Snatched

by Pete Hautman

  Roni’s heart was hammering. Abducted! The same person who had beaten Alicia in the park must have come back to kidnap her.

  “I thought maybe Ted would know something,” Brian said.

  “Who’s Ted?”

  “Alicia’s brother. He’s kind of a friend of mine.”

  They rounded a curve and Bloodwater House came into view. Normally there was little traffic on Riverview Terrace, but today the road was lined with vehicles—two police cruisers and several other vehicles, including a bright yellow KDUK-TV van.

  “You ever been inside?” Roni asked, looking up at the house.

  “Just once. It’s huge.”

  “No kidding.” Bloodwater House was the biggest home in Bloodwater, and one of the oldest. It had been built in the 1890s by James J. Bloodwater, the son of Zebulon J. Bloodwater, who had founded the town back in 1867. Built entirely of native limestone, Bloodwater House had four enormous pillars on either side of the front door. Roni had heard that there were more than thirty rooms inside. The house was completely surrounded by a ten-foot-tall wrought iron fence. Each vertical bar was topped by a large iron spear point.

  Since James J. Bloodwater’s death, the house had passed through a dozen owners. The house had a bad reputation. No one ever stayed for more than a few years. The latest in the long line of owners were Arnold and Alice Thorn, Alicia Camden’s parents.

  “Think they’re gonna let us in?” Brian asked.

  “Why not?” Roni said. “I’m here on official business. This is a big story.”

  Two policemen stood near the front gate talking to a woman with big blond hair and a microphone. Roni recognized her as Kerry Berry, the anchor for KDUK Channel 7 News. Several other reporter types were milling around, looking bored and frustrated.

  The best strategy, Roni decided, was to just go for it. She pulled out her notebook and pen and walked up to the nearest policeman.

  “Excuse me, I’m P. Q. Delicata, from the Bloodwater Pump. I wonder if you could answer some questions for me.”

  The cop looked down at her with an amused smile. “The Bloodwater Pump? I remember that paper from high school. Sorry, we aren’t supposed to talk to the press.”

  “You were talking to her.” Roni pointed her pen at the blond news anchor.

  Kerry Berry gave her a disdainful look. The cop shrugged. Roni decided to use an old reporter’s trick she had read about. She said, “Is it true that Alicia Camden was kidnapped in broad daylight?”

  The cop looked startled. “Where did you hear that?” he asked.

  “I never reveal my sources,” said Roni. She leaned in close to the cop and said in a low voice, “Yes or no? If you don’t answer, I will take it as a yes.”

  The cop said, “Sorry, kid. Can’t help you.”

  Roni frowned. Kerry Berry was looking at her with a smirk. Just then, through the gates, Roni saw Brian inside the fence standing beside a boy with thick blond hair. Brian saw her and waved, then pointed toward the gate at the back of the lot.

  Roni looked at her watch and said to the cop, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m on deadline.” She winked at Kerry Berry, then ran back along the iron fence.

  11

  three thorns

  “She was waiting for our mom to pick her up in front of the hospital after her doctor appointment. Then somebody pulled up in an SUV, and Alicia got in, and they drove off. That was three hours ago. Nobody’s seen her since.” Ted Thorn offered this information unemotionally, as if he were giving an oral report at school.

  Roni stared at Ted Thorn’s head. Not a hair out of place. You would think that when your sister gets abducted, you would let your hair get a little mussed. They were in the backyard by the pentagonal swimming pool. Roni and Brian were sprawled in a couple of cedar deck chairs. Ted was standing at the edge of the pool with his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans. The jeans had a crisp crease down the front. Who irons blue jeans? Roni wondered.

  “How come you and your sister have different last names?” she asked.

  Ted looked uncomfortable. “When my mom married Arnold, we were all supposed to change our names to Thorn. Only Alicia kicked up a fuss, so they let her keep the name Camden, our real dad’s name.” He looked away. “Alicia doesn’t care much for Arnold.”

  “Did anybody see who was driving the SUV?” Roni asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Wait a sec—why do they think she was kidnapped?” Brian asked. “It sounds like she got into the car willingly. Maybe she’s just riding around with a friend.”

  Ted shook his head. “Alicia doesn’t really have any friends she hangs with. Except Maurice, and she broke up with him a few days ago. And she missed our French lesson. Our tutor comes here every Monday at three. She knows my mom would kill her if she missed French.”

  “Still,” Roni said, “that doesn’t mean she was kidnapped.”

  “I suppose. Except for what happened to her last Friday in the park. I think that’s what’s got everybody so freaked.”

  “So the police think the guy who grabbed her was the same guy that beat her up?”

  “I don’t know. My mom thinks it was our real dad. Only he lives halfway across the state in Mankato, and besides, he drives a pickup truck, not an SUV. He’s a signpainter. Besides, he would never beat anybody up. Arnold thinks it’s somebody who wants his money. Like a professional kidnapper.”

  “Have you seen any strangers hanging around?”

  “Just that guy with the beard.”

  Roni asked quickly, “What guy is that?”

  “That scruffy old guy, Driftwood Doug. You see him around. When we first moved here he came to our door and started yelling something about a curse. Arnold called the cops on him. I still see him cutting through our woods every now and then.” Ted pointed past the swimming pool to the woods at the end of their yard. “Our property goes all the way down to the river.”

  “Driftwood Doug’s been around for years,” Roni said. “He’s harmless.”

  “Did you tell the police about him?” Brian asked.

  “Yeah. They seemed interested. Arnold told them he was the one that wrecked his boat.”

  “What boat?”

  “Arnold had a boat.” Ted pointed toward the river. “But it got vandalized, so he had to sell it.”

  “And you think Driftwood Doug wrecked the boat?”

  Ted shrugged. “That’s what Arnold told the cops.”

  Just then a tall, blond-haired man dressed in a suit walked out of the house. He moved like a dancer, and was smoking a cigarette. It had to be Arnold Thorn.

  “Ted, you shouldn’t be out here,” said Arnold Thorn. “We don’t want those newshounds spreading pictures of you all over the airwaves. One missing child is quite enough.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roni wasn’t sure she had ever heard anyone call their father “sir” before. But what did she know—she didn’t even have a father.

  “And who are your friends?” Mr. Thorn asked, turning a forced smile on Roni and Brian.

  “Just kids from school,” Ted said. “I didn’t invite them. They just stopped by.”

  “This isn’t a good time for company, Ted.”

  “I know. I—”

  “There you are!” Ted’s mother came rushing out of the house. “I was worried about you, honey, I . . . who is this?”

  “These are some friends of mine, Mom. This is Brian Bain, and this—”

  “I know who you are.” She pointed at Roni, and her neck turned instantly red while her face, covered with a thick layer of makeup, remained pale. “You’re that awful girl who attacked Alicia!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Roni. “I’m really, really, really sorry about what happened this afternoon. I was just—”

  “I don’t care!” Mrs. Thorn said, advancing on Roni. “I want you out of here!”

  “Okay, okay!” Roni stood up and started backing away.

  “Mrs. Thorn? Is everything okay?�
�� A small, dark-haired woman wearing a navy blue suit came out of the house. Roni noticed a police badge clipped to the woman’s lapel.

  “Detective, this creature is the girl who attacked my daughter this afternoon,” said Mrs. Thorn. “Who knows, she might have something to do with what happened to Alicia!”

  “Oh?” The policewoman peered closely at Roni, then asked, “Did you know Alicia well?”

  “Not really,” said Roni. “I’m writing a story for the school newspaper and—”

  “I want her out of here,” said Mrs. Thorn. “I want them both out of here!”

  “Both?” the dark-haired woman asked, then did a double take as she caught sight of Brian peeking out from behind Ted.

  Her mouth fell open. “Brian? What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Nothing, Mom,” Brian sighed.

  12

  the plan

  “I am so dead.” Brian slumped down in his seat and stared gloomily out the windshield.

  “You can’t be dead,” Roni said, making a U-turn on Riverview Terrace. “Your mouth is moving.”

  “I might as well be dead. My mom’s gonna kill me.”

  “I doubt it. Mothers rarely kill their sons.”

  Brian looked at Roni. He was beginning to understand why Alicia had whacked her with a backpack.

  “I wasn’t being literal,” he said.

  “Okay then, I won’t quote you.” She winked.

  Brian looked back at Bloodwater House. “Who do you think is scarier—Mr. or Mrs. Thorn?”

  “Neither of them is as scary as your mom,” said Roni.

  Roni had been ordered to drive Brian home after his mother’s quiet explosion outside the Bloodwater House. Amazing how his mother could do that—get really quiet and at the same time scare the liver out of you. She had told him, in no uncertain terms, to get his sorry butt home.

  Roni said, “I’m just kidding. Your mom is a good connection.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you were connected to her,” Brian said. “At least not when she’s mad like that.”

  “She doesn’t seem so bad. So . . . were you adopted or what?”

  Brian was startled. It was obvious to anyone who had met his parents that he was adopted, but almost nobody came right out and asked.

  “Why do you ask?” he asked.

  “Because your mom doesn’t look like you. What are you, Chinese? Vietnamese? Thai?”

  “I’m American.”

  “I mean, where’d you come from originally?”

  “From under a cabbage leaf.”

  “Okay, smart-ass.”

  To his own surprise, Brian didn’t mind her calling him “smart-ass.” The way she said it made it sound okay.

  “Actually, I’m from South Korea,” he said.

  “Cool. South Korea. D’you like your parents?”

  He shrugged. “They’re okay, I guess.”

  “I know what you mean. I only have one. My mom, Nick.”

  “You call your mom Nick?”

  “Yeah. I started doing it one day and she liked it. She’s pretty cool. Except when she’s on the warpath.”

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “Good question. All I got from him was my middle name.”

  “What is it?”

  Roni didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, then shrugged and said, “Quigley. Petronella Quigley Delicata. And if you ever tell anyone, I’ll be forced to kill you. I am being literal.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Good. So, will you help me?”

  “Help you?”

  “Yeah. Find out what your mom knows about Alicia’s abduction.”

  “She doesn’t like to talk about her work,” Brian said.

  “You just have to know how to ask the right questions.”

  When they reached Highway 61, Brian said, “My house is up that way.” He pointed to the left.

  Roni turned right.

  “Hey, where are we going?” he asked.

  “Look, Brian, we have a common agenda here. We’re both kicked out of school and we’re both grounded. Sometimes the best thing to do is lay low and be good for a while. But sometimes you just have to charge ahead, you know what I mean?”

  “Not really.”

  “I think there’s another way out of this mess. At least, for me. We conduct our own investigation.”

  “We?”

  “You and me. You could be a big help.”

  Brian liked to be helpful. But this P. Q. Delicata was what his mother would describe as “nothing but trouble.”

  “You’re saying that the best way to get out of a hole is to dig it deeper?” he asked.

  Roni laughed. “Would you rather sit in the hole and pout?”

  “No. But I don’t see what we can do that the police aren’t already doing.”

  “We can do a lot. We can learn everything the police know through your mom, plus we can find out our own information. Think about it. If we found Alicia we’d be heroes.”

  Suddenly Brian could see it. His mom beaming down at him. His father actually seeing him. All the kids at school tossing him up on their shoulders. Maybe even a park or a street named after him.

  He took a closer look at the girl driving the car. She was hunched over the wheel, driving fast, her eyes bright with excitement. Did he want to get mixed up with some crazy girl reporter, middle name Quigley, chasing after dangerous kidnappers? Did he want to risk being grounded for all of eternity? Or did he want to go home and eat tuna melt sandwiches and listen to his father describe a new type of bovine pustule infestation?

  He thought about it for three more seconds.

  “What’s the plan?” he asked.

  13

  leverage

  “The plan is, first we find out who was driving the SUV that Alicia got into.”

  “Do you know how many SUVs there are in Bloodwater?”

  “According to Ted, Alicia got into the car willingly. Maybe it was somebody she knew.” Roni ticked off names on her fingers. “There’s Alicia’s real dad, then there’s her stepdad, and her boyfriend, Maurice.”

  “Don’t forget the guy who beat her up in the park,” Brian said.

  “I’m not forgetting that, but I don’t know why she’d get into a car with a guy who had just beat her up.”

  “Maybe he was pointing a gun at her.”

  “Maybe. But let’s start with Maurice.”

  “Okay.” Brian thought for a second. “He’s not home right now. He’s at basketball practice.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I stay after school for Chess Club most Thursdays. Basketball practice lets out about the same time. I bet we could catch him in the parking lot in about twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty minutes, huh?” Because she hadn’t eaten lunch Roni was suddenly very hungry. “A stop at the Dairy Queen might be in order.”

  Brian dug in his pocket. “I have enough for two Buster Bars.”

  Chocolate and white cotton don’t mix, Roni thought as she rubbed with a paper napkin at the brown stain on her shirt. It wasn’t doing much good—she was just spreading the chocolate over a larger area.

  They were sitting in Roni’s car in the school parking lot, waiting for the basketball players. The last bite of Roni’s Buster Bar had missed her mouth and fallen onto her shirt. Roni gave it a few more halfhearted swipes, then gave up.

  “You know what you’d do if you were smart?” Brian said.

  Roni gave him a withering look.

  “I don’t mean you in particular,” said Brian. “I mean everybody.”

  Roni said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What would I do?”

  “Wear clothes the same color as whatever you’re going to eat.”

  “That’s a pretty stupid idea.”

  “So’s walking around with a big stain on your front.”

  “What if I wanted to eat a lime Popsicle? Green isn’t my color. Or what if you wanted to eat strawberry ice
cream. You think you’d look good in pink?”

  “Sure, why not—hey, isn’t that Maurice?”

  A tall, broad-shouldered guy with short sandy hair, dark eyebrows, and the face of an angel was coming across the parking lot. A letter jacket was draped stylishly over one shoulder, and he walked with the bouncy step of a guy who looks good and knows it.

  “That’s him all right,” Roni said. “Let’s see which car is his.”

  Maurice stopped next to a red Camaro convertible. He shrugged into his letter jacket and took a key ring from his pocket. Roni’s shoulders dropped in disappointment. Alicia had been seen getting into an SUV. A moment later her mouth fell open in astonishment when Maurice dragged a key from one end of the Camaro to the other, ripping a long, ugly scratch in the paint.

  “Did you see that?”

  Brian said, “Somebody’s gonna be really irate.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Might give us a little leverage.”

  Roni looked over at Brian. “I like how you think.”

  Maurice, with a little smile on his angelic features, walked over to a green Ford Explorer SUV and opened the door.

  “Bingo,” said Roni.

  14

  king tut

  “Maurice! Wait up!”

  Maurice Wellington jumped as if he’d been goosed. He whirled and glared at Roni, who was trotting across the parking lot toward him.

  “What?” said Maurice, scowling dangerously.

  Brian followed Roni, staying a good ten feet back. He wasn’t sure what she was going to do, and he didn’t want to get too close. Athletic types could be touchy, and Maurice had a reputation for being extra prickly.

  “Got a minute?” Roni asked.

  “No,” said Maurice, getting into his Explorer.

  “I just have a couple of questions.”

  “About what?”

  “Alicia Camden.”

  Maurice’s mouth tightened. “What about her?”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “No. I hope I never hear from her again.”

  “You’re not worried?”

  “Why should I be worried?”