pictures taken with the mascots. When it was her turn, Lynnette dropped down into the hay, put an arm around each lamb and smiled for the camera. She sat on a nearby hay bale to watch it finish developing, then gave it to me for safekeeping in my purse since she was afraid it would get candy smears if she put it in her tote.
“Well, hello,” said a friendly voice.
I turned around and saw Heather McKenzie smiling at me.
“I see you got your purse back. Did you find Savannah?”
“No. Sorry. The police found it—”
I broke off, not wanting to say where. Not with Lynnette only a few feet away.
Oblivious to the child, Heather stared at me wide-eyed. “I just realized. You were the one who found him, weren’t you?”
I tried to shush her, but her eyes widened even further as she gazed at something in the distance behind me.
“Look!” said Heather. “On the escalator. Isn’t that Savannah?”
Lynnette followed Heather’s pointing finger and stood atop the hay bale so that she could see over our heads.
“It is Savannah-Nana!” she squealed, and before I could stop her, she jumped off the bale of hay and squirmed through the line of people waiting to have their pictures taken.
“Lynnette! Wait!” I called, but she was gone, swallowed up by the crowds.
12
« ^ » “
I charged after Lynnette with Heather McKenzie close behind me, but the child was half my size and able to dart through openings in the crowd that got me a glare or an icy “Do you mind?” when I tried to slip through the same spaces.
By the time we finally elbowed our way over to the escalator in the middle of the floor, there was no sign of the child nor of Savannah in the solid flow of people jammed onto the moving stairs. Nevertheless, we stepped on and I shoved Heather in front of me since she was several inches shorter.
“You keep looking up there for Savannah,” I ordered. “I’ll check out the floor.”
We rose steadily while I anxiously scanned the area for a small pink T-shirt and a long bouncy pigtail. If there were any children at all on the first floor, I didn’t see them. A flash of rainbow pastels entering Arte de Mexico raised my hopes till I saw it wasn’t Savannah.
Going with the flow, we crossed a glass-enclosed walkway and reached the mezzanine. Hallways crowded with people branched off in different directions from a central reception desk where more crowds waited for the two elevators. There was a glass door that led outside and I recognized the street where I’d dropped Drew Patterson an hour or so earlier, which meant that this part of Market Square connected with the String and Splinter.
For a panicky moment I considered trying to see if Drew was still inside the club and could help us hunt for Lynnette, but then I recognized a familiar face standing near the elevators. “Mr.—Tomlinson, is it?”
He had switched uniforms and now wore a patch on his sleeve that identified him as an employee of a private security company, but it was my bailiff from the courthouse all right
“Oh, hiya, Judge,” he beamed at me. “Enjoying Market?”
“Not at the moment,” I answered. ‘I’m missing a little girl. Did one pass through here a few minutes ago?”
“Bugs Bunny shirt?” he asked. “Blonde hair in a braid?”
“Yes! Where did she go?”
“She took the elevator up to five. You just missed them.”
“Them?” asked Heather.
“Kid with her grandma, right? Gray-haired lady in a fancy spring dress? She asked me where the Century showroom is. On five, I told her.”
Unlike the elevators over in GHFM, the elevators at Market Square were built to hold more than six people at a time. And since they serviced five floors instead of GHFM’s eleven, we only had to wait six very long minutes instead of twenty.
Of course, it might have been a bit longer if we hadn’t had a chatty Mr. Tomlinson to part the waters for us and escort us to the front of the crowd.
“Who’d you wind up giving the baby to?” he asked as we waited, and I remembered that there’d been a different bailiff in my courtroom after lunch.
“The father.”
“On account of he’s moved back in with his folks?”
I nodded. “That tipped it.”
