The Twisted Window (11 page)

"That's coincidence number two then," Sally said. "The first was Tracy's calling us when she did, right when we were absolutely frantic about finding a sitter. All I can say is, blessings on Jimmy Tyler! He's an angel for having given you our number, Tracy."

"We'd better get the show on the road, hon," Doug broke in. "Is Cricket down for the night?"

"Probably," Sally said. "I tucked her in and handed her Monk-Monk and put on the Songs From Dreamland tape. That usually does the job in about thirty seconds."

"Cricket?" Tracy repeated the name in bewilderment. "Her name is Cricket?"

"It's a nickname," explained Doug. "You'd understand why if you ever saw her in the daytime. The kid's like a jumping bean. She never stops hopping around."

"You don't have to worry about her tonight though," Sally said reassuringly. "Once she hits that bed, she's down for the count. Around ten, you'll have to get her up and walk her to the bathroom. She sleeps so soundly she won't wake up on her own until the bed's wet.

"Cricket's room is down the hall, second door on the right. If you should need to get hold of us for any reason, the information about where we'll be is on a pad by the telephone. Help yourself to anything you want from the refrigerator." She looked at her watch. "Doug, we've really got to get going!"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Doug Carver responded in mock exasperation. "Tracy doesn't need a thirty page instruction sheet. Next thing, you'll be offering to supply her with a floor plan of our home."

They were still engaged in lighthearted bantering as they left the house. Tracy stood gazing out through the screen as they crossed the yard and got into their car. The engine roared to life and the car radio followed suit, filling the evening with foot-stamping bluegrass. The headlights flashed on like the eyes of a waking cat as Doug backed the car slowly out of the driveway and into the street.

Tracy continued to stand and watch until the Carvers had disappeared from sight around a bend in the road and Sweetwater Drive had settled back into undiluted darkness. Then, closing the door but leaving it unlocked, she went down the hall to the room in which the child was sleeping.

The bedroom door had been left standing open, and light from the overhead in the hallway spilled into the room, illuminating the small figure on the bed. Mindy was lying on her side with her thumb in her mouth. Her silken hair was spread out across the pillow like a halo. With her free hand, she was clutching a toy monkey, and a tape recorder on the floor by the bed was playing softly. A woman's voice was singing a song about the moon.

"Mindy?" Tracy asked softly. "Are you awake?"

The child made no response.

"The moon is wise, the moon is old, and all her songs come wrapped in gold," sang the lady on the tape.

Tracy switched on the lamp on the bedside table. Despite the fact that Mindy was a recent addition to their household, it was evident that the Carvers had redecorated the room for her. The wallpaper was splashed with pictures of brightly colored balloons, and the curtains were adorned with Sesame Street characters. A throw rug on the floor was in the shape of Big Bird.

Crossing to the bureau, Tracy pulled open the topmost drawer. It was filled with panties, socks, pajamas, and T-shirts. She began removing the clothing, stack by stack, placing it in neat piles on the top of the chest of drawers. When the first drawer had been emptied, she shoved it closed, pulled out the one below it, and began to remove the clothes from that.

"The sweetest songs I ever knew; she has no child to sing them to," crooned the lullaby lady. "Poor lonely moon, poor Mother Moon...."

Gentle as it was, the voice on the tape was loud enough to cover the sound of the front door opening, and although she had been expecting him, Tracy was startled when Brad appeared suddenly in the doorway to the bedroom.

"I was parked down at the corner and saw the car drive off," he said. "They sure took their own sweet time about leaving the house. I was beginning to be afraid they might have changed their minds about going out." He paused. "What are you doing over there?"

"I'm getting Mindy's things together," Tracy told him.

"You don't have to do that. She's got plenty of clothes back in Albuquerque," said Brad. "Mom was going to give all her stuff to Goodwill, but I wouldn't let her. I made her put it in boxes and store it in the attic."

"That was close to half a year ago," Tracy reminded him. "It's not likely many of those things will fit her now."

"You may be right. She sure has grown a lot." He went over to the bed and stood staring down at the sleeping child. "She's beautiful, isn't she? Like a princess in some fairy tale. I can't wait to see Mom's face when I walk through the door with her."

"The Carvers have a nickname for her," said Tracy. "They call her Cricket, because she's always hopping around."

"That's stupid. What do they think she is, a bug?" He reached down and smoothed back a lock of hair from the little girl's forehead. "Mindy's such a pretty name, why would anybody change it?"

"There'll be plenty of time to admire her later," said Tracy. "What you'd better do now is find something we can put these clothes in. It doesn't have to be a suitcase; any sort of sack or bag will do. And while you're at it, see if you can locate her bear."

"Doesn't she have him in bed with her?"

"She's sleeping with a monkey."

"That's odd," said Brad. "It used to be she wouldn't go to bed without Bimbo. She'd throw a fit if we tried to get her to sleep with any other toy." He bent closer to examine the object his sister was clutching to her chest. "You're right, though, it is a monkey. That doesn't make sense. I wonder why she took that shabby thing to bed with her."

He left the room and returned a few moments later with his arms loaded with brown paper sacks, which he placed on a chair next to the bureau.

"I found these in a storage room off the kitchen," he said. "Now I'll check around for Bimbo."

"Maybe you didn't see a bear the other night," Tracy suggested. "That lump on the floor could have been almost any toy. Neither of us could see very well through the window."

"It was Bimbo," Brad said firmly. "I know that bear. After all, I'm the one who went out and bought him."

Alone once again, Tracy continued with the task of removing Mindy's clothing from the second drawer and loading it into the grocery sacks. Then she pulled open the third drawer and emptied that also. The lullaby tape came to an end and the recorder switched itself off.

With the cessation of the music, the only sound in the room was the even breathing of the child on the bed. This time, when the front door opened, Tracy heard it perfectly. There was another short silence, during which she tried desperately to convince herself that she had been mistaken about the source of the sound. Then Doug Carver's voice exploded into the quiet.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my home?"

Shocked into a state of paralysis, Tracy stood frozen, her hands convulsively clutching the straps of a pair of tiny overalls that she had been preparing to drop into the second half-filled sack.

If there was a response to Doug's question, it was not discernible from the bedroom.

Doug's voice rose again in an outraged bellow.

"Tracy Lloyd! You get yourself out here this minute!"

The sound of her name released Tracy from immobility. Letting the overalls fall to the floor, she rushed out of the bedroom and hurried down the hall to the living room.

The scene that confronted her there was even worse than she had anticipated. Huge and glowering, Douglas Carver was planted solidly in the center of the room in the stance of a bull preparing for a charge. His head was lowered, and his nostrils were flared and quivering. In one crazy instant of near hysteria, Tracy could almost imagine that he was going to begin to snort and paw holes in the carpet.

Brad was standing across from him in the doorway to the kitchen, looking as startled and caught off guard as a matador who had misplaced his sword and sent his red cape to the cleaners.

As Tracy entered the room, Doug swung around to confront her.

"You call yourself a baby-sitter?" His voice was shaking with fury. "We haven't been gone twenty minutes, and already you've let a stranger into our house! You were hired to take care of Cricket, not to entertain visitors!"

"It isn't the way it looks. I mean, Brad is a friend of mine." Tracy groped frantically for words to explain the unexplainable. "I didn't know—I mean, I thought..." Unable to come up with a way to end the sentence without revealing the true reason for Brad's presence there, she let it trail off uncompleted.

"I know what you thought," Doug said grimly. "You thought we were gone for the evening and you and your boyfriend could have the run of the house. Well, it didn't work out that way, did it? As it turned out, I forgot our theater tickets, and I left Sally at the restaurant to order while I drove home to get them. The last thing I expected to find was a strange car in our driveway."

"I'm sorry," said Tracy—sorry you came back and saw Brad's car, she finished silently.

"Well, you'd better be sorry! This is the last time you baby-sit at this house!" Doug glared at her and then turned his attention back to Brad, who had not moved throughout the course of the diatribe. "As for you, kid, I want you out of here, and I mean now! You can count yourself lucky I'm not calling in the police."

There was a moment of silence.

Then, Brad said, "Maybe you should. If you want to call the cops, I wouldn't mind talking to them."

"Did I hear you right?" Doug demanded. "You wont to be arrested?"

"I wouldn't be arrested," Brad said. "What law have I broken? You're the one who could be charged as an accomplice to a felony."

"Are you on drugs or something? You're talking like your brain's been fried." Doug regarded the boy with undisguised disgust. "I'm going to repeat this one time and one time only—I want you out of my house! If you don't walk out that door, I'm throwing you through it, and, believe me, little man, I'm the guy who can do that!"

In the terrible silence that followed, Tracy could hear the trip-hammer pounding of her heart, so loud in the room she was sure that the others heard it also. She could feel Doug's fury radiating out of him in waves like the energy-charged vibrations from an overheated motor.

She would not permit herself to look at Brad.

"Please," she said in a shaky voice, "do as he says. He's so much bigger than you. He could really hurt you."

For a moment she was afraid he was going to ignore her and continue to blurt out statements that would antagonize Doug Carver further. Then, like a windup toy activated by a switch, Brad stalked over to the door, jerked it open, and stepped out into the night.

His footsteps clicked twice on the doorstep and then were lost in the grass of the lawn. A few moments later, Tracy heard the slam of his car door.

Gentler sounds then suddenly rushed in to fill the void left by angry voices, filtering through the screen to invade the silent living room: the tinkle of wind chimes in a tree in the Carvers' front yard; guitar music wafting across from a neighbor's house; cicadas serenading spring-time from their home in the hedge that separated the Carvers' house from the one next door.

Apparently satisfied that Brad had been permanently disposed of, Doug addressed himself to Tracy. "Your boyfriend's crazy. God knows what junk he's been shooting up or smoking. I can't believe you'd let someone like that come into this house with Cricket here." He paused and then, with a major effort, got a grip on himself and managed to continue in a calmer voice. "Now, I want you to get on the phone and call your aunt."

"Call my aunt?" Tracy repeated. "Why should I do that?"

"You're a minor, right? And Irene Stevenson's your guardian?"

"Yes," Tracy acknowledged.

"Then she's responsible. You've contracted to do a job you're not trustworthy enough to handle, so it's up to your aunt to take over in your place."

Tracy stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing.

"You expect Aunt Rene to come over here and baby-sit?"

"Damn right I do," Doug said tersely. "Tonight's our anniversary. Sally and I have a celebration planned, and I'm not about to let you wreck it. I'll be too late to get back to the restaurant in time for dinner, but at least I can join my wife and friends at the theater. You get your aunt on the phone and explain what's happened. Tell her I'm not leaving this house until she gets here."

With no option but to obey, Tracy crossed to the telephone, which was situated on the table at the end of the sofa. She picked up the receiver and reluctantly dialed the number of the Stevensons' home. As the phone on the other end of the line began to ring, she could visualize her aunt and uncle, comfortably planted in front of the television, squabbling good-naturedly about whose turn it was to get up and answer.

The loser this time turned out to be her uncle. After the eighth ring it was his voice that said, "Hello?"

Before Tracy could respond, however, Brad spoke from the doorway. "Hang up, Tracy," he said. "You don't have to make that call."