Scouts are coming. We’d better stay here.” Kathleen pulled away. “I can’t stay.” She started out into the night, calling, calling.
Chief Cobb stared after her, then punched his cell phone. “All officers are to report to St. Mildred’s Church . . .” St. Mildred’s happy Spook Bash was transformed into a crime
G h o s t at Wo r k
scene. Chief Cobb knew it wasn’t regulation to assume so soon that a missing child had been abducted, but the memory of Daryl Murdoch’s body in the cemetery had to be dark in his thoughts.
The parish hall was the heart of a rescue effort. I was aware of the bustle and effort under way. Walter Carey stood in one corner, using his cell phone to contact the Boy Scouts, calling them to come and help. Dogs arrived, barking and snuffling. Names were taken, information sought.
I understood Kathleen’s need to search. I would have joined a team, but they didn’t need me. I forced myself to remain. I had to think. I knew well enough that Bayroo had never left of her own accord. She’d been taken. But why and by whom?
The first necessity was understanding why Bayroo was taken.
The alarm was pulled, the fuses thrown, firemen summoned, all to provide an opportunity to kidnap Bayroo. Only a sense of dire urgency would have prompted such an elaborate charade. The kidnapper could not afford to allow the passage of time. Bayroo had to be snatched immediately.
What peril could Bayroo pose to anyone?
There was only one possible answer. Bayroo knew something she must not tell. What secrets did Bayroo have? She had been upset when Lucinda described her sojourn in the nature preserve Thursday evening. The girls were forbidden to go into the preserve. Everyone knew danger lurked for unaccompanied young girls in remote and untrafficked areas.
Bayroo had ignored that rule and something—someone—frightened her. But she’d reassured everyone—was she speaking to her parents?—and said she’d been scared, but as soon as she saw the car, she knew everything was all right.
She saw a car late Thursday afternoon as dusk was falling, a car hidden in the preserve. Whose car? Did she recognize that car?
Within minutes of Bayroo’s arrival in the preserve, the murderer
Ca ro ly n H a rt
marched Daryl Murdoch at gunpoint to the rectory and shot him on the back porch. His murder was planned. The murderer would not park in the church lot and certainly not behind the rectory. Instead it would be so easy to drive into the nature preserve, leave the car hidden behind pine trees or willows. That meant the murderer knew Daryl was en route to the church, knew it beyond question.
Bayroo had been kidnapped by Daryl’s murderer. I almost dropped to the floor, determined to accost Chief Cobb. But he might brush me aside. After arresting me, of course, banishing me to jail.
That would not be a problem for me, but I had to know enough, be emphatic enough, that he would listen.
The solution was obvious now. Of all who had reason to wish Daryl ill, only Walter Carey, Irene Chatham, and Isaac Franklin had been in the parish hall to hear Lucinda’s artless revelations. Judith and Kirby Murdoch were not present. Nor was Lily Mendoza. Or Cynthia Brown. Walter was organizing the Scouts into a search team.
The somber sexton hovered near Father Bill.
Irene Chatham. She knew Daryl was coming to the church. Her rackety old car had squealed from her drive in time to arrive at the preserve, be hidden before Daryl reached the parking lot.
Irene—
I stared down.
I saw Irene Chatham shoving a serving cart with two coffee urns against the wall nearest the south exit. She lifted Styrofoam cups from a bottom shelf, arranged packets of sugar and creamers. It was a churchwoman’s immediate response to a gathering.
If I’d suddenly tumbled from a mountaintop and turned end over end through space, I could not have been more shocked. Irene Chatham was innocent. Her presence here was proof. She was innocent and she had not abducted Bayroo. Then who . . .
I gripped the wood rim of the chandelier, held on as if its concrete reality would anchor me to facts. These things I knew:
G h o s t at Wo r k
1. DARYL MURDOCH HAD TOLD IRENE CHATHAM HE WAS ON
HIS WAY TO THE CHURCH.
2. IRENE’S CAR HAD SPED FROM HER DRIVE AT SHORTLY
BEFORE 5 P.M.
The conclusion seemed inescapable: Irene came to the church. I pressed my fingers against my temples. She was at the church, but it wasn’t her whom Bayroo had seen or her car that Bayroo recognized.
However, Irene told me,
Irene had seen something. Or someone. I had to get the truth from her. I would do whatever I had to do. Time was racing ahead.
How long had Bayroo been gone. Twenty minutes? Half an hour?
How much time did Bayroo have left?
Irene bent into the freezer in the kitchen. When she spoke, as she reached for a large tray, her voice sounded hollow. “I’ll get some cookies out, heat them up. It would be nice if we had a snack for everyone.”
