Pawns

by Willo Davis Roberts

  Dora was suddenly ferocious. “Not this time. I’m not giving away my baby.”

  In the ensuing silence, Teddi sipped at her hot chocolate, glad it was almost hot enough to burn. Dora had been found out. There wasn’t much she could do, now, was there? No matter what the unknown Roger wanted.

  Mamie finally spoke. “How do you feel about being married to a man who doesn’t want you to keep your child?”

  “Right this minute,” Dora said with a spark of anger, “I’d like to strangle him.”

  “But you can’t do that. So what will you do?” Mamie asked.

  For a moment Dora looked confused, as if she’d forgotten that the original plan was now in a shambles. Then, as full comprehension swept over her, she muttered, “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to be married to a man who refuses to let you keep your baby? Or risk staying with him when he resents the child and might abuse it?”

  Obviously the idea had not occurred to Dora. Color flooded her pale face. “I’d never let anybody hurt Danny!”

  A knock on the back door made their heads turn in that direction to see Jason’s face through the window. Teddi got up to let him in.

  He stepped into the kitchen, uncertain at seeing them all sitting companionably, as it must have seemed, around the table.

  “Uh . . . maybe we’d better talk outside,” he told Teddi.

  She stared at the red welt across his forehead. “What happened to you? Did . . . did Roger attack you?”

  “Roger? Is that his name? The guy I was chasing?”

  Dora stood up, nearly spilling her cocoa. “You were chasing Roger?”

  Mamie rose, too. “What’s going on? Is Roger here?”

  “He came to demand that I go out and talk to him, later. After you were all asleep. About . . . what we were going to do next.” Dora was still flushed, from embarrassment this time. It was clearly difficult for her to adjust to the realization that none of the things she and Roger had planned were going to happen. “Why were you chasing him?”

  “Did he hurt you?” Teddi demanded, still held by the red welt.

  “No, he never even saw me. He had a car parked around the corner. I got the license number, for what that’s worth. It’s an old Camaro. California plates.” His gaze settled on Dora. “I think the rest of you know something I don’t.”

  “I’ll explain it in a minute,” Teddi assured him. “What happened to your forehead?”

  “That’s why I was late getting here after you whistled. My little sister left a skate on the stairs and I didn’t bother turning on the hall light because I was in a hurry. I stepped on the skate and fell.” He touched the raised weal. “I think this was from the edge of the railing. Who’s Roger?”

  “My husband,” Dora said almost inaudibly.

  “So Danny’s not Ricky’s kid at all.” Jason’s gaze swept from one of them to the other.

  “No,” Teddi said. Dora looked so woebegone, she almost felt sorry for her.

  Apparently Mamie felt some pity for her, too. “It was a terrible thing to do,” she said without rancor, which Teddi thought was pretty big of her.

  Dora nodded. Twin tears slid down her cheeks, which were back to their normal pallid state. She raised her palms to wipe them off.

  “You made so many mistakes,” Mamie went on. “You didn’t know much about my son, and what you did express was wrong. Did you just expect me to accept you as Ricky’s widow with so little proof? Only a faked marriage license, no picture of him, and that insurance policy? I wanted Danny enough so that I almost decided to take him on whatever terms I could get him, even if you were a fraud.”

  Teddi wanted to reach out and hug her, as Mamie would have done had their situations been reversed, but she felt frozen into immobility.

  “I called the number he’d given for a home phone,” Mamie continued, “and got his landlady. He was living in a rooming house, and she didn’t know anything about a wife. She knew he’d been killed in that plane crash, and she didn’t know where to send his belongings. I asked her to ship them to me here. How could you possibly have thought you would get away with it, Dora?”

  More tears followed the first ones. After a moment, Mamie dug into a pocket for a handkerchief and passed it over.

  Dora mopped ineffectually at her face and blew her nose. “What are you going to do? Are you going to have us arrested?”

  “I think we need some help in dealing with Roger, at least. Where’s he staying?”

  Dora shrugged. “Just in his car, I think. He probably doesn’t have the money for a motel.”

  “Why did you risk stealing money from me, when getting caught would have blown your whole scheme? Did you think I wouldn’t miss a twenty-dollar bill, nor notice when it was put back?”

  “I put it back,” Dora said defensively. “I didn’t really steal it.”

  “But why did you take it in the first place?”

  “I needed to talk to Roger. I had to call him. There were too many things I didn’t know what to do about. I thought she”—and here she looked at Teddi—“was looking at me suspiciously and I didn’t know what to do. I knew it would cost more to call than I had in coins; I had to have enough for a long conversation, and I didn’t dare call from the house. It would have showed up on your phone bill.”

  “So how were you able to put the money back?” Teddi asked.

  “I tried to get change for the twenty at the gas station, but the attendant said his money was all locked up at night. So he told me I could make a collect call without having to have any cash. I didn’t break the twenty.”

  “When are you supposed to meet Roger?” Mamie asked. “And where?”

  Dora gulped pathetically. At least it would have seemed pathetic if she hadn’t tried to do such a rotten thing to Mamie. “Midnight. He said he’d be parked around the corner again.”

  Mamie looked past Dora to Teddi and Jason. “I think it’s time to call my lawyer. It’s kind of late, but Joe’s a friend from church. I think he’ll advise me even at this time of night. This needs to be reported to the police, Dora. You can’t attempt fraud and extortion this way and expect not to have to face the consequences.”

  Dora’s face crumpled, and she slid back into her chair and leaned forward over the table, sobbing softly.

  In the adjoining room, Danny began to wail.

  “I’ll get him,” Teddi offered, and hurried to scoop the infant out of his basket.

  “Poor little toad,” she whispered into his soft hair. “What’s going to become of you?”

  It was a problem for which there seemed to be no immediate solution. The baby was taken to his mother to be fed. Dora took him back to her room, tears soaking her shirt front, while Mamie talked on the phone.

  Jason was looking at his watch as she hung up and announced that both the lawyer and the police would be at the corner at the appropriate time.

  “My folks will be wondering what’s going on. I’d better check in with them. But if it’s okay with you, Mrs. Thrane, I’d kind of like to stick around and see what happens.”

  Mamie nodded, then, when Jason was gone, addressed Teddi. “You knew the money had been taken out of the jar, too, didn’t you? Yet you didn’t tell me about it.”

  “I was afraid you’d think that I’d taken it,” Teddi admitted, flushing.

  Mamie gave her a hug. “No, no, dear, I never thought that for a minute. If we’d shared our suspicions, I guess we’d have brought this to a conclusion a lot sooner.”

  “I knew you wanted Danny to be your grandson,” Teddi said. “I thought it would hurt you terribly to realize he wasn’t.”

  Mamie released her. “Oh, I did want him to be Ricky’s child. But there were so many things that didn’t fit. I guess right from the beginning, before he was even born, I doubted Dora’s story. But I felt sorry for her. She was going to have a baby, and she appeared to be all alone and desperate for help and a place to stay. God forgive me, but there were moments when I seriou
sly considered letting her get away with it, and pretending Danny really was mine, too.”

  “What’ll happen to Danny if his parents go to jail?” Teddi asked in a small voice.

  “I don’t know. He’ll need to be cared for, one way or another. I don’t know if they’d let me take him or not. I’ll have to ask Joe about that.”

  Teddi stared at her in wonder. “You’d keep him? Even knowing what’s happened?”

  “It’s not his fault. I do love him, you know. The same as I’d love any child who needed me, and I think Danny does right now. For a while, at least. Teddi, I have a splitting headache. Would you massage my temples the way you do, see if we can make it back off?”

  When Jason came back, he and Teddi and Mamie sat around the kitchen table, waiting for whatever would happen with the lawyer and the police. Dora sat by herself in the rocker in her room, holding the baby, unable to stop weeping.

  When Mamie’s friend Joe finally stopped by the house, it was nearly two A.M.

  “He was there, in his car, right where he said he’d be. Offered no resistance. Do you want them to take the girl in tonight, too?”

  “I don’t think she’s a flight risk,” Mamie decided. “Leave her here until morning. Then we’ll go down to police headquarters together, if that’s all right? I’d like to have you there, too, Joe. What about the baby, if both its parents are in jail? Can you do anything to arrange for us to keep him here? She’s nursing him, but I wouldn’t think she’d want to take him to jail with her. We’d have to get bottles and formula, that kind of thing, before Dora and Danny are separated.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Joe said gruffly.

  When he had gone, Jason stood up and stretched. “Well, I’d better head for home before my dad calls the cops after me. I guess tomorrow’s going to be pretty busy. You think we’d better postpone the tennis lesson?”

  “Yeah,” Teddi agreed. She couldn’t even think about tennis until this matter was settled.

  “But I’ll talk to you in the afternoon, okay? When you know what else is going to happen.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Teddi told him, smiling for what seemed to be the first time in a long while.

  She walked with him to the back door.

  “Boy,” Jason said on his way out, “wait’ll I tell my cousin Jenny what came of those things I wanted her to investigate. Even if Mamie had already called his landlady.”

  She’d have to tell Callie all the details, too, Teddi thought. But for tonight, she thought she was going to go upstairs and offer a prayer of thanks that she was still here, and Mamie was okay, and even Danny would probably be all right.

  “Good night,” she told Jason quietly as she closed the door behind him and locked it.

  Mamie was standing there, waiting, when she turned. Without words, they went into each other’s arms. They stood that way for what seemed a long time, tears running down both their faces, until finally Mamie drew back and reached for the box of tissues on the counter.

  “I suppose we ought to get some sleep,” Mamie said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a very long day.”

  “I don’t know if I can sleep,” Teddi said uncertainly. “Mamie, could we just sit and talk a little longer?”

  “How about if we lie on my bed, with just a night-light on, until we get sleepy?” Mamie suggested.

  And so they did, and before Teddi drifted off she heard Dora in the room across the hall, making small sounds as she put Danny back in the bassinet.

  Teddi’s emotions were in such turmoil, she couldn’t sort them out. Not tonight. But Mamie would be there tomorrow, and Mamie would make it all come out as right as it could, for Dora and Danny and herself.

  And for me, Teddi thought. And for me.

  And she slept without dreaming and without fear.

  About the Author

  Willo Davis Roberts wrote many mystery and suspense novels for children during her long and illustrious career, including The Girl with the Silver Eyes, The View from the Cherry Tree, Twisted Summer, Megan’s Island, Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job, Hostage, Scared Stiff, and The Kidnappers. Three of her children’s books won Edgar® Awards, while others received great reviews and accolades, including the Sunshine State Young Readers Award, California Young Reader Medal, and the Georgia Children’s Book Awards.

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  Don’t Miss These Other

  Willo Davis Roberts Mysteries:

  Twisted Summer

  Nightmare

  Rebel

  Blood on His Hands

  Undercurrents

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  This Simon Pulse edition June 2017

  Text copyright © 1998 by Willo Davis Roberts

  Cover illustration copyright © 2017 by Luke Choice

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  Cover designed by Regina Flath

  Interior designed by Tom Daly

  The text of this book was set in Exceldior LT Std.

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  ISBN 978-1-4814-8620-0 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-8619-4 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-8621-7 (eBook)