My jaw dropped. “Kevin was kidnapped? Why the hell didn't they tell us that before?”
“Let's ask them,” Afton said, his face grim. He reached through the open front door and tapped Mr. Poffenberger on the shoulder, interrupting his interview with an anchorman from NBC. “Get the kids in here. Now!” he ordered with surprising authority.
Within a few minutes, an assortment of Poffenberger children had been rounded up and sat in a semicircle on the orange shag carpet before us. Kevin's parents sat side by side on the couch. Another couple, parents of Kevin's cousins Pearl and Peter, took the recliner-he, seated, she, perched on an arm.
“Now,” the young policeman said sternly, “let's hear what happened. And I want the truth!”
As one, the little towheads turned to Pearl. With her eyes downcast, she began her tale. “It was a guy in a big black boxy kind of car,” she said. “We was walking along the road, and he stopped and said he needed some directions. Kevin went over to him, even though I told him not to, and the guy grabbed him and pulled him into the car and drove off.”
“Which way?” Afton asked.
“Down the mountain. Toward town.”
“This man-what did he look like?”
Pearl appeared to be thinking. “We couldn't see his face very good, because he was wearing a ball cap pulled down real low. But he had a beard. Didn't he, Peter?”
Her brother Peter nodded. “Yeah, a beard and a ball cap.”
“What team?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“You said he was wearing a ball cap. I wondered what team?”
“It wasn't a
“Yeah,” Peter said. “Tractors.”
“Did you notice anything else? How old do you think he was? How tall was he? What kind of clothes he was wearing?” Afton had his notebook out.
Pearl scrunched her forehead as if she were working really hard at remembering something. “He wasn't a real young guy. Maybe as old as her,” she said, jerking a thumb in my direction. “He never got out of the car, so I don't know how tall he was. Wait! I remember he was wearing a red-plaid flannel shirt.”
A bearded man, about thirty years old, wearing a cap advertising tractors and a plaid flannel shirt. Pearl had just described half the men in Lickin Creek!
“Why didn't you tell your parents right away about this man?” Afton asked. “Why did you let us believe Kevin had wandered off by himself?”
The little faces all looked at Pearl, waiting for her to answer. “The guy told us he'd come back and get us if we told,” Pearl said.
“You were afraid, is that right?”
The heads nodded in unison.
“How about the vehicle? Did you catch a glimpse of the license plate?”
The forehead scrunched again. “Texas,” Pearl said. “I think it was a Texas plate.”
Afton asked a few more questions, with unsatisfying results, and finally told the children they could leave.
“Can we sleep over?” Pearl asked her mother.
The woman looked at Kevin's mother, who gave a slight nod. But one of her children began to whine. “I don't want to sleep with Peter. He always pees the bed.”
The scathing look Pearl directed at her brother should have immediately cured his enuresis problem.
“I'll call Luscious and the state police,” Afton said to me as he pulled on his coat. “We need to put out an APB for that sports utility vehicle.”
“You're not going to call off the search on the mountain, are you?” I asked him.
He shook his head and glanced into the kitchen, where the adult Poffenbergers had all adjourned. I could hear them popping the tabs off beer cans. The children had turned on the TV and were enthralled by an incredibly violent cartoon. He lowered his voice so only I could hear. “I don't really believe anything that Pearl says. This abduction story doesn't ring true.”
“Exactly what I thought,” I said. “I'd sure like to get that girl alone for five minutes. See what I could get out of her.”
Afton sighed. “I know how you feel, but for the time being I have to follow up on her story.”
Pearl, in front of the TV set, was watching us with a thoughtful expression on her face. I wondered what she'd overheard.
Afton opened the front door and jumped back, startled, as the press began shouting questions at him.
“You coming?” he asked me.
“You go ahead,” I said. “I need to talk to Mrs. Pof-fenberger for a minute.”
I'd just recalled that Praxythea had asked me to bring her something, preferably metal, of Kevin's. It couldn't do any harm, I thought, so I went in search of Mrs. Poffenberger. I found her in the bedroom with the baby.
She handed me a tiny pocketknife, saying it had been Kevin's birthday present. Although I wondered about the family's judgment in giving a small child a knife, I accepted it with only a word of thanks.
“They're going to find him, Mrs. Poffenberger. I know they will.” I wanted to offer her some encouragement, some hope.
“Yeah, sure.” Her voice was flat. I could tell she'd already given up.
I drove through late-afternoon shadows back to the borough. As I approached downtown, a volunteer traffic cop in a yellow vest signaled me to stop. I rolled down the window and asked, “What's the matter? Water main burst again?”
“Nah, they're setting up the Nativity scene in the square so the traffic needs detoured. You can take a right on Oak, a left on Elm, another left, this time on Maple, and then-”
“Thanks, I'll find my way.” Lickin Creek isn't very big, but its one-way streets could have been the inspiration for Dante's circles of Hell. Why the borough council chose rush hour to close Main Street was beyond my comprehension.
After circling aimlessly for about fifteen minutes, I ended up where I'd started, only this time the traffic cop took pity on me and let me through. As I drove past the fountain in the center of the square, I saw Yoder Construction Company workers busily turning it into a manger.
Because of the time I wasted being lost, it was dark when I pulled through the gates into the Moon Lake compound, but my house was illuminated by floodlights like a Broadway theater on opening night. Trucks and vans lined the dirt road and filled my circular drive.
More media people, I realized. Cables lay coiled in the grass like a nest of pythons.
Praxythea stood on the front porch in a black bodysuit that covered her from neck to toe but hid nothing. Didn't the woman own underwear? She was speaking into a microphone held by a beautiful, raven-haired Asian woman.
As I approached the house, I recognized some faces from the tabloid news shows, and I heard snatches of predictable phrases: “-astounding new developments-search for bearded man-tristate area-possible connections with children abducted in Florida and Texas-noted psychic's vision directed police to a deserted quarry where…”
“Be careful up there,” I called to Praxythea and several familiar talking heads. “That porch roof is liable to cave in.”
They ignored me, as did the news crews on the lawn, so I took my life in my hands, climbed the steps, and entered the house through the front door. I gathered up the mail that lay on the carpet and flipped through the envelopes while I hiked to the kitchen. Damn! Still nothing from Garnet. I tossed the envelopes on the table to look through later.
I refilled the cats’ bowls with Tasty Tabby Treats, and while they happily and noisily chewed their food, I checked the iguana to make sure it had water and some of the lizard food Oretta had left with it. As far as I could tell, he was all right, but I tossed in a little lettuce as a treat. Then I prepared two cups of instant coffee and doctored mine with the powders that represented sugar and cream.
