Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2)

by Jerusha Jones

  What would Susanna White look like? Ronald McDonald didn’t provide the shelter I’d been hoping for in order to observe unnoticed, so I scooted over to the ketchup and straw station, pretended I was loading up on napkins, and cautiously glanced around.

  The place was packed. Harried adults and whining children, everyone frazzled from last minute gift shopping at the nearby mall. I was looking for a woman alone, like me, and there just weren’t any. At a minimum, people were in pairs — an adult with a child, two adults together — and most were in full clans with a couple adults and several children. Maybe Susanna had been delayed, or maybe she’d given up waiting for me.

  I felt a short tug on my jacket hem and looked down. A little girl — pale skin, large light brown eyes and an absolutely flat, deadpan expression — no expression at all really, the blankest little face I’d ever seen. She turned and walked away, toward a table where a skinny, frizzled woman sat. The woman nodded at me once and returned her gaze to the steaming Styrofoam cup she clutched in both hands.

  The bottom fell out of my lungs — Susanna White. She did not look promising.

  Her hair was so blonde, it was actually white. Not bleached, either, but naturally colorless. Her eyes were a washed-out blue, and her lips bloodless and chapped. Her hands looked much older than the rest of her, blue veins pushing the thin skin up in ridges. A box of cigarettes lay on the tabletop, and I got the impression the coffee was a poor substitute for the nicotine hit she really needed.

  The girl had returned to the seat opposite the woman, perched in front of the remains of a Happy Meal. I needed to be able to watch Susanna’s face during the coming conversation, so I sat next to the girl, across from Susanna.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight. Her pupils were too large for the bright florescent lighting. Our little table unit, all bolted together underneath as though the patrons might walk off with the chairs if they weren’t attached, shook from the nervous bouncing of her knees.

  It was hard to judge her age — younger than me, though. I was pretty sure she’d spent most of her life on the streets.

  “Susanna,” I said, “thank you for calling me.”

  “This here’s Juliet’s girl.” Susanna coughed, a repeat of the deep, mucous-rich rattle I’d heard on the phone.

  I glanced down at the little girl, but she sat staring straight ahead, sucking ketchup off a French fry.

  “Juliet died couple years back — heroin,” Susanna continued. “I told her that stuff was no good, couldn’t trust Billy to keep it clean. I been taking care of her this whole time.” She tipped her head toward the little girl. “But I can’t anymore. You understand.”

  “No,” I whispered. “I don’t.”

  Susanna took a cigarette out of the pack, crimped it between the first and second fingers of her left hand. She chewed on her lip for a second, no doubt longing for the taste of the tobacco, then turned back to me. “Juliet’s my sister, see? God knows she slept with a lot of men, but this one’s Skip’s.” Again a nod in the little girl’s direction.

  Blood rushed in my ears, and Susanna’s face swirled at the end of a long tunnel. Christmas lights flashed, and “Jingle Bells” blared, distorting into the swirl. I panted for a black hole — something to cover me, hide me, bury me forever.

  “She started out as one of his couriers, see? Juliet always did get whatever guy she wanted.” Susanna dropped the cigarette and fished in the purse on the seat beside her. She came up with a small bottle of hand sanitizer and squirted some into her palm. “See, I have plans,” she continued as she smeared the clear jelly. “I can’t be tied down anymore.”

  I’d regained enough muscle control to nod. Keep her talking. Maybe this would all go away.

  Susanna turned and gazed out the window, her hands near her face. Then she cupped a hand over her mouth, and her tongue darted out, licking her palm.

  I nearly gasped aloud. My mind snapped out of the funk, all my senses on keen alert.

  Her eyes darted over to me and recognition hardened them, but she got one more lick in anyway. One more measly dose of nerve-steadying alcohol. In that moment, I knew the child could not stay with this woman, regardless of her lineage.

  “You want money,” I said. Underneath the table, I twined my hands through my purse strap into tight fists.

  “A couple years of food and clothing and schooling,” Susanna mumbled.

  I doubted the child had been pampered. Given how Susanna cared for herself, I recoiled at the idea of what she might think was appropriate for a child. The little girl was an unwanted appendage.

  “I don’t have cash.” It was a lie — I actually did have cash, quite a bit stashed in the mansion’s basement. But this negotiation with Susanna needed to be final, once for all, and if I gave her money she’d likely come back for more when it ran out.

  I disengaged my fingers from the strap and plunged a hand inside my purse, rooting around, finally feeling the heavy bauble in the bottom. My wedding ring. A massive emerald surrounded by diamonds. It was too big for me and had become an appendage in its own right. It had been on the window ledge in the kitchen for a few weeks, but I got tired of looking at it. I didn’t know how much it was worth — probably in the neighborhood of seventy-five thousand dollars. It wasn’t a good idea to leave something like that lying around, so I’d tossed it into my purse.

  I plunked it on the table and watched Susanna’s eyes light up. Almost involuntarily, she stretched out a hand to touch it, then quickly withdrew. Even at pawn value, the ring was worth what many couples paid for legal adoptions. And pawning it would provide a record, whereas cash was untraceable. If she broke her end of the bargain, it might be a little leverage I could fall back on.

  I hated negotiating in front of the child, but I couldn’t risk subtlety with this woman. “Conditions,” I said. “If you take this, the deal is done. You never, ever return or make any claim on the girl. We shall never see or contact each other again.”

  Susanna licked her lips, her eyes flicking between me and the ring. She never once looked at the girl.

  “Is it fake?” she blurted.

  “What do you think?” I gritted through clenched teeth.

  I held my breath until she nodded. She snatched the ring up along with her cigarettes, grabbed her purse, and walked quickly out the door.

  One good thing about fast food restaurants is all the windows. I watched Susanna crawl into a battered Toyota pickup. When she turned toward the exit, I got a good look at her license plate. I recited the number to myself until I found paper and pen to write it down. Insurance. And good riddance.

  I sat there, a buzzing numb echo caroming around inside my head, while the little girl finished her French fries.

  CHAPTER 11

  I’d just bought a child. A scrawny, languid little thing with dark hair and nearly translucent skin. I could hardly keep my eyes off her in the rearview mirror.

  How many little kids in the world have eyes the color of butter rum Life Savers? More than Skip was able to produce all by himself, I was pretty sure. But had he helped create this one? I didn’t consider Susanna a reliable anything, let alone a reliable source about Skip’s romantic trysts. But the eyes — they were exactly like Skip’s.

  How many illegal things had I done in the past forty-eight hours? Bring it on. I was on a roll. A weird exhilaration flooded over me. Then I realized I was shaking. And I really wanted to cry.

  I glanced at the girl again. No matter what, it wasn’t her fault.

  “How old are you?” I asked, trying to sound friendly.

  A brief moment of meeting my glance in the mirror but no answer.

  Susanna had mentioned schooling, but the girl didn’t look more than five or six years old. Although, given her life until now, it’d be fair to expect she’d be small for her age.

  I tried another question, this one usually easier to answer by the younger set. “What’s your name?”

  Her eyes were just barely level with the bott
om of the window in the back seat, and she kept them fixed on the never-ending gray clouds as though she was bored with the interrogation. The seatbelt crossed her thin shoulder and chest, pinning her flat like a prisoner. Her hands rested limply in her lap. She probably didn’t weigh enough to be out of a child’s protective car seat, and I hoped we didn’t attract the attention of a state patrol trooper.

  “Well, my name’s Nora,” I chattered cheerfully. “I live on a farm, sort of. We have a couple pigs and a goat. A bunch of boys live on the property too. But they’re nice boys,” I added hastily, remembering the preliminary war of the sexes common in the elementary school ages when the other side was considered to have cooties. “Right now we have another little girl visiting too. Her name’s CeCe.”

  No reaction.

  She hadn’t come with a suitcase, identification, anything. I doubted she had tags sewn into her clothes with her name, social security number and birth date on them. Like during the Depression when extra children were shipped off to relatives, arriving at strange train stations with only the clothes on their backs and delivery labels pinned to their shirts as though they were pieces of luggage. Free labor for the cost of room and board, as it were.

  I chewed on my lip and tried to decide how to explain the girl’s presence to Clarice. One thing I was sure of though — Walt’s reaction. Never, ever leave a child in a situation where harm may come to them if you’re given the opportunity to help. That’s why Mayfield was a home for strays of all types.

  The miles seemed to fly by, mainly because my mind was working overtime. I kept to the speed limit and drove sedately in the slow lane even though my brain was doing anything but, to no avail.

  She was just starting to nod off when I pulled up in front of the Gonzales’s house. We had maybe another hour of solid, if gray-tinted, daylight left, and I was going to need all of it for the trek ahead.

  I slung my tote across one shoulder and hefted the little girl out of the back seat. “You okay?” I murmured.

  She burrowed into my other shoulder and wrapped her arms around my neck. I took that as a yes and set off.

  Her legs dangled from around my hip, her feet bumping against my thighs as I hiked. She’d looked small, but her extra forty-plus pounds made me breathless in a hurry.

  My arms burned from clasping her, and I was panting raggedly into her hair. But she clenched me so tightly, I didn’t dare set her down for a rest. This little girl, whoever she was, needed something reliable in her life, and I was going to be it.

  With my center of balance off-kilter, I had to study every step, avoiding rocks and roots, finding the smoothest path. Every once in a while, with shorter intervals the farther we went, I stopped and leaned against a tree, easing the strain off my back, catching my breath, psyching myself up for the next incline. The little girl snuggled in against me like a papoose, an ungainly extension of my own body.

  Clarice and CeCe were sitting at the kitchen table coloring in a Disney princess coloring book when I burst through the door. The shock, fear, worry and irritation that flitted across Clarice’s face in that moment was almost worth the price of admission.

  “I’ll explain later,” I wheezed, gently setting the little girl down in an empty chair.

  CeCe, wasting no time, popped out of her chair to stand by the newcomer. “What’s your name?” she asked in that bright, uninhibited tone children have.

  I laid a hand on the little girl’s head. “She’s tired, and so am I. How about we have dinner first?”

  I pitched my eyebrows at Clarice who was scowling mightily, a purple crayon poised in her large-knuckled hand. But she pushed to standing without a word and started banging pots and pans around in a rather effective manner.

  oOo

  It was a night for early bedtimes all around. I rustled up my biggest t-shirt for the little girl to wear as a nightie. I sat on the edge of the newly made-up bed in the room that was quickly becoming our girls’ dormitory and brushed her hair after her bath. CeCe was still splashing during her turn in the tub down the hall, so I had a few minutes alone with the child.

  I placed my hands on her arms and held her loosely as she stood in front of me. “I understand you don’t want to talk, and that’s okay.”

  Her eyes tracked with me, face expressionless.

  “But we need to call you something, so you’ll know we’re talking to you. Would it be all right if I gave you a name, and later you can pick which one you like best — the name you have now or the one I give you?”

  She nodded slightly, but I thought I saw the tiniest flicker of eagerness — or maybe curiosity — in her eyes.

  “How about Emmie?” I asked. “Emmie Grace?” I’d traded an emerald for her in a moment of grace. Why not. She’d learn what it meant when she was ready.

  She traced the scar on my upper lip with a fingertip and nodded gravely. Then she climbed onto the bed and slid under the covers.

  “Good night, Emmie,” I whispered.

  Fifteen minutes later, Clarice and I sat across the kitchen table from each other. I felt as though I had to swim through a huge void, to merge her understanding with mine — what little there was — before I could let myself relax. She took it well.

  “So you traded Skip’s ring for Skip’s child,” she finally grunted. “Seems appropriate. Frankly, he never struck me as the type to fool around.” Her face puckered in distaste.

  “She looks like—”

  “Only the eye color.” Clarice cut me off. “Nothing else.”

  “She’s too little to know for sure,” I said.

  “You’ll never know for sure, unless you do a DNA test.” Clarice glared me, squinting through the cat’s eye glasses. “But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

  I sighed. “It wouldn’t change what Emmie needs.”

  “What about this Juliet woman, a courier? What’s that mean?” Clarice asked.

  “It means research. Because I haven’t a clue. The diagram from Josh. What we copied at the freight terminal. It’s here — somewhere in all these details.”

  I slept hard — dreamless and all the way through the night — for the first time in a very long time. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

  oOo

  First thing in the morning, while the girls slurped Cheerios and milk from their bowls and Clarice cracked her eyes open with a gallon of coffee, I scanned the kitchen with the bug detector doohickey Josh had given me. I’d blown it last night — probably from exhaustion — by discussing the wild events of my day with Clarice out loud, in the open, for any listening device to pick up.

  At first I worried that the little gadget didn’t work since nothing happened — no lights flashed, no buzzing or vibration. CeCe was chattering away, obviously excited about having a new playmate, and more than making up for the silence of the rest of us, so any voice-activated bugs should have been very busy transmitting her eager plans for building a fort in one of the mansion’s many rooms that were essentially furniture graveyards.

  Then I went outside and climbed into the Subaru. I started the engine and let the station wagon roll in neutral for several feet. Yep — motion activated. The tracking device lit up like I’d hit the jackpot.

  I found the GPS unit up underneath the left rear bumper, embedded in the caked-on mud that coated most of the car. A powerful magnet held the small, rectangular box to a metal bracket. But I left it in place — for now.

  “What’re you doing?” Clarice growled when I returned to the kitchen. The coffee had finally lubricated her voice.

  I dropped the bug tracker back into my purse and grinned. “Trying out an early Christmas present from Josh. We’re clear in here.”

  “I took the paperwork up to your office yesterday,” she said. “About a million trips up three flights of stairs, I’ll have you know. You do what you need to do up there. I’ll take care of things down here—” she peered at the two girls in turn, “and start preparations for the big bash.”

  I laid a h
and on Emmie’s head and smiled at her when she glanced up. I believe in smiling with my eyes — I have to since the lower half of my face isn’t as flexible as it could be due to all the surgeries, and smiles don’t always register there the way I’d like them to. She smiled back at me — but still no words.

  I was an only child, probably because I was an expensive child, so I grew up having to entertain myself. Emmie was an isolated child, whether or not she had any half-siblings. I sincerely doubted she had any full siblings. It would do her good to be in CeCe’s company for a while and play like a carefree kid, maybe for the first time in her life. I planted a kiss in her hair and headed upstairs.

  My office, as Clarice referred to it, was a low-ceilinged, wide room at the top of the mansion, with dormer windows that provided the best view of the property, including Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier in the distance — on clear days, which today was not.

  Clarice is a marvel. Her ability to finagle, dictate and bulldog resources into marching order was amazing. She’d laid out a workstation for me with the copied contents of the file drawer on the left, my laptop and Skip’s laptop side by side in the middle, and Josh’s diagrammed pages on the right.

  The only other thing I needed was about ten brains working simultaneously on my problem because the one I had at my disposal felt particularly sluggish this morning. I dropped into the chair and faced the overwhelming wealth of information.

  Then I decided the floor was better. I skimmed through the copied files and started making piles, grouping them into categories based on my uneasy understanding of shipping industry jargon. The more I learned, the more I rearranged, creating sweeping streaks through the thick dust on the floorboards as I shuffled files.