he’d drugged a few of them.
Leo warily moved toward the worktable.
Meeker laughed and shook his head. “I don’t care what you did,” he sighed, “as long as that crazy-shit friend of yours is out of commission. Thank you. Thank you, Leo.”
Biting his lip, Leo avoided Meeker’s eyes. He tugged at the rope around his wrists.
“That sucker’s so tight, you’ll need a knife to cut it loose,” the man said.
But Leo made certain the rope was secure. He bent down and checked the tape around Meeker’s ankles.
“What the hell are you doing?” Meeker asked. “What’s going on? Aren’t you going to untie me?”
“I’m driving to the general store, so I can call the state police,” Leo said, backing away from him. He thought of Jordan upstairs, asleep and vulnerable. “I’m taking Jordan with me,” he lied. In truth, it would slow him down terribly if he attempted to move his unconscious friend into the car. But Meeker didn’t need to know that. “When we come back—”
“NO!” Meeker shouted. “You gotta untie me! At least, loosen the rope, for Christ’s sake. I’m dying! You can’t do this to me….”
“We’ll come back here and wait for the police together,” Leo said, edging toward the stairs. “All of this will be over in about a half hour.”
“Goddamn it, don’t leave me here like this!” Meeker bellowed. He squirmed on the table and tugged at the rope around his bound wrists. “Don’t leave me alone! You gotta untie me!”
Leo headed up the stairs.
“You son of a bitch!” he heard Meeker scream. “Get back here!”
Leo shut the basement door, but it didn’t block out Meeker’s tirade. The man downstairs kept screaming and cursing at him. Leo locked the basement door. Then he dragged one of the dinette chairs across the kitchen floor and wedged it under the doorknob.
Fishing the car keys from his pocket, he hurried out the front door and climbed into Jordan’s Honda Civic. It smelled like a bakery cake inside the car. Leo turned the key in the ignition. But then he hesitated, turned, and pulled at the string around the bakery box. He opened the top flap.
Inside was the cake with Speed Racer’s likeness in the frosting and a tiny green plastic race car by the words
He let out a little laugh, but then tears stung his eyes and he began to cry.
Leo closed the top flap of the cake box. He wiped his eyes, took a deep breath, and started out of the driveway.
“Hi, um, Nancy, this is Susan Blanchette calling again,” she said into the telephone. Rosie had let her use the corded slim-line phone by the register. Susan leaned over the counter to glance past the lottery machine at the play area, where Rosie was keeping Mattie entertained. He was in Fisher-Price heaven.
“Yes, Ms. Blanchette,” the police operator said on the other end of the line. “Can I help you?”
“I’m wondering if you’ve heard from Deputy Shaffer. He stopped by where I’m staying this weekend—at Twenty-two Birch. He said he’d be back in forty-five minutes. And that was nearly two hours ago. Do you know where he is? Has he radioed you?”
“No, Ms. Blanchette,” the operator said. “I haven’t heard from him since we put out that APB on Mr. Meeker’s car. And that was just about two hours ago—like you say.”
Susan anxiously tugged on the phone cord. “Have you had any response to that bulletin yet? Any leads as to Mr. Meeker’s whereabouts?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m awfully sorry.”
“What about the girl? Do they have any updates on the girl?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “What girl?”
“The teenager, Moira,” Susan explained. “The deputy radioed you about her just a few minutes after he spoke to you about Allen—Mr. Meeker.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Blanchette. Corey didn’t report anything to me about a teenage girl—at least, not today.”
Susan didn’t understand. “But I heard him on the radio with you. He said it was a possible kidnapping and that you ought to notify the sheriff.”
“Well, Sheriff Fischer has the night off. Corey knows that. Stuart and his wife left for Whidbey Island late this afternoon. He’s had it on the schedule for weeks now.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Susan murmured.
“Well, maybe you heard him talking to the state police,” the operator said. “Or maybe you misunderstood. I’ll try to get ahold of him and straighten this out. His radio was off when I tried him about twenty minutes ago. The caller ID shows you’re phoning from Rosie’s store. Is that a good number to call you back?”
“Yes, thank you,” Susan said numbly.
“Okay, stay put, and I’ll give you a call there,” the operator said. Then Susan heard a click and the line went dead.
Susan hung up the phone. Leaning over the counter, she glanced toward the play area. Rosie caught her eye and shuffled toward her. “Any luck?” she asked.
Susan sighed and shook her head. “They’re supposed to call me back here. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh, please,” Rosie said, with a wave of her hand. “Are you kidding me? I could use the company. It’s deader than Hector here.
Susan wandered over to the play area and watched Mattie crawling in and around the mini jungle gym.
She kept thinking that it didn’t make sense, what the police operator had told her. Susan had heard the deputy on his car radio earlier. She remembered him describing a “possible kidnapping or hostage situation,” and he’d said, “put Stuart on alert.” Then he mentioned that he was headed to “the Prewitt cabin on Cedar Crest Way.” He wouldn’t have talked like that to the state police. He had to have been talking to someone local.
On the way here to Rosie’s, she’d slowed down near the turnoff to Cedar Crest Way. But she hadn’t been able to see if a patrol car was in the driveway to the Prewitts’ cabin. She wondered if the deputy was still there—or if he’d gotten a hot lead from Jordan Prewitt and was now following it up someplace else.
The Prewitts’ place was only five or ten minutes away.
She watched Mattie, entertaining himself in the play area. He was looking the happiest she’d seen him all day—except for when he’d been frolicking in Tom Collins’s backyard.
“Rosie?” she said, starting back to the register. “Could I ask you for a big favor? I need to check on something down the road. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. Would you mind—”
“Looking after the little one?” Rosie finished for her. She put down her credit card printout and took off her cat’s-eye glasses. “Honey, I’d be delighted. Mattie and I are like old friends already. He’s a peach.”
“Well, the police operator is supposed to call back here.”
“No sweat, I’ll take a message for you,” Rosie said.
“Rosie, thank you. You’re a lifesaver.” Susan moved back toward the play area and crouched down on the recreation mat. Mattie was playing with a big plastic dump truck. “Sweetie, I’m going out for a few minutes. I want you to be a good boy for Rosie while I’m gone. Okay?”
Nodding, he barely looked up from the toy truck. “’Kay.”
“Kiss me good-bye?” she asked. She needed to make sure he understood she was leaving. Often when she left him with a babysitter, he didn’t comprehend what was happening until she stepped out the door—and then he’d scream bloody murder.
But not now. Mattie looked up from his truck, put an arm around her neck, and kissed her on the cheek. “Bye, Mommy.”
She kissed him and hugged him back. On her way down the aisle toward the front of the store, she thanked Rosie again. Heading toward her car, Susan listened for the sound of Mattie’s cries. But it was quiet in the store. Susan told herself that he would be all right without her—for a while.
She remembered in the heyday of the Mama’s Boy murders, she used to wonder if Michael would be all right without her.
Susan wondered why she’d thought of that now.
