Fugitive Father

by Jean Barrett

  “I’m all right,” Ellie assured her, struggling to control her sudden excitement. “This man who was Sandra’s lover…who was he?”

  Terry shrugged. “Beats me. She was always very hushhush about him. The guy was probably already married. They always are, aren’t they?” The caseworker seemed to realize then that she was violating the ethics of her department by gossiping about a colleague. She quickly checked her watch. “I’ve got to run. I don’t know that it’ll do much good, but I’ll put in a good word for you at Services.”

  Ellie didn’t try to detain her. She was anxious herself to hurry away in the opposite direction. She needed to see Noah immediately. Needed to share with him what she had just learned, because if she was right—But she was afraid to put it into actual words until Noah himself validated her startling conjecture.

  Minutes later, she had been admitted into the visitor’s area of Prisoner Processing. Seating herself where the guard indicated in front of the glass screen, she waited in a fever of impatience for Noah to be brought from his cell.

  It seemed to take forever before he finally arrived on the other side of the divider. Her heart lurched at the sight of him. Even though he looked tired and gaunt in one of the blaze orange coveralls issued to all the prisoners, he would always be the most compelling man she had ever known. She longed to touch him, hating the glass wall that separated them and prevented any physical contact. But they could hear each other clearly through the stout mesh at the bottom of the screen.

  Sliding onto the chair that faced her, he leaned forward, his dark eyes glowing with pleasure sharpened by concern. “Ellie, are you all right? They aren’t threatening you with charges, are they? I’ve told them that you—”

  “I’m fine,” she interrupted him. “Noah, we don’t have much time, and I’ve got something important to tell you.”

  “What is it? If it’s Joel—”

  “He’s all right. They’ve assured me he’s just fine.” She didn’t want to worry him before it was necessary. She needed his full attention. “Noah, when we were on the road to North Carolina, you talked about Howard Buchanan. You said something about him and Brett sharing the same taste in women.”

  He frowned at her puzzling reference to the murdered man. “Ellie, where are you going with this? What’s—”

  “No, just tell me, and then listen. What kind of women?”

  “They were always younger than he was, usually on the flamboyant side.”

  Women like Sandra O’Hara, Ellie thought “And he had affairs with them, right?”

  “Some of them. I don’t know a whole lot about it. He kept that part of his life pretty quiet. I suppose because of his position.”

  “And what if his latest lover, someone he’d been keeping a secret, visited him that day he died? What if she arrived at the house just after you left, hoping for a commitment from him? And what if, instead, he told her he was finished with her, and in a fit of rage—”

  “She killed him. Ellie, what’s going on? What have you heard?”

  She pressed close to the glass, relating in a low, urgent tone everything that Terry Goldman had shared with her in the corridor. “It all fits, doesn’t it? Sandra O’Hara killed Howard Buchanan and then left the house in a panic. But she must have realized Joel was there in the dumbwaiter. She probably figured that because she has such a low, husky voice, the child couldn’t have understood what she was saying, and maybe he even mistook her for a man. And of course, she was right, which made her safe for the time being. But the possibility that in time the pieces would fall into place for Joel and that he would identify her must have gnawed at her constantly.”

  “So she had to get her hands on my kid to make sure he never talked.”

  “That’s why she was so eager to get his case, and eventually she did. Only by then Brett had been awarded custody of Joel and was taking him to North Carolina where she couldn’t reach him.”

  “Unless she turned up in North Carolina herself.”

  “Which she did. And, of course, I assumed she was there because she was after Brett and that Joel was just an excuse. But all along Joel was her target. She knew that Sultan was dangerous and if she put the puppet in the stall, there was a chance that Joel could be killed.”

  “And if that didn’t work,” he said angrily, “she could always arrange for another accident.”

  “Oh, Noah, am I crazy, or does any of this make sense?”

  “Yeah, it does. It makes perfect sense. Trouble is,” he said bitterly, “there’s no way to prove it.”

  “There has to be! If we can convince—”

  “Ellie,” he stopped her, “I don’t care about that right now. All I know is Sandra O’Hara still has access to my kid, and if we’re right about her, Joel’s in danger.” His hands clenched into tight fists, an action that demonstrated his intense frustration. “And I’m trapped in here and can’t do anything about it.”

  “No, but I can.” Ellie got swiftly to her feet, her expression hardening with determination. “And I’m not going to waste time talking to either Superintendent Bolling or Family Services. Forbidden or not, I’m going straight to the McCormicks to beg them to keep Sandra away from Joel until we can get someone to act. The McCormicks are reasonable people. Somehow I’ll convince them to listen to me.”

  “Ellie, be careful. The O’Hara woman must be desperate by now.”

  “Yes, but so am I.”

  She left him at the glass screen, his face wild with rage over his inability to join her.

  THE MCCORMICK HOME was located less than a block from Forest Park, a short drive from the Police Headquarters Building. But Ellie, battling the city traffic, felt that it took her forever to get there.

  Parking at the curb, she hurried to the front door of the neat brick bungalow. She rang the bell and waited impatiently, hoping to catch a glimpse of Joel’s eager face at a window. But there was no sign of the boy.

  It was Jan McCormick, an older woman with thinning hair and a benevolent face, who answered the door seconds later. She looked concerned to find Ellie on her front step. She must have been instructed that Ellie was to have no contact with Joel.

  “Jan, it’s all right. I won’t try to see him. I just need you to listen to me.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to see him anyway. Joel isn’t here right now. He’s out with his caseworker.”

  Ellie’s heart dropped like a stone. “Sandra O’Hara took him? Where? How long ago?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  Ellie fought a rising panic. “Jan, I don’t have time to explain. Just trust me, please trust me to know Joel’s whereabouts. I promise you it’s vital.”

  The woman hesitated, wasting precious seconds. She must have been finally moved by the earnest, pleading expression in Ellie’s eyes. “They’ve been gone just a little while. She took him over to the zoo. He’s been withdrawn. She hoped he would open up to her in surroundings he liked. Ellie, what is this all—”

  “I can’t stop to tell you! I’ve got to find them! Jan, call the police!”

  She hardly heard Jan’s assurance that she would head straight for the phone. Nor, when she turned and rushed toward the street, did she return to her car. The free zoo was located on this side of the park. It would be quicker to reach it on foot than to deal with parking outside the gate.

  Her heart hammered with fear as she raced along the sidewalk. Fear and a painful self-reproach. Why had she sacrificed time by visiting Noah? She should have come directly to the McCormick home. She would have been here before Sandra took him away. But she had been desperate for Noah’s support, fearful of pursuing on her own what might have been nothing but a wild theory. Now, if anything happened to Joel because of that delay, she would never forgive herself.

  The South Gate was just ahead of her. She flew across the street, dodging cars whose drivers honked at her angrily. Paying them no attention, she reached the gate. The only attendant in sight was busy with a man in a wh
eelchair. She didn’t feel she could afford to wait for help from that source.

  Without pausing, she sped through the gate, ignoring the startled expression on the face of a woman she almost knocked down in her haste. But once inside the entrance, she came to a halt in the open area where routes branched off in opposite directions.

  Which way? They could be anywhere in here, and if she chose the wrong route…

  Where, where? she wondered frantically.

  There was a mounted directory in front of her. She rapidly consulted the list, searching for a clue. Her gaze stopped at a sign pointing to the right: Big Cat Country. She remembered how Joel was fascinated by tigers and lions. It was her only hope.

  She swung to the right, crossing the tracks of the Zooline Railroad, trotting past the herpetarium. Although a thin sun was struggling to shine through the cloud cover, it was still cool and blustery. Not a good day for visiting the zoo. The place was almost deserted.

  Ellie kept straining for a glimpse of a redheaded woman and a little boy. Nothing. Had she made a fatal mistake? Chosen the wrong route?

  It was outside the primate house that she spotted it. Joel’s beloved Hobo—all alone and looking forlorn on a bench. Her discovery of the hand puppet was evidence that they had come this way. But Hobo went everywhere with Joel, and it worried her that he was abandoned on a bench. Was she too late?

  Snatching up the puppet, she ran on.

  Winded by the time she reached the empty show arena, with a stitch in her side whose pain she strove to ignore, she paused long enough to catch her breath. And it was from here, through a stand of shrubbery, that she saw them.

  They were less than a hundred yards away, positioned in front of the open-air habitat of the Siberian tigers. The beasts prowled on rocks separated from the viewing rail by a deep moat. The woman and the boy were the only spectators in the area.

  Joel in his eagerness had pulled himself up on the low rail for a better view. Sandra, who had probably encouraged him, stood close behind him. Looking quickly to either side to make certain there were no witnesses, she grabbed Joel roughly and appeared to be trying to lift him over the barrier. Joel’s startled and terrified wail rang out as he clung desperately to the rail. If Sandra succeeded in breaking his grip, in a moment he would be unconscious prey for the predators waiting on the rocks.

  A horrified Ellie tore through the shrubbery that had concealed her, crying an outraged, “No! Joel, hold on tight!”

  Joel’s head whirled around. Sandra, caught in the act, went rigid for a second. Then, surrendering to panic, she took off in the direction of the bird house.

  A security guard, who had been approaching from the camel yard, was alerted by Ellie’s call. “She tried to kill him!” she shouted, pointing toward Sandra.

  The guard flew past her and went chasing after the redhead. Ellie, leaving the pursuit to him, was interested only in Joel. By the time she reached him, he had climbed down from the rail.

  The first words out of his mouth were an angry, “She was gonna make tiger meat out of me!”

  Half crying and half laughing in her relief, she caught him in a tight embrace. “I know, sweetheart, I know.”

  “Ellie?”

  “What?”

  “I lost Hobo.”

  “No, you didn’t. He’s right here.”

  They could hear the sound of police sirens nearing the zoo as she placed the puppet in his hands.

  ELLIE STOOD IN THE BAY at the side of her parlor, studying the painting in progress on her easel. She decided it wasn’t worth completing, and with good reason. It suffered from a lack of enthusiasm. She had tried to keep as busy as possible this past day and a half, but a perpetual state of anxiety kept interfering with her concentration.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Noah. They hadn’t permitted her to see him again, or Joel either. The child had been returned to the McCormicks after the episode at the zoo. But Noah’s lawyer was working to wm his release, which could occur at any hour. With Sandra O’Hara under arrest, having finally confessed to Howard Buchanan’s murder, Noah Rhyder would be a free man again, able to legally recover his son.

  What then? Ellie wondered. But she didn’t dare to count on the future. All she could do was wait and hope.

  Having decided to abandon the work on the easel, she was cleaning her brushes when the sound of a car pulling into her driveway made her catch her breath with anticipation. Was it possible?

  The weather had turned again overnight, with the afternoon so warm and sunny that it was almost like summer. She’d left the inner door open to the porch. Now, trembling with eagerness, she went to the screen door and looked out.

  Her excitement immediately subsided. The handsome figure emerging from the dark sedan wasn’t the man she had been ready to welcome. What was Brett Buchanan doing here? He was the last person she expected to see arriving at her home.

  He came up on the porch, smiling a confident greeting as he discovered her behind the screen door. “How are you, Ellie?”

  “Hello, Brett.” She realized he was alone. “No driver today?”

  “Peaches and I have parted company.” The tone of his voice suggested that he must have learned of Peaches’s involvement with Lew Ferguson and hadn’t been pleased about it. “Are you going to ask me in?”

  She hesitated and then reluctantly opened the screen door. He came into the parlor and wandered toward the bay to regard the painting on the easel. “Nice,” he commented.

  But she knew he wasn’t interested in her art. She followed him to the bay, asking a direct, “Why are you here, Brett?”

  “To apologize.” He turned to face her. “We got off track in North Carolina after Sandra arrived. I admit I was temporarily blinded by her.”

  She shook her head “We were never on track.”

  “We could be.”

  There was a seductive quality in his voice that she didn’t appreciate. “As sorry as I am about it now, how can you possibly be interested when I tried to implicate you in your father’s murder?”

  “I’m not complaining about it.”

  “Brett, this is—”

  “Rhyder, huh?” he interrupted her. “You’re telling me I don’t stand a chance because of Rhyder.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “Ellie,” he told her gently, “you can’t count on him. He only needed you because of one thing, and he has that now.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why isn’t he here? He was released almost two hours ago. I checked before I drove over here.”

  “Joel…he would have wanted to get Joel first.”

  “He already has him. He went straight to the McCormicks and collected him. That couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes. Face it, he isn’t coming.”

  She struggled against a sudden despair that threatened to overwhelm her.

  “Did he ever once tell you that he loved you? Did he, Ellie?”

  “If he hasn’t,” came a sharp, deep voice from the direction of the screen door, “he plans to. Just as soon as you clear out of here, Buchanan. And I suggest you don’t waste any time about doing just that.”

  Ellie and Brett had been so occupied they hadn’t heard the arrival of another car out front. Her gaze flashed to the open door. A rush of joy made her light-headed at the sight of Noah standing there on her porch.

  Ignoring his rival, Brett searched Ellie’s face. The glow in her eyes told him all he needed to know. He had never stood a chance with her. With a little smile of resignation, he moved toward the porch. Noah held the screen door open for him.

  “No hard feelings, I hope,” Brett said as they passed each other on the threshold.

  “None at all,” Noah assured him, closing the door firmly behind him.

  When Brett was gone, they faced each other across the parlor, both of them experiencing a moment of uncertainty. Noah cleared his throat

  “Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been since I was releas
ed?”

  She didn’t care. He was here, and that was all that mattered. “Where?” she asked, trying to sound interested.

  “You ever hear of Livermore’s?”

  Livermore’s? Of course, she knew it. It was the finest art gallery in St. Louis. “What were you doing there?”

  “I did some design work for Edgar Livermore once. An addition to his house. It got me a meeting with him today.”

  “You never mentioned you knew Edgar Livermore. Artists kill to get his attention.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve got it, Ellie, and you didn’t have to strangle anyone. I showed him one of your pictures. He was impressed. He wants to see more of your work, and if he likes it, he’s interested in mounting a show.”

  She was astonished. “One of my pictures? Which one? How?”

  “Uh, I sorta snitched it from your portfolio in the van on the road to North Carolina. The pastel you did of Joel when he was living with you. It’s beautiful, Ellie.”

  “But—”

  “Look, I didn’t want to come to you today emptyhanded. Not this time. You gave me back both my life and my son, and I wanted to bring you the most valuable thing I could. That’s why I went to Livermore’s.”

  “It’s wonderful, but don’t you realize you’re the most valuable thing you could bring me?”

  He grinned happily. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  In three quick strides he was across the parlor, his arms closing around her in an eager embrace.

  “You willing to work the same magic on me, Rembrandt, as you did with my kid in that portrait?”

  “Absolutely.” And then she remembered. “Where is Joel?”

  “Playing on the swing set out back. I told him his old man needed a few minutes alone with you. I explained to him I’m one of those guys who can’t propose with anyone looking on but the woman he loves. He’s thrilled.”