FAMILY FALLACIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series #3) (10 page)

T
hanksgiving Day was
everything Kate had hoped it would be. The house was full of people and
laughter and wonderful fragrances wafting from the kitchen.

Kate was flabbergasted
by how much her niece and nephew had grown up. She hadn’t seen them since the
previous Christmas. Mike was now a freshman in college and well over six feet.
Kate looked up at him. “Don’t you get dizzy up there, Mike?”

Then she turned to her
fourteen-year-old niece. “And look at you, Amy. You’ve turned into a young lady
when I wasn’t looking.” The girl of last year, who had still had one foot in
childhood, was now a full-blown teenager.

As the day progressed,
Kate felt an occasional twinge of missing Skip but most of the time she was
kept busy helping her mother in the kitchen or visiting with her family. When
he came to mind, she imagined him having an equally good time with his mother
and his sister’s family. He was probably giving his nephews and niece pony
rides on his broad back at that very moment.

It didn’t occur to her
until she was getting ready for bed that night that she hadn’t thought about
Eddie all day. That made her a little sad, and optimistic at the same time.

Friday morning, the
‘girls’ were only a few minutes behind schedule getting away from the house.
They had planned to take Edie with them, but she woke up with the sniffles so
Kate left her in Maria’s capable hands. Kate had taken her father aside and
filled him in on the notes and the possible risk to Edie. Dan O’Donnell was in
his seventies but he was a big man, in reasonably good health, and the younger
men would be there as well. Kate knew her father wouldn’t let anything happen
to his youngest granddaughter.

The three generations
of O’Donnell women had a wonderful time for the first couple hours. But by
lunchtime, Amy’s interest in hanging out with her relatives was waning. She
started whining that she was bored and wanted to leave. Phyllis pointed out
that other people’s plans could not be altered just because she was a bit
bored.

Amy’s face set in a
stubborn look. Kate had trouble hiding her smile. She’d seen that look on her
father’s face quite a few times through the years. Amy was definitely an
O’Donnell.

Finally Phyllis got
tired of the whining and gave in when Amy suggested she could call her brother
to come get her. “He’s meeting me out front in twenty minutes, Mom,” Amy said
after making the call. “See ya!”

Phyllis just sighed and
muttered, “Teenagers!” as the girl hurried away.

Kate clamped her teeth
together to keep from saying anything. She wasn’t sure it was safe to let a
young girl loose in this crowd by herself. It would be far too easy for a
sexual predator to target her. But she knew from past experience that Phyllis
would scoff at such a warning. Phyllis believed that Kate was paranoid about
such things because of the work she did. But Kate knew that crowded malls were
a favorite hangout for pedophiles.

Not my call
,
Kate reminded herself.
I’m not the girl’s mother.

An hour later the three
women were rummaging through racks of clothes in Nordstrom’s bargain area when
Phyllis’s cell phone rang. Her face went white and then red as she listened to
whatever the caller was saying. “Stay there. I’ll be right out,” she snapped
into the phone and disconnected.

“That girl is going to
be the death of me yet,” she said to Kate and her mother-in-law as she tried
Amy’s cell number. “Mike’s been waiting out front for forty minutes and Amy
hasn’t shown up. He’s been calling her phone and she’s not answering.”

Kate’s stomach
clenched. Had her earlier dire thoughts become reality?

But Phyllis was still
bent on convincing herself that Amy had just gotten distracted by some cute
outfit in a store window and had lost track of time. Phyllis left an angry
message on the girl’s voicemail and they all headed toward the mall’s main
entrance.

Amy was nowhere in
sight.

Kate suggested they
split up and check the other entrances on the ends of the mall, in case Amy
hadn’t realized which one was the main one. After they had checked the
entrances and searched all the stores’ juniors’ departments and shops that
catered to teens, Kate said for the third time, “Phyllis, we need to call the
police.”

Bridget O’Donnell
nodded her agreement. Her face was pale and her lips were trembling from the
effort to resist crying. But Phyllis’s face was still set in a resistant frown.

“Look, Amy’s in a
strange mall, and this place is mobbed. She could’ve gotten totally turned
around, may be frantically looking for us. But in this crowd, we might never
find her, or she us.” Kate was terrified that Amy wasn’t just lost. But telling
Phyllis her daughter might have been kidnapped would probably not get the
desired reaction.

“She has her phone,”
Phyllis said.

“Which obviously isn’t
working for some reason. Maybe the battery’s dead.”

Phyllis finally nodded
and Kate led the way toward the mall’s management offices to find the security
staff.

Phyllis might not be
ready to believe something bad could have happened to her daughter, but the
security chief knew better. She took Kate’s report seriously. After calling the
police, she asked if anyone had a picture of the girl on them. All three women
produced photos from their wallets. Phyllis’s was the most recent. The security
chief photocopied it to pass out to her staff, and to the uniformed officers
who arrived a few minutes later.

As the three women and
Mike sat in anxious silence in the security office, a man in a rumpled navy
business suit strode into the room. He introduced himself to the security chief
and the others as Detective Randolph of the Baltimore County Police Department.
The thickening around his waistline and the gray heavily sprinkled through his
rust-colored hair pegged him as middle-aged. His expression was sympathetic.

Chief Brown filled him
in. “My officers and your uniforms have started a systematic search of the
mall. Couple of my best people are going through the security camera data for
the last three hours. No luck so far.”

“I’ll get some more
uniforms to help with that,” the detective said. He asked Phyllis several
questions about Amy’s personality and habits. Kate knew, even if Phyllis didn’t
catch on, that he was trying to ascertain how friendly and how naive the girl
was. Both traits would make her more susceptible to the tricks pedophiles used
to isolate and then subdue their prey.

Kate called Mac and
Rose and they came to the mall to help with the search. Three hours later, the
detective told the family that he was issuing a nationwide Amber alert and it
might be best if they went home. Phyllis and Michael refused to leave, but
Kate’s mother was visibly sagging. Kate wanted to get her out of there. She
asked Mike if he wanted to go home with her. He hesitated, then decided to stay
with his parents.

By seven o’clock there
was still no news. Dan had insisted his wife lie down, but Kate doubted her
mother was actually napping in the guest room upstairs.

Kate’s cell phone rang.
The caller ID showed Skip’s number. She rushed outside to the front porch for
some privacy.

Skip’s cheerful voice
said in her ear, “Hey there, Mom and Sissy are heatin’ up leftovers so I
thought I’d–”

“Oh my God, Skip...”
Kate burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” he said
in a sharp voice.

Kate couldn’t stop
sobbing. She sat down on the front steps and leaned against the end post of the
porch railing.

“Darlin’, please tell
me what’s wrong?” Skip begged, terrified that something had happened to Edie.

Finally Kate was able
to get the story out.

“I’ll be on the next
plane. Be there tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“No, Skip, there’s
nothing you can do that isn’t already being done. Don’t cut your trip short.
That’s not fair to your family,” Kate protested.

I can be there for
you
, Skip thought but didn’t say out loud. He actually wasn’t quite sure
what to say out loud. What do you tell a woman whose niece was missing,
possibly kidnapped by a sexual predator? He looked across his sister’s living
room to where his nephews were playing. His little four-year-old niece was
trying valiantly to get them to let her join their game.

“Oh, darlin’, what can
I do? How can I help?” he said into the phone, his eyes stinging.

“Just talk to me for
awhile,” Kate answered him from thirteen hundred miles away. “Tell me about
your visit so far.”

So that is what he did.
He talked to her for over an hour, trying to find things to say that would give
her hope, or at least distract her.

The phone pressed to
her ear like a lifeline, Kate walked around and around the block. With only a
cardigan as a wrap, she was shivering in the chill night air, but she just
walked faster. As she rounded the corner and neared her own front walk, she
thought she saw movement further up the street.

Suddenly Skip’s
description of his nephews’ earlier game of space aliens, from which they had
so determinedly excluded their little sister, was interrupted by Kate yelling,
“Dad, come quick! I think I see Amy!”

Skip heard feet
clattering down steps and Kate’s heavy breathing as she raced toward the
bedraggled figure she had spotted stumbling through the circle of light under a
streetlamp. Then Kate shouted, “It’s her, Skip. Dear God, it is her! I’ll call
you back.”

Kate was suddenly calm.
Her clinical detachment had kicked in. She punched 911 on her phone as she
continued to run down the block. When she reached Amy, she was already giving
her name and address and demanding the dispatcher send an ambulance
immediately. The dispatcher asked what the nature of the problem was.

“My niece is hurt. Just
get them here. Now! I need to tend to her.” Kate thrust her phone into her
pocket as she tried to support the staggering girl.

Between them, Kate and
her father half-carried Amy back to the house. As they settled the girl on the
living room sofa, Bridget O’Donnell was calling her son’s cell phone.

Kate kneeled beside the
sofa. “What happened, sweetheart?”

“That you, Aunt
Kate?... I don’t feel so good.” The girl’s head lolled to the side. Kate felt
her neck for a pulse. It was slow.

T
he ambulance was there
in nine minutes but the police detective beat them by two. He pulled up in
front of Kate’s house, his flashing light still revolving. Michael and his
family were right behind, Mac’s Hummer at the end of the parade. Phyllis was
out of the car before her husband had brought it to a complete stop.

The next few minutes
were pure chaos. Phyllis raced over to the sofa where Amy was laying, begging
her daughter to talk to mama. The detective was asking Kate questions about
what had happened. Dan was trying to reassure his son and grandson that Amy
didn’t seem to be seriously hurt. Edie had woken up and, reacting to the
tension and noise, was now wailing in Maria’s arms. Mac and Rose were trying to
stay back out of the way.

And the newly arrived
paramedics were trying to get through the crowd to identify who their patient
was.

Suddenly a female voice
boomed out across the room. “Shut up!” Everyone turned and stared at the
normally soft-spoken Bridget. Even Edie stopped crying, letting out a soft
hiccup as she looked across the room at her grandmother.

“Let the lads take care
of my grandbaby!” Bridget said, her voice breaking on a sob. Dan was next to
his wife in an instant, steering her to a chair.

Kate tapped Randolph on
the arm and gestured toward the kitchen. In a low voice, she said, “Detective,
my niece is a good kid. She wouldn’t just take off like that and it looks to me
like she’s been drugged.”

Randolph nodded. He had
a granddaughter who wasn’t much younger than this girl. For the time being, he
was continuing to handle this as a kidnapping.

Kate knew Phyllis was
the queen of denial. She warned the detective that her sister-in-law might very
well be resistant to what needed to be done.

Which she was.

Back in the living
room, a paramedic stepped over to Randolph and Kate. In a low voice, he said,
“Symptoms are consistent with Rohypnol, sir.”

The detective nodded,
his expression grim. He took Phyllis and Michael aside and tried to gently
explain to the frantic mother and shell-shocked father that their daughter may
have been given a date rape drug and might have been molested.

When Phyllis registered
what the policeman was saying she shot across the room and sank to her knees in
front of her daughter, who was now sitting up on the sofa but was still fairly
out of it. “Is she okay?” Phyllis asked the paramedics in a sharp voice,
without taking her eyes off her daughter’s face.

“Uh, hard to tell,
ma’am,” the paramedic said. “We need to get her to the hospital and let the
docs check her over.”

“Do you hurt anywhere,
baby?” Phyllis said to her daughter. The girl shook her head and then said in a
small voice, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Phyllis jumped up,
lifting Amy to her feet by her arm. She raced the girl down the hall toward the
master bathroom. “Michael!” she yelled back over her shoulder. “Get our things.
We’re going home!”

Michael gave the
detective and his sister a helpless look and followed his wife into the master
bedroom, where they had slept the night before, to pack up their overnight
bags.

Kate noticed that Maria
and the baby had disappeared into the nursery. The door was shut.

“Mike, can you get your
sister’s things, along with your own, please,” she said to her nephew. The kids
had slept in spare rooms on the second and third floors of the old Victorian.

“Okay, Aunt Kate.” The
boy swallowed hard, suddenly looking a lot younger than his eighteen years.

“Bridget, let’s give
the lad a hand,” Dan said. He figured the detective and his eldest daughter
were going to try to talk some sense into his daughter-in-law, and the smaller
the audience the better. Mac came to the same conclusion. He and Rose quickly
said their goodbyes and left.

When Phyllis and Amy
came out of the bedroom ten minutes later, Michael trailing along with two
small suitcases, only Detective Randolph and Kate were in the living room. The
detective stepped forward. “Mr. and Mrs. O’Donnell, could you sit down for a
moment, please,” he said gently, but with authority.

Michael moved toward
the sofa to comply but his wife stood firm. “Thank you for your help,
Detective. But there’s nothing more to talk about. My daughter doesn’t remember
what happened. She’s upset and I’m taking her home.”

Phyllis glared in the
direction of her husband. “Where’s your son?” she snapped. At that moment, Mike
descended the stairs with two backpacks in his hands.

Phyllis didn’t say
anything else. She just steered her daughter out the front door, with Mike in
tow.

Michael started to
follow but Kate stepped in front of him. “Don’t let her do this, Michael. Amy
needs medical attention.” Her brother just gave her a defeated look. Then he
stepped around her and out the door.

Kate flopped down in
the nearest armchair. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!”

Her parents were just
reaching the bottom of the stairs. “Don’t blaspheme, Katie,” her father said.

“I wasn’t. I was
praying for divine intervention, that God’ll strike your eejit daughter-in-law
with lightning between here and their car!” Kate spat out.

Detective Randolph
motioned the two elder O’Donnells toward the sofa. He sat in the other chair
and faced them. “I’ll call the sexual assault crisis center in Montgomery
County. They’ll send someone out to talk to Amy’s parents tomorrow. When
they’ve calmed down, maybe they’ll see reason.”

“Don’t count on it,”
Kate said.
And by then all the evidence that would’ve told us what really
happened will be gone,
she thought.

Suddenly feeling
exhausted, she dragged herself to her feet. “I’ll show you out, Detective.” She
needed to call Skip back, before his anxiety got the better of him and he
headed for the airport. She didn’t want him to cut his visit home short. There
was definitely nothing he could do now. But she desperately wanted to hear his
voice.

After seeing the
policeman to the door, Kate turned to her parents. “Are you okay?” she asked.
They both nodded numbly.

“I’m gonna take a walk
then. Would you help Maria if the baby wakes up?”

“Aye,” her father said.

Kate was not surprised
when Skip answered on the first ring. She once again did circuits around the
block as she told him what had happened, including the paramedic’s comment that
Amy might have been drugged with roofies.

The cold night air
eventually drove her inside. The house was still, most of the lights turned
out. Whispering into the phone, she went into the kitchen.

There was a note on the
table, in her mother’s handwriting. Grandma had the baby monitor, it said, and
would tend to the wee one if she woke during the night. There was a turkey
sandwich in the fridge and Katie was to get a good night’s sleep.

At the mention of the
sandwich, Kate realized she wasn’t hungry, despite the fact that she hadn’t
eaten since lunchtime, over nine hours ago. She relayed this amazing fact to
Skip.

“What, Madam Grizzly
isn’t hungry?” his teasing voice said in her ear.

“I think my stomach has
gone into hibernation for the duration,” she replied.

Thirteen hundred miles
away, Skip was shaking his head. This was not good. He was glad he had done
what he had.

Kate was saying that
she ought to go and to call her when he got home Sunday.

He interrupted her. He
had toyed with the idea of making up a fib about the airlines messing up his
reservation, but he knew she’d see right through that. “Kate, I changed my
flight to tomorrow.”

“You shouldn’t have
done that,” she said, but he could hear relief in her voice.

“Well, it’s done, so
I’ll see you tomorrow, late afternoon. Sleep tight, Kate. And if you need to
talk some more, call me, no matter what time it is.”

“Thanks, Skip.”

“Goodnight, darlin’.”

“Goodnight...
Sweetheart.”

~~~~~~~~

S
kip was ringing her
doorbell a little after four the next day. He had come straight from the
airport, not even bothering to stop at his apartment first. When she opened the
door, the look of pleasure and relief on her face washed most of the travel
fatigue out of his system. This was the right thing to do.

He reached out for her
hand. She led him into the living room and introduced him to her mother as her
friend, Skip Canfield. “You remember Skip, I’m sure, Dad.”

“I certainly do, Katie
girl.” Both he and Skip had helped Kate and the Franklins track down his
son-in-law’s killer. He remembered the young man as being a nice lad, and sharp
as a whip. “Good ta see ya, lad,” Dan said, lumbering to his feet to shake
Skip’s hand.

“Pleased to meet you,”
Bridget murmured shyly from the sofa.

As they all settled in
the living room, Skip asked, “Where’s Edie?”

“Taking a late nap,”
Kate said. The excitement the night before had disrupted the baby’s sleep
cycle.

They made small talk
for a few minutes but Skip was anxious to find out how Kate was coping, and had
she heard from her brother. She had dark circles under eyes that were a
washed-out gray instead of their normal sky blue. Skip’s heart ached for her.

The elder O’Donnells
had noticed how the young people were looking at each other, trying to
communicate without words. “Well,” Dan said, “I’m a bit knackered meself. While
the wee one’s still sleepin’ I think I’ll take me a nap.”

He stood and offered a
hand to his wife, who rose to join him. “There’s still plenty of leftovers, Mr.
Canfield. I hope you’ll stay for supper,” Bridget said to Skip.

“I’d like that, ma’am,”
Skip said, getting to his feet as well.

As soon as Kate’s
parents were halfway up the stairs, out of sight, Skip crossed to Kate’s chair
in one long stride and pulled her to her feet. He wrapped his arms tightly
around her and laid his cheek on top of her head, rocking her gently back and
forth.

Being held so firmly
against his solid chest was almost her undoing. Overwhelmed, she struggled not
to burst into tears. Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, she let herself
relax against him, just as the phone rang in the kitchen.

Kate pulled away,
giving Skip an apologetic look as she raced into the kitchen, afraid a second
ring would wake the baby.

It took her a moment to
figure out that the voice screeching incoherently into her ear was her
sister-in-law’s. Kate’s nervous system went into full alert when she heard the
word “note.”

“Phyllis, calm down,”
she yelled over the woman’s screaming. “What about a note?”

Skip had followed Kate
into the kitchen. He put his hand on her shoulder. She was trembling. Dan and
Bridget hurried back down the stairs.

The baby started crying
but before Bridget could get to the nursery door, Maria was coming down the
stairs, baby monitor in hand. Bridget nodded to her and followed her husband
into the kitchen.

“Phyllis, please, this
is important. What exactly did it say?” Kate was yelling into the phone.

A brief pause. “I need
that note, Phyllis. It’s evidence... I’m begging you, please take Amy to a
hospital. She needs medical attention, and psychological help... She hung up on
me.” Kate dropped the phone on the table and turned into Skip’s arms.

The elder O’Donnells
exchanged a look. “Kin we borrow yer car, Katie? I’m thinkin’ we’ll be makin’ a
visit to yer brother,” Dan said, his brogue thickened by emotion.

“Keys are in my purse,”
Kate mumbled from against Skip’s chest.

“Take care of her,
lad,” Dan said softly as he and his wife headed for the front door.

“I will, sir.”

Skip scooped Kate up in
his arms and carried her to the living room. He sat on the sofa with her on his
lap. She laid her head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. “What
did your sister-in-law say?” he asked softly.

In a depressed voice,
she told him. Phyllis had been doing laundry when she found a note in the
pocket of the jeans Amy had been wearing the day before. The note had said,
“Tell your aunt to stop destroying families, or I’ll destroy hers.” Phyllis had
torn it into little pieces.

“Then she hung up when
I tried to get her to take Amy for help. That woman is so infuriating.”

“She’s a mama mountain
lion just tryin’ to protect her cub, darlin’,” Skip said.

“Well she’s going about
it all the wrong way. If these notes are coming from some false memory fanatic,
the odds are high that Amy was raped.” Kate stopped, swallowing hard. “They
took her to scare me, but most of that crowd are parents whose adult children
have accused them of child sexual abuse...”

“So these
alleged
abusers, who likely
are
abusers, wouldn’t think twice ’bout molestin’ a
purty girl they had under their control,” Skip finished for her. “Especially if
they’ve slipped her roofies so’s she won’t even remember ’em.”

Some small corner of
Kate’s otherwise morbidly preoccupied brain was amused by the amount of Texas
that had crept into Skip’s voice after just a short visit home. She kept her
face down, her head snuggled against his shoulder. She didn’t dare look up at
him. If she did, she knew she would kiss him. Even as tired and depressed as
she was, she felt a small tingle at that thought.

Kate took a deep breath
and let out a long sigh. Skip’s arms tightened around her. “You rest now,
darlin’,” he said. “There’s nothin’ more we can do tonight.”

They sat like that for
a long time, until Kate’s stomach rumbled. Skip swung her off his lap to set
her feet on the floor. He stood up and took her hand. “Let’s warm up some of
those leftovers.”

He made her sit at the
table while he put one dish after another into the microwave. When Maria
smelled food cooking she figured it was okay to resurface. She brought Edie
into the kitchen, put her in her highchair, and set the table.