pulled newspapers and other trash on top of him.
“Christopher!”
The loud call made the young boy start shivering. This guy knew his name. He knew he was here.
“Christopher, I’m Officer Tom. I’m here to help you.” The voice was getting closer. “You called Miss Littlefield tonight—the lady who gave you a ride on Friday. But she’s in Philadelphia and couldn’t get up here fast enough. So she called me to come and help you.”
Chris heard a car drive by on the road. His mind was getting more confused by the second. She’d trusted this guy. But what if he was lying? Then again, how would he know Chris had called her?
“I’m a friend, Chris,” the man said more gently. “There’s no reason for you to hide. You haven’t done anything wrong. We just need to ask you a few questions about the fire.”
“What fire?” he whispered, then shut his mouth, realizing his mistake. Suddenly, everything had become too quiet. He waited a heartbeat before his curiosity got hold of him and he snaked up to look out the window. Officer Tom was peering inside a mashed-up sports car across the lot from the station wagon Chris was hiding in. Like a big cat’s, though, the man’s head snapped in his direction. He was caught.
“There you are. Why don’t you come out, Chris?” he asked softly, taking a couple of steps and stopping. He was holding out his hand. “You must be starving.”
Chris didn’t know what to do. This guy didn’t sound mean, and he wasn’t running over to get him. There was no point in hiding anymore, anyway.
“Everybody has been pretty darn worried about you. Mrs. Green. Your teachers. Your classmates. I stopped yesterday and talked to your mom. She’s very worried.”
“Right. As if she’d care,” Chris mumbled under his breath.
“Miss Littlefield says she’ll be up here first thing tomorrow morning to see you at Mrs. Green’s.” He took another step toward the car. “Come on, kiddo. You’re not all alone in this. There are people who care, you know.”
Fear, hunger, the feeling that there were bugs crawling all over him—there were a hundred reasons to go with Officer Tom, and none he could think of for not going. Chris slowly pulled the handle and pushed the creaky door open until it scraped the chain-link fence.
He hesitated and reached back into the car for the box of Lucky Charms. Then, as he was backing out, the sound of a car roaring into the lot reached his ears. Chris barely had time to turn around when the screeching of tires stopped him cold.
Seven
Waiting for the phone call from Murtaugh’s upstate New York cop friend, Ellie decided the silent treatment was her best defense. The man was everywhere. She ran a hand up and down her arms. No invisible strings connecting them that she could find. It was impossible, though, to ignore him, and getting worse by the minute.
She’d returned to the back room to reorganize the lighting. He came in, and suddenly there was no air in the place. She moved to the adjacent area and rearranged some of the end tables and chairs. He joined her and, without being asked, gave her a hand. Ellie escaped to the front of the shop and went to work on the displays under the glass showcases. Murtaugh walked in and sat on the high stool, watching her through the glass. Then he had the gall to ruin any chance of ridiculing him by making intelligent comments about the pieces.
If he were anyone else, Ellie thought, she’d probably enjoy his company. Educated, a good sense of humor and certainly easy on the eyes. He’d fit into any circle. She had to remind herself that this was exactly the plan. That was why he was chosen for the job. He would slip without any trouble into the role of a collector.
“Where did these come from?”
She pulled her head from under the glass to see which items he was pointing at. On the other end of the display case, he was bent over her new collection of snuffboxes. She moved over and brought out the three pieces. “I bought them in a private showing of an estate near Ticonderoga this past Friday.”
“Is that why you went up there?”
“Are you interested in them or in me?”
“I guess it would be inappropriate to say ‘you.”’
Ellie looked at him steadily, stunned by the odd sensation of butterflies his comment triggered. “Very.”
“Okay. How about ‘both’?”
“Still wrong, would be my guess. What do the regulations say, Spe
cial Agent?”
“Guess I’ll have to plead my Fifth Amendment rights on that.” His boyish smile made him look downright handsome, even to Ellie. “Mind if I handle the pieces?”
“Go ahead.”
He reached for the white-enameled snuffbox. His hand was large, but the gentleness that he used to caress the ribs on the cover and the depictions of blue crowns in the corners was unsettling. Ellie looked up and found herself noticing how long and dark his lashes were. His head came up and for a second she was lost in the depth of his blue eyes. She blushed.
“What’s the story with this one?”
“An enameled snuffbox from London. Dates back to the 1750s. Because of the patterns, I believe it was fashioned to celebrate the creation of the future George III as Prince of Wales.”
He looked at the small price tag on the thread. “Twenty-four-hundred dollars. How much did you pay for it?”
“Twelve hundred.”
Ellie planted her elbows on the glass and met his gaze head-on. “I don’t apologize for the markup.”
“Nor should you. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you told me you paid five bucks for it. As a matter of fact, I think my grandfather had a box like this on his dresser when I was a kid. My mother sold it at a yard sale for a buck.”
“I should start going to more yard sales in your neighborhood,” she replied. “Where do your parents live?”
“Upstate New York.”
The dimple in his tanned cheek was too much. Ellie had to do something with her hands, so she organized the pen collection on the top shelf.
“Why the private showing? I’d have thought an auction could have done better for the previous owner.”
“Maybe, but the owner didn’t want an auction. In this case, she’s a widow, in ill health. For financial reasons, she wanted to liquidate the estate, but for personal reasons she didn’t want the public nature of an auction. I was contacted through a mutual friend who is also a dealer but was only interested in her clocks.”
“You could have given her less for this, I’m guessing. Why didn’t you? You sound pretty generous to me.”
“I wasn’t being generous. I gave her a fair price. It’s what she would have gotten if she’d had time to sell it somewhere on consignment. I’ll hold it and hope the value goes up, but that’s the risk of being in this business.”
“Interesting that she trusted you.”
“My business works because of trust and word of mouth.”
“She was right to trust you.” Nate was openly studying her face, and she found herself getting flustered. “I’m impressed.”
“Well, don’t be,” she snapped, angry with herself for letting him put her off with just a look. She took a deep breath to calm herself before continuing. “For every purchase like this one, I’ve stolen at least a hundred in tag sales and church auctions. I’ve even culled through stuff on the side of the road.”
“You mean road kill?”
“Sometimes you get lucky.” Ellie stopped and put the boxes back into the display case. She shot him a threatening look. “The funny thing about road kill is that often there are no witnesses around when a person does the killing.”
Nate took a pad of paper and a pen from next to the register and started scribbling on it. “Would you care to elaborate on that, Miss Littlefield?”
She leaned over the counter and smiled innocently at him. “No. Not really, Agent Murtaugh.”
“You sure know how to pique a man’s interest.”
“Not a man’s,” she replied. “A federal agent’s.”
“I’m afraid I have to correct you on that point, Ms. Littlefield.”
His blue eyes were riveted to her face. Ellie ignored the tightening in her stomach and tried to come up with something flippant to say. Luckily, his cell phone began to ring. As it did, the guilt and anxiety she’d had about Christopher rushed back.
The transformation in Nate was immediate. His face became unreadable. He walked into a shadowy corner at the far end of the room. The words he spoke were cryptic, and Ellie had no idea if this call had anything to do with the young boy or not. The suspense was nearly killing her.
“Which hospital?” she heard him ask.
She almost tripped over a stack of Shaker baskets in her rush to get around the counter. Murtaugh, rubbing the back of his neck and with the phone still plugged into his ear, was disappearing into the back room.
The thought of something having happened to Chris washed through her like February rain. It was all her fault. She should have taken the boy to his school, or to the museum office. The world was a different place now than when she was young. And just because Ellie had been able to manage alone, she shouldn’t have assumed that Chris could, too.
She had been twelve; he was eight. She had lived in a city with thousands of people around. He was isolated in the country. She’d survived. He was hurt. And it was her fault.
Ellie caught up with Murtaugh. He was still talking on the phone. She went around him, trying to get his attention. He turned his back on her. She moved next to him, playing the part of his shadow.
“Tire tracks…yeah…hold on a minute.”
He gave her an irritated glare over his shoulder. “Do you mind?”
“Is it Chris?” she asked.
Nate paused a second, but instead of answering, he went back to his conversation. “You know the procedures. I’ll be up there first thing in the morning.”
A lump in her throat threatened to choke her. Her feet were locked in concrete.
“Well, I don’t care what he says. I’m involved with this now.” Nate ended the call, and she was immediately in his face. “Things didn’t go as planned.”
“What happened to Chris?”
“We don’t know. Maybe nothing. As far as we know, McGill and the boy never connected. Sorry, I have to go.” He turned around and started for the front of the store.
Ellie cut in front and blocked him. “And you wonder why is it that normal people don’t want to have anything to do with you people? I asked you to come here. I gave you the information about Chris. If you had one shred of decency, you would tell me what the heck is going on.”
“Officer McGill went down tonight.”
Nate’s statement knocked the air out of her. “Where? How did it happen?”
“In the lot of the body shop where he was supposed to meet up with Chris. It looks like a hit-and-run. A police cruiser passing by saw McGill’s pickup truck and then spotted his body on the ground.”
“How bad is he?”
“He’s still unconscious. Other than that, it’s too early to tell. They airlifted him to Moses-Ludington Hospital in Ticonderoga.”
“And Chris? Did anybody even look for him?”
“Tom had called in to the station before he left his house. They looked for Chris, but there was no sign of him.”
“I’m going up there with you,” Ellie blurted. “I heard you say you were going. Maybe Chris is hanging around. If he sees me, then he might come forward.”
“There’ll be a police investigation into this. I’d just as soon not get you involved at this point.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re…” He stopped.
“What?” she pressed. “Because I’m the daughter of an ex-con? Because I have a record myself?”
His cell phone started ringing again. Ellie didn’t back up when Nate answered and half turned away. From where she was standing, she could hear some creative obscenities pour out of the phone.
Nate walked past her toward the front of the store. Ellie followed him. “I don’t see what the problem is. I’m only going for the day. But I would’ve thought Chief Buckley had something better to do than call you with minute-by-minute updates. I just got off the god-damn phone with him.”
The voice on the other end was so loud that Ellie saw Nate pull the phone away and tug on his earlobe irritably. When the person on the other end paused, Nate dove in again.
> “We don’t know what happened. And Buckley can’t possibly know if this was a case of drunken driving. He has no one in custody yet. Hey, I was the one who sent McGill out there. The least I could—”
The voice started shouting again. Ellie heard her own name. Sounded like Nate’s only something-something job was to get her to help acquire the something-something flag. She had no doubt that the foul mouth belonged to Sanford Hawes, a big gun at the FBI. Sister Helen had warned her about this Hawes, now a supposed friend but the same guy who’d put her behind bars. He had a reputation for being a pit bull who always got the job done, whatever the cost.
Sister Helen had given her a number of bits of advice about Hawes and the FBI this afternoon. Get involved on your own terms before you’re forced to help them, and insist on working with a reasonable agent. She watched an increasingly frustrated Murtaugh run a hand through his hair, making the short tufts stand out in every direction. This was a side of him she rather liked seeing right now.
“No. Now you listen to me, Sanford. You’re busting a gasket over nothing. I’m not trying to handle everyone else’s job at the expense of my own. What…let me finish—”
He switched the phone from one ear to the other and stalked to the front window. For the first time she noticed the slight limp.
“Reassign me, if you think that’s called for,” Nate yelled back. “You’ve been on my back ever since you gave me this assignment…I know our asses are on the line. But if you think you can run this thing from your office…”
Ellie shuddered at the very thought of Hawes’s direct involvement. She hadn’t even met the man, but the idea of being pushed along by someone like him was revolting. Sister Helen had said there were no options. The politics of the election was one hundred percent the motivation behind this, and Helen’s and Ellie’s names were already mixed up in it. And Ellie knew that she had enough ghosts in her closet. If anyone dug deep, they could put a headlock on her.
“I’m done talking about this, Sanford. You’re so full of this political crap that you can’t even hear or see straight.” He sat down on one of the stools and rubbed his knee. “I’m fed up. Get someone else down here or come yourself. I’m going back to New York.”
