by Carolyn Hart
Serena reached out, touched her arm. “I know that. Of course, I know that. But I have an idea. Quick, Millie, tell me everything you fixed last night.”
“A club steak and mashed potatoes and gravy and peas. I made a strawberry shortcake with lots of whipped cream. It was good food.”
Serena frowned. Nothing could be put into a steak, and it would be hard to do with the vegetables.
“The drink. What did Danny drink?”
“A Coke. In a can. He likes to drink from the can.”
A cat will eat steak and perhaps lick gravy and even sometimes chew a few peas. But cats don’t drink Coke.
“Is that all, Millie? Are you sure that’s all?”
Millie started to nod then paused. “Oh well, that’s everything at dinner.”
“But after dinner?” Serena asked gently.
“I took Danny some warm milk about ten o’clock and told him it was time to turn off the TV.”
Warm milk.
Danny didn’t like milk. Warm or cold. Had never liked it. Wouldn’t drink it.
Cats love warm milk.
She could see a possible answer now.
“Millie, I want you to tell me everything you did with the milk. Everything.”
Serena led her through it, Millie frowning all the while, the pouring of the milk into the saucepan, the wait until it almost began to boil, the dash of vanilla.
“I put it in a mug and carried it up and put it by his bed.”
“Then what happened?”
“I waited until his program was over then I helped him into the bathroom.”
“When you went to the bathroom, could someone have come into Danny’s room without your seeing them?”
Millie thought about it. “Yes,” she said finally, “someone could have. Danny had some soap bubbles and he blew them.”
If someone had seen Millie go upstairs carrying the tray with milk on it then waited a moment in the hall, the watcher could have seized the chance to finish the job begun when the swing was sabotaged.
“Did you see Danny drink any of the milk?”
“No. He said he would drink it in a little while. I kissed him goodnight and came back downstairs.”
Serena nodded. In her mind, she could see Danny falling asleep with the big orange-and-white cat in his arms. Then, he would move in his sleep and the cat would wriggle free and stretch and stand up to move about. Did Mr. Richard smell the milk? If he found it, he would crouch beside the mug, his pink tongue lapping greedily.
“All right, Millie. I think I know what happened. I’m going to tell the sheriff about Mr. Richard.”
Serena hurried out of the kitchen, knowing that Millie watched her go with frightened eyes. But it would be well for her to be frightened. They all should be frightened.
Sheriff Coulter listened intently. Then, his face grim, he turned to a deputy. “Go get that cat and take it into town for an autopsy. Pronto.”
Serena went with the deputy to the kitchen and told Millie it was all right for him to take Mr. Richard. Then, with Millie’s help, she loaded the back of the pick-up with lunches for the searchers. She drove the pick-up across the ranch at sixty miles an hour, dust boiling in her wake like smoke from a brushfire.
As she found each group, she honked and they gathered round, glad to pause for a moment from the grueling ride, drinking deeply of the icy water in the huge tin drum before reaching out for their sandwiches. Each time, she looked hopefully at the leader, but the answer was always the same; nothing, no trace, nothing.
All the while, the clouds boiled blackly in the western sky. Thunderheads moved nearer and nearer. The air hung hot and heavy, a sultry harbinger of the coming storm. By the time she pulled back into the parking area behind the stables, the sky overhead was darkening. Thunder rumbled in the mountains.
Serena hurried up to the house.
Julie waited on the front porch.
“Serena, where have you been?” Julie’s face was pale and drawn and, for the first time in a long time, Serena felt close to her. Julie, too, loved Danny. She was obviously upset.
“I took food to the search parties. Has there been any word?”
Julie shook her head. “Not a damned thing. Serena, this is driving me crazy.”
“I know,” Serena said sympathetically, “but we have to hope, Julie. They will find him. They will.”
Julie looked at her blankly, said jerkily, “Do you think so? You’re a fool.” Her voice was uneven. “Nobody kidnaps some kid, then lets them be found. What I don’t understand is why we haven’t had some kind of note or telephone call.” She led the way into the hacienda, looking back at Serena. “Where are all those deputies? Why aren’t some of them up here guarding us? We ought to demand protection.”
Protection. So that was what Julie was concerned about. Of course. She was worried about herself. Not about Danny. Not about a little boy taken from his bed in the middle of the night.
Serena ignored Julie as they walked into the den. The middle of the night. Why hadn’t Danny shouted, called out for help? His cousin Will was only two doors away. His cousin Julie and her husband were so close.
Why hadn’t Danny called out?
“. . . and I’m getting out of here. I told the sheriff I was going but he said I had to stay until they knew what happened to Danny. That’s crazy. We could all be dead in our beds . . .”
“Shut up, Julie.”
Julie’s head jerked up.
“That’s right,” Serena said clearly. “I said shut up. Stop thinking about yourself for five minutes. Nobody’s trying to hurt you.”
That was important, too, Serena thought suddenly. There had been no threat to Julie or Will, only to Danny and Serena. That told her something didn’t it? The focus of everything was control of Castle Rock. Once you understood that, every awful thing that had happened all made sense.
Danny and Serena. Serena and Danny. A rattlesnake. A broken swing. A dead cat. That could never have passed as an accident, could it? But someone could have said, look, it happens all the time, somebody in pain, they take too many . . .
Serena turned and ran from the room, hurrying up the stairs toward Danny’s room.
The deputy was young. Her age. No older. He stood his ground doggedly.
“Sorry, Miss. The sheriff said nobody was to go in that room. Nobody.”
Serena bit her lip in frustration. She was wild to see that bedside table.
Then the sheriff spoke behind her. “So here you are, Serena.”
“Sheriff,” she said quickly, “I need to see Danny’s room. I’ve figured out what must have happened and I want to see if his pain pills are there beside his bed.”
“All right.” He motioned the deputy to step aside.
Serena paused for an instant on the threshold. Danny’s model airplanes hung motionless from their silken threads tacked to the ceiling. He had just finished the Spirit of Saint Louis a week ago. His soccer ball and cleats were kicked carelessly in a corner. Three rows of Hardy Boys books filled a bookcase. The crumpled covers on the bed looked as if he might just have thrown them back.
Serena took a deep breath and forced herself to walk to the bedside table. The medicine bottle was there, shiny brown plastic with the neatly typed legend on white label: TAKE EVERY FOUR HOURS FOR PAIN, DO NOT EXCEED DOSAGE.
The bottle was full when the prescription was filled. Two pills remained. She turned and saw the sheriff nodding in unspoken agreement.
“In the milk,” she whispered.
“The autopsy on the cat showed codeine.”
Serena looked back down at the night table. “There isn’t any mug. Did Millie take the mug down to the kitchen this morning?”
The sheriff shook his head. “She said she didn’t even think about the mug when she found Danny missing.”
“Where is it?”
“I imagine someone removed it later, washed it, and put it back in the kitchen.”
Serena tried to understand. T
he drug was put in the milk to kill Danny. If it had worked and he had been found in the morning, it could have been suggested that he woke in the night in pain and took too many of the pills. There would have been censure, of course, about leaving pills within reach of a child, but it would have gone down as a tragic accident.
That hadn’t happened.
Had it?
Serena pressed her hands against her cheeks. She didn’t understand. Nothing made sense. The milk must have been drugged because Mr. Richard died and that was the only way he could have been exposed to the drug.
But what happened to Danny? Did he drink some of the milk and was that why he made no outcry when someone took him away in the middle of the night? But why was the mug taken? Surely the missing mug would be noticed. But it didn’t matter either way because Danny hadn’t been found dead of an overdose.
“Sheriff . . .” Serena had trouble putting it in words. “Sheriff, do you think . . . do you suppose Danny . . .”
“I don’t know, Serena.” His face was bleak. “The longer we look and don’t find him, the more likely it is that he’s dead.”
Serena turned away from him and crossed the small cheerful room to stare out the window toward the range of mountains. Although it wasn’t yet five o’clock, it was almost as dark as dusk. The darkening sky looked close enough to touch, purplish black clouds blotting out the low-hanging sun.
“I’ve called in the searchers,” the sheriff said quietly.
She wanted to protest, to cry out that Danny was so small and the coming storm so huge and violent. Such a storm would terrify grown men caught out in it. What would sheets of rain and the crash of lightning and cannon-loud rumble of thunder do to a little boy? But she knew the sheriff was responsible for the safety of the searchers and they would not be safe in the mountains or on the range tonight.
Sheet lightning exploded in the northwest sky, hanging like a shimmering curtain of fire with the backdrop of immense black thunderclouds.
“It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?” she asked hopelessly.
“It’s going to be very bad.”
“I’ll tell Millie to get dinner for the men.”
“Most of them will be wanting to load up their horses and get home.”
The sheriff was right. Serena waited at the main corral to greet all the men as they came in, to thank them for their help. All of them nodded and said they would come back tomorrow to search again.
“Sure sorry, Serena.”
“We looked everywhere. Everywhere.”
“Not a trace, Serena. I don’t think he’s out there.”
None of them said what most of them thought, that a body could lie for years undiscovered. They had been looking for a living boy. They hadn’t found him. They didn’t think anyone would. It was a subdued group of weary men who unsaddled their horses and loaded them into trailers. The pick-ups began to swing out the main ranch road, their headlights already on to pierce the gathering gloom.
Serena stood beside the road watching until the last pickup was gone. She needed to get up to the house. The sheriff was waiting in the den. He wanted to talk to all of them.
“Hi, Serena.”
She turned toward the group of Castle Rock men coming out of the tack room. She nodded to the two professors and realized in surprise that even Howard Minter had apparently joined in the search.
“It’s good of all of you to help us,” she said as they came up to her.
“That’s rugged country,” Howard Minter said wearily.
The two professors stopped. “I’m sorry we didn’t find him,” John Morris said quietly. He looked back toward the mountains. Thunder rumbled ominously and a moment later lightning split the sky. “I hope he has shelter.” He reached out, patted Serena’s arm. “We’ll help look tomorrow.”
“Yes, we will,” VanZandt agreed quickly.
“Thank you.”
They walked on and Serena waited for Peter and Jed. They were the last.
Abruptly Serena knew what had nagged her as she watched the searchers ride in to the corral.
“Jed,” she called out sharply, “where’s Joe?”
Jed and Peter stopped beside her. Both looked exhausted, their shirts stained with sweat and dust.
“I don’t know,” Jed said slowly. “I thought . . . Hasn’t he been here at the stables, helping direct the search?”
“No.” She barely squeezed the word from a throat suddenly taut with fear. “I haven’t seen him all day.”
“He has to be around somewhere,” Peter said brusquely. “Don’t be a fool, Serena.”
But the sheriff didn’t think Serena was a fool.
Once again men clumped up and down the stairs of the hacienda. Flashlights flickered across the grounds.
It was clear enough within a half-hour. Joe Walkingstick wasn’t to be found.
Millie sat in the kitchen, her apron clutched tightly in her hands, sick fear in her eyes. She told her story over and over, “. . . and when he came down from Danny’s room, he brought the dead cat and he told me to be sure and tell Serena. He said he would explain everything to her when she got back from Santa Fe.”
Serena had arrived back from Santa Fe at mid-morning. Joe knew how long the drive took. He knew too that she would come immediately when called. He would have estimated when she would have arrived at the ranch. He had planned to talk to her when she came but Serena hadn’t seen him.
“Has anyone seen Joe Walkingstick since breakfast?” the sheriff demanded. He looked around the room. One by one, every person shook his head.
The sheriff’s face hardened. “All right, folks, let’s get one thing straight. I know one of you is lying.” He looked at each person in turn. “If any one of you knows anything, now is the time to tell me.”
“I object to your tone, Sheriff,” Peter said insolently. He lounged against the mantel. Serena looked at him indifferently. It was odd, really. He was as handsome as ever with his vivid blue eyes and wheat blond hair, but she didn’t care at all. But she kept her eyes on him. She didn’t look at the other corner where Jed stood, his shoulders hunched, his face grim. She couldn’t bear to look at Jed.
The sheriff snapped, “What kind of tone would you like, Carey?”
No mister to it. Peter flushed. He wasn’t accustomed to being treated brusquely by those he considered his inferiors.
“Look, Sheriff, we’ve spent the whole day looking for Danny. And now because we haven’t had any success in the search you’ve directed, you’re trying to blame us. Surely we can’t be faulted when a criminal breaks into our home and abducts a child? What progress have you made? Have you checked on reports of escaped criminals? Have you checked on tramps? Just what the hell have you done, Sheriff? Not very damned much, I’d say. We here at Castle Rock certainly aren’t going to tolerate innuendos on the part of incompetent investigators.”
Peter’s tone was proprietary. He was so much the duke of the manor speaking to an underling.
Serena drew her breath in sharply. Dear God, Peter already saw himself as the owner of Castle Rock.
“The sheriff has done an excellent job,” she said forcefully.
Peter turned toward her, arched an eyebrow. “Has he? Where’s Danny?”
“We’ll find him,” the sheriff said grimly. “And Joe Walkingstick. Alive or dead. I’ll make myself clear, Carey, I’m not fooled. Not by anyone here. And I’m not afraid of any of you. I don’t care how big and powerful you are. Nobody broke in and took that boy. It was an inside job. I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“If you make that claim, you just may have to do that, Sheriff,” Peter answered angrily. “Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. My wife and I are decided on it. We are going to call in the finest private investigator in the state. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“That’s not necessary,” Serena said loudly. “The sheriff is doing all that anyone can.”
Peter lifted his chin and Serena wondered why she had n
ever before realized what an arrogant look he had. “You may not be making the decisions here, Serena.”
“What do you mean, Peter?”
“You aren’t an heir.”
“Why don’t you say it straight out, Peter?” she asked angrily.
“Say what?”
“That you think Danny is dead. And if he’s dead, you can kick me off the ranch and run it yourself.”
A very slight smile touched Peter’s face.
She would have liked to scratch that arrogant face, dig nails deep into his cheeks.
“You’ve put it well enough, Serena,” he said coolly. “It’s time we all faced facts.”
“No,” she said huskily. “Danny isn’t dead. He isn’t, do you hear me?”
Thunder rumbled like boulders crashing down a mountainside.
Peter turned and looked out the window. “Do you think he’s out in that somewhere? If he’s on the ranch, why didn’t he call out when one of the search parties passed by?”
Serena too looked toward the window and the ghostly radiance of lightning. There wasn’t any answer to make. If Danny were alive, he would have shouted for help.
“I’ll tell you, Sheriff,” Peter continued brusquely, “it’s time some real thought was given to this.”
For the first time, a tinge of red touched the sheriffs face.
“For instance,” Peter demanded, “how does Joe Walkingstick figure in all this?”
“I guess I don’t know,” the sheriff drawled. “Maybe you can explain it to me.”
“Maybe I can. Maybe the answers are pretty simple after all.”
“What are you saying, Carey?” Jed asked bluntly.
Peter’s eyes narrowed and she knew he didn’t like being addressed by his last name by one of the help.
“Yeah, what do you mean, Peter?” Will asked.
Peter ignored Jed and turned to Will. “Look at it. We have a missing kid and a missing Indian. Who knows, maybe Joe had a seizure somewhere or something, but maybe he likes little boys—”
The room erupted as Millie flew straight for Peter, her voice high and eerie like an eagle’s cry. Peter stumbled back, bloody furrows marking his cheeks. Serena exulted in the attack even as she jumped up to gather Millie in her arms.