“Mrs. Ramos thinks it was a station on the Under-ground Railroad.”
I lay motionless and let my mind connect the dots.
“That’s what Pam was raving about? The trains to freedom? Bloodhounds?”
“You got it.”
“And these pictures of Jesus?”
“Yeah.”
The ambulance arrived and, despite my protests, I was lifted onto a gurney, strapped in, and wheeled out through a closet into the Rose Bedroom.
“This isn’t the way I came in,” I said. “There are secret stairs under the real stairs.”
“We know that now. How did you find them?” asked Dwight, who walked beside me, still carrying Cal.
“She left the closet door open, and when I looked in, I heard Cal crying and— Ouch!”
The rescue team carried my gurney down as carefully as they could, but pain arced through my head with every little bounce. As they lifted me into the ambulance and Dwight crawled in with Cal, I suddenly remembered his records! “I left them on the desk.”
“Everything’s fine,” Dwight soothed. “Just lie still.”
“No!” I said, struggling to sit up and held by the straps. “Where’s Paul? Where are those explorers?”
“We’re here,” an amused voice said from outside the ambulance.
“Look on the desk beside the computer,” I called.
“There are pictures beneath Cal’s records. Make Betty Ramos talk to you.”
“Here we go,” someone said, then the doors closed and we were moving.
I shut my eyes as the tires hit a pothole.
“Stay with us, ma’am,” said the nurse or whoever she was, lifting one of my eyelids and shining a light into my pupil.
“I’m fine,” I said, swatting the light away. “I’m not going to pass out again so would you please undo these damn straps?”
“Ma’am—”
“Do it,” said Dwight and a moment later I was free again.
“Thanks,” I said. “How’s Cal?”
I was speaking to Dwight, but the nurse answered.
“His blood pressure’s a little low but not in the danger zone.”
I reached for Dwight’s hand. “How did you find us?”
“Bandit. He caught Cal’s scent as soon as I brought him inside and went straight up the stairs to that hidden door in the closet.”
“He’s going to do just fine down on the farm, isn’t he?”
He squeezed my hand tightly. “Soon as we get home, I’m buying him the biggest steak I can find. God, Deborah! When you disappeared on me, too—”
He broke off as Cal stirred. “Daddy?”
“Right here, buddy.”
“Good,” he murmured and snuggled deeper into Dwight’s arms.
As I expected, the emergency room doctor took a good look at the lump on my head, looked into my eyes with his light, asked lots of questions about whether I was confused or dizzy, then told me to take aspirin for my headache and call him in the morning. He grinned when he said it, so I figured there was no permanent damage.
Cal’s doctor ordered an IV drip to help flush his blood-stream of the codeine-laced cough syrup and wanted to keep him at the hospital overnight for observation.
Dwight and I could have gone back to Jonna’s house for the night, but no way were we going to let him out of our sight. There was a recliner in the room and they rolled in a cot so that we could take turns stretching out if we wanted. Extra pillows and blankets were ours for the asking.
We dimmed the lights and moved away from the bed to the window that looked out over the town. The moon was three nights from full and it starkly silhouetted the skeletal limbs of the oaks that would shade the building in summer. We stood with our arms interlaced and talked quietly.
“Where’s Bandit?” I asked.
“Paul said he’d take care of him tonight.”
“Can we go home now?”
“Soon as the funeral’s over.”
Funeral. It wasn’t that I had forgotten that Jonna was 29 dead or who probably killed her and why, but I
