He exhaled. “Okay, how about Ted and Ginger Vikarios went straight from the Albert Kerr memorial lunch to a church meeting that lasted five hours? A handful of people claim the Vikarioses never left.”
“Please believe me, Detective. I know I’m right this time.”
“I
“No, thanks. I just feel so…nervous, knowing that Sandee and Bobby are out there somewhere—”
“Please, Mrs. Schulz. You have concerns, call your lawyer. All right? I need to go now.”
After I’d closed the phone, a cloud of worry descended on me. What if Sandee or Bobby tried to frame me further? They didn’t know that the cops had picked up all the money from the safe-deposit box…what if they tried to get the key out of Arch?
I put the van in gear and started toward Lakewood. I’d tried to solve this crime, first because I was implicated, and second, for Arch. For closure. But would it be so good for Arch to know his father had been killed because he’d raped a teenage girl? I thought not. Especially since I believed that that woman or her cohort, or cohorts, had also killed her own mother, probably because Cecelia hadn’t protected Alex from her own father. Was I crazy, or could all this be true? No matter what, we were talking about a very traumatized and disturbed individual or individuals. I certainly wasn’t going to try to catch the killer. If the cops didn’t want to follow up on my theories, then that was their problem.
But I’d promised not to go looking for trouble. And besides, I wanted to check on Arch. I’d never seen him skate for more than five minutes, anyway. He was such a good kid, and he’d been doing so much better since the school change, that he deserved some TLC…maybe a new outfit or lunch out after the game. Besides, I missed him.
The Lakewood rink was so mobbed with screaming kids that I thought my eardrums were going to pop. The lobby was teeming with boys in hockey gear and girls in figure-skating leotards and tights. Kids hollered at the desk attendant for locker keys and rental skates. Arch was nowhere in sight. I don’t think I would have recognized him right off, not in a helmet and all those pads, anyway. I made my way to rink side and watched the skaters whizzing past. Finally I picked out a jersey that said “Druckman.” The next time Todd shot by, I called to him to stop. This he did. He clomped, red-faced and sweaty, over the thick rubber padding to the spot where I stood.
“Where’s Arch?” I asked. “I’ve been looking everywhere and I can’t find him. I wanted to see him skate.”
“He’s gone!” Todd replied. “Somebody came to get him. The guy at the front desk might know who picked him up.”
I shrieked all the way to the lobby.
21
I unfolded the note with trembling hands. I cursed myself for not bringing Arch down here myself, for not figuring out the solution to John Richard’s murder before that trip to the library. I tried to read, but the words swam.
The note was unsigned. It was half-past eleven. I jumped into the van and headed back up the mountain. I put in a frantic call to Tom. One to Boyd. Another one to Reilly. Nobody was answering. I called the department dispatcher. My son had been kidnapped, I yelped, and I needed as many units as they could spare to hightail it to the Roundhouse, in Aspen Meadow….
She told me to calm down, she’d see what she could do. Meanwhile, I pressed the pedal and hit I-70 going eighty miles per hour. Maybe if a state trooper picked me up on his radar, I could get him to follow me. I willed the cell to ring. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed as I flew up the interstate, my horn blaring. The engine whined as I took the exit ramp at sixty miles per hour.
Oh, how I cursed myself for trusting her. That sweet act, anybody could be taken in. And had been.
I flew through Aspen Meadow to the Roundhouse. No one there, either. It was five after noon.
I kept going up Upper Cottonwood Creek Road, toward the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. Toward the fire.
The smoke became extremely thick halfway up the road. I was going to keep driving until a cop or fireman stopped me. Five miles up, I was flagged down. The road was covered with orange cones.
“You can’t go in there, lady,” a uniformed fireman informed me. He had a long, lined face and wavy gray hair matted to his egg-shaped head.
“Please help me,” I begged. “Somebody has kidnapped my child and said they’re going up to the fire. Maybe to meet someone, I don’t know.”
“Meet who?”
“Bobby Calhoun? Please, my son’s life is in danger!”
The fireman consulted a clipboard. “Bobby Calhoun has been up with his line for the last forty-eight hours, lady. I would have known if he’d—”
“If you don’t let me through,” I screamed, “I’m going to drive right through these cones!”
“All right, all right. I’ll lead you to the base camp for Calhoun’s line. It’s up by Cherokee Pass.”
He strode purposefully to his fire-department pickup. A moment later I was following him along one of the dirt roads that led into the preserve. I began to cough from the smoke. My eyes smarted as I squinted to make out the pickup’s rear lights. I closed all the van windows and pressed a button for the air to recirculate.
Was I right? Was Sandee driving Arch up to the fire? Had Arch told her the safety-deposit box was empty? Was she going to dump Arch, get Bobby, and then the two of them would take off together? How far did she think they’d get?
The fireman turned off onto a bumpy one-lane fire road lined with singed grass. I held my breath and prayed as the van groaned into the turn. Then I pressed the gas as gently as possible. The wheels lurched suddenly as I hit a small ditch. Somehow I managed to negotiate the ditch without vaulting the van onto the blackened grass.
Was the smoke turning orange, or was that my imagination? And was that snow falling or bits of ash?
The fireman turned on his left signal and I followed. A ragtag row of pickup trucks were just visible through the heavy haze. The fireman parked and jumped out of his vehicle, with me close on his heels.
A group of firemen, their yellow outer garments zipped open, was sitting behind one of the trucks. As I came closer, I saw that their faces were blackened with ash. They were drinking water and talking in low tones to the fireman who’d led me up to them.
“Please help me,” I burst out. “I can’t find my son.”
One of the men, his blackened face streaked with sweat, shook his head. “Ma’am, we’ve got at least two hikers who’ve been missing for a couple of days. We didn’t see a kid anywhere, I promise. I saw Bobby Calhoun’s truck come up from one of the fire roads a little while ago. He parked down there somewhere, but I haven’t seen him—”
“Parked down there?” I cried, pointing along the row of parked trucks. “Somebody come with me, please!”
I turned and began trotting beside the trucks. The smoke made it hard to make out details of any of the vehicles. My coughing and hacking wasn’t helping me think, either. I glanced back and saw, thank God, three firefighters jogging along behind me.
