I watch him nearly stumble on the steps but keep mumbling. I hope he isn’t brainstorming a crime story about Ms. Stillford.
As we pass my house, I can see Mom though her office window. She’s pacing and gesturing as she talks on her cell. She gives us a short, choppy wave.
We run around each of the houses until the end of the road. Ben’s the quickest. He climbs and jumps and tugs at doors and yells to us, “Not this one! Nope!”
“He’s really athletic,” Ella says.
* * *
The four Abbott houses sit across the road from the ocean, perched on the edge of the marsh. Just looking at them gives me a feeling of spider legs on the back of my neck. I shudder to think that Ms. Stillford might be in one of them.
“Goth,” Ella says, twisting strands of hair into a knot.
“The Abbotts,” Ben whispers like he’s describing something unholy.
I cringe. “Your uncle could sneak here from your house around the back of the marsh.”
Something the size of a crow swishes overhead, and Ben and I duck. Ella shrieks and clutches Ben’s arm. “What was that?” she gasps. Ben stands a little straighter.
I brush the top of my hair and see the culprit perch on the rooftop of Horror House. “Just a martin. They’re swoopers.”
“I thought it was a monster-sized bat,” Ella says.
“Totally,” Ben says.
“Like you can’t tell a bird from a bat, all of a sudden,” I say to Ben, but he doesn’t hear me. He’s concentrating on standing up straight since his arm is needed.
We stare at the dreary dumps that could be Ms. Stillford’s prison. The wet wind blows against our jackets.
“Why don’t they tear them down?” Ella asks. She’s shivering.
“The Abbott family won’t let the city touch them,” I say.
“My uncle says an Abbott died in each one of them.” Ben grabs his throat and pretends to choke himself. “They’re like shrines or something.”
“Shrines!” Ella gasps. “Sick.”
Ben gets into it. “People say they’re haunted.”
“What people?” Ella asks.
“You know, old people around town.” Ben has no idea. He’s just telling it like he tells it to summer kids.
“My mom says they should be torn down for more rentals,” I say. Thinking about the debate surrounding the houses reminds me that Ms. Stillford offered to make signs and picket outside the Abbotts with me for historic preservation. Now she might be tied up inside one of them.
The rusty metal wind chime on the porch of Abbott #1 jangles. I don’t know how it hangs on.
“So . . . are we going in?” Ella asks.
Ben and I look at each other. I know we are both thinking of that Halloween when the floorboards under us gave way and Zoe and I fell through to our waists and Ben had to pull us out. That was the night we gave Abbot #1 the name Horror House.
“It’s dangerous,” Ben says. “No matter where you walk, it could collapse, and you’d fall into a pile of splintery boards with rusty nails sticking out.”
Beyond the Abbotts, I see a team of searchers coming our way, whacking the reeds along the edge of the marsh with sticks. I wonder if John Denby is among them.
“I don’t see how she could be in there,” Ella says.
“But if there is any chance she is,” I say, “I’m going in.”
* * *
I touch the blistered paint covering Abbott #1 with my right hand. When I turn the corner at the back of the house, I can see across the marsh toward the nature center. The searchers are headed in that direction. They didn’t even come near the Abbotts. I wonder if John Denby talked them out of it.
I put my fingertips on the railing of the rickety porch that hangs off the back of the house and start up the steps. My foot tells me how weak they are.
“Be careful,” I say over my shoulder. “And don’t pull too hard on the railing. It’s about ready to fall off.”
Behind me, I hear Ben say, “I’ll go first. Hang on to me.”
I summon the willpower to shake off the sound of Ben crushing on Ella. This is about finding Ms. Stillford, I tell myself, not about being jealous of Mariella Philpotts.
“I should have worn different shoes,” Ella says.
My immediate thought is “Ya think?” but I don’t say it.
I inch across the porch until I can look into the wreck of a kitchen. For as long as I can remember, Abbott #1 has been a place for summer kids to smoke and drink beer. In the last few years, summer people have helped themselves to crystal doorknobs and carved wall panels too, even though PRIVATE NO TRESSPASSING signs are plastered everywhere. Last spring, Mom sent old Miss Abbott a letter threatening to have all four houses officially condemned if she didn’t either fix them up or tear them down. Horror House is in really bad shape, but it might be the perfect place to secret away a hostage.
My heart breaks a little for the house. I scan the planks for holes, potential breaks, possible places where my foot could plunge through. I gingerly put my weight on the most solid-looking board, then behind me I hear:
“Hey!”
Not a scared hey. A surprised hey. Maybe a slightly-incensed hey.
I turn and see Ben scoop Ella up and carry her across the porch. It’s quick. His cheeks are red.
“Okay,” Ella says. “Not necessary.”
I’ll say. Ms. Stillford. Ms. Stillford. I keep repeating it over and over.
Once I’m inside the kitchen, I grasp the amount of devastation. The floor has huge gaping holes with splintered edges. Only half of the stairway remains. The top steps hang suspended, trailing down into thin air. A hole in the roof that I’ve never seen before has let the Maine weather in with a vengeance.
“Back up,” I say, my voice trembling.
“Holy smokes,” Ben says when he sees the interior. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
I hear a cracking sound, and Ella screams.
I turn and see her foot buried ankle-deep in the floor. She balances on her free leg with her knee slightly bent. Ben drops to his knees and crawls slowly towards her, the boards groaning beneath him. Ella stares at me with frightened eyes underneath her sparkly green lids.
“Don’t move,” I say.
Ben works to get Ella’s foot out of her shoe so she can back away. Then he struggles to release the shoe from the jaws of the splintered floor.
Ella raises her arms like she expects to be picked up and carried out, but Ben is already three steps across the porch, holding her shoe and extending his hand to help her onto the solid ground.
I sprint across the creaky porch and take a deep breath when my feet reach the backyard. “Ms. Stillford can’t be in there,” I say.
“No kidding,” Ben agrees.
I look back at the porch again. Ground-out cigarette butts litter the far edge. I’m about to go over and look at them when Ben and Ella yell “Don’t!” in unison.
I cross the porch anyway. Creak. Squeak. Creak. Crack. The butts are fresh—as in not from summer kids. I drop them into one of the plastic baggies Mom gave me.
“What is it?” Ella says.
“Evidence,” I yell back.
When I’m back on the ground, I give Ben the baggie. While he and Ella debate how fresh the cigarettes are, I look out into the marsh and see trampled weeds and reeds. It looks like more than one person has been here. Recently.
“That’s a path,” I say. “It may go to the nature center. . . . I mean, where else?”
Ben is starting to go pale. “My uncle doesn’t smoke. Not cigarettes, not a pipe, not anything.”
I tell Ben and Ella to wait, and I take off down the path. But instead of going to the nature center, it snakes through the damp edges of the marsh. Every once in a while, the path stops and widens as if its maker turned in circles. I round a patch of knee-high bushes and turn in a circle myself. It’s nothing but marsh.
Eventually, the trampled plant life leads back to Horror H
ouse, where Ella and Ben are waiting.
“The path doesn’t go anywhere,” I say. Ben looks relieved. “But it’s fresh.”
19
We head back up Mile Stretch Road, toward Gusty’s, to report our findings. All of a sudden, Ella is full of information. She’s yakking on about her dad’s books and things she learned from him about crime investigations and what some fictional detective named Monroe Spalding would do. Ella’s talk is not really about Ms. Stillford. Why would it be? It’s about showing off how much she knows.
“You should send the cigarette butts to a forensics lab for DNA testing—for lip prints in addition to finger prints. In Bloody Footprints, Monroe Spalding used genetic DNA testing to determine that the sweat on a scarf used to strangle the victim belonged to a female.”
Back at Gusty’s, Mom wields a clipboard and a whistle. She’s wearing a blue RESCUE jacket that is three sizes too big for her—I guess she was the last person to reach the box.
Vreeeee! She gives the whistle a full bleat. “All right, everybody. Quiet.” Chair legs scrape, people finish their conversations. “Let’s have reports. Group one?”
A man I recognize as a teacher from Rook River High School speaks up. “We had the harbor area, yacht club, lobster pound, grocery store, B&B, post office. Nothing. Mr. Loney didn’t want us inside the pound for sanitary reasons. Said the lady never went in there, so we skipped it.”
I look around for Owen Loney. He isn’t there. I shoot Ben my “I told you so” expression and catch him looking at Ella.
“Fine,” Mom says. “I’ll talk to Mr. Loney and get that done. What about group two?”
Officer Dobson walks to the front of the room and edges Mom to the side. “Group two cordoned off the lighthouse and Maiden Rock historical marker location, set up containment, divided the location into sectors, and moved through each, meticulously examining the area for footprints, broken branches, and the like.”
OMG. My concentration is totally blown. I didn’t check for footprints.
“In sector 4A,” Dobson continues, “the west side of the lighthouse, we observed, collected, and bagged this.”
Dobson raises his arm. A group gasp sucks the air out of the room. A plastic baggie containing a dark brownish-black wad of something swings from his hand.
Mom grabs the baggie from Officer Dobson. “What is this?” she says, clearly irritated she hasn’t seen the evidence until now.
“An item of apparel. A scarf.”
“I’ll take it to the lab in Rook River. Thank you.” Mom turns the baggie over and runs her fingers across the surface of the bag. “Anything else?”
Dobson laughs. “That’s not enough?” He looks across the group. “Anybody else find anything?”
Silence.
Dobson turns to Mom. “I’ve already tagged the item in accordance with the search-and-rescue protocol. You’ll see the pertinent information there on the bag, including the date and time found and my name as search team leader.”
A storm gathers on Mom’s face, but she quells it. “Anyone else, in any of the search teams, find anything?”
A woman in a properly-fitting RESCUE jacket speaks up. “Our team had the area immediately south of the Maiden Rock historical marker, the one with the convent on it. We searched from the beach through the woods and up to the road. The grounds around the building are pretty overgrown, so it’s hard to tell if anything looks unusual down there. And if you don’t know already, there’re quite a few cats around that place, and I think they’re using the beach as a litter box.” She wrinkles her nose. “The sisters came out and gave us cups of hot chocolate. We asked them if they’d seen anything unusual, and they said they hadn’t. Before we left, they told us they were going to Walmart in Rook River for cat food.”
The crowd laughs like a bunch of bobbleheads on a bumpy road.
Mom looks over the group and her eyes fall on me.
“How about your team, Quinnie?”
Ben starts to step forward, but I move past him toward the front and hand Mom the baggie. “We found the cigarette butts on the back porch of Abbott #1, and we found a new path trampled in the marsh back there.”
People in the crowd press forward to get a look at the baggie. Dobson reaches for the cigarette butts, and Mom pivots so they’re beyond his reach.
“Excellent, Quinnie. As soon as we break up here, you can take me to the spot, and I’ll examine the area further. Did you see footprints?”
“No,” I say so softly that she leans forward. “I didn’t.”
It’s not exactly a lie. I didn’t see any footprints. The problem is that I didn’t look, either. I feel rotten. I was prepared to jump up and scream, “Look what I found!” Instead, I may have to admit that while walking all around the Abbott, I might have trampled over valuable evidence.
Mom takes this as regret that I didn’t find any. I can tell. She hurries to say, “It’s fine. Officer Dobson’s group didn’t observe any footprints either . . . or I’m sure he would have let us know, being so thorough and all. But your discovery warrants a further search.”
* * *
Mom tells all of the searchers to report to the Abbotts and wait for her. Then the four of us pile into her sheriff’s car and head there. Ella’s in the middle-back, between me and Ben, studying the perp-barrier. Unintelligible squawks blast from the radio periodically.
I think Ben’s about to explain the reason for the barrier, but Ella cuts him off and says, “My dad would really like this ride.”
Mom pipes up helpfully from the front seat. “Mariella, you can tell him I will give him a neighborhood law enforcement familiarization ride in the squad any time he wants . . . Well, when this has all calmed down.”
“Thanks,” Ella says. “Cool. And it’s Ella.”
“Okay, then. Ella.” I see Mom study her in the rearview mirror, wondering if this new girl is going to be a brat or if she’s just confident.
When we get to Horror House, Mom has me show her exactly where I found the cigarette butts and the fresh path. Then she gives the teams instructions to “comb the area” and to “watch for footprints” and to “use a crosshatch pattern from behind the Abbotts all the way to the nature center.” John Denby offers to help, but Mom tells him to meet her at the nature center. I watch her whisper to a man in a blue RESCUE coat.
“I want you to go home now,” she tells me.
I can barely see though my watery eyes. “Is it because you think I wrecked the footprints?”
“No, honey. It’s because you found something significant, and that marsh is no place for you right now. They have to do their search.”
“She’s alive, Mom.”
“Oh, Quinn.” She straightens my hair with her fingertips and wipes the tears off my cheek. “I’ve been visualizing her safe and sound, and my instincts tell me she’s going to be okay.”
* * *
Mom tells me, Ben, and Ella to go back to our house. She adds that Ben should not go home until she calls him. For once, Ben isn’t hungry. We don’t even put on the TV. Ella tries to tell us about how in her dad’s book, Dark Observer, the footprints were man-sized but made by a woman wearing her husband’s boots. Calls come in to the sheriff’s phone in the next room. Messages broadcast through the house because the speaker is turned up.
Beep. “This is Virginia Stark from Wooster. I think I saw the lady you are looking for in the Zippy Mart here.”
Beep. “This is Joe Maroni. I’m staying at the Lake Champlain resort, and I think maybe the woman you’re looking for is staying here too. Room three-one-four.”
Beep. Beep. Beep. It goes on and on. She’s been seen in Burlington, Vermont; Fryeburg, Maine; Concord, New Hampshire; and Amherst, Massachusetts, to name a few places.
Eventually, another phone rings—Ella’s. Her ringtone is “Trouble,” of course.
“My dad wants me home. I have to go unpack my room,” she says. “But I can come back.”
Just then, Mom calls my ce
ll. As I raise it to my ear, I think, Don’t be bad news, don’t be bad news, don’t be bad news.
“It’s okay, Quinnie. We haven’t found a thing. Relax. I’m just calling to tell you to send Ben home. Dad will be there with dinner soon.”
I say good-bye to Ben and Ella. As she’s leaving, Ella says again, “I can come back if you want.”
If she were Zoe, there’d be no question. In fact, Zoe wouldn’t have to ask. She’d just come back as soon as she could. But she’s not Zoe, she’s Ella, and I really don’t want Ella to be with me. I don’t really want anyone to be with me right now.
“Nah, it’s okay. My dad will be home soon, and my mom.”
She shrugs, nods like she understands, and jams her hands into her hoodie pockets.
Ben says, “Bye, Ella.”
She tells Ben, “Yeah, bye,” but she keeps looking at me. And I like her a little better for that.
It’s five o’clock and getting dark in the house, so I walk around the main floor, flicking on light switches. I pick up a bowl of shells from the dining room table and blow at the dust ring under it. I straighten the stack of magazine we pulled apart looking for a maritime map. I pick up my phone to Google “maritime maps of Maine.”
My phone pings a text arrival. It must be Ben. But when I look at it, I don’t recognize the sender’s number.
The cleverest lie is the one that is closest to the truth.
What? I start looking around, like something in my immediate area will tell me who sent the text. Then I think about its meaning. The smartest lie is almost the truth. Okay. So what?
This must be from Ella, I think. Another one of her Monroe Spalding things. Ha, ha.
I go up to my parents’ bedroom, at the front of the house, and look out their window. The marsh starts near the intersection by our house, but it’s dark enough now that I can’t make out anything. Maybe they’ve stopped for the night.
At six, Dad calls to say he’s closing Gusty’s and bringing home chowder.
I set the table.
At six thirty, Mom straggles in, stomping dirt off her shoes on the front rug and shaking her head.
“Anything, Mom?”
“Nothing,” she says as she peels off her coat and walks to the kitchen. “We’ll start again tomorrow in the marsh and then spread out into Becker’s Woods.” She tosses my baggie and Officer Dobson’s baggie onto the table. “Dobson’ll lead the search groups tomorrow while I take these to the lab.”
The Maypop Kidnapping Page 9