“She said that since they weren’t going far, she didn’t need car seats. I hope I didn’t do anything wrong, but when she offered ice cream, both girls wanted to go. It didn’t seem like that big a deal.”
It might not have been a big deal to Julie, but it certainly was to Teresa. Ali was already on her feet. “Look,” she said. “It’s not a problem. I’ll take the car seats and go find them. I’ll bring the girls back here as soon as they finish their ice cream.”
Julie followed her out of the room with her cell phone ringing again. Ali suspected that her interrupted conversations were part of the reason she was happy to hand off the girls and let them be someone else’s problem for a few minutes.
“If you’ll go get the car seats,” Ali told her, “I’ll go get my car.”
While she waited for Julie to bring the seats, Ali pulled up to the front door. A quick Internet search showed her that the nearest Baskin-Robbins was under two miles away, on Wrightstown Road.
“I hope they’re not mad at me,” Julie said as she stuffed the seats into Ali’s Cayenne.
“No one’s mad at you,” Ali assured her. “We’ll take care of it. What kind of car was she driving?”
“I don’t know. A white one? And like with four doors or something.”
“A sedan, then?”
“I guess.”
Julie’s vague description wasn’t a big help, especially since, when Ali arrived at the Baskin-Robbins parking lot, there were no white sedans in attendance. A white Toyota Tundra pickup truck, yes, but no four-door sedans of any kind. There was no sign of Olga Sanchez and the girls, either.
Ali got out and went inside. She waited impatiently while a family of four did multiple taste tests before making their final flavor choices. She asked the solo employee, “Did a lady with black hair and two little girls come in a while ago? The lady wears her hair pulled back. There are white streaks in her hair.”
The clerk behind the counter, shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
The first inklings of real concern leaked into Ali’s consciousness. She went back out to the car and watched up and down the street for several minutes. Maybe Olga had decided to stop off somewhere on the way to the ice cream shop. While Ali watched oncoming traffic, she called Teresa. “I’m at Baskin-Robbins,” she said. “They’re not here.”
“Where else would she have taken them?” Teresa asked.
Ali heard the rising panic in Teresa’s voice. She didn’t want to cause the poor woman any additional worry, and so, although Ali herself was feeling genuine alarm, she tried to keep it from showing.
“Maybe she went to a different branch,” Ali suggested. “Or maybe she decided to go somewhere else first. Is it possible she took them home? She offered to do that earlier, didn’t she? Where is home?”
“That would be either the ranch, the Lazy S, south of Patagonia, or else to her house here in Tucson.”
“Where’s that?” Ali asked.
“On Longfellow Avenue,” Teresa said. “Right around Hawthorne. I don’t remember the exact number.”
“The streets are named for writers?”
“Yes,” Teresa said. “It’s an area in the central district called Poet’s Corner, mostly homes from the forties and fifties.”
“How will I know which one is the right one?”
“It’s a brick house that’s been painted white,” Teresa said. “Blue trim. If you’re driving southbound between Speedway and Fifth, their house in on the right side of Longfellow.”
“What kind of car does Olga drive?” Ali asked. She was programming Longfellow Avenue into her GPS as she spoke.
“She and Oscar may not still have the same car, but they used to keep an older-model Buick at the house in Tucson to use when they were in town.”
“What color?”
“White.”
“Two-door or four-door?”
“Four.” Teresa added, “They have a Range Rover that they mostly keep on the ranch and a minivan conversion that holds Oscar’s wheelchair.” There was a momentary silence on the phone before she asked, “Do you think I should call the police?”
“Not yet,” Ali said. “Let me drive by the house on Longfellow. The GPS says it’ll take me just under twenty minutes to get from here to there. If there’s no sign of them at the house, or if Olga hasn’t brought the girls back to the hospital by then, that’ll be the time to bring the cops in.”
It occurred to her that while she was checking on the house in Tucson, Patty might be able to find out if Olga had retreated to the ranch. As Ali made her way across Tucson, she tried redialing both of Patty Patton’s landlines, but there was no answer at either one.
Remembering what had happened on Sunday, Ali dialed Stuart Ramey’s number.
“Hey, Ali,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”
“Can you get back into the Physicians Medical’s CCTV system?” she asked.
“Another evil flower delivery guy?” he asked. “How did all that turn out, by the way?”
“The flower guy turned out to be a good guy,” Ali said. “I should have let you know. But now we’ve got a grandmother who may have gone off the rails. She came to the hospital sometime within the last half hour, loaded two kids-two little girls-into a vehicle, and took off. We need to get the kids back.”
“She took the kids without permission?”
“Yes.”
“So this is urgent?”
“Very.”
“Let me get back to you.”
He hung up. No more than a minute elapsed before he called her back. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got it. Looks like a Buick Regal from the nineties. Here’s the license.”
“I’m driving,” Ali said. “Can’t write it down. Can you send it to me?”
“Will,” Stuart said. “But there’s something else you should know. Those kids, the older one in particular, didn’t look very happy to be getting in that car.”
By then Ali had turned off Alvernon onto Second Street. Longfellow was two blocks in. She spotted the Range Rover parked on the street as soon as she turned the corner onto Longfellow. Not only was the Range Rover parked out front, there was a white Buick parked under the carport at the end of the driveway. A quick comparison revealed that the license number matched the one Stuart Ramey had sent to her phone minutes before.
“Bingo,” Ali told herself. “Got her.”
The xeriscaped front yard wasn’t fenced. A concrete walkway led through a collection of prickly pear, yucca, barrel cactus, and palo verde. Growing along both sides of the house was a foolproof burglar deterrent-a thicket of seven-foot-high cholla. Backlit by the setting sun, the five-inch-long needles resembled an evil halo. Blinds on all the street-facing windows had been pulled tightly shut. Had it not been for the car in the driveway, the house might have been deserted.
Ali pulled in behind the Buick, effectively blocking it. If Olga planned to leave in the Ranger Rover, there wasn’t much Ali could do, but if she planned to drive the Buick out of there, she would have to go through Ali’s Cayenne to do it.
Ali rang the bell. When nothing happened, she rang the bell again. Eventually, despite the fact that there was no sound from inside, the light in the peephole went out.
“What do you want?” a woman’s voice asked.
“I’m Teresa and Jose’s friend, Ali Reynolds. I’ve come to pick up the girls.”
“Whatever would make you think they’re with me?”
“Come on, Mrs. Sanchez,” Ali said. “Julie, the girl who was looking after Lucy and Carinda, told us you had taken them for ice cream. We have the security tape that shows you leaving the hospital with the two girls in your car.”
Olga Sanchez gave an audible sigh. “Oh well, then,” she said. “I suppose you should come inside.”
