by Kate Flora
If he was surprised to see me, it didn’t show. “Was that General and Mrs. Norris?” I asked.
He nodded. “Going to the airport,” he said. “They’re heading back to California. She said something had come up at home and they were taking an early flight. She said the school would pick up the tab for their room.”
He shrugged. “Since I didn’t have authorization from the school, I required them to pay and suggested they seek reimbursement. She was mad as a wet hen about that. But this is a business, and I’ve been stiffed before.”
“That was smart,” I agreed. “There’s no reason for the school to be paying. But why on earth would they leave suddenly like this?”
He shrugged again, as though despite being in the business of housing and feeding transient strangers, human behavior puzzled him. “Some people. You’d think she’d stick around, what with that poor child of hers having that baby and all. There must be a lot of things to be sorted that no way could be sorted that fast. Legal stuff and decisions about the baby. Folks sure can be strange, even about their own children.”
He had that right, I thought, even as I wondered how he knew so much about the situation. I had no idea how much had been on the news, but it wasn’t likely that the Norrises had been identified and certainly not Heidi, who was a minor. Was it possible that Lorena Norris had confided in him? That would be bizarre even in an already bizarre situation.
My mind was running at high speed, trying to analyze what the Norris’s stealthy departure did to Simmons and the whole situation. Wondering how I was going to tell Gareth about this, and whether I should call him right now. Arguing the pros and cons with myself as I stood in the hallway in my bathrobe while a patient man holding a dripping umbrella waited to see if I needed something.
If I did call Gareth, he might be able to head them off at the airport. But even if he went to the airport, was there any way he could stop them? Probably not. If she wanted to abandon her child, there wasn’t much Gareth could do to stop her. I supposed that even if I called the police, they couldn’t stop her. They’d sure like to question her, though. I’d put money on that.
My loyalty was to Gareth. However useless it might be, I felt that I had to tell him what was happening. I said, “Excuse me. I’d better tell the headmaster,” and made the call. Instead of Gareth’s sleepy voice, I went straight to voicemail. I left my message and shoved the phone in my pocket.
I was operating on only a few hours sleep. I wanted to go back to bed. But the kindly proprietor was still hovering, so I figured I’d ask. “Pardon me for prying, but you seem to know rather a lot about the Norrises’ situation. Was the story about Mrs. Norris’s daughter on the news?”
He shook his head. “Just that there was an abandoned baby at the Simmons School, and that the police are investigating. No names, of course, the mother being a minor and all.”
He must have read my skeptical look, because, after a hesitation, he said, “When people are upset, they talk. Actually…” He lowered his voice and gestured for me to follow him into the kitchen. “Actually, I overheard most of it last night, when the Norrises were arguing. Before they went out again. When I had to go upstairs to ask them to please be quiet because they were disturbing our other guests.”
He looked at me as if inviting me to share his bafflement at human behavior. Obligingly, I said, “People sure can amaze you.”
“I knocked,” he said, “and no one answered. She was saying that they had to do something and he was saying that the girl had gotten herself, and them, into this mess and she could get herself out of it. Then she said, ‘Heidi’s only sixteen,’ and he said, ‘Old enough to get herself knocked up.’ And she said ‘I don’t see how’ and he said ‘In the usual way, I suppose’ and she said ‘But who’s the boy, Bradley, she’s never even had a boyfriend,’ and then she said ‘What about that music teacher?’ and he said, ‘What about your creepy cousin?’”
My host, whose name was Austin Palmer, a name I vaguely remembered as having something to do with cursive writing, popped a single-serving cup into the coffee maker and looked at me. “Figure at this point I might as well stay up. You want one?”
A sensible person with a demanding day on the horizon would have gone back to bed, but there was more to be learned here, so I said, “That would be great. What else did they say?”
He shouldn’t have been telling me any of this, but I wasn’t about to complain. When he hesitated, I added, “I don’t see how they can come all this way and then abandon the poor child like this. Her child or that poor little baby.”
Nodding, he turned to the rack of coffee pods and said, “Regular or decaf?”
“Regular, thanks.”
I have no use for decaf. If I’m going to drink coffee, I want to get some bang for my buck, even if I am hoping to go back to sleep. Then I thought about MOC, and how the baby needed sleep and I was supposed to go easy on the coffee, and said I’d pass. He offered cocoa instead. MOC likes cocoa.
He removed his coffee, added cream and sugar, popped in my cocoa pod, and moved seamlessly back into his story. “She said ‘You leave my family out of this,’ and he said ‘Well, she’s your kid so this is your mess. It was probably the kid who cleans the pool’ and she said, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s far more likely to be Crosby and Ramirez. I’ve seen how they watch her.’ That’s when he got very loud and told her to shut her damned mouth, he didn’t want to hear another word about that. I knocked again because they were getting louder and it sounded like name-calling was about to start.”
He looked like a man who’d stumbled on a couple in flagrante. Perhaps, by his standards, arguing loudly enough to be overheard, particularly about a subject as personal as a child’s unexplained pregnancy, was as bad as any other improper public display.
But his story wasn’t finished. “I waited outside their room to be sure they were done and would quiet down. It was quiet for a moment. Then she said, ‘Well, it could have been one of them. They’re always in and out and looking at her like she’s not just a kid.’ He made some kind of sputtering noise. She said, ‘Well, it isn’t impossible.’ He said, ‘Shut up.’ She said, ‘Heidi complained about you. And them.’ Then she raised her voice and said, ‘Oh, God. Bradley, you didn’t…they didn’t?’ He said ‘shut up’ and some other words I won’t repeat and something about getting the girl back to California so they could deal with this. So I knocked again.”
He stopped, like he’d realized maybe he shouldn’t be telling me this, then said, “She finally jerked the door open and said ‘What?’ like she had no idea why I might be knocking. I explained about the noise and she just made an aggrieved sound and said they’d had a hard day. Behind her, he was on the phone, and it sounded like he was trying to book flights to California. I left them to it and went back downstairs. An hour later, there was another commotion and they both went out.”
He considered. “That was around eleven. I didn’t hear them come back. I’d gone to bed. Then, a few minutes ago, she knocked on my door, told me they were leaving, and that I shouldn’t charge their card, the school would take care of the room.”
It might be reasonable for me to expect the school to pick up the tab for my room, but not the Norrises. But many of the comments and actions I’d observed screamed cheapskate. Good thing the proprietor had insisted on payment.
He gestured toward a plate of cookies. “I know it’s an odd hour, but they’re very good. Or I could get you a muffin?”
I’d missed dinner, sitting with my dad, and I was hungry. “That’s very kind of you. I’d love a muffin.”
He ducked his head like someone unused to compliments. “It’s a small thing, Ms. Kozak. I’ll be right back.”
He disappeared through a swinging door and was back quickly with two muffins on a plate. “You know,” he said, “I’m sure the papers will make her out to be a monster, but I’m already feeling quite sorry for that poor girl. Heidi. I shouldn’t say it, of course, but the Norrises
are not pleasant people. One can only hope perhaps her father is a better parent.”
“I feel sorry for her, too.”
I noted he’d called Heidi by name. The news hadn’t reported her name, so this, also, had to have come from the Norrises.
With parents like them, who needed enemies? A little after four in the morning, pitch black outside, and the two of us were sitting at the table gossiping like friends. I figured I might as well ask another question or two. “So, they were actually arguing about who might be the father of that baby?”
“They sure were. She got really defensive when he mentioned her cousin. Then, when she mentioned some people he’d brought to the house and wondering whether it might be one of them, and mentioned that Heidi had been concerned about them, he got ugly and shut her down real fast.”
The plot, already as thick as long-cooked porridge, had just gotten thicker.
I figured I’d pushed it as far as I could, so I took my muffins and cocoa and headed for the door. “Thanks for these. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“Any time after seven. Tomorrow…uh, today, I mean…we’re making whole grain granola pancakes with bananas and pecans, whipped butter, and real maple syrup.”
I didn’t care what came up or if the world was ending. I was going to have some of those pancakes. MOC loves pancakes.
“Well, I’d better let you get back to sleep.” He disappeared through the swinging door while I hurried upstairs.
I gave up on Gareth calling me back, and was settling down into what I now knew was a deliciously comfy bed, when my phone rang.
As every cop’s significant other knows—when the phone rings in the middle of the night, your heart stops. This goes double for when your father is in the hospital, even if they say they’re just watching. My hand traced a rapid, unsteady course, and picked it up. Did my “Hello?” sound as shaky to the person on the other end as it did to me?
Let it not be about my father, I thought. Maybe Heidi’s father had beat feet for the airport, too. Maybe their whole story was bogus, Heidi was none of the things we’d been told, and her parents were fleeing before the truth came out. But I doubted that was what was going on. Why had her mother come here in the first place, if she didn’t intend to deal with her daughter’s issues?
As soon as I heard Gareth’s own shaky, “Thea?” I felt a wave of relief followed by guilt and an immediate wave of renewed anxiety.
“You got my message?” I said.
“Your message? No. I’ve been on the phone for the last half hour. I haven’t gotten any messages.”
My stomach lurched. If he didn’t know about the Norrises, it had to be something on campus. Something wrong with Heidi? Something had happened with the baby? Unless the cops had jumped the gun and arrested her, and while I’d met cops who were irredeemably bad, he’d seemed to think he was dealing with reasonable ones.
“What?” I said it too sharply. “What is it, Gareth? What’s happened?”
“It’s Heidi,” he said. “The infirmary called. She’s disappeared.”
Eleven
“I’ll meet you there,” I said. “But there’s something else you need to know. It’s in my message. The General and Mrs. Norris just decamped for the airport. According to the proprietor here, they’re on their way back to California. Maybe they’ve taken Heidi with them?”
“Damn that woman! Cover your ears,” he said, and muttered a string of obscenities. “I’ll see you at the infirmary. You know how to find it?” He rattled off some directions. It sounded pretty simple.
I put the phone down and jumped in the shower. That horror dream had left me sweaty. It was a two minute soap and rinse. No time to wash my hair. I have the world’s most impossible hair, long, curly, and willful. To wash and dry it so it looked smooth and professional, would have taken an hour I didn’t have. I just bundled it into a thick braid. I jumped into my clothes, hoping they were right side out, shoved my laptop into my briefcase, grabbed my raincoat, and hurried down the stairs.
I’d been looking forward to those wonderful pancakes for breakfast, and now I was probably going to miss them. An especial pity because breakfast was my favorite meal and I knew what I would be missing. I also knew it could be a good long while before I got another chance at food.
Even though I’d paused for a shower, Gareth was just getting out of his car when I arrived. When he walked around and helped Ted Basham out of the passenger seat, I understood. Basham had had to be woken, too, and get himself dressed, not the easiest of tasks when you’re on crutches.
The nurse who met us was probably in her sixties. Ash blonde hair, a pleasant face, and an aspect that would normally have been motherly and comforting if she wasn’t so distraught about having lost a patient.
“It was only fifteen minutes,” she said. “I’d checked on my two other patients and gone down to the kitchen to make one cocoa. When they don’t feel well, that’s when they’re likely to get homesick, and I’ve found that cocoa and some of Mrs. Willoughby’s cookies usually helps, especially in the middle of the night. Heidi had been restless and weepy and I’d given her another dose of the sedative that Dr. Purcell prescribed.”
Her hands were twisting in a nervous knot as her eyes jumped from Gareth to Ted Basham. “She was asleep. I swear she was asleep. She was such a sweet, obedient girl. I never thought—”
She reached in the pocket of her scrub top and pulled out a folded tissue, unwrapping it to reveal a pill. “I found this under her pillow.”
She shook her head and focused on Gareth. “The door was locked. We keep it locked, you know, so no one can get in or out, because sometimes their friends like to sneak in, and sometimes they do want to take off, if they’ve been bad, see, and think they might be in trouble or if they’re worried about school work and getting behind. It’s safe, keeping the door locked like that. If the fire alarm goes off, the door will unlock, see. It’s just a precaution, because they’re kids, and while the kids here are good kids, they don’t always have the best judgment. And so we…”
She stuttered to a stop, recognizing that she was giving too much general information and too little of the specifics. “I don’t see how she could have gotten out.”
“But that’s not the only door,” Gareth said.
“That other one’s always got an alarm on it,” she said. “It would have gone—”
She turned and hurried toward the back of the building. “Oh dear. I suppose I should have looked, only I would have heard…” floated back to us.
The back door was ajar, the floor wet with rain. And no alarm had sounded.
Sometimes these kids didn’t have the best judgment, but they could be pretty ingenious and many of them were technically savvy. If it was kids who had helped Heidi disappear. Plenty of adults were ingenious and tech savvy as well—and plenty of them used those skills for bad purposes. I wondered again if the Norrises had swooped past and carried Heidi away. But someone from campus security should have noticed them coming and going. We’d have to check.
I wondered who else it might have been. I was getting an awful feeling in my stomach.
Gareth sighed, turned away, and got on the phone to security. From what I could hear, it sounded like they hadn’t seen a student out on her own, and no unfamiliar cars had arrived or left. He put things in motion to start them searching the campus. Then he called Joel and Ruthie, in Heidi’s dorm, and the dorm parents in the dorms that housed Heidi’s closest friends. Setting all the usual things in motion.
He shifted his focus back to the nurse. “Are her clothes gone?” He thought a moment, and then revised his question. “Did she have clothes here?”
The woman—her name was Helen Brooks—nodded. “A friend brought her some clothes.“’
“Do you know her friend’s name?”
“It was that sweet little Bella. Heidi’s roommate.”
He turned to us and raised his arms in a helpless gesture. “I really don’t know what to say. This
is another unexpected event in a day—and night—of unexpected events. We’ll find her, of course. The campus isn’t that big, security has monitored who goes in and out, and the students don’t have cars.”
I was supposed to be helping him. At this point, though, I didn’t know what to do. I’d developed a dark turn of mind lately, and yesterday’s events hadn’t helped. I was imagining very bad things.
“Your other patients,” I said, “they didn’t see or hear anything?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been in such a rush since I found her gone, I haven’t gotten around to asking. I mean, they should be sleeping, but under the circumstances, it should be okay to wake them. I’ll go do that right now.”
“I’ll come with you,” Gareth said.
“Wait,” I said. “Do we know if this has been on the national news? The story about the baby?”
My dark mind turning. What if it wasn’t a friend who’d helped Heidi escape? What if someone had taken her? Someone other than the Norrises. Someone who’d heard the story on the news, and hurried here to silence her? They wouldn’t have used Heidi’s name on the news, but a bad actor who knew about Heidi and where she went to school could have put two and two together.
He gave a grim nod.
“Mr. Basham, did you tell anyone about this? About your coming here, and why?”
“People told me, remember?” he said, and repeated the list he’d recited earlier, when his ex-wife had asked him how he knew. Lorena’s sister. Heidi’s roommate. Heidi’s friend Ronnie. The roommate and Heidi’s friend I could understand, but how did Lorena’s sister know. Know in time to notify him and get him here? And then I realized that I had no idea where he’d come here from. And I noticed that he hadn’t answered my question.