The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (39 page)

“Not your office. The old records room.”

“Tasha, what are you talking about? We keep the outdated records in our old barn office, up at the school, or in the basement at home.”

Natasha stared open-mouthed between Lance and me, then sank into the chair I’d just vacated, her head in her hands. “I guess I should have asked sooner,” she muttered. Then, quickly, defensively, she added, “I only even remembered last Friday, okay?” This explained some of her despondency. Whether the information was relevant or not, her flashbacks
always
came with guilt.

“What room do you mean?” asked Trudy.

“I should have said something on Friday, but I kind of assumed you already knew. It’s right on the edge of the sanctuary. I assumed you’d have tripped over it six months ago.”

“Don’t you think we’d have asked you about it, if we had?”

Tasha shrugged and looked back at the table.

“Natasha, help me.” It was yet another moment when I wanted to mother her but instead had to respect her space. Everything about her body language said she didn’t want to be touched. I kept my hands to myself. “I know all the sanctuary buildings. There is no ‘old records room’.”

When she finally replied, Natasha’s voice was flat, almost emotionless, as if she’d had to cut herself out of the discussion to hold it at all. Everything,
all
of this, was supposed to be between her and a therapist. It should have been private. “When we . . . when we filmed with the monkeys,” she said, “we always used the old records room. It’s the . . . it’s over on the other side of the creek behind the sanctuary. It looks like you’re going into a fruit cellar or something, but it’s the size of a basement. You get there from the employee road behind the mall site, but you break off before you get to the new enclosure.”

“Can you take us there?”

“She’s got therapy in less than two hours, Drew,” I told him.

“This won’t take long.” Trudy clearly shared Drew’s perspective.

“It’s okay,” Natasha insisted. Then she turned away from us. She was talking to Drew, Darnell, and Trudy. Lance and I weren’t even there as far as she was concerned. Maybe she needed us to be elsewhere so she could come back to herself later. “You knew so many names and stuff, I figured you’d found the place already.”

Trudy shook her head.

Natasha shrugged. “Let’s go,” she said. “I want to do something first, though.”

“What?” We all wanted to know.

“Can I talk to Layla?”

“Why do you want to?” Lance demanded.

“Because as dumb as I feel about Friday, I feel worse for her. She’s stupid and naive, and . . . maybe I can help her. I don’t know.”

“I’ll have to ask her guardian ad litem,” said Drew.

“They did take her from her mom?” Tasha asked. We were all entirely too familiar with Drew’s legalese. A guardian ad litem was a court-appointed individual who was supposed to act in place of a parent and ensure the best interests of a child were being met.

“For the moment. Let me make a call. Why don’t we take care of all this after your therapy appointment? It’s not like two more hours’ delay . . .”

“No. I want to deal with all of it
now.
I’ve
got
to be in school tomorrow. We’re getting ready for midterms, and I’m barely keeping up.
Barely.
I have a C average, and I know they regret letting me jump ahead a grade. I need to be in class. I need to be in bed and
calm
tonight. And right now, I’m worried sick.”

“Let me see if I can get an answer,” said Drew. “You have to promise you won’t assault her.”

“Yeah, I know. I was majorly freaked out on Friday.”

He walked outside to place the call.

“It sounds like I’ll take Natasha down to the station,” said Trudy. “Then she can show the deputy where this extra room is. I’ll bring her to her therapy appointment and home, and you can all . . .”

“No,” Lance and I said at once. Whatever personal differences we might have, we were still on exactly the same parenting page.

“You aren’t taking her anywhere without me,” I added.

“Us,” Lance corrected me. He gently squeezed my shoulders.

I gripped his hands with my own. “Us. Natasha needs us right now. The twins will be fine with Mama and Daddy for a couple of hours. Drew’s got people back out here. Mama, don’t forget to wake Nana up to pee.”

Trudy and Darnell didn’t like it, but they ultimately split up again, Darnell staying with the twins largely because William had trapped him into a game of trucks, and his departure would have caused a meltdown.

When she saw who the guardian ad litem was, Natasha started walking backward away from her. Lance stepped gently to one side, so she backed straight into him.

“Hello, Chandra,” I said.

“Hello, Noel.” She turned to Natasha. “If this conversation becomes unproductive at any time, I will bring it to an end. Clear?”

After her initial retreat, Natasha seemed to have recollected her resolve. “Completely.”

“And,” Chandra said, “before we begin, I want to know what you hope to accomplish.”

“I need to know she’s as naive as she seems. I need to believe I wasn’t completely screwed up to think she, at least, seriously didn’t mean any harm on Friday. I want to help her. I mean . . . she’s my sister. I don’t want to hate her guts forever.”

“I won’t allow her to incriminate herself,” Chandra warned us. “I’m no lawyer, and anything she says cannot specifically reference Friday’s events.”

“I don’t want to talk
about
Friday. We’ll accomplish a big argument if we talk about
that.
She’ll be all
‘Robby-my-true-love,’
and I’ll have to puke and leave.
I
want to know about
Layla.
I want to know she’s not a . . . not already a player.”

“Come on, then.” We all started to follow, but Chandra stopped us with a glance. “Only the two of us,” she said. “This isn’t a party.”

I might have protested, but Natasha agreed quickly. “Good.”

Left suddenly at loose ends, we trailed along with the detective back to his office. “I think you’re right,” he told us. “If they don’t have monkeys back there, the Gibsons sure seem to have something. Tony was downright agitated about my questions, and he had no intentions of letting me into the back room. And now he’s wise to me. I don’t have anything concrete a judge could use to grant me a warrant to look around before all the evidence drives off, but what you’re saying makes sense. I wish those two kids weren’t mixed up in it.”

He didn’t mean my children. “Why are you sympathetic to Layla and Robby?” Natasha’s life was in danger. William was the one who nearly got stolen. I tried not to sound indignant.

Drew held out his hands in a placating gesture. “They’re being used by some powerful people, Noel.
You
know what those people can be like.”

“They tried to take—”

“Robby convinced Layla she was playing hero. Now they’ve been caught, he’s ready to throw her to the wolves, but she won’t say a word against him. But he’s not telling me everything useful about
himself
, either. We all agree there’s a good chance he’s the one who took William in the first place. But he’s terrified. Somebody has him convinced it’s better to go to jail for kidnapping than sell out. He’d love to be rid of Layla, but he won’t give up the people who
are
responsible.

“They’re both getting used. And they’re kids. If they can’t make some good choices in the near future, they’re likely to wind up in detention until they turn twenty-one.”

“Good.”

Drew looked to Lance in supplication, but my husband said, “I’m with Noel.”

Drew gave up. “Tell me about your monkeys.”

We were still talking when Chandra and Natasha returned, too soon.

“She won’t talk to me.” Natasha looked weepy and shaken.

“She demanded her aunt again,” Chandra confirmed, “and then she turned away and refused to say a word to either one of us.”

“And I . . . I . . . I need to sit and breathe. She looked like . . . she made me think of . . . the angle of her face when she . . . it made me think of when Mom died.”

Drew had her seated before she finished speaking. I stood ready with her inhaler, but she slowly mastered her emotions.

“I appreciate your effort,” Chandra said. She turned to go.

“Listen, I don’t know if I can help her, or if I even want to,” said Natasha, “but I feel sorry for her. Here’s what I think is going on.” Chandra turned back, and after that, Natasha seemed to only be speaking to the social worker.

“She’s in deep with Robby. He goes to school with me, but he’s flunking out this year. The scuttlebutt is she practically lives with him. Her mom works in Columbus and travels with her job. She thinks she’s leaving Layla with one friend when she goes out of town, but Layla convinces
that
friend another one has her. The other one thinks she’s with the first. Her mom only ever calls Layla’s cell. She never really checks up.”

“Wait,” said Lance. “You know she’s doing this?”

“It’s only gossip. But come on . . . she thought the guy was going to marry her. Plus, she brags as bad as her mom. Robby’s been giving her driving lessons, and if he was smuggling monkeys into the sanctuary, I bet Layla was helping him out the whole time.”

“You think so?” Layla’s mother had arrived, and she was furious.

Dear Nora:

I never get places on time. Even when I leave fifteen minutes early, I arrive late. What can I do?

Missed the Bus

Dear Missed:

Identify “Tardy” as your new lifestyle choice and hope to be invited places anyway.

Nora

“How
dare
you,” Shannon Dearborn demanded of Drew, “prevent me from seeing my own daughter? She is a minor.”

“Excuse me,” said Chandra. “I am Layla’s guardian ad litem . . .”

“Hello.” Shannon’s greeting didn’t suggest she was happy to see Chandra Evans at all.

“Sorry.” Deputy Greene looked in. “She kind of bulled through.”

Drew rolled his eyes. I clearly heard the words “damned rookie” in his mutter.

“Let me tell you something,” Shannon said to Chandra. “Every word these people have been telling you is a lie.”

Shannon Dearborn was my own height, barely five feet tall, and the rare acquaintance who didn’t tower over me. This made it unfortunately simple for her to glare past Drew and right into my eyes.

“I’m trying to
help
her,” Drew insisted. “Right now, she’s got at least six credible witnesses who saw her attempting to kidnap
their
son.” He jerked a thumb toward Lance and me for illustration.

“We’ll see. I know how cops work. You lie to get a person to speak . . .”

“She hasn’t said a word,” said Chandra. “And you, ma’am . . .”

“I saw her.” I hadn’t meant to say anything. Shannon was already furious enough, and Chandra was more than capable of handling her. But here I stood at the police station with my husband while my foster daughter’s life was in danger and my son, the child who had nearly been kidnapped, cooled his heels with my parents, an FBI agent, a made-over ring-bearer suit, some toy trucks, and a pair of fake gardening shears. How could this woman think her daughter had done nothing? Still, keeping in mind what Chandra had said to Natasha about productivity, I tried for a reasonable tone. “I think . . . I hope her intentions were better than they seemed, but she had one arm, her boyfriend had the other, and they were dragging him toward the boyfriend’s car.” In spite of my efforts, I ended on a snarl.

“Layla doesn’t have a boyfriend, and that’s hardly how she puts it.” But the look Shannon threw at Drew suggested I had confirmed his story, and now the eyes she narrowed in my direction were wary, but less hostile. “She said she was sitting at home when
he
showed up with handcuffs.”

“She was in my mother’s front yard. I absolutely saw her . . .”

“How would you know who you saw? How can you be sure it wasn’t some other biracial child. Don’t they all look alike to you?”

Now I didn’t snarl. I shouted. “My
son
is biracial.
Both
my children are biracial, and they are
both
Layla’s biological siblings.” Probably. Probably they were her siblings. I tried to think about that, not my own rising anger. I forcibly lowered my voice. “No, ‘they’ do not look alike to me any more than you look like
me
because we’re both five feet tall and white with brown hair. I’m hardly going to forget the kid who was distributing sex tapes of Natasha this year.”

“Excuse me? What did you accuse my daughter of doing?”

“We spoke on the phone about this before I met with your sister to get them
back.
”

“I never spoke to you before in my life. I . . . wait. You met with my
sister
?” She whipped her head around to Drew. “
When
was Ivy here? I specifically barred her from visitation.”

“You don’t have a say,” said Chandra.

I tried to break in. “It was before Layla went back to school in the fall.”

Shannon plowed on without listening, planting herself directly in front of Drew so he had to bend down to maintain eye contact. “I have a longstanding restraining order against her. She is not permitted to be near me or Layla, either one . . . wait . . . what?” She turned back to me.

“I said it was back before school started.”

Shannon licked her lips. “How long before school started?” She didn’t give me time to answer. “I was at a conference the week before school started. Layla was with my
brother
in Cheboygan. She was fishing on the
lake.
” Her fury drained for an instant, only to be replaced with frantic energy. “No. He wouldn’t. He
couldn’t.
” She grabbed her phone out of her pocket as she spoke. When her brother answered the call, she demanded, “Did Ivy con you into letting her see Layla this summer?”

The hostile glowers Shannon was directing at Natasha slowly dwindled to sorrowful glances. When she hung up, Shannon was an entirely different person. She slumped into a folding chair. “All right,” she said. “I’m ready to listen.”