"Like speaking proper English and looking people in the eye." Dolores sat back in her chair and smoothed her short ash blonde hair against her neck. "Not to mention cleanliness and politeness and getting to work on time."
"Not everyone who works for Jimson is an ex-con," Scott said. "There are a lot of regular joes, too. College students, like Charlie. Lots of recent immigrants. You know, your basic unskilled labor." He set his napkin beside his plate. "We use Jimson janitors down at the car dealership. Their workers do a great job. The company guarantees satisfaction. They even send a quality control man around regularly to check up on how they're doing. You don't get customer service like that out of most companies."
"We've got apple pie for dessert, Matt." Dolores rose from her chair.
"That sounds wonderful." Finn smiled. Roast beef, apple pie, and other delicious tidbits—Charlie Wakefield most likely working with felons, and the probability of a pool of felons in the area where Ivy had been snatched.
Chapter 17
Eleven days after Ivy disappears
From the passenger seat of Joy's car, Brittany watched the strange woman park the SUV in the driveway. There'd been so many false leads; so many babies that were obviously not Ivy. People all over the country were sending her photos of sightings via Facebook; she and her mom or her friends spent hours sorting through them every day. But it was still possible, like Detective Finn said when he brought that dog, that a neighbor had taken her beautiful baby. Someone who'd seen Ivy and wanted her for their own. Ivy might be just around the corner—that was the thought that kept Brittany hopeful. That was what kept her listening for those baby cries.
Today would be the day she'd find Ivy; she just knew it. The X really lifted her mood. Thank god Joy had a good source. Just one pill in the morning made the whole day go a lot faster and smoother. Now she had the energy to keep looking for Ivy, and her mother acted so relieved that Brittany was feeling happier.
In the back, Ruben banged his toy against his car seat and gurgled. He'd come in fifth in the Pretty Baby contest. In spite of what Joy had predicted, the baby that took the prize was a blonde, blue-eyed baby girl. If Ivy had been in the contest, she would have won for sure.
The stranger pulled the baby out of the car seat and cradled her in one arm as she picked up the grocery bag with the other and walked to the door. The woman was fat enough to still be pregnant and her black hair was pinned back with hairpins. A black-haired stranger, just like the psychic had predicted! And living only a twenty-minute drive away from the Morgan house. The baby was the right size.
"See? Red hair," Joy said from the driver's seat. Brittany's parents had hidden her car keys, so Joy had driven her over to this neighborhood.
"Yes," Brittany said. A wisp of red hair peeked from the edge of the baby bonnet.
Brittany startled when her cell phone sang its melody from her purse. Shit. Her mother, checking up on her. She grabbed it. "Hi Mom, I really can't talk now," she said in a rush.
"I wanted to call before we went into the dead zone. What are you doing?"
Her parents and Danny had trooped off to a friend's farm near Okanagan for the weekend. Not giving up, just a little break, her mother said, especially since Britt was feeling better. They'd begged her to come, but she'd gotten out of it by saying she had to study for a history exam. As if she'd even cracked a book since Ivy disappeared.
"I'm at Joy's. We're going to watch a movie," she lied. "My phone's going dead; I gotta go." That part was mostly true, the little battery icon was flashing in the upper right corner.
The woman was walking up to her front door.
"No more tattoos?"
"Of course not! Mom, I've got to go—"
"Taking your anti-depressants?"
"Right on schedule, Mom. Like I said, they're really making me feel better. I've got to go."
"I left the Marshes' number on the refrigerator," her mom said. "Call that if you need us, because the cells don't work out there."
"Got it, Mom. The phone's going."
"Don't forget to plug it in to recharge. I love you, Britt."
"Ditto, Mom." She threw the phone down on the passenger seat next to her purse. "I'll be back," she told Joy. She nudged open the car door and scampered across the street, stopping to hide behind a bush.
When the woman fumbled with her keys to open the front door while trying to hold groceries and infant to her chest, the baby gave a little squeak of protest. Brittany's heart leapt like it had been touched with a live wire. Ivy!
Should she call the police? No, they'd never believe her. Nobody believed her anymore. The police would talk to the fat woman, who would probably then disappear forever. Brittany walked around the perimeter of the house, crouching low. She could see the top of a headboard through one window. The headboard was big enough for a queen bed, so she moved on around the house.
There. A decal was attached to the window, one of those Save My __! stickers the Fire Department handed out. Somebody had written baby in the blank space in Magic Marker. The window was open a couple of inches. Brittany crouched beneath it, listening to the snuffling of the baby. Then there was a ticking sound and a soft melody began to play—the classical version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star—and she heard the woman say, "Now sleep, please." After another minute, there was nothing but the melody, playing over and over.
Brittany stood up. She had to stand on tiptoe and mash her face into the window screen to see in. Only the corner of the crib was visible; it was against the same wall that she was leaning on. She had to get in there.
Jamming her house key under the edge of the screen, she managed to pop it out of its track and lower it quietly to the ground. She tried to pull herself up into the window frame, but couldn't make it further than a few inches. She broke a nail and scraped her knees on the siding. "Hold on, baby girl. I'll be right there," she whispered through the window.
Beside the deck she found a plastic bucket and carried it back. Turning it over, she climbed gingerly on top. The plastic sagged under her weight, but didn't completely collapse. She peeked back into the window. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star still played, but the tune moved from one style to another—jazzy, classical, dramatic, light. Ivy would probably like that.
Brittany hoisted herself up on her forearms and wiggled upright until she could reach a leg in. God it hurt, the metal of the window frame and the bumpy wall surface scratching against her bare legs. Why had she worn shorts? She still couldn't see the baby; only the headboard and the little carousel of padded silk stars and half moons twirling above the crib. She slid her whole body inside, landing with a thump on one foot before she could pull the other one inside the window frame. Holy crap, anyone could hear that, couldn't they? She ducked behind the door and waited.
Nobody came. Must have not been as loud as she'd thought, or maybe the thump was covered up by Twinkle Twinkle. She edged out from behind the door and tiptoed to the crib. The baby slept on her back, facing away from her, a pacifier covering the lower half of her face. Ivory snow skin, strawberry blonde hair, long reddish lashes against the plump cheeks. The baby had tiny pink ladybugs on her earlobes. They'd pierced her ears?
"Ivy?" Brittany whispered. Ivy wasn't this big, was she? And she had darker lashes, didn't she?
Could she have forgotten what Ivy looked like in two weeks? Two weeks was like a fifth of Ivy's lifetime, and sometimes it seemed like Ivy changed overnight. Could this be Ivy? Her eyebrows looked familiar. Little red-gold arches. God, please let it be Ivy.
Brittany touched the baby softly on the cheek with a finger. "Ivy?" The baby turned her head and regarded her with large blue eyes. "Ivy?"
The baby didn't really look like Ivy and she didn't really feel like Ivy, but maybe Brittany didn't remember right. She'd been more than a little whacko in the last two weeks, and the drugs didn't exactly help with critical thinking, as Mr. Tanz would say. At times it seemed like Ivy was only a dream, not a real baby. She heard crying in her dream
s.
The kidnapper could have pierced Ivy's ears so that she wouldn't look so much like Ivy; that would be a really smart thing to do. The photo next to Brittany's bed was now a month old. So did she really remember what Ivy looked like?
The mole. Ivy had a mole next to her spine on the left side. Brittany knew that for sure; that wouldn't change. She picked up the baby, held the warm soft body against her chest. God, it felt so right, a baby's weight in her arms again. She pulled up the little pink shirt.
The carousel stopped and Twinkle Twinkle died away. Then there was the creak of a floorboard. Brittany turned. The black-haired woman filled the doorway. Their eyes met, and they screamed simultaneously, just like in the movies. Then the baby started to shriek, too.
* * * * * *
After three interviews, Finn was reasonably certain who had stolen the drugs from the clinic. One nurse had a lover with a long record of drug use. Finn had seen this way too often; otherwise smart people in relationships with criminals, so sure that the bad seed would never hurt them. He'd met parents who swore that their child would not rob them even after said child had been caught fencing Dad's coin collection. Most likely the nurse had been careless and the dirtbag lover had borrowed her keys and helped himself. Finn was still a few steps from proving it, but he could see the path laid out in front of him like a runway. A couple of uniforms were tracking down lover boy right now to haul him in for an interrogation. He had a warrant for the guy's cell records, and now he held a phone receiver between his ear and shoulder as he scrolled through the guy's criminal history on his computer screen.
"We'll fax those cell records to you within forty-eight hours," the Sprint representative told him.
"Make it within twenty-four if you can." He hung up the phone. Man, it was satisfying to make quick progress on a case. He couldn't wait for the reporters to show up after he had this one in the bag.
Miki materialized in front of his desk. "I called the schools in Coeur d'Alene and Portland like you asked," she said.
"And?"
"They both use Jimson for their janitorial services."
Finn wanted to leap up from his chair and shout "Yes!" He worked hard to keep his expression neutral. "Thanks."
"Is that the answer you wanted?" she asked eagerly.
"Thanks, Miki," he said again.
She pursed her lips and put her fists on her hips, posing like a petulant child. "But I don't understand—why those two schools? Does this have something to do with the Ivy Morgan case?"
"Good job." Finn told her. He wasn't about to give a nineteen-year-old assistant any details about a hunch that might or might not lead anywhere. He pretended to study his computer screen.
Miki stood there for a few seconds longer, then turned and walked away.
Jimson Janitorial Service held the contracts at all three schools where babies had disappeared in the last six months. A witness had identified the Jimson logo on the car Ivy was taken to. Next step? Employee records from Jimson to correlate with criminal histories and work locations and dates. With luck, he might be able to track Charlie's movements between Cheney and Evansville, or find an associate that Charlie had hired to snatch Ivy. There could be a not-so-reformed ex-con working at the Evansville high school.
An answering machine greeted him at both the local Jimson office and the company headquarters in Spokane. He checked his watch. Damn. Almost nine p.m. on a Friday evening. He left a message but didn't have much hope of a call back.
"Working overtime again?" Detective Melendez asked as she hung her jacket on the coat tree next to her cubicle.
"You know how it goes," Finn said.
Scoletti and his duty belt clanked to a stop next to Melendez. "Hey, Finn. We've got your dirtbag in Room Two," he said. Turning to Melendez, he said, "Yours is in Room One. And did you hear? The sheriff just hauled Brittany Morgan in for home invasion—some woman out in Briarwood with a red-haired baby." He clanked off down the hall.
It sounded like the Morgan girl was going off the deep end looking for her baby. Now that he had Neema's tips, it seemed likely that Brittany was telling the truth: Ivy had been kidnapped. Finn felt guilty that he hadn't believed Brittany's story in the first place.
"That poor girl," Sara Melendez muttered, shaking her head. "There's never enough time, is there? We're still so far from knowing what actually happened, aren't we?"
"Got that right." Finn stood up, picked up the clinic file from his desk and went to work on the case he could solve today.
* * * * * *
"Residential Burglary," Brittany's public defender told her. "That's much better than Burglary I, which they could have charged you with."
"But I didn't steal anything!" Brittany protested.
"Entering a house without permission, that's the legal definition of burglary. You don't have to steal anything."
She pressed her hands down on top of the grungy table in the interview room. The place smelled like old French fries. There was no mirror on the wall, but there was a little camera up in the corner by the ceiling. It didn't look like it was on, though; there was no glowing light like most of them had when they were running.
The cop who brought her had taken her handcuffs off, and the door had clicked shut behind him as he left. There was just a tiny window in the door? Were she and the lawyer locked in this room? It made her feel like screaming to think she couldn't get out.
The lawyer had sandy brown hair and hazel eyes and didn't seem much older than the boys at school. Shouldn't a courtroom lawyer look a little tough? He pressed his lips together and glared at her like he was annoyed to be called here on a Friday night. "This is serious, Brittany."
"Of course it's serious! Why else would I break into a perfect stranger's house?" The baby girl wasn't Ivy, although she could have been her twin. But there was no mole on her back. And her ears were pierced. Three months old and that baby's ears were pierced! Brittany would never do that to Ivy; she'd let her little girl make up her own mind.
But she didn't have Ivy. Maybe someone else was piercing Ivy's ears right now. She could hear a baby shrieking. She pressed her hands over her ears.
"Listen to me." The lawyer pulled one of her hands back down to the table. "You already have the charge of reckless endangerment."
And the failed lie detector test. He thought she was guilty, too; she could see it in his eyes. Where's Ivy? She could see the lips of all those strangers, moving over and over. Where's Ivy? People who thought she'd done something horrible to her baby.
IVY IS IN A BETTER PLACE.
God, please let that be true. Let her be with someone who wanted a beautiful baby, someone who is taking good care of her.
"How did you get to that house?" the lawyer asked.
"I told you; I hitched." When the police dragged her out of the house, Joy's car was gone. Smart girl, she took off when she heard the screams or maybe it was the sirens. Brittany told the cops she'd hitched a ride out to that address. Nope, she hadn't brought a purse or anything with her. Joy would keep her mouth shut; she still had two months to go on probation for a shoplifting charge last year. Brittany wondered what Joy would do with her purse and phone. She really wished she had that purse. She could envision the little stamped pills of Ecstasy in her coin holder. She was coming down and it was going to be a hard landing, she could tell. Her jaw ached and she felt twitchy. She could really use another X right now.
"We've been unable to contact your parents. Do you know where they are?"
The last thing on earth she wanted was for her parents to find out what she'd done. "My parents went to visit a friend out in the country. They don't have any phones there." She'd already said that at least three times. Did the guy have Alzheimer's, or what?
"Do you know the address?" He opened his notebook to write it down. "We could have the local police drive out to contact them."
She stared at the ceiling for a minute like she was thinking about it. "I don't know the address. It's somewhere n
ear Cheney?" It was the first town that came to her because of Charlie. That shithead.
He looked at her. "The friend's name?"
"Umm." She counted the specks on the table in front of her for a few seconds. "Jones, I think. Tim and Margie Jones. Or maybe Jonas?"
He raised an eyebrow, but scribbled down a few words anyway, then slapped his notebook shut.
A baby was crying, just beyond the green wall there. "Do you hear that?" she asked.
"Hear what?" He scooted back his chair and pulled his notebook into his lap. "I'm sorry, but it's too late in the day to arrange for bail."
The baby was getting louder. The lawyer's voice seemed to come from somewhere far away as he said, "Since it's Friday, you won't be arraigned until Monday."
"I have to find Ivy." Brittany stared at the door, willing it to open. It didn't. She gazed at him through a film of tears. "You have to let me out."
"It's not up to me." He stood up. "The judge will decide that. On Monday."
Chapter 18
Twelve days after Ivy disappears
It was easy enough to get a DMV list of vehicles owned by Jimson Janitorial. They had quite a fleet; mostly utility vans, but also nine cars. Unfortunately, six were green Tauruses, all the same year and model. The company must have gotten a deal from Ford. All were registered to the company headquarters address in Spokane.
Not surprisingly, Finn got no answer on a Saturday morning at the Spokane headquarters of New Dawn Enterprises.
However, he lucked out at the local Evansburg office. When he arrived in Jimson Janitorial's parking lot, the girl he'd seen before was standing in front of the building, grinding out a cigarette butt with the heel of her sandal. He caught the door behind her and followed her in.
THE ONLY WITNESS: A Mystery/Suspense Novel Page 18