Vanished (8 page)

Ms. Carter rubbed the back of her neck. “That’s all true … but you’ve added two plus two and come up with ten.” She hesitated. “Can you keep some things to yourself if I share them with you?”

Jeri nodded.

“This is extremely confidential, but I believe I can trust you to keep this between us. Ms. Long has her reasons for what she does. The school is suffering financially. Landmark can’t afford bad publicity that might keep parents from enrolling their students. The headmistress is under a lot of pressure.” She turned to face Jeri. “Parents and students demand more programs and better facilities, and it all costs money. That means increased tuition. The dorms need to be full to pay the cost of running the school.”

“And if parents think their kids wouldn’t be safe here …” added Jeri.

“Exactly,” said Ms. Carter.

Jeri laid her head on her knees. “I sometimes wonder why she works here. I mean … she doesn’t seem to like girls at all.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong. She
loves
you girls.” Ms. Carter wrapped long arms around her legs. “Ten years ago, in a boating accident, she lost her husband and twin daughters.”

Jeri caught her breath. How horrible! She’d always assumed the Head was an old maid. To think of her having a husband and daughters–to even think of her having fun on a boat–felt bizarre.

“After their deaths,” Ms. Carter continued, “she threw herself into making good things happen for
other
people’s girls. Landmark is her whole life now.” She rubbed her chapped hands together. “I know this because she is my sister-in-law. Her husband who drowned was my brother.”

“Oh! I’m really sorry. For you both.”

“Later, she got me this job.” She patted Jeri’s knee. “Just try to have compassion for her heavy responsibilities. She fears lawsuits from angry parents now. An expensive lawsuit could shut down the school. Of course, her worst fear is that the girls are hurt – or worse. The headmistress hired Keith Reeves. She holds herself personally responsible.”

Jeri was speechless. She’d been so wrong about the Head. “I’ll pray for her,” she finally said. Had she misjudged Mr. Reeves too? And Jake? Did she have the good guys and bad guys all turned around?

“I’d better take the girls down to the search area.” Ms. Carter got up and brushed her hands on her slacks. “Keep those prayers coming.”

Jeri deliberately stayed in the restroom long enough for the cars carrying her friends to leave. It was killing her not to go along. She pictured a half-frozen, frostbitten, starving Rosa being carried out of the woods by a rescue worker. Rosa would try to stand, but her numb legs would collapse. She’d hunt for Jeri–who was her only family now that her parents were out of the country–but Jeri wouldn’t be there.

Washing her hands, Jeri stared at her reflection in the mirror. The Head had always reminded her of the Wicked Witch of the West. Instead, it turned out that her two children died in some terrible accident. Jeri cringed as she remembered sarcastic cracks she’d made about her during the year. And all this time …

She finally headed back to the dorm, mentally trying to arrange different pieces of the puzzle to make sense. The school’s financial trouble, Jake’s lie about where he was when she called him, Mr. Reeves’s bank withdrawal and mysterious evening disappearances, Heather’s ability to drive … Nothing fit.

Lord, who is the real enemy?

When she reached Hampton House, Jeri went straight upstairs and wrote an apology to the headmistress for any trouble she’d caused. She
had
taken action on her own, without checking with anyone. Even though she’d meant well, she’d created new problems.

As she trudged across campus to the main office, her eyes watered in the bitter stinging wind. A few flurries swirled through the air. Jeri fervently hoped the forecaster was wrong about the winter storm heading their way in a few hours.

In the office, the secretary was on the phone. “I’m sorry,” Betty explained, her gray eyebrows arched. “I really don’t know any more than what’s on TV.” A small portable TV tuned to a local news station sat on her desk.

Jeri stomped her snowy feet on the welcome mat and studied the secretary. Betty was fun–she painted on her own eyebrows, depending on the color of her outfit. They might be black, brown, plum, or gray – and thin, thick, straight, or arched. She changed them like she changed earrings.

Betty hung up and slumped in her swivel chair. “The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since seven a.m.” She got a bottle of aspirin from her purse and a cup of water from the cooler.

Jeri studied the fundraiser poster above the cooler. “So, which dorm is ahead in the competition?”

“No idea. I’ve been too busy since Thursday night to count the money that was turned in.”

Jeri shifted from one foot to the other. “I have a note for Headmistress Long. It’s personal.”

“Oh. Well, just leave it in her office, in the middle of her desk.” She pointed to a door near the visitors’ chairs. “It’ll get lost if you leave it on
my
desk.”

“Okay.” Jeri opened the door and stepped into the dim room. Gauzy maroon curtains filtered the light from outside. She tiptoed across thick carpet and dropped her note on the massive–and extremely tidy–polished desk.

Back in the reception room, Betty grabbed her purse and stood. “Jeri, could you do me a big, big favor? Answer the phone while I run to the restroom? I’m gonna bust. I need a snack, too.”

“Um, sure. If someone calls, what do I say?”

“Just say, ‘Landmark School for Girls, Main Office.’ Say that you’re the answering service and take a message. I’ll call people back.”

“Okay.” Jeri sat down behind the desk.

“You’re a lifesaver, hon.” And Betty trotted down the hall.

On the TV, Jeri watched the weatherman’s special bulletin about the winter storm coming. If only the girls were rescued before it came! A few minutes later, a phone rang. Jeri reached for it and then realized it was coming from the Head’s office.
Must be a private line.
It rang and rang. Betty had said to answer the phone. Did she mean both of them?

Jeri ran into the office and grabbed the receiver. Before she could give her greeting, a raspy male voice on the other end spoke. “I have some information. Talk to me, or I’ll expose what’s going on. You have my number.” He hung up.

Jeri dropped the phone as if it had bitten her.
Who was that?
He must have assumed the headmistress had answered. “Expose what’s going on” sounded like a threat–like blackmail! That voice was vaguely familiar. Could it have been Jake?

She hurried out of the private office and closed the door. She probably wasn’t even supposed to be in there. She was back at Betty’s desk when the secretary reappeared with a candy bar. “Thanks, hon. Did my phone ring?”

Her phone?
“No. No, it didn’t.” Jeri felt her face go red. She hated lying to her.

Outside again, she barely felt the wind. Who had left that threatening message? It sure didn’t sound like a ransom call, but what could it mean? Should she tell the Head … and upset her even more? She already had mountains of problems to solve without adding a blackmailer to the list.

Saturday, 8:39 a.m. to 10:23 a.m.

Back in her room, Jeri was desperate to
do
something,
anything,
to help find Rosa and the others. She wanted to defy the headmistress and head back to the lake. They might be close to finding the girls. Rosa just had to be alive.

Lord, can’t I go back there? Isn’t there something else I can do?
She paced, still limping, while she prayed and waited for some kind of direction or idea. One of her mom’s often-quoted verses came to her about how God “acts on behalf of those who wait for him.” Why did waiting have to be so
hard
though?

But she waited. Eventually her heart stopped pounding, and her mind settled down. She was filled with an incredible sense that God was in charge of everything that was happening – that he had things under his control. Then a thought passed through her mind:
Go back to the woods.

Holding her breath, Jeri waited. Was this a prompt from God? If only she could be sure that it wasn’t just her own idea! At least she’d be doing something. She didn’t get a chance to explore much yesterday.

Okay, she’d go.

She wrapped her ankle with an elastic bandage before jamming it into her boot. Down in the kitchen, she grabbed drink boxes of orange juice, a big box of raisins, and a bag of hard candy, just in case she found the van full of girls. They’d need some quick energy. She put it all in a heavy plastic bag with handles, which she planned to loop over the saddle horn.

When she left the dorm, the flurries were heavier, but not accumulating on the shoveled sidewalk yet. The sun was hidden by low-hanging gray clouds. As she passed the clock tower, it began to strike nine. She picked up her pace. Nobody was in the barn with the horses this morning, and Jeri was glad. She bet Houston was helping search again.

Jeri saddled up Star quickly, hung the food and drink over the saddle horn, and headed out. Soon she took the entrance to the main trail through the woods, listening closely for reckless snowmobilers. But today all was hushed, even serene, with lightly falling snow. She searched farther up the trail this time, but found nothing.

Leaning back in the saddle, she let Star rest.
Now what, Lord?
She hated this helpless feeling. Would she ever see Rosa again? Would Mrs. Reeves live with gossip and terrible sadness for the rest of her life?

Not if she had anything to say about it.

Scanning the area slowly, Jeri peered into the shadows cast by the brush and scrubby trees. The walnut and buckeye trees–she remembered them from science class–were too thin to hide the van. Massive evergreens much farther up the slope, however, swept low and touched the ground. A cluster of them could hide the van easily, but could anyone actually drive it up there? She didn’t know how they could, but puzzling out the clues helped her focus on something besides how much Rosa must be suffering.

She thought about how Jake had gotten her interested in investigative reporting. She didn’t like how Jake dramatized the news, but she
did
like putting odd bits of information together, discovering things, solving problems, and helping people.

Star pawed the ground while Jeri reflected on what to do next. Flurries thickened and turned to clumps of flakes. She found herself squinting through swirling snow kicked up by intermittent gusts of wind. She felt cut off, as if she were inside the unreal world of a snow globe. As she stared, the trees to her left moved, shifted. She blinked the flakes off her eyelashes and then looked again, her eyes finally seeing the shifting shapes.

Staring at her from the underbrush were three full-grown deer. They stood like statues; their backs looked as if they’d been dusted with powdered sugar. How perfectly they blended in for their own protection. Even now, their antlers seemed made of twigs and branches.

She hadn’t seen them a moment ago. Yet they’d been there, right in front of her!

What else was right in front of her that she wasn’t seeing? Was there something obvious about the missing van that she’d overlooked? The police assumed the van was in the lake or had been driven away by a kidnapper. Jeri herself wondered if Heather had knocked Mr. Reeves out and stolen the van.

But what if they were all overlooking something else right in front of them?

Like … what if the van hadn’t actually gone
anywhere?
What if–like the deer–it had blended into its surroundings?

She slipped from the saddle, wincing as she landed on her foot with the sore ankle. She petted Star’s nose and pulled an apple from her pocket. Star crunched the whole thing in one bite, then nibbled up the pieces that fell to the snowy ground. Jeri was startled to realize that a new inch of snow had already accumulated. She ran a hand down Star’s neck and chest, and her fingers felt the rippledscar. As a foal he’d been snagged by barbed-wire fence. She’d noticed it the day she went with Houston to pick up the horse.

Last fall they’d gone to a farm nearby to get a dozen horses for the school, donated by a woman whose husband had died. She had wanted to move to Arizona. When no one bought her farm or the horses, she decided to give away the animals and move anyway.

Jeri wondered. Was the farm still abandoned? It was just three miles down the paved road. An idea grabbed her, and she breathed rapidly. Was it possible that the van was hidden in an empty barn there? If so, that would explain why the roadblocks hadn’t turned up anything. Maybe the kidnappers hadn’t gone any farther than down the road from the school!

Jeri hurled herself back up into the saddle. She knew the chances of finding them at the farm were very slim, but she had to check it out. With the snow heavier and visibility shrinking by the minute, it was now or never.

She trotted down the remaining quarter mile of trail, turned right, and then headed down the main road at a gallop. One hand held the reins and the saddle horn; her other hand gripped Star’s streaming mane. She knew it wasn’t correct form–Nikki would hoot if she saw her–but Jeri held on for dear life. She flew down the road, woods passing by in a blur.

Star’s horseshoes made a terrific racket, despite the fresh snow. If the kidnappers actually
were
at the abandoned farm, they’d hear her coming long before they spotted her. She thought the farm was down the next hill and just around the corner, then over a wooden bridge. Two more miles at the most. If Jeri recalled correctly, the farm was surrounded by trees that towered over the house, a huge barn, and several outbuildings.

After about a mile, she slowed and turned off the paved road so the snow would muffle the clattering hoofbeats. She headed straight into the woods until she could no longer see the main road, then angled left through the trees and started down the hill. She planned to circle around and come in behind the barn. If the kidnappers were holed up there, the road was undoubtedly guarded. No one should be watching the woods behind the barn though.