“How could they be lost?”
“I don’t know. Either someone has taken them or they’ve run away. Bonnie’s afraid of Mrs. Benning, that’s all I know. Hurry. I’m going to get Peter.”
His door opened before I got there. “What’s going on? I heard you yell.”
My breath came out in huffs as I explained once again. “Quick. Get Sebastian. Maybe he can help us find the girls.”
He looked from side to side on his stoop. “Sebastian. Come here, boy.” When the dog didn’t appear, he whistled. Nothing. “I bet he’s with the girls. Hang on, I’ll get a flashlight and some shoes.”
Malcolm Overstreet had now joined us, along with Mary Frances. I glanced at the office, not sure I wanted to leave Willie alone. “Mary Frances, would you go to the quarters and keep an eye on Willie? And call Sheriff Bolander. Tell him to hurry.”
Bayou sounds echoed as we searched around the fireplace and trees in back. A screech owl squawked and flapped its wings above us. Bullfrogs that usually sang a comforting chorus now bellowed in a frenzy. Fear roared like a lion in my stomach.
Another thought came. The washhouse.
I motioned for Peter to follow me. “You check the shed and the lean-to while I look in the washhouse.”
The door was locked, so I fetched the key from the flowerpot next to it, knowing it was fruitless. The room was dark, nothing disturbed. All the linens stacked neatly on the shelves, the cupboards stocked. But no girls.
Slumping to the floor, I put my hands over my face and let the tears flow. What if they’d gone to the highway and tried to catch a ride? Fear worked its way up my spine. With it being the Fourth, there was no telling how many strangers were in town. They could be halfway to Dallas by now.
That’s insane. No one would pick up three small girls and a big dog and drive off, especially in the middle of the night. They would deliver them to the sheriff’s office. Having Sebastian with them was a comfort at least. But where were they?
A momentary thought tried to take root, but Peter’s shadow came over me. He offered me a hand and pulled me up, then held out his arms to hold me.
“Don’t touch me. We have to find the girls.”
“We will. We just have to stay calm.”
“How can we be calm when they could be in danger? They could be hurt. Or lost. Or—”
“We can’t be sure of anything. The sheriff will know how to approach the situation. In the meantime, we’ll just pray they’re all right.” He clasped his hands before him and closed his eyes.
I bit my lip and prayed. “Lord, help us find them. Please.” Fear knotted my throat as my silent pleas continued. After what seemed an interminable time, we heard a car and the crunch of gravel.
I sailed out the door, Peter right behind me.
Sonny had already heard the gist of it from Mary Frances when she called. “Has anyone questioned Mrs. Benning?”
We all looked at each other and shook our heads. The lights in her cottage hadn’t come on, so I assumed she was asleep.
Sonny hitched up his britches. “I’ll talk to her, but first, Georgia, show me the window where they disappeared.”
We looked from the inside, then the outside. He shone his high-powered flashlight on the grass. “This has been trampled on so much, there’s no way to see which way the footprints go. You should’ve called me sooner. Did you hear anything from inside? A car speeding off or one of the girls crying?” He pointed the light in my face like I was under interrogation.
“No. Nothing.” Then I held up the cypress knee I still carried. “This. It’s Bonnie’s favorite possession. I found it out here under the window.”
“I’ll take it, although there’s no chance of getting fingerprints now that you’ve handled it. Have they done this before?”
Another no.
“Any reason they might have run off? Were they in trouble for something and afraid you would punish them?”
“Good heavens, no. You know me, and you know them. They’re sweet girls, and they weren’t in trouble. But Bonnie was afraid to go with Mrs. Benning.”
He went to Mrs. Benning’s cottage and woke her up. I followed to see what she had to say. She was groggy but fully clothed. She’d either slept in her clothes or dressed in a hurry. I suspected the former.
She squinted at the light from Sonny’s flashlight. “What’s wrong?” She glared at me. “Why are you waking me up? Is something on fire?”
The sheriff explained what had happened. “We thought you might know something.”
“Me? Why me?”
“I understand the girl wasn’t too keen on going with you.”
Mrs. Benning stepped forward. “Bonnie’s a shy child. It had been awhile since I’d seen her.” She looked around Sonny at me. “You know what’s more likely is that this woman’s children coerced her for some reason. If the circus I saw in there tonight is any indication, there’s no telling what they’re capable of. A man living with a woman he’s not married to. It’s a den of iniquity. Not something I want my niece exposed to.”
Sonny looked at me, then Peter. “Is that right? You’ve invited your handyman to move in? Your aunt Cora will—”
My face flamed, my insides ready to explode. “Sonny, you know me better than that. I’m tired of your accusations, and we’ve veered way off the point. Three girls are missing. We need to find them. Now.”
Sonny turned back to Mrs. Benning. “You’re coming with me. Bein’ a stranger in town, we’ll want to check your vehicle and ask you some questions.”
Mrs. Benning drew up her shoulders. “You’re arresting me? Because I came to do my family duty and provide a home for an orphan?”
“You’re not under arrest. Only in custody for questioning.” He turned to me. “If Mrs. Benning had nothing to do with it—and I will find out—then we could be looking at an abduction.”
My blood ran cold. “What?”
“Georgia, you know people in this town are scared, and this whole polio outbreak started right here at the Stardust. Could be someone’s gone off the deep end and wants to get back at you. We’ll want to question all your customers.”
“Mr. Sweeney’s the only other one. He’s next to Malcolm Overstreet.” I pointed toward the place. The roadster he drove was gone.
[ CHAPTER 35 ]
I didn’t think Van Sweeney was a kidnapper any more than I could fly. Yet he’d never come around to our backyard suppers until last night. He’d seemed friendly and easygoing, talking with Catfish. A guest in our town. Anticipated. Invited.
But he was a stranger.
Odd, too, that a professional had chosen Bobby Carl to be his agent. I shuddered. Was Bobby Carl the one who’d gone off the deep end? Wanting to get back at me for not returning his feelings of admiration?
All of this and more zipped through my head. Sonny shook my arm. “What the Sam Hill is wrong with you?”
“Mr. Sweeney’s car is gone. He was here last night when Mrs. Benning arrived.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Not much. Only that he’s the celebrity entertainer for the March of Dimes fund-raiser. Bobby Carl Applegate’s his agent.”
“That blows the case wide open. Anyone fool enough to have Bobby Carl for an agent ain’t smart enough to kidnap three girls. Peculiar, though, since his car’s missing.”
Malcolm, who’d stepped out on the porch for a smoke, walked up. “Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing. You were talking about Sweeney?”
Sonny scratched his head. “Yeah, he a friend of yours?”
“Matter of fact, I hadn’t seen him in years until he showed up here. We’ve been getting reacquainted ever since.”
“Do you happen to know where he is now?”
Malcolm started to say something, then stopped. “Personal business, I believe. He’s not your fella, though. And I’m sure he’d be glad to come to the station tomorrow and answer any questions.”
“So you’re planning on seeing him?”
“Shore ’nuf. We’re going fishing at first light.”
“I’d give a million bucks right now to join you, but I’ve got other things to do. Personal business, you say? What kind of a man has personal business in Mayhaw at four in the morning?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Some do, I guess.”
A wisp of an idea went through my head, something that wouldn’t quite come to me.
Calm down. Think.
Sonny jerked my arm. “I need you to stay by the phone. I’ll call the mayor and tell him to get a search party rounded up. Guess the dispatcher will have to sit with Mrs. Benning down at the county office while we start combing the streets of Mayhaw. Mind if I use your phone?”
“Help yourself.”
When he’d made the calls, he held the back door to his car open for Mrs. Benning.
She turned to Peter and me. “If so much as a hair on that sweet child’s head is harmed, I will sue you for neglect.”
Sonny told her to get in. Before he turned onto the highway, the red light was spinning on top of his car.
Peter guided me inside. The stale air of the office was suffocating, and my arms and legs trembled. I collapsed into the rocking chair and leaned back. Ludi’s voice came into my head. “You gotta stop your strivin’. Let the Lord do the strivin’ for you.”
I hadn’t been striving when Mrs. Benning showed up. Worried, yes, about what to do with Fiona’s children. And I was still worried that Bonnie would be neglected by the Bennings. But something about Van Sweeney wasn’t right, either. He’d been to supper at Aunt Cora’s. Had she invited him back for some late-night conversation, as she always put it? She was a grown woman and didn’t owe me explanations about her private life. But still…
The childhood insecurities skated along my bones. Give it up. The girls are what matter now.
I couldn’t, though. Theodora Benning and Aunt Cora corkscrewed through my thoughts like a whirlwind.
Quit your strivin’.
A blanket of calm swooped over me. Ludi. Why hadn’t I thought of her first? Between Sonny’s accusations and all the commotion, I obviously hadn’t been thinking clearly.
I inhaled deeply and looked at Peter. “I know where the girls are.”
[ CHAPTER 36 ]
Zion. They’d gone to Ludi for help. I was sure of it, and Peter agreed it was plausible.
My body wouldn’t stop shaking as I went into the quarters and told Mary Frances and Malcolm that we believed the girls were trying to help Bonnie so she wouldn’t have to leave with Mrs. Benning.
Mary Frances nodded. “I had a bad feeling about her. I only hope the girls are all right.”
I gave her a hug. “We all do. Can you stay here and listen for the phone in case we’re wrong and the sheriff finds them somewhere else?”
Malcolm told Peter how to get to Zion, the quickest way being across the field and into the trees. “I think, though, you’d be better off taking the road. In the darkness, you don’t want to take a wrong turn and find yourselves knee-deep in the bayou.”
All of Malcolm’s summers in Mayhaw and his knowing every fishing spot for miles around gave us confidence he knew what he was talking about.
He told Peter, “When the dirt road ends, you’ll have to leave your car and walk. There’s a crook in the bayou heading off to the right, so you want to take a sharp left through the trees. Don’t worry, there’s a good path. You’ll come to a break in the trees. You’ll know you’re in the right spot if you smell the jasmine.”
My mind was trying to remember the directions, but the jasmine stopped me. “I thought jasmine bloomed earlier in the year.”
“It does. But the blooms fall to the ground, giving a couple hundred feet of the path an intoxicating smell you can’t miss. Walking on it releases the scent.”
I wanted to know how he knew this, but anxiety over finding the girls skated along my bones. Peter ran to get his car, and as I got in, Malcolm hollered that he’d take care of Mary Frances. Somehow that made me smile.
Ten minutes later, we turned onto a blacktop road then took two other turns. At the dead end, we got out of Peter’s car and followed Malcolm’s directions along the path. There was no mistaking the jasmine when we came to it. It was a heavenly scent that reminded me of Ludi and the day I first met her.
A sudden terror gripped me. “Peter, what if someone thinks we’re intruders? Do you think this is safe?”
“I’ve got it covered. Catfish and I have a secret whistle we use when we go fishing.”
Voices filtered through the trees on our right. “I think it’s time to whistle.” My heart pounded, partly out of fear for the girls, but also because I’d never stepped foot in Zion.
Peter whistled the first two lines of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” then stopped and listened.
“Really? That’s the secret whistle? An Andrews Sisters’ song?”
“Catfish thought it was catchy. Caught on right away to the echo part to whistle back at me.” Peter repeated the whistle. And like a boomerang, the echo came back.
Five seconds later, Catfish ran up. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and enough light came from Zion behind him that I could see the whites of his eyes like twin moons on his dark face.
“Mister Peter. Miz Georgie. Come quick. Momma be having a conniption. Don’ know what to do. The girls and yo’ dog, Mister Peter, they just showed up.”
I pulled Catfish into a bear hug. “They’re here! Oh, I had a feeling.”
“The girls be scared out of their wits. They say a terrible woman be chasin’ them.”
Peter clapped Catfish on the shoulder. “It’s not exactly like that, but Bonnie was frightened. We’ve come to fetch them.”
We followed Catfish, and from the edge of the clearing, Zion looked like a cluster of cabins, but as we drew nearer, it became apparent they were nothing more than huts. Some appeared to be wood, others solid black. The phrase tarpaper shack popped into my head, and with it, an ache in my heart. How could this be? A village so poor at my back doorstep? Shame, like angry gnats, bit at my soul.
Catfish opened a crude screen door and held out his arm. “This way.” From behind us he yelled, “Momma, don’t be afraid. It’s Mr. Peter and Miz Georgie.” We stepped inside. A kerosene lantern graced a wooden table in what appeared to be the main room. Bonnie and Rosey shared a bench and jerked their heads up.
Ludi lumbered from another room, working her apron in her hands. “Lordamercy, I didn’t know what to do. The girls came skippin’ through the trees, that big, ugly dog with ’em, runnin’ like the boogeyman was after ’em.”
Bonnie jumped from the bench and ran to me. “I’m sorry. I was a scaredy-cat. Rosey said Ludi can hide us so I don’t have to go with Aunt Teddy.”
I looked at Rosey. “I’m so mad at you, I could strangle you. What you did was dangerous. And how you even thought of it is beyond me.”
She bent her head and looked up at me. “I know, Momma. And you can give me twenty-five whippings. I don’t care. That woman was mean to Bonnie.”
“She didn’t do anything to her. What are you talking about?”
“Bonnie told us one time the woman locked her in the broom closet when she didn’t eat her supper. And the man, he pretended he was nice, but he wasn’t.”
“Bonnie, are these things true?”
Tears filled her eyes, and her chin quivered. “Momma said they’re bad. Don’t make me go…” Sobs racked her shoulders, and she buried her face in the folds of my skirt.
I picked her up. “Shhh. It’s all right. You don’t have to go anywhere right now. And I’m not mad at you, but I was afraid because we couldn’t find you.”
Rosey pointed at the floor. “We had Sebastian. He wouldn’t let nothing bad happen.”
We all relaxed, and Ludi told us Avril had fallen asleep in the other room. She asked us to sit down and pointed to a couch with a spring sticking out and a picture of Jesus hanging over it. Peter and I sat down, Bonnie on my
lap, Rosey on his.
Ludi asked if we’d like some apple cider.
I laughed. “That would be wonderful.”
She padded away on bare feet as wide as snowshoes and returned with two mason jars for Peter and me and smaller glasses for the girls. She smiled and folded her hands over her bosom. “Welcome to our home.”
The apple cider, rich with flavor and as warm as the friend who served it, slid down my throat like fine wine.
I thanked Ludi and said, “We should go and tell everyone the girls are safe. I’m curious, though, has your husband already left for work?”
“Eli and the other menfolk sleeps over to the lumber camp during the week. He only comes home on the weekends to bring our Sunday service. What we got here is a whole passel of women and kids, but we make do. Yes’m, we make do.”
“How many people live here in Zion?”
“Last count we had thirty-one, countin’ the baby what was birthed last month. Good thing Mr. Malcolm stopped in. Them breech birthin’s is the worst.”
An odd feeling came in my chest. “Mr. Malcolm? What did he do?”
“Why, he be the only doctor we got in Zion. Only he don’t allow us to call him doctor. Says that’s for them people back at his clinic in Texarkana.”
“Malcolm Overstreet? The one who’s staying at the Stardust?”
“Yes’m. He’s been comin’ every summer for as long as I can remember. Spends the weekends fishin’ the bayou and doctorin’ folks here. We ain’t never let on bein’s we can’t pay him much. He says it ain’t for the money anyway.”
“So that’s how he knew how we could find you. And you never let on when you’re up at the Stardust. How come?”
“Mr. Malcolm say it’s between us.”
“I’ll be doggone. Can you get Avril for us?”
Peter rose, still holding Rosey, who’d fallen asleep on his lap. “We’d better get back and tell the sheriff to call off the search.”
Ludi started wringing her apron again. “You ain’t gon’ tell him where you found ’em, are you? He might think we coaxed ’em here.”
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