A Penny for Your Thoughts (38 page)

I knew he was right. In the early days, I had taken a tip from my policeman brother and learned to play racquetball, pounding out my emotions on the court. Nowadays, I found better solace in prayer and in canoeing. At this moment, I prayed for Alan Bennet,
for his physical health and his spiritual well-being.
How quickly we can move from life to death,
I thought.
How tragic if that happens before our hearts have been sealed for heaven by the Savior
.

By the time I rowed into the shore at Lorraine’s house, I felt calm and at peace despite the confusion that I knew would continue to swirl around me. There were still many unanswered questions, still much work to be done—even with Alan Bennet arrested for the murder and Monty Redburn in police custody.

I got one shoe a little wet as I stepped onto the bank, but otherwise it was a clean landing. I dragged the heavy boat up to its tree, huffing and panting until it was safely back in place. It was then that I noticed Harriet running across the lawn toward me, with what looked like my cell phone in her hand.

“Thank goodness you’re back!” she yelled, running closer, her breathing ragged and heavy. “They’ve been texting and calling almost since the minute you left.”

“They who?” I asked, taking the phone from her.

“The Smythe family,” she wheezed. “The wife. The son.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s the boy,” she said.

“Carlos?”

“Yes. Carlos.”

“What about him?” I asked, my heart leaping into my throat.

“He’s gone,” she said, wringing her hands, shaking her head. “Disappeared. They were hoping you might know where he is.”

Forty-Three

By the time I arrived at the house, things were in utter chaos with two uniformed cops in the foyer, Derek shouting into the phone in the drawing room, Marion talking frantically on a cellular phone in the front hallway, and Sidra pacing next to Derek, sobbing.

“I don’t care about standard procedure!” Derek was yelling into the phone. “I want to know why it took you until 2:30 in the afternoon to let me know my son never showed up for school this morning!”

Sidra grabbed me as soon as she saw me. “Oh, Callie! Where has he gone? Where can he be?”

I had already spoken to her on my cell phone as I raced back here in my rental car. But seeing her distraught face—seeing the panic on all of their faces—slammed me in the solar plexus like a fist. This was unbelievable.

“And you are?” one of the police officers asked me, his notebook in front of him for taking notes.

“A—a friend of the family,” I managed to rasp. “I haven’t seen Carlos since last night.”

“She’s a houseguest, officer,” Marion said, her eyes moist, holding her hand over the phone. “Callie, tell me again, are you sure you haven’t seen Judith today? How about Angelina? Our only hope is that he’s with one of them.”

I shook my head, wondering what they knew of Alan and what had happened at the airport. It was big news, certainly, but it paled in comparison to the knowledge that Carlos was missing.

“Oh, Callie,” sobbed Sidra, “I don’t know what we’re going to do! I watched him go to the bus, but they say he didn’t get on. He never showed up at school.”

I hugged her, unable to think of any words that might help.

After a few minutes I did, however, pull one of the policemen aside and give him a short version of everything that had happened with the police in Pike Ridge. They got on their radios and talked back and forth while Marion, Derek, and Sidra surrounded me and asked me to repeat the information I had just given the cop. I went into more detail, telling about the bank
records at Smythe, the diverted funds, the attempted escape. They were stunned to find out about the theft of Feed the Need funds, but even more shocked to learn that Alan had been shot. I remembered that he had been—until this day, at least—a trusted employee and beloved friend of the family.

“Do you think Alan could have taken Carlos?” Sidra asked. “Like, kidnapped him?”

I was wondering the same thing, but unless Alan had regained consciousness, there was no way to know for sure. I looked at the Smythes, my heart aching for them.

“Where does Carlos go to catch the bus?” I asked Sidra.

“Right at the end of the driveway.”

“Show me where,” I said.

Together, Sidra and I ran out of the door and descended the front steps, then jogged down the driveway toward the road. We reached the spot where the bus usually stopped. The main road was fairly empty, and I trotted across to the other side.

“Look,” I said, scooting down a steep bank to a dry ditch beside the road. “You see the grass here?”

I pointed to where it was flattened against the ground.

“Was Carlos wearing sneakers this morning?”

“Yes. Nike’s.”

“That’s probably his footprint,” I said. At the bottom of the indentation in the grass was a clear, child-sized print in the mud where someone was obviously pushing off to climb back out of the ditch.

“It’s just my guess,” I said. “But I’d be willing to bet he climbed down here and hid until the bus was gone. Then he climbed back out and either took off down the road or headed back home.”

“Back home?”

“Have you checked his tree house?”

Sidra shook her head.

“We haven’t even tried looking around the house. I just kept thinking someone nabbed him here on the road while he was waiting for the bus.”

We ran back across the street, and Sidra took off for the yard, yelling.

“Carlos!” she screamed, her voice carrying the anguish of a mother who’s lost her son. “Carlos! You come out right this instant!”

I headed back into the house, and Derek and Marion met me at the door.

“Looks like he hid beside the road,” I said. “There’s a chance he could be around here somewhere.”

“The pool, check the pool,” Marion said, clutching at her throat. “He may have drowned!”

She and Derek ran outside. The policemen and I began to search inside the house, and as I was running through the kitchen, Nick came in from outside, carrying a bag of groceries.

“What is going on here?” he asked. I told him as quickly as possible, and he immediately put down the bag and began to help us search the house. I could hear his booming voice shouting for Carlos even when I was upstairs at the other end of the hall.

It wasn’t until I went through my own door that I stopped short, my heart pounding. There, on my bed, was an envelope with my name on it, written in what looked like a little boy’s handwriting.

I picked it up and ripped it open. Inside was a piece of paper, a typed series of letters and numbers that made no sense at all.

“Carlos!” I muttered under my breath. “What have you done?” Across the bottom of the page he had typed, “Clue to crack the code: Move your fingers to the bottom row of the keyboard.”

“Oh, no,” I whispered. Carlos’ stupid secret code! My computer was in the car. I ran down the stairs and out of the door just as Sidra and Derek were rounding the side of the house.

“He’s not anywhere,” Derek said breathlessly.

“He left me a note!” I said. “It’s in code. I need a keyboard.”

I grabbed my computer and ran with it to the table in the drawing room. I sat down and opened the lid.

“Angelina’s stuff is gone!” Nick cried, running into the room. We all hesitated, looking at him. “Searching for Carlos, I went in her room. Her suitcase and most of her clothes are gone.”

We all looked at each other, and I couldn’t help but think this all grew stranger by the minute.

“She was not here when I got up this morning,” Nick continued when no one spoke. “Today is her day off. I wondered where she had gone, but I did not really think anything of it until now.”

The police began asking Nick questions about Angelina. As they did, I turned back to the computer, which was now up and ready to use. I read Carlos’ note again, trying to figure out what he meant.
Move your fingers to the bottom row of the keyboard,
it said, so I set the note next to the computer and studied it. The first word was “dqoo83.” I put my fingers on the keyboard in the home position, then slid them down one row. I closed my eyes and pretended that my fingers were on the home row. I then typed “dqoo83.” When I opened my eyes, I saw on the screen that I had actually written “callie.”

“That’s it!” I said. Quickly, I typed in the rest of the message. When I was finished I leaned forward and read what I had written.

callie,
it said,
i think aunt judith is running away. shes got suitcases in her car and everything. im going to hide in the trunk and see where shes going. ps if i never come back call the police
.

“He’s with Judith,” Marion said, clutching her chest with relief.

“Derek,” I said evenly, “I think you’d better tell your mother about Judith and her little nighttime ‘activities’ that Carlos discovered.”

He spoke quietly, filling her in on the events of two nights before when Carlos and I caught Judith in her vandalism red-handed. Despite all of that, I, too, felt relieved. At least Judith hadn’t taken Carlos away intentionally. The greater question remained, however: Wherever Judith was headed, whatever she was doing, once she found Carlos and realized he had been
waiting inside her trunk, spying on her—what exactly was she capable of doing to him?

Forty-Four

“This is my fault,” I said softly, swallowing hard. “Carlos wanted to be a detective, like me. I told him the situation could be dangerous, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“But Callie,” Marion said. “It’s okay. He’s with Judith. We’ll just keep trying to reach her on her car phone and—”

“No!” Derek and I both yelled at once.

“It might be safer for the time being if Judith doesn’t know Carlos is with her,” Sidra added more softly.

“What kind of vehicle does she have?” one of the cops asked.

“She drives a company car,” Derek answered. “A Mercedes.”

“Late model?”

“This year.”

The policeman was one step ahead of us, already picking up the phone to dial Mercedes Benz.

“If we’re lucky,” he said as he dialed, “her car will have a GPS tracking system.”

“If you’ll give me the plate number and things like that,” the other cop said to Marion, “we can put an APB out.”

“If he’s in the trunk, Carlos may have smothered by now!” Sidra wailed, burying her head against Derek’s shoulder. He held her against him like a lifeline, whispering softly to comfort her.

“This way, officer,” Marion said, heading for Wendell’s study. The cop, Nick, and I followed as she quickly made her way over to Wendell’s file cabinet.

“Everything should be here,” Marion said as she pulled out a file and laid it across the desk. She read off the plate number to the officer as I paced at the other end of the room.

“I do not believe this nightmare,” Nick said, shaking his head. I just walked quietly back and forth, thinking.

When Marion had finished giving the officer the necessary information about Judith’s car, he left the room, and she came over to us.

“If only Wendell were here,” she said softly, her eyes threatening to spill over with tears again. “He would know what to do.”

She walked to the case that held Wendell’s antique clothing collection and ran her hand lovingly across the top of the glass. My heart ached for her, and I was about to step closer and put my arm around her shoulder when she gasped.

“The shirt!” she said, bending over to peer into the case. “The Jefferson shirt is gone!”

Nick and I both stepped to the case and looked inside. I realized instantly what she was talking about. The white ruffled shirt from the top right corner of the shelf was missing with nothing but an empty space of black velvet where it had been.

“Could Carlos have taken it?” I asked. “I know he loves this collection.”

“Carlos isn’t stupid,” Marion said. “He knows the shirt is priceless. He wouldn’t go near it.”

“Priceless?” Nick asked. “Which one?”

Marion waved her hand dismissively.

“One of the shirts from this collection is very, very valuable—and it’s been stolen.”