by Kate Flora
There was a long silence on the other end, while I nursed my guilt at having revealed Heidi’s private information. Finally she said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Stephanie wants to be done with that mess at the Norris’s. But if Heidi is in trouble? I’m going to leave it up to her. She can call you if she wants. Give me your number.”
I gave her my number and then shared one more suggestion. “If she really wants to help Heidi, she’ll share what she knows with the police.” I gave her Miller’s number as well. She sighed, then disconnected without saying goodbye.
What mess at the Norrises’? My dread about Heidi’s safety was growing exponentially.
I stuck my head into Gareth’s office to see if he was ready for me. He was sitting behind his desk, staring balefully at the telephone, looking like he’d been the recipient of more bad news.
“What’s up?” I said.
He glared down at the phone, which was still in his hand. “I think your dark side is contagious,” he said. “Not that this situation isn’t awfully dark already. I’ve just called my wife to see that Ted Basham was resting comfortably.”
He shook the phone like he was trying to shake something out of it. “Thea, she says he’s not there.”
“Not there? Did she say where he went?”
He shook his head. “She has no idea. Seems despite his statement that he ‘needed to rest,’ he never went back there after he left us this morning.”
“Is his car gone?”
“Jennie says it’s not at the house.”
He walked to the window and stared out into the parking lot, looking for Basham’s stand-out red BMW. “And it’s not out there in the lot.”
Had my instinctive lie detector been so far off the mark? Did that pseudo-boyish charm hide not a man trying to duck the buck but a wily manipulator? If so, who was he manipulating? And for what purpose? Did he, like his ex-wife, have secrets he wanted to hide, secrets that Heidi might divulge? Or—and this was an ugly thought—was there some way he thought he could use Heidi as a pawn in his on-going battle with his ex-wife? What if Heidi was in his trunk or he had helped her to hide somewhere? Was he making a stupid, and likely futile effort, to protect his daughter, some kind of “I’m a good dad” bravado? What might he hope to accomplish by that? He couldn’t keep her hidden forever. He’d already said his lifestyle couldn’t accommodate a child.
We hadn’t asked whether Basham had been back to visit Heidi last night. Why would we? He was with us when we went to the infirmary. If he had anything to add, presumably he would have mentioned it. Helen Brooks hadn’t mentioned it. And Gareth hadn’t noticed his house guest missing during the evening. Nor had we asked Jaden or Bella or Ronnie whether they’d spoken to Basham since they’d called him about the baby. We’d dropped a lot of balls in that interview—like what had happened after Jaden dismantled the door alarm, and whether he’d done anything else to help Heidi get away. Those were absolutely questions that Miller or Flynn should have asked. As I keep telling people—often defensively—I am not a cop.
Increasingly, this business was making me feel like I was hanging off a ledge by a few shaky fingers. Gareth’s expression suggested he felt the same way.
“Call Security and see if he’s left the campus,” I said.
He made the call and set the phone down with a crash. Ted Basham, it seemed, had driven away from the campus immediately after leaving Gareth’s office.
“Call his cell phone and see if you can find out what’s going on.”
He found Basham’s business card and started dialing. I could tell by his face, and the brevity of his message, that he’d gone straight to voicemail.
Not only Heidi, but both her parents, it seemed, had disappeared.
Eighteen
Gareth looked like a man with a bad headache. This situation would give anyone a headache. Leading a community that believed in honesty and righteous behavior, and negotiating between that community and the rest of the world, was challenging at the best of times. At a time like this, when he’d represented that Heidi was telling the truth, it was going to be hard to go back to his students and put her disappearance in any kind of a positive light.
Mrs. Norris’s disappearance, followed by Basham’s, didn’t help his relations with the police, either, though neither was his fault. Maybe Ted Basham had just gone to run an errand or buy a clean shirt. What we hoped, but not what we believed. Why would he need to lie about that?
I quickly filled Gareth in on my phone call to Nina Smirnoff. “Whatever she knows, she’s not sharing it. This is beginning to feel like the blind men and the elephant.” I settled into a chair and got out a pad of paper. “I get no consistent picture of Heidi, and her parents are off the chart strange. But something happened in that house. I’m sure of it.”
“What am I supposed to say to our parents, never mind the school community?” he said. “First there’s the baby and now we’ve lost the mother.”
“You didn’t lose her.”
“As good as lost her,” he said. “We let her slip through the cracks. I know you’re good at spinning, Thea, but how do you plan to spin this?”
I stared down at my pad as though there might be some wisdom in the blank white paper or the clean blue lines. “The baby is doing well.”
Gareth stared at his own blank page.
I pushed away my uncertainty, pulled out my tiny recorder so I could capture my thoughts as I went, and pushed record.
“The student body at Simmons has self-selected to attend this school because of its reputation for honest discussion, informed debate, shared community values, and a belief in the importance of civic involvement,” I said. “The recent events involving a very young mother, a premature birth, and what appears to be a case of traumatic amnesia regarding the circumstances of the pregnancy present a challenge to all of us. Dealing with this complex and difficult situation through rigorous investigation, followed by open discussion and debate, will be a test of our community and its values. However, we’re confident that by keeping open minds until the facts are known, and conducting respectful discussion, Simmons will emerge stronger despite this troubling event.”
I looked at Gareth. “With a bit of tweaking, you can use that for both your students and your parents.”
He moved restlessly behind his desk, reminding me that despite the fact that he wore a suit today because of official meetings, he liked to spend his time outside on the campus, interacting with his students. “It helps,” he said, “but it’s not enough. We need to find her. We need to find her parents. What kind of people are these, to abandon their child like this? They should both be here in my office, wringing their hands, and asking what they can do to help.”
I couldn’t disagree. Before I could get him focused on the message and what steps we should take, his phone rang. He listened to what was obviously more bad news before setting it carefully back in the cradle and grabbing his coat. “That was Security,” he said grimly. “They’ve found a blue jacket in that copse of trees down by the river. The spot we call the picnic grove.”
My heart jumped. It could be unrelated, but Bella had told us Heidi’s jacket was blue. His grim expression echoed the thought that leapt into my mind—had Heidi had been so upset she’d thrown herself in the river? The possibility was too horrible to contemplate.
“You’d better call Miller and Flynn,” I said.
His set face said, “I don’t wanna,” even before his words brushed me off. “I’ve got to go,” he said. He was out the door before I could stop him. Evidently, he planned to handle this without me, despite the fact that I was supposed to be his trouble-shooter. Trouble-shooters have the unfortunate effect of reminding people of their troubles.
No way, I thought. I grabbed my own coat and followed.
He moved fast and with purpose, whipping past his assistant when she tried to stop him to ask a question. He was out the door and into a waiting four-wheel drive security vehicle with lightni
ng speed. Ignoring me when I called, “Hold on, Gareth,” he slammed the door and the driver took off, leaving me standing there.
I understood his alarm, but his behavior? Not so much. Maybe Basham-Norris disease was contagious.
Luckily, my Jeep was nearby. I jumped in and took off after him, instructing my phone to dial Miller’s number as I wheeled around the green and followed Gareth down a narrow dirt track that disappeared into some trees. The main road was almost clear and dry, but the dirt track was soft and mushy with mud after the recent rain and freak late-season snow.
Miller didn’t answer. I didn’t want to try and describe the situation in a message, so I said we’d found a coat that might be Heidi’s and asked him to call me. Then I concentrated on not putting myself in a ditch or running into the vehicle I was following if it came to an abrupt stop.
I was dressed to look professional in a meeting room, not for traipsing through the woods. Luckily, my boots were low-heeled and water-proof, with thick soles and a sturdy, gripping tread. I live in New England, after all. We carry snow shovels and scrapers and those odd foil emergency blankets in our cars. We carry kitty litter and water and energy bars, extra sweaters and spare wool socks, jumper cables and all manner of stuff “just in case.” Just in case included unseasonable weather and snow when we’d already moved on to spring and were thinking of capris and spring dresses. Also, I was married to Detective Extra Careful, the king of serve and protect, so I had the best shovel, best scraper, and a giant bag of kitty litter in case I got stuck, even though my Jeep was supposed to be an off-road vehicle.
The road curved abruptly, and I slammed on the brakes, slewing sideways to avoid running into the car ahead of me. Gareth and the driver were already out of the car, and heading down a wooded slope toward the river. The track we’d been following dead-ended at what looked like a picnic area, with an outdoor area for lectures with rows of stumps arranged like stools. In more inviting weather, it would have been pleasant.
I stood a moment, catching my breath, then jammed my hat on, grabbed my gloves, and followed.
A man in a security uniform, Gareth, his driver, and I stood and stared down at a forlorn-looking blue coat. It wasn’t folded, but looked like someone had flung it in haste.
All our eyes focused on tracks in the thin patches of unmelted snow, heading away into the woods and not toward the river. “Did you check those out yet?” Gareth asked.
“We’re waiting for Chief Greenberg,” the man who’d found the coat said. “I called him just before I called you. He said to wait until he got here and not to do anything to muck up the scene.”
He ducked his head, like he was embarrassed. “Except he did not say muck.”
Gareth shifted his shoulders impatiently. “Well, where the heck is he? It’s not like the campus is that big.”
“Um…” This was the man who’d helped Joel the refrigerator hold the reporter who’d been in Heidi’s room. The one who’d showed surprising concern for me. His name tag said he was Dalmar Amad. “One of the students found something in a greenhouse that she thought might be a clue to…uh…Heidi Basham’s disappearance, Gareth. He went to check it out.”
He was a large man with a slight accent, broad-shouldered and competent-looking. Under Gareth’s glare, he seemed to wilt.
We heard the roar of an engine and the depressing thunk of metal on metal as the SUV I assumed held Chief Greenberg slewed around the curve much too fast and arrived with a literal bang—the sound of his vehicle slamming into mine. I am very fond of my Jeep, but suppressed my urge to storm over there and yell at him about his carelessness. My bumper still appeared to be attached. We were all distracted. And right now, our focus had to be on that jacket and the tracks leading away from it.
Chief Greenberg’s first words did not endear him to me. “Who the fuck parks their car right around a blind curve?” he demanded. “Whose car is it, anyway?”
He shot an interrogatory look at Gareth and a dismissive glare at me. Ex-cop for sure, and unlikely to have been a nice guy when he was a cop. He seemed like a poor choice for a place like this, given the independence and quirkiness of the students, but maybe he was the best they could get. Or gave a good interview that didn’t reveal his true character? More likely, Gareth had inherited him.
“Mine,” I said, meeting his dismissive glare with one of my own.
“And who the hell are you?”
Before I could explain who the hell I was—a question that Gareth should answer anyway—my phone rang. Miller. I answered.
“What’s this about a coat?” he said. “Where the heck are you? Where’s the headmaster?”
“Hold on.” I held out the phone to Gareth. “Sergeant Miller.”
If looks could kill, the one Greenberg gave me would have blown me up and scattered my pieces. I tried not to roll my eyes. Cop vs. cop pissing contests were not my department. I wanted them to all get over their egos and start thinking about what those tracks meant, where they led, and who was going to follow them. Greenberg? Greenberg and his crew? Gareth and Greenberg and his crew. Did I get to trail in their wake? And now we’d have to wait for Miller, which was my fault. But as I’d told Gareth earlier, my job was to protect the school. He might think I was making his job harder, but not getting the local cops mad at us was part of that protection.
I gathered, from what I could overhear, that Miller was in Gareth’s office. Gareth gave a quick set of directions, said, “Yes, we’ll wait,” and handed the phone back to me.
“Miller and Flynn are on their way,” he said.
With a discouraged glance at Greenberg’s vehicle, snuggled up to mine like a machine with sexual congress on its mind, he said to Amad, “Perhaps it would be wise if you positioned yourself around that curve and flagged him down, so we don’t have another collision?”
Amad nodded, looking relieved to be getting away from us, and loped back to where the vehicles were parked.
“Too damned many cooks, Gareth,” Greenberg muttered. “We could have handled this ourselves.”
Right, I thought. You could have organized a search of the river if the footprints lead that way? Handled a crime scene if we had one? Coordinated a wider search if it turns out Heidi has left the campus? Destroyed your important on-going relationship with the local police? I held my tongue. I might have some suggestions about Greenberg in a one-to-one conversation later, but right now, handling the chief was Gareth’s problem.
“I know it’s frustrating, Stan,” he said, “but the police are already involved. And good relations are important. I think you taught me that?” He dropped a firm hand on Greenberg’s shoulder and squeezed. It was a guy thing. I don’t think I’ve ever dropped a confidential hand on someone’s shoulder and squeezed.
It worked. Greenberg smiled. “Too damned right,” he said.
We stood in the damp and dripping clearing and waited impatiently for Miller and Flynn.
Soon there was the crunch and hiss of tires, the squeal of brakes that needed attention, and Miller and Flynn piled out of another SUV. Take the people away and it would have looked like four clandestine SUVs had sneaked off to the woods to party. Five, counting Amad’s, which was parked farther into the clearing.
In his bulky coat, Flynn looked like a barrel on legs, but he moved with economical speed. Miller wore the unhappy face of a man who resents being left out and I felt Gareth shift beside me, bracing for what might come. Nothing came, though, except a crisp, “Fill me in,” directed at the security chief. Greenberg did an economical update. Miller said, “Wait here,” and walked off, leaving Flynn with us like a German Shepherd on alert.
First, Miller examined the jacket, bending to examine it without disturbing how it lay. He even took out his phone and snapped some pictures. Then he went to the tracks. He studied them, crouched down and studied them some more, and then rose and returned to us. “At least two people, one of them with big feet, maybe male,” he said. A modern day Natty Bumppo. “We’re gonna
follow them and see where they lead.”
He studied our little group like a man choosing teams. “Amad, you found the coat?”
Amad nodded.
“You know this part of the campus well?”
Another nod.
“Okay. You come with me.” He focused on the chief. “Greenberg, you come with us. The rest of you stay put.”
Very diplomatic.
None of us wanted to stay put, but like good do-bees, we did. Flynn’s solid bulk and set face made anything but cooperation unthinkable.
My phone, like a cricket in August, was having a field day in my pocket. I had a business to run and a parent who’d recently been in crisis, so I stepped away from the group to check my messages. The instant I moved, Flynn stepped toward me. “Just checking my phone,” I said, holding it up. He nodded and relaxed.
Well. Relaxed wasn’t quite the term. No one here was relaxed. Just a slight softening in his rigid posture that I took for permission.
I walked maybe fifteen feet away, turned my back on them, and checked my messages. Andre, checking in. That one could wait until we were done here, though I sent him a quick text that I was tied up, Dad was home, and I’d call when I could. Two from Suzanne. They could also wait. A message from my mother, asking me to call. That one couldn’t. I dialed and raised the phone to my ear.
“Don’t panic,” she said when she answered. “I just wanted you to know that your father is home and resting. He wants to go to the office. I won’t let him. When you get a chance, we need to plan that shower.” There was an actual giggle from my mother who never giggles. “Maybe we should make it a joint shower.”
Yeah. Right. I really, truly wanted to share a baby shower with Sonia. And I was so eager to plan my own shower. Thanks, but no. She wouldn’t hear me, though, if I protested. At least it wasn’t an emergency. I made a neutral sound she took as agreement, and she hung up. I was surprised by how relieved I felt, like someone had lifted a huge weight off my body.