If Ben didn’t like it or thought it was silly, she could always take it back. As to the phone . . . one of those Jitterbugs she saw advertised all the time by that guy John Walsh. This way, if anything ever happened, and Ben found himself in trouble, all he had to do was press the 5* button, and he’d be connected with a help line, and assistance would arrive within minutes.
Without even realizing it, Isabelle had already made up her mind because she was slipping into a windbreaker and reaching for her purse.
Fifteen minutes later, Isabelle was cruising up and down the aisles of the Target store, looking for the electronics department. There was a whole end of the counter that displayed the phones. Isabelle debated a moment, trying to decide if an eight-year-old boy would do better with the flip phone, even though flip phones were dated, or the one with the plain screen. He’d probably carry it in his hip pocket. Boys that age were careless. Without meaning to, he might crack the glass or drop it. The flip would offer more protection. Now to color. Maybe blue to match his bike. Easy decision. The box found its way into her shopping cart.
She looked around for the jewelry department and saw it three aisles ahead. She beelined for it and once again found the end filled with Disney products for both boys and girls. The watches stood out like beacons in the night. They were brightly colored, had large numbers, and who didn’t love Mickey and Minnie Mouse? She snatched one up and looked to see if they came in small, medium, and large as a vision of Ben’s skinny arms came into focus. She heaved a mighty sigh when she saw that they did come in sizes. She chose a small one and put it in her cart.
Isabelle stood in the middle of the aisle, wondering if there was anything else she could get for the little boy. It came to her in a flash. A whistle. Every kid needed a whistle. Even a big kid like Charles was never without his whistle. Absolutely. But . . . where in this vast store would they be? She asked a man in a red vest, an employee, she presumed, who pointed her in the right direction.
One whistle coming up.
Isabelle was back home in the loft in just under thirty-five minutes. She smacked her hands together gleefully. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been more satisfied with something she’d done.
She spread her purchases out on the kitchen table, then made herself a pot of coffee and a ham sandwich.
As she chewed her food and drank her coffee, Isabelle read the instructions for the Jitterbug phone. She loved that all Ben had to do was press the 5* button if he was ever in dire trouble. She programmed in her number and the numbers of all the sisters. She was having a hard time coming to terms with why she was suddenly so concerned about something possibly happening to the little boy. He’s just a little boy, she thought. He might be a genius in some areas, but he was still a defenseless little boy, a fragile little boy in her mind. Someone has to help him, she told herself over and over. And since no one else was standing in line for the job, it might as well be her.
Isabelle called the 800 number on the booklet and activated the phone. She made sure the operator understood that the phone would be in the boy’s possession even though the bill was coming to her home address. Once she was assured all was well, she slipped the phone, along with the booklet, into her purse to turn over to Ben when she saw him on Tuesday.
Isabelle cursed as she ripped at the stiff plastic packaging around the Mickey Mouse watch. She broke two nails before she dug out the kitchen shears to cut around the watch. She couldn’t help but smile at the cartoon character. Maybe that’s why Annie wore hers, so she would smile more often. “Whatever works,” she muttered under her breath. She set the timepiece by the clock on the gas range. The instructions, once she pried them out of the mangled plastic, said the battery should work for a full two years. Like that was really true. Ben, genius that he was, would figure it out if the watch stopped at some point. She wrapped the watch in a paper towel and dropped it into her purse, along with the phone.
The whistle was next. Once again, she attacked the plastic packaging and broke another nail, but she finally pulled out the whistle and hooked it onto a beaded chain. He could either wear it around his neck or stuff it in one of his pockets. She felt like a little kid again when she brought the whistle to her lips and let loose. She blinked at the shrillness of the whistle. If Ben blew it, people would take notice. She wrapped it in a paper towel and dropped it in her bag to join the watch and the cell phone.
Good to go!
Isabelle looked down at her own watch and was stunned to see that it was already eleven o’clock. Time for bed. She hoped she would be able to sleep.
In the bathroom, Isabelle washed her face, brushed her teeth, and donned her pajamas before she crawled into bed. She missed Abner, hated sleeping alone. She switched up pillows and sighed contentedly when she smelled his scent. She hugged the pillow as she drifted off to sleep.
* * *
The next day, the sisters all clustered in Myra’s kitchen, hooting and hollering, and high-fiving one another as they laughed and giggled just as Isabelle, the last to arrive, walked through the kitchen doorway.
“Just in time for lunch,” Myra said. “Annie has the hot dogs on the grill, and we’ve been sitting here waiting for you. It’s a little too nippy to eat outside, and the wind is kicking up, so we’ll have to eat here in the kitchen. Fall to it, ladies!”
The sisters each had a chore before and after a meal, so they fell to it. Within five minutes, the lovingly restored huge plank table was set, coffee cups filled, and several serving pieces were placed in the middle of the table. Condiments were in little bowls on a revolving lazy Susan.
“Pumpkin pie for dessert straight out of the freezer. But it was made by Charles, so it is not store-bought. I personally whipped the cream that goes on top a little earlier,” Myra said proudly.
Annie appeared with her favorite food of all time, in one hand perfectly grilled hot dogs with delicious-looking grill marks and a platter with toasted buns in the other.
Between bites, the sisters ooohed and aaahed and complimented Annie, who beamed her pleasure. Who would have thought that Countess Annie de Silva, perhaps the richest woman in the world, would know how to grill a perfect hot dog? No one, that’s who.
“I think this is the best hot dog I ever ate, better even than a Nathan’s special,” Maggie said, as chili, green relish, and bits of onion dribbled down her chin. “The messier they are, the better they taste.” She was already on her third hot dog.
“Is this a late lunch or an early dinner?” Kathryn asked as she reached for her third hot dog.
“Both, so eat hearty. It’s four o’clock,” Annie said. “We could save the pie for later if we get hungry.” She turned to Isabelle. “How much time do you need to present your case?”
“At least an hour,” Isabelle mumbled around the food in her mouth.
“That means we need three or four hours to kick it around, which will bring us to eight o’clock or thereabouts. I say we save the pie till then,” Nikki said. “Do you all agree?” Everyone said that they did.
“More coffee, anyone?” Alexis asked. Eight cups were raised in the air, including her own. Alexis poured generously. She looked over at Yoko, and said, “It’s your turn to make the new pot.” Yoko nodded her agreement.
Myra sighed as she played with the pearls around her neck. She had no idea how the sisters kept track of who was to do what and whose turn it was, but somehow it always worked out, and even to this day, there had never been one objection from any of them.
The after-meal talk was easy banter, with just a trace of edginess that concerned the weather but disappeared entirely when the subject turned to Halloween and how beautiful the leaves were that were just starting to fall from all the trees. And then somehow, by some unknown signal, the sisters got up as one and started to clear away the remains of Annie’s perfectly cooked meal.
Nine minutes and two seconds later, they all laughed out loud. The dishwasher was humming, and the last dish towel had been hung
on the handle of the oven door. “Our best time yet, nine minutes and two seconds,” Maggie said.
“That’s because we used throwaway plates, and there was no silverware to speak of, and no pots and pans,” Yoko said.
Annie reached into the cupboard for clean cups. Myra poured.
The room went silent.
Time for business. All eyes turned to Isabelle.
Isabelle licked at her lips. She closed her eyes for a minute as she tried to gather her thoughts. “I’m going to have to go back a ways, about fifteen years, before we all knew one another, to when I designed the biggest project of my young career. So bear with me.”
“Take all the time you need, dear. We have all night if need be,” Myra said.
“Okay. This lady, her name is Eleanor Porter Lymen. She walked into my office one day with a sketch in her hand. She asked me if I could design it for her. It was a circle with six houses and a park in the middle of the Circle. I said yes. Any first-grade architect could do that. Then she said she wanted me to design a special school for gifted children. She wanted it to be built at the top of the Circle but outside the Circle. I, of course said yes. I think it was something like thirteen acres, possibly a little more, that I had available for what was asked for. So she commissioned me to build six mansions, three on each side of the circle, then the school. I won two awards for my designs.
“Eleanor and I became friends over time. She told me to call her Ellie, which I did.
“Ellie had a daughter. Her name was Diana. At the best of times, their relationship was contentious. Diana was one of those gifted children, what we today call a brainiac, because she was wayyyy up there in the clouds, if you know what I mean, but Diana wasn’t a child. I only met her twice. It’s hard to describe her. She was there, but she wasn’t there. It was like she lived on another plane of existence somehow. Ellie wanted her to run the Institute when it was completed. Diana said no thanks. She was sick and tired of her mother’s thinking of her as some freak of nature. Which wasn’t what her mother thought at all. Diana was brilliant. I’m not sure, but Ellie said she did a lot of drugs and smoked a lot of pot. As I said, I only met her the two times.
“Once the houses were finished, Ellie moved Diana into one of the mansions. She said Diana could live in a tent and not know the difference, that’s how far out there she was. Anyway, she, Diana, never even showed up when the Institute opened. Ellie had to find people to run it. It’s very successful.
“Yesterday, Maggie and I worked at my place trying to gather as much background as we could, which isn’t all that much. You see, Ellie and her two friends who live on the Circle next to her are gone. They’ve been gone for six months, almost seven. But I am getting ahead of myself here.
“Back to Diana. I had not seen Ellie in quite a while. You’ll remember we were quite busy those days, and often out of the country or on our hilltop. But when I next met Ellie, Diana had a boyfriend of sorts. From what I remember Ellie telling me, he was like Diana, a dreamer, a free spirit. Then one day, he was gone.
“Almost nine months later, Diana gave birth to a baby boy. Diana wasn’t capable of taking care of the child, so Ellie and Rita and Irene took over. Then about seven months after the boy was born, Diana met another man and, to Ellie’s dismay, married him. Ellie was certain that he married Diana for her money. Ellie said she knocked on her door one day, and said, ‘Meet my new husband. Give me my son.’ Ellie had no choice but to turn the seven-month-old baby over to her daughter. Connor Ryan was the name of the man Diana married. Connor adopted the baby and gave him his name. They lived on the Circle in the house directly across from Ellie’s house.
“A little more than a year after she got married, Diana was killed. She was in a bank when a robbery went down. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ellie was devastated, inconsolable.” Isabelle looked over at Annie and Myra, both of whom just nodded that they understood.
“Connor moved out of the house on the Circle into an apartment shortly after Diana was killed. He was unable to take care of a two-year-old child on his own, so Ellie, with Rita and Irene’s help, took the boy in. Two years later, at Rita and Irene’s urging, Ellie went to court to obtain permanent custody of her four-year-old grandson. She had the best lawyers in the state, but she could not get custody of the child. Connor had adopted him. And after Ellie sued him, he married a woman named Natalie. With an intact family unit for the boy to move in with, and with Connor having adopted the boy, Ellie lost her bid for custody. Grandparents have no rights. Furthermore, in retaliation for Ellie’s having sued him, no matter what she did, Connor wouldn’t let her have visitation rights. All he wanted was Diana’s money.
“Once Ben came to live with Connor and Natalie, monthly child support checks from the trust fund were paid to Connor. But about eight months ago, Connor went back to court, demanding that Diana’s trust fund be turned over to him. I suppose the monthly checks were not enough to keep him satisfied. Anyway, the judge agreed with Connor’s position.
“Ellie was going to be ordered by the court to turn it over. Since she wasn’t about to let that happen, she . . . ah . . . took it on the lam. She’s gone. No one has seen or heard from her since, and that was more than six months ago. Before she left, she apparently did some fancy financial deals. All the money disappeared just the way she disappeared.”
Isabelle leaned back in her chair and looked around as she sipped at her cold coffee.
Seven pairs of eyes stared at Isabelle. “But you found her, and she’s the client. She wants her grandson back, and this is to be our mission, is that what you’re saying?” Nikki said.
Isabelle sighed. “I wish.” Isabelle reached for her phone, moved her index finger until she found what she was looking for. “This is our client if we take on the case.”
Everyone in the room gasped as they stared at the smiling, gap-toothed, curly-haired little boy straddling his blue bicycle. “Meet my new best friend, Benjamin Andrew Lymen Ryan. He’s our client if you all agree to take on the case.”
Even before the last words were out of Isabelle’s mouth, seven hands shot high in the air. Isabelle grinned and raised her hand, too.
“There’s more. I went to Ellie’s house. I know where she keeps a spare key. In fact, I built a special birdhouse high in a tree in the backyard as a surprise for Ellie. When I showed her the birdhouse, she was delighted and suggested that it would be a wonderful place to hide a key. Then I had to install a pulley system to lower the cage to get the key. The tree is covered in years of Virginia creeper vines, so you can’t see the pulley. Anyway, the house is empty. Ellie planned this. She wasn’t abducted, that much I can tell you. Oh, and her two friends, Rita and Irene, are also gone, so they must be with her. That alone tells me that the Ellie I know has no intention of turning over her daughter’s money to Connor Ryan.
“I also understand that the house that Connor, Natalie, and Ben moved into after Connor obtained custody of Ben is actually owned by Ben, not Connor. As I told you, Connor gets a check once a month for taking care of him. Ben had no idea how much the check was for, and I have no clue, either. Other than the amount for child support, however much that is, the monthly checks from Diana’s trust fund stopped when she died. She was in the bank about to cash one of them when she was killed. And do you believe that Connor fought Ellie to get that check paid? Ellie had the account frozen, so he never got it. I was with you guys out of the country when Diana was killed and only heard about it when we came to DC on a mission. Ellie told me about it when I went to pay a condolence call.
“Ben says he hates Connor’s wife, Natalie. He’s not particularly fond of Connor, either, but I tend to think Connor treats him okay and doesn’t abuse him.
“Ben attends the Institute. He’s eight years old and is a freshman in college. He’s a whiz kid. He’s as cute as a button. It took almost five months before he would talk to me. You all know I go to the park to eat my lunch, so I can stare at the Circle, which is
still my pride and joy, especially after the debacle in England, which almost cost me my marriage, thank you very much.
“Ben would pedal past me and smile or wave, then the wave turned to ‘hi,’ then to maybe a few words, until just the other day we had lunch together. He goes to the Institute on Mondays, gets his assignments, and works at home and turns them in the following Monday. After Thanksgiving, he will be a senior in college. How amazing is that?”
“Pretty damn amazing. What’s the plan? A snatch and grab? Then what? The stepfather will raise holy hell, and the fallout will be horrendous,” the always blunt-spoken Kathryn said.
“I don’t know what the plan is. Yet. First, we need to find Eleanor Lymen. Ben actually asked me for my help. Of course I said yes. My plan for the moment is, we all meet up at the park on Tuesday. Tomorrow is out because he has to go to the Institute. I will introduce you and let him talk. Then we make plans.”
“How much money is involved here?” Yoko asked.
“Not sure. I saw some of Ellie’s financials back when I was designing the project. At the time, I had no idea there was that much money in the world. Millions and millions plus more millions. And from what Ben said, Rita and Irene have just as much as Ellie does, and it was all going to go to Diana, and now Ben, because they have no heirs.”
“By any chance do you know what happens to all those millions if something were to happen to young Ben?” Annie asked softly.
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