“Do you want to grab some pizza and figure out what to do next?”
“Sure. Let me call my dad and tell him I’ll be late.”
As Madison dialed her cell phone, she looked back at the house and thought she saw a window curtain move on the second floor. She was tempted to go back to the house and look around more, but Jake had already started walking away.
When they got to Amore Pizza, a popular hangout for Madison and her friends just a few blocks from Ann’s house, Jake went to the counter while Madison found a booth. By the time Jake sat down with a small pepperoni pizza and two Cokes, Madison could feel her tightly wound nerves fraying.
“I think we need to go to the police,” she said as she ripped a napkin into tiny pieces.
Madison remembered
“Let’s not panic. You said that Ann was in Europe all summer, right?”
“Yeah. Ann’s dad is some sort of famous scientist. I think he was giving lectures over there.”
“Maybe his lectures were so good that he stayed.”
“Like they extended the trip or something?”
“Yeah.”
Madison thought for a minute. “But Ann has to go to school. And why wouldn’t she call me? Or email or something?”
She took a bite of her pizza. Jake’s usually joking expression had been replaced with a thoughtful one. After a few quiet moments he looked up. “You said your father is a criminal lawyer.”
Madison’s mouth was full of cheese, so she nodded.
“Has he ever handled a kidnapping case? Maybe you should ask him about Ann.”
“I dunno . . . Dad is so busy right now. He just got a really hard new case.” She took a sip of Coke.
“Oh yeah? What’s it about?”
She quickly swallowed. “This woman called the police and said that she heard her neighbor being murdered. When the police went into the house, they found a knife and blood. And the most awful part is the missing woman is my second-grade teacher.”
“Oh my God! I really liked Mrs. Haggard, my second-grade teacher,” he said mid-bite.
“I really liked Mrs. Shelby too, and I can’t stand thinking that something bad has happened to her. I’m so worried.”
“Is there a chance she’s alive?”
“No one knows for sure. They haven’t found Mrs. Shelby’s body, but they arrested her husband for murder anyway.”
“Wow! That’s like
“Oh, yeah,” Madison replied casually. “I go all the time.”
“Can anyone watch?”
“Sure!”
“I’ve never been in a courtroom. It would be pretty cool to go. . . .”
“There’s a bail hearing for Mr. Shelby on Friday. That’s a teacher-training day, so there’s no school or soccer practice.”
Jake was reaching for his third slice of pizza. Madison couldn’t believe the words that came out of her mouth next.
“Do you want to come with me?” She ducked her head and filled her mouth with more pizza.
Jake flashed his wide gap-toothed smile. “That sounds great.”
Madison was about to say, “It’s a date,” but she caught herself. Was asking Jake to watch a bail hearing the same thing as asking him out on a date? Dates were usually, like, going to movies or to the mall, so she wasn’t sure. She decided that going to court would be educational, so it couldn’t be a date.
“Is your mom a lawyer, too?” Jake asked.
It was the question she always dreaded. In a few seconds, her mood went from high to low.
Discussing her mom always made her sad. She guessed she’d never get used to not having one. One time many years ago, Madison and Peggy had had a serious talk about Madison’s mother. Madison had been in a school play, and Hamilton couldn’t come because he was in a big trial in California. Madison had been staying with Peggy, and Peggy had come to school in Hamilton’s place. After the play, Madison saw all of her friends with a dad and a mom and she’d gotten teary-eyed. Until that day, Madison had accepted having a dad and no mom. She knew her mom was dead, but they had never really talked about it. On the ride home, she’d asked Peggy why other dads had wives and other kids had a mom and a dad.
“You had a mother, Madison. She was lovely, one of the sweetest women I’ve ever known.”
“Why can’t I remember her better?” Madison had asked.
“You were too young when she passed away.”
“Some of the kids in my class have two moms,” Madison said. She knew this because she had playmates whose fathers had remarried after divorce or death. “I’d like to have a mother, even if it wasn’t my first mom.”
Madison had seen tears form in Peggy’s eyes before she turned her head back to the road.
“Your mother was so special that your dad hasn’t found anyone to replace her,” Peggy said.
“Does Dad work so hard because he misses Mom?” Madison asked.
Peggy looked surprised. “I think that’s it,” she said. “When your mother was alive, he didn’t work nearly as hard. After she passed away, Hamilton buried himself in his work because he was very sad. I guess he never got out of the habit.”
“Hey, you okay?” said Jake, waving a hand in front of her face.
Madison snapped out of her memories and looked across the table at Jake. “My mom died when I was young,” she said, hearing her voice go quiet.
Jake stopped smiling. He put his pizza down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . ”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know. How about you?” Madison asked quickly, to change the subject. “What do your folks do?”
“They’re doctors. They both work at OHSU,” he said, referring to Oregon Health Sciences University, the hospital that had been built on a high hill overlooking Portland’s city center. “That’s why we moved from Atlanta. They got jobs here.”
“What kind of doctors are they?”
“Mom’s a cardiologist, a heart doctor, and dad is a neurosurgeon. He operates on brains.”
“Do you want to be a doctor like your folks?” Madison asked.
“No. Their work is really interesting, but you have to be good at science if you want to be a doctor, and I am definitely not good at science. I really want to be a cartoonist or write graphic novels. But right now I just want to play soccer and make it through junior high in one piece.”
Madison laughed. “I guess we don’t have to make up our minds for a while,” she said, but she’d known for a long time what she would be when she grew up.
Chapter 8
The Mystery Woman
The Multnomah County Courthouse was a blunt, eight-story building of gray concrete that took up an entire block in downtown Portland. On Friday morning the line to go through the metal detector stretched out of the courthouse and along the sidewalk in front of the building. In the line were intense-looking lawyers carrying attache cases and making important calls on their cell phones, uniformed police officers who were scheduled to testify in
