Jody had been peeking into different shops on the shopping mall’s main level. Now he hurried back to George at the concierge desk. Shaking his head, Jody looked so forlorn. “Dad, I’m sorry,” he said, his lip quivering. “It’s all my fault-”
George mussed his son’s unruly, brown hair. “It’s all right, Jody. We’ll find her.”
He asked the concierge to make the announcement again. Then he put down his shopping bags and turned to Jody. “You stay here and keep your eyes peeled,” he said. “I’ll start on the top floor and work my way down. Have the woman call my cell if Steffie shows up. Okay, sport?”
Jody nodded. George kissed his forehead, then hurried toward the escalator. “Stephanie! Steffie?” he called, loudly. People stopped to stare at him, several of them scowling. He didn’t care. He brushed past shoppers on the escalator, saying, “Excuse me,” over and over again. He yelled out Stephanie’s name a few more times. He kept looking around as he moved from each shopping level, stepping off one escalator and starting up a new one.
As George reached the top floor, where the restaurants and movie theaters were, he felt his cell phone vibrating. He stopped in his tracks. He quickly snatched the phone out of his jacket pocket, then switched it on. “Yes, hello?” he asked anxiously.
“Uncle George?”
“Amelia?” he asked.
“Yeah, hi, listen,” she said. “Has Aunt Ina called you from the cabin today?”
Flustered, he shook his head. “Not yet,” he said into the phone. “She’s supposed to call from that diner near the cabin when they go to breakfast. I’m sorry, Amelia, but I-”
“Uncle George, it’s past noon. She should have called by now-”
“Amelia, honey, I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of something. I need to call you back.”
“No! Don’t hang up, please! Uncle George, something happened at the Lake Wenatchee house, something horrible.”
He stood by the entrance of a fifties diner with the cell phone to one ear and a finger in the other to block out all the noise. “What are you talking about?” he asked, trying not to sound impatient.
“Remember how when Collin died, I knew before everyone else? Remember that premonition I had? Well, this is the same thing. I
“Amelia, I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of something right now. It’s an emergency. Let me call you back-”
“This is an emergency too, Uncle George! I’m serious-”
“Honey, I’m going to hang up, okay? I–I’ll call you back just as soon as I can, all right?” Wincing, George clicked off the line. He felt awful hanging up on her, but he just didn’t have time for Amelia’s dramatics right now.
He hadn’t even gotten the cell phone back into his pocket when it vibrated again. “Oh, Jesus, please, Amelia, leave me alone,” he muttered. He clicked on the phone, and sighed. “Yes?”
“Mr. McMillan, this is Jennifer, the concierge. Your daughter’s okay. She hadn’t wandered too far. She heard the last announcement, and came right to us. She’s here at the desk, waiting for you….”
“Oh, thank God,” he whispered. “Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you very much.”
Fifteen minutes later, he was walking with the children toward the Pine Street lot where he’d parked the car. George gripped Stephanie’s little hand. He felt as if he’d just dodged a bullet. He’d thanked the concierge, stopped by Pottery Barn to tell the saleswoman all was well, and he’d assured Jody that he wasn’t mad at him for letting Stephanie wander off. But he still had some unfinished business.
He needed to call back Amelia, and he didn’t want to. She’d been babbling on about some
“Okay, watch your fingers and feet, pumpkin,” he said, helping Stephanie into the backseat. He shut the car door and made sure she was locked in. While Jody climbed into the front passenger side, George stashed the Old Navy and Pottery Barn bags in the trunk. He closed it, and then glanced at his wristwatch: 12:35.
Ina definitely should have phoned by now.
He checked his cell to see if he might have missed a call. There were no messages. The only call had been the one from Amelia.
Pulling at her leash, the eleven-year-old collie led the way. Abby knew exactly where her owner was headed. She had that sixth sense some dogs had. When they came to a split in the forest’s crude path, Abby sniffed at the ground and quickly veered onto the trail that went along the lake’s edge-toward the Faradays’ house.
“That’s a good girl,” Helene Sumner said, holding the leash tightly. A chilly autumn wind whipped across the lake, and she turned up the collar to her windbreaker. Helene was sixty-seven and thin, with close-cropped gray hair. She was an artist, working with silk screens. She had a studio in her house, about a half mile down the lake from the Faradays’ place.
Helene had hardly gotten any sleep last night. When those shots had gone off at 2:30 this morning, Abby had started barking. She leapt up from her little comforter in the corner of the bedroom and onto Helene’s bed. The poor thing was trembling. So was Helene. She wasn’t accustomed to being woken up in the middle of the night like that.
Hunting was prohibited in the area, and even if it were allowed, what in God’s name were they hunting at that hour? The tall trees surrounding the lake played with the acoustics, and sounds traveled across the water. Those shots rang out so clearly, they could have been fired in Helene’s backyard. But she knew where they’d come from.
She’d just started to doze off again when another loud bang went off around five o’clock. Helene dragged herself out of bed and threw on her windbreaker. Grabbing a pair of field glasses, she walked with Abby to the lake’s edge, and then peered over at the Faradays’ house. No activity, no lights on, nothing.
She retreated to the house, crawled back into bed and nodded off until 10:30-very unlike her.
An hour ago, while having her breakfast-coffee and the last of her homemade biscuits-Helene had figured out who must have encroached on her sanctuary. Those three loud shots in the early morning hours must have been some kind of fireworks-bottle rockets or firecrackers.
Now, walking with Abby along the lakeside path, Helene gazed at the Faraday place and thought about the daughter, Amelia. She used to be such a polite, considerate girl-and so beautiful. But there was an underlying sadness about her, too. And talk about sad, it was such a tragedy when the Faradays’ son drowned. It had been around that time, maybe even before, when Amelia and her lowlife boyfriend had started showing up at the weekend house without her parents. They were so obnoxious. Helene didn’t care about the skinny-dipping, but did they have to be so loud? She heard their screaming and laughing until all hours of the night, and sometimes it was punctuated by bottles smashing. They trashed the lake, too. Helene would find food wrappers, cigarette butts, and beer cans washed up on her shore after each one of their clandestine visits. Those kids were making a cesspool out of her lake.
About a month ago, when the Faradays had come for a weekend, Helene stopped by with a Bundt cake and offered her belated condolences about Collin. Then, privately, she talked to Amelia about her secret trips there with her boyfriend. “It’s none of my business what you do with him, Amelia,” she told her, walking along the trail beside the water. “But I wish you’d be a little less noisy about it. And so help me God, I’m going to say something to your parents if I see one more piece of garbage in that lake. It’s my lake, too, and I won’t let you and your boyfriend pollute it.”
Amelia stopped and gaped at her with those big, beautiful eyes and a put-on innocent expression. “Oh, Ms. Sumner, I–I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmured. “I haven’t come here with my boyfriend. I swear. Shane’s
Helene shook her head. “You can deny it all you want. I know what I saw, Amelia. I’m really disappointed in you….”
Now, as she approached the Faradays’ front porch, Helene figured she’d get the same Little Miss Innocent routine from Amelia as last time. She would probably wake her up-along with her boyfriend-since they’d been lighting off firecrackers until the wee hours of the morning.
But something suddenly occurred to Helene that made her hesitate at the Faradays’ front stoop. Why didn’t
