The House on Candlewick Lane

by Amy M. Reade

  “Do you know whose car that is?” I didn’t even know who asked me the question.

  I didn’t answer. I was watching my daughter approach the passenger side of the car as Gus continued to tap the keyboard slowly. The window on the passenger side was rolled down. Ellie leaned into the window and, frame by frame, she opened the car door and got inside. The car drove off.

  My hands were shaking. I pushed the chair back and leaned forward, putting my head between my knees so I wouldn’t throw up or faint. Mrs. Ravell picked up her phone and said something to Maureen, but I couldn’t hear her because the sound of blood rushing in my ears was too loud.

  Gus reversed the video and stopped it again at the point when the car pulled up in front of the bus.

  “I can’t quite make out what kind of car that is,” he said, grimacing and shaking his head.

  Maureen came hurrying into the office with a glass of water. “Here, Dr. Dobbins. Drink this. It’ll help.”

  Mrs. Ravell was on the phone again, this time talking to the police. She hung up and pushed another button on her phone. Suddenly I heard her voice over the PA system, announcing a school-wide lockdown. It was strange, hearing her voice over the intercom and also in person, directly in front of me. Why the lockdown now, when Ellie is gone already? I stared at her.

  As if reading my mind, Mrs. Ravell said gently, “I have to do that. It’s school procedure.”

  I looked away from her and tried again to focus on the black-and-white frames in front of me, but my peripheral vision was going black. I swayed, and Maureen knelt down on the floor between me and the desk, cupping my face in her hands. She spoke sternly.

  “Dr. Dobbins, pull yourself together. We have a job to do. Focus now, and help us find Ellie.”

  Her stern words were exactly what I needed to hear. I sat up a little straighter. Mrs. Ravell spoke up. “The police are on their way. No one else can get in or out until I give the order.”

  I inched the chair closer to the computer screen, straining my eyes to see what kind of car had pulled in front of Ellie’s bus. Maybe if we had that information… But only the front right side of the car was in the image. The make and model were impossible to determine. Tears blurred my vision. I cursed in frustration.

  “Are there any other cameras outside the school?” I asked Gus.

  “I’ll pull up the one closer to the main road.”

  Ellie’s school was in a bucolic setting, with a large park separating it from the road. Anyone driving out of the school’s parking lot had to go past the park to get onto the main road. Gus’s fingers flew as he pushed several buttons. Before long, a split screen appeared, this time in color. He pushed more buttons, and the frames reversed until the time-stamp on the new video matched the time-stamp on the bus video. He then moved forward through images for several seconds until the car that had been in front of the bus—the car containing my little girl—pulled into view.

  It rolled quickly through a stop sign and turned right onto the main road leading past the campus. In a matter of seconds it was out of sight.

  It was my ex-husband’s car.

  “That’s Neill,” I told Mrs. Ravell and Gus, my breath catching in my throat.

  “Ellie’s father?” Mrs. Ravell asked.

  I nodded, transfixed by the sight of his car driving out of sight on the monitor.

  Maureen had returned to the main office and buzzed Mrs. Ravell. “The police are here. I’m sending them in.”

  There was another knock at the door, and two police officers entered. Mrs. Ravell, who plainly knew both of them, introduced me quickly and outlined what we knew so far from the video surveillance. I stood up, still shaky, and offered her chair to one of the officers. He sat down and asked Gus to pull up the video from the line of buses. The other officer took out his phone and turned his back to the rest of us. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. After a moment, he clicked off the phone and joined us around the desk.

  The officer at the computer turned to me. “You’re sure this is your ex-husband’s car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you happen to know the license plate number?”

  I shook my head, mentally kicking myself for not memorizing Neill’s license plate. The officer swiveled back to the monitor and watched the video several times, moving the frames backward and forward, with the second officer leaning over his shoulder. Finally he looked up at Gus and asked to see the video closer to the main road. Gus complied rapidly, and in just a moment, the officers were watching Ellie disappear over and over again as they reversed and forwarded the frames again.

  “Wait.” The second officer pointed to the screen. “Can you reverse that? Just one frame.” We all crowded around the computer to see what the officer was pointing to.

  “See that? It’s a partial plate.” We hadn’t noticed it before. He turned to Gus. “Can you enlarge that frame?”

  Gus pushed more keys and the frame appeared larger on the screen. If I stepped back from the computer and strained my eyes, I could make out four grainy letters on the license plate. The officer standing next to me got on his phone again, relaying numbers and letters to the person on the other end of the line. He clicked off the phone again. “We’ll get that information disseminated right away. He won’t be able to get far before someone sees him.”

  The two officers talked to each other in low voices while I stared at the computer screen. Mrs. Ravell gestured toward Gus and spoke to him privately next to the door. It was only a few moments before my phone vibrated. I yanked it out of my pocket, hoping Neill had come to his senses and was bringing Ellie back to school. But then I noticed that Mrs. Ravell and Gus were looking at their phone screens, too. We had all been contacted at the same time.

  It was an Amber Alert. I should have expected it, but I looked at the screen in confusion. It took me a second to realize I was reading Neill’s license plate number and physical descriptions of him and Ellie. My memory jerked back to the times I had received Amber Alerts for other missing children. I always felt a jolt of dread for the child and the parents involved. I would look at the cars and people around me to see if any of them matched the descriptions in the alert. But when they didn’t, the Amber Alert would melt into the background of my mind as I returned to whatever task was at hand. I almost never gave the alert a second thought. It didn’t involve me, so I never bothered to find out what happened to the child or the family who was the focus of the alert. And I felt a sudden stab of guilt and regret for all the times I didn’t spare any more pain for those people. Suddenly that pain was fiercely personal. It didn’t seem possible for this to be happening to my family. This was something that happened to other people. I wanted the nightmare to stop.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Is there a place where we can talk to Dr. Dobbins privately?” one of the policemen asked Mrs. Ravell. She showed us to a small conference room and departed, closing the door quietly behind her.

  “I’m Sergeant Boyd,” he said, “And this is Sergeant Templeton. Now I want you to start at the beginning and tell us what happened with you and your ex-husband.”

  I took a deep breath to try to steady my nerves. As horrified as I was, this was no time to lose control of myself.

  “My ex-husband and I divorced about three years ago,” I began. “I got primary custody, but he gets Ellie one night a week and every Saturday.”

  “Why did you divorce?” Officer Boyd asked.

  “Irreconcilable differences,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t pry any further.

  “Such as?” Officer Boyd prompted.

  “I found out he had a gambling addiction,” I stated. “It led to arguments, secrecy, you know. I couldn’t take it anymore and I left him. I took Ellie with me.”

  “Has he ever abused Ellie?”

  I shook my head. “No. Definitely not.”

  “So it’s normal for her to go in the car with him?”

  “I suppose so, but no
t on a weekday and certainly not at the start of the school day. He must have told her something that sounded urgent enough for her to leave the line of kids going into school. Maybe he told her I was sick. He could have told her anything. Do you think you can catch him?”

  “I hope so.” The full importance of what was happening hit me just then. I tried to catch my breath as I bent forward. The police officer grabbed my arm and helped me to slide to the floor, where I sat with my back against the wall. The sounds in the room seemed to subside into a murky black background.

  The next thing I knew, Officer Templeton was bent over me saying, “Dr. Dobbins, stay with me. I need your help, Doctor. You have to help us.” It was the second time that morning someone had reminded me to remain focused, remain alert. But I just couldn’t bear the weight that was pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe and making clear thoughts impossible. Only one thing was screaming its way through my head:

  Neill has Ellie.

  Neill has Ellie.

  I was living in a nightmare.

  What did he want with her, anyway? Where could he be going with her?

  I looked up into Officer Templeton’s face. I could see the concern in his eyes. He took my arm and helped me to sit up. Maureen appeared out of thin air with smelling salts and a glass of orange juice. I nodded my thanks, unable to speak, and tried to focus on what the officer was saying, but I realized he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Officer Boyd. I could only hear snatches of the conversation.

  “…check his last known address…”

  “…find out where he works…”

  “…issue an APB…”

  “Dr. Dobbins?” Hearing my name jerked me out of my trance. It was Officer Boyd.

  “Yes?”

  “We need some information from you about your ex-husband.”

  I nodded. What followed was an exchange I barely could recall later. I dimly remember telling him that Neill was an English professor and that he had an apartment about thirty minutes away. I must have given him other information, too, but I don’t remember what it was.

  The police issued instructions to Mrs. Ravell to end the lockdown. They were quite sure this was an isolated event. “Domestic incident” they called it, though Neill wasn’t part of our household anymore. As they prepared to leave the school, Officer Boyd asked me to accompany him to the police station to provide a list of Neill’s family contacts.

  “I’ll have to stop at home to get my address book,” I said.

  “You don’t have the contacts on you? On your phone?”

  “No. I don’t have anything to do with his family.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  We drove to my house, which was a short distance from the school. On the way I dialed Neill’s mobile phone. No answer, as I suspected. As I pulled into the driveway, Dottie came running across the street.

  “I’ve been waiting for you!” She glanced nervously at the police car out of the corner of her eye. “What on earth is going on?”

  “Neill took Ellie from school.”

  She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Where did he take her?”

  “That’s the problem. We don’t know. Dottie, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get numbers for Neill’s family and get down to the police station. I’ll tell you everything later.” I was walking up the front steps and opening the front door as I spoke.

  She nodded. “Let me know if you need anything, honey. Anything.”

  I closed the door behind me and ran into the office. I rifled through stacks of papers on my desk, finally locating the leather-bound book that contained the names and contact information of Neill’s family.

  I took the book with me and went out the front door, locking it behind me.

  In my haste, I hadn’t noticed anything amiss in my office. Knowing what I do now, I wish I had looked more closely.

  CHAPTER 3

  I followed Officer Boyd to the police station, and he ushered me into an office. Sitting down opposite me at a utilitarian table, he took out a pen and pad and waited for me to open the address book.

  “Whose name do you want first?” I asked.

  “Parents and then siblings.”

  I flipped through several pages. “His parents’ names are Janet and Alistair Gramercy,” I said as I ran my finger down a page. “They live outside Edinburgh, in Scotland.”

  “They don’t live in the U.S.?”

  “No. His whole family lives in Scotland.”

  “Is that where he’s from?”

  “Yes.”

  Officer Boyd jumped up and left the room. I waited nervously for several minutes until he returned. “Why didn’t you tell me he’s not from the U.S.?” he asked as he came back through the door.

  I was bewildered. “I … I didn’t realize that was important.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “That kind of information is always important.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “I notice you speak with an accent. Are you also from Scotland?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you lived in the United States?”

  “About seven years. Since before Ellie was born.”

  “And you’ve been divorced for three years?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me more about your ex-husband’s gambling addiction.”

  I tried to answer fully without telling him the whole story. “I didn’t see it coming. We’d been having problems, and all of a sudden I found out that he owed money to people I’d never heard of. And he was afraid of them. It wasn’t safe for me or Ellie anymore.”

  “Do you think these people may have had something to do with Ellie’s disappearance?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What brought you to the U.S.?”

  “My job and Neill’s job.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “I’m an art history professor.” He scribbled something down on the pad in front of him, then gave me a hard look.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  “Just give me the rest of the contact info.”

  I gave him the address and telephone number of Neill’s parents. Officer Boyd glanced at his watch.

  “What time is it there?”

  “They’re four hours ahead.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I listened to the sounds coming down the hall of the police station while I tried not to bite my fingernails down to the quicks. The air smelled of stale coffee and garlic. My stomach and head ached, and my breath came in shallow bursts. Where did he go? What is he doing? Is he calling Janet and Alistair? Why doesn’t he hurry?

  I pulled out my mobile phone and tried calling my own parents. No service. I slapped the phone down on the table in frustration.

  Officer Boyd returned several long minutes later. “I’ve got someone trying to get in touch with Neill’s parents.”

  “What’s being done to find Neill and Ellie?”

  Rather than answer my question, he posed one of his own. “Have you tried contacting Neill?”

  “Yes. In the car on the way from the school to my house. He didn’t answer. It didn’t even go to voice mail. “He furrowed his brow, and I repeated my question. “What’s being done to find Neill and Ellie?”

  “We’ve got a bulletin out for his car and we’ve alerted the airports in the area.”

  “Airports?”

  “We can’t rule out Neill taking Ellie to Scotland. Or anywhere else.”

  “He can’t do that! I have her passport.”

  “On you?”

  I hesitated. “No, I keep it in a safe in my house.”

  “Not in a safe-deposit box?”

  “No.”

  “I want you to get that passport and bring it to me.”

  “Right now?”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes. Right now.”

&nb
sp; I grabbed my handbag from the table and practically ran out of the room, down the echoing station hallway, and out into the parking lot, where the sunshine was rapidly being replaced by dark gray clouds.

  I made it to my house in record time. Fumbling with the key to the front door, hot tears began to prick the insides of my eyelids.

  “Greer, are you all right?” Dottie. I hadn’t heard her coming. I groaned inwardly as I turned to face her. I didn’t need an audience right now. “Hi.”

  She took one look at me and wrapped me in a big hug. I must have looked worse than I thought. I finally broke down and started to sob. “I’m sorry, Dottie. I’m just overwhelmed.”

  “Of course you are, honey,” she said gently, smoothing my hair. “What can I do?”

  I sniffled and wiped my eyes. “Nothing, I guess. I’m here to pick up Ellie’s passport to take it to the police station.”

  “Why?” Dottie gave me a puzzled look.

  “I guess they want to make sure Neill doesn’t take her out of the country, since he’s not from the U.S. and his family lives abroad. I’ll call you the minute I know anything,” I promised her.

  She hugged me again. “Okay. Make sure you do. And let me know if you need me.”

  I had opened the door and dropped my purse on the hall floor. The safe was in a corner of my office. I switched on the desk lamp and glanced toward the corner.

  The safe door was open.

  “Dottie!” I screamed.

  I heard her clattering back up the front steps a moment later as I sat on the floor, stunned.

  “What is it?” she yelled, charging into the office.

  “The safe door is open.” I jammed my hand into my pocket and pulled out Officer Boyd’s card. “Will you call this number? Officer Boyd is helping me.”

  She rushed over to the phone on my desk while I pulled everything out of the safe into a heap on the floor. Bank documents, gift certificates, receipts, Ellie’s baby book, countless pieces of paper.