Authors: Terri Reid
“Clarissa,” Mary called up the stairs. “Rosie and Stanley
are here to visit with you. I’ll only be gone a little while and then we can
talk about shopping again.”
There was no response from Clarissa and Mary sighed. “I hope
she comes down once I leave,” she said. “I’m not her favorite person right
now.”
Rosie gave Mary a hug. “Give her some time,” she said.
“She’s going through a lot.”
“
Iffen
I acted like that, I’d be
seeing the business end of a paddle,” Stanley said, taking off his coat and
hanging it over the chair. “Folks are way too soft with children today.”
“Stanley, my mom paddled my brothers and me when we were
growing up,” Mary said. “But it was only when we did something that could have
endangered our lives. She wanted to be sure the lesson sunk in.” She rubbed her
backside. “And it always did. But Clarissa is more confused about how she fits
into our new family and I think spanking her would send the wrong message.”
“Well, maybe you’re right and maybe you
ain’t
,”
he said, folding his arms over his chest. “But I
gotta
say that kids in my generation had a whole lot more respect for their elders
than kids today.”
“Yes, but I don’t think you want children to blindly listen
and obey to someone just because they are an adult, as we did,” Rosie said,
giving his arm a little squeeze. “The world today is too full of adults who
mean to harm children. So, children should learn that adults need to earn trust
and respect, just like everyone else.”
“Well, Mary should be respected,” Stanley argued, nodding at
Mary. “She’s more than earned Clarissa’s trust and respect.”
“I don’t think that’s the problem,” Mary said, pulling her
coat out of the closet and slipping it on. “I think Clarissa is fearful, that’s
why I want to go over and speak with Katie and Maggie. Maybe they can give us a
clue about what prompted her concerns.”
“Well, you go and have a nice chat with the Brennans,” Rosie
said. “And I’m sure we will have a delightful time with Clarissa.”
“Thanks,” Mary said.
She reached for the doorknob just as her cell phone rang.
Pulling it from her pocket, she answered it. “Hello.”
“Mary,
it’s
Celia. Is it true?
Someone posted on Facebook that they found the man who kidnapped the last
little girl.”
Closing her eyes for a moment, Mary sighed softly. “Well,
it’s early yet in the investigation,” Mary said. “But they did get a
breakthrough.”
“Mary, please, can’t you give me any more information?”
Celia pleaded. “I’m going a little crazy.”
“Sure, why don’t we meet at my office,” she said. “I can be
there in ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Mary. I’ll be there.”
Mary hung up her phone and turned to Rosie and Stanley.
“Change of plans,” she said. “I need to meet a client at my office. I shouldn’t
be very long.”
“Don’t matter to us,” Stanley said. “You just go and do what
you need to do.
Rosie brought over stuff
to make cookies, so I reckon Clarissa will be down those stairs soon as the
cookies are out of the oven.”
“You two are the best,” Mary said, giving them each a hug.
“I’ll call Katie on the way over to my office and let her know I had to change
plans.”
Mike followed her out onto the porch. “I’ll hang here,” he
said. “I want to keep an eye on Clarissa.”
“Thanks, Mike,” she agreed. “That would be great.”
Ray Giles sat in his car, watching Mary leave the house and
drive away in her Roadster.
He’d been
there since dawn, about a half block away from the house, waiting for his
opportunity to take the little Alden girl for a nice long ride.
He’d seen Chief Alden leave in the early
morning hours and knew they had found Nick’s body. Smiling to himself, he
settled back in the seat. It was only a matter of time before everything was
tied up in a neat bow.
He gazed up into the rearview mirror at the small potted
pine tree sitting in the back seat. He had picked it up that morning at the
twenty-four-hour, big-box store’s garden center. One more pine tree, one more
student and then he would have to leave Freeport.
Even though he’d thrown them off his trail,
he realized that he was going to have to find a new town with new students for
his special school.
The little Alden
girl would have to be placed on an accelerated plan, he needed to have the new
young pine planted by tomorrow morning, just before he left town.
Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, he wondered how
long he was going to have to wait.
Even
though he didn’t consider the elderly couple much trouble, there would be a
risk with having two of them in the house. And, since it was a Saturday, he
couldn’t use his customary ploy of truancy.
He sighed, he was just going to have to sit back and wait.
Suddenly, an explosion of noisy children emerged from the
house he was parked across from.
The Brennan clan
, he thought,
those boys were always stirring up trouble.
He watched the
youngest, a little girl, follow her brothers down the steps.
Why did
she look familiar? Oh, yes, she was with the Alden girl that morning. She was
the one who pulled her back away from the street.
“I’m going to go see if Clarissa wants to play,” she called
to her brothers and started to run down the street.
Smiling and skipping, she was lost in her own world, when
she suddenly froze and turned to look at Ray’s car. He rolled down the window
and smiled at her. “Hello there,” he said. “I’m just waiting for a friend to
come out of their house. Don’t I know you?”
Her eyes filled with fear and she kept transferring her gaze
between his face and the back of his car.
Finally, she took several slow steps backward, turned and ran back to
her house.
“Hey, I thought you were going to go get Clarissa,” one of
her brothers called.
“I just remembered,” she called back as she ran up the porch
steps. “She can’t come out and play today.”
Ray watched her run into the house, slamming the door shut
behind her and a knot of fear twisted in his stomach.
She
knew
, he thought.
Somehow she knew
about his students.
Turning the car on, he casually pulled out of the parking
spot and drove down the road.
Now he was
going to have to rely on the small GPS tracker he placed on Clarissa’s backpack
when he saw her at the school. Turning the locater on, he saw the red dot
remaining stationary at the location of her home.
“Still working,” he said softly. “Now, come
on Clarissa, it’s a beautiful day to take a walk. I’ll be waiting.”
Celia rushed through the door of Mary’s office moment after
Mary had arrived. “What did they find?” Celia asked, her words spilling out of
her mouth. “Did they find anyone else?
Have they located the bodies? Are they sure this is the right person?”
“Just wait a minute, Celia,” Mary said. “Have a seat and
I’ll tell you what I know. Okay?”
Celia took a deep breath and then collapsed into a chair. “I
just want it to be…” she said, her voice trembling. “I just need it to be
over.”
Mary sat on the edge of her desk in front of Celia’s chair.
“What I’m going to tell you needs to stay confidential,” she said. “At least
until the press gets a hold of it.”
“Okay, I promise,” Celia replied. “I’ll keep it to myself.”
“Bradley was concentrating on members of the school
district,” Mary explained, “because it seemed the kidnappings were linked to
the attendance and truancy records.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Celia said, shaking her
head in awe. “And Ray Giles, the truancy officer, is a good friend of ours. He
would have helped me with research.”
“Well, Bradley hadn’t gotten very far in his investigation
when he received a call this morning. Nick Sears killed himself last night and
the young girl who had been kidnapped was found in his home.”
Celia clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, I read they had
found her,” she said. “Is she going to be…
”
“She’s alive, but in critical condition,” Mary said. “She
had a lot of drugs pumped into her system.”
“Nick Sears,” Celia repeated. “I would have never considered
him.”
“Well, the case hasn’t been closed yet,” Mary said, still
feeling uncomfortable with the outcome.
“But, if he killed himself and left a note, really, what
else can there be?”
“You’d think that would be open and shut, wouldn’t you?”
Mary mused.
“But you don’t think so.”
Shrugging, Mary stood up and walked to the other side of the
desk. “Maybe I’m just looking for shadows when there aren’t any,” she said.
“The house where he had her was on Henderson, that wasn’t close to the park at
all.”
“And Courtney didn’t know Dr. Sears,” Celia added.
“What?” Mary asked.
“Courtney didn’t know Dr. Sears,” Celia repeated. “She
wouldn’t have carried on a conversation with him.”
“Celia, would you mind if I shared that with Bradley?”
“No, please do,” she said. “I want the right person caught,
not the convenient one.”
“Me too,” Mary agreed.
Celia stood up and walked with Mary to the door. “Call me
when you find out the truth,” she said.
Mary nodded. “I promise,” she said.
“First
thing.”
As Mary drove home, she called Bradley. “Hi, how’s it
going?” she asked.
“I can’t say a lot,” he said. “But, I can say a lot has
changed since I left home this morning.”
“I just met with Celia,” Mary said. “She read the news on Facebook.”
“Good grief,” Bradley said. “What did she read?”
“Just that the little girl was recovered and on her way to
the hospital,” Mary said. “No other details.”
Mary turned on Empire toward her house. “But I wanted to let
you know that Courtney did not know Nick Sears,” Mary said. “Celia said she
would not have gotten into a car with him.”
“Yeah, that matches with some of the stuff we’ve
discovered,” he said. “Looks like another long day. Are you okay?”
She smiled. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m heading home. I
anxious to see what Rosie and Stanley have got planned with Clarissa.”
“Well, call me if you need me,” he replied. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” she said. “See you later.”
She hung up the phone and turned into her driveway, a little
surprised to see smoke coming out of the chimney.
The weather hadn’t really been cold enough to
light a fire lately.
Grabbing her purse,
she hurried across the lawn and up the stairs to the door.
Opening the door, she found Stanley and Rosie adding logs to
an already roaring fire. “Hi,” she said, stepping in and removing her coat.
“What’s going on?”
“Well, Clarissa thought it would be a great surprise to help
you clean up your cabinets,” Rosie said, with a bright smile on her face. “So
she suggested we start a fire and burn up some old papers you wanted to
destroy.”
“Old papers?”
Mary asked.
“Yeah, she said there was a box of old stuff in the cabinets
you didn’t want to keep,” Stanley added.
“Just old junk.”
“My box?”
Mary cried, running into
the kitchen. “Clarissa please
tell
me…”
Clarissa stood on the countertop, holding Mary’s keepsake box
upside-down in her hands.
She turned, as
Mary ran into the room, and fear washed over her face. “I didn’t mean to,” she
yelled.
The floor was coated with thin slippery paper and, before
Mary realized it, she was sliding on the floor, her feet slipping out from
underneath her.
She grabbed wildly for
something to hold onto, but her fall was too fast and there was nothing
nearby.
She fell backward and felt her
head make contact with the edge of the butcher-block counter and then there was
nothing but darkness.
“Mary!” Clarissa screamed, scrambling down from the
countertop. “Mary, are you okay?”
“Oh, Stanley,” Rosie shrieked. “She’s bleeding. Mary’s
bleeding.”
“Go to the fridge and grab some ice,” Stanley yelled,
grabbing a dishcloth from the sink. “We got to stop the flow of blood.”
He looked up at Clarissa. “You know how to call 911?” he
asked sharply.
She nodded.
“Well, then call them, so your new mom don’t die,” he
yelled.
Sobbing, Clarissa grabbed the phone in the living room and
dialed 911.
“My mom fell,” she cried.
“She fell and she’s bleeding and she’s not awake.”
Rosie brought the ice over in a plastic bag and Stanley
gently placed it on Mary’s head, trying to staunch the flow of blood with the
dishcloth.
“Oh, Stanley, is she going to die?” Rosie asked.
Stanley started to reassure Rosie, but saw that Clarissa was
also listening. “I don’t know,” he said. “
Falls
like
these can kill people.”
“The ambulance is coming,” Clarissa sniffed. “I told them to
come fast.”
Mike appeared in the midst of the chaos. “What happened?” he
asked Clarissa.
“I did it,” she cried. “I was going to burn Mary’s stuff,
her special stuff and she came into the room and slipped on the papers and hit
her head.
She’s not waking up, Mike.
She’s going to die and it’s my fault.”
Clarissa ran from the room and up the stairs to her bedroom,
slamming the door firmly behind her.
Stanley looked up in the direction Clarissa had been
speaking. “Mike,
iffen
you’re still here,
don’t
worry,” he said. “She’s got a nasty bump, probably a
concussion, and head wounds always bleed a lot. But I have a feeling she’s
going to be just fine.”
But Mike wasn’t standing where Clarissa left him, he was on
the floor kneeling next to Mary and talking to her. “Hey, babe, you got to hang
in there,” he said. “I know it would be easy to let go, easy to just walk away,
but you’ve got to fight and you’ve got to stay.
It would ruin Clarissa’s life to know that her actions killed her
mother. And Bradley, how would he go on knowing that his daughter killed you?
Babe, I know you want to be with me. I know I’m irresistible, but you made a
commitment and you
gotta
hang tough for a while.”
Leaning over, he placed a kiss on Mary’s forehead. “Come on,
babe, take a deep breath and grab back on to your body.”
Mary groaned slightly and Stanley breathed a sigh of relief.
“I think she’s gaining consciousness.”
“There you go,” Mike said. “I always knew you were a
scrapper, Mary. Besides, you’ve got more to fight for than you realize.”
Mary blinked and looked up at Stanley. “What happened…” she
started and then she winced in pain.
“
Owwww
, I feel like I was hit in the head with a semi.”
“Pretty close,” Rosie said, dabbing the tears from her eyes.
“You got hit with a butcher-block counter.”
“Who threw it,” she whispered.
“You kind of threw yourself against it,” Stanley said. “And
you weren’t very graceful in the execution.”
“Blame my dad,” she whispered. “He never let me take ballet
lessons.”
The sounds of the siren came up the street and stopped in
front of their house. Mary tried to turn her head and nearly screamed. “Please,
Stanley, not an ambulance,” she said. “I really hate ambulances. I really hate
hospitals. I die in hospitals.”
Mike leaned over and smiled at her. “You won’t die in this
one,” he said. “I promise. Now do as you’re told and I’ll come along for the
ride.”
“Promise?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, I promise.”
“I
ain’t
promising
nothing
,” Stanley grumbled. “You’re going to that hospital
and that’s that.”
Rosie hurried to the door and let the paramedics in.
“She fell backward against the edge of the counter,” Stanley
explained. “She’s got quite a large knot on her head and she lost consciousness
for about five minutes.”
“It would be best for her to go into the emergency room,”
the paramedic stated. “They can check her for concussion and maybe perform a CAT
scan to see if there is any internal damage. Does one of you want to ride
along?”
“Rosie you stay here
with Clarissa and I’ll go in the ambulance with Mary, okay?” Stanley asked.
Rosie nodded. “Please call me and let me know everything’s okay.”
They carefully loaded Mary onto the gurney, carried her out
of the house and into the waiting ambulance. Stanley rode up front, next to the
driver, and Mike stayed next to her in the back with the other paramedic.
“Hey, how are you doing?” he asked.
“My head really hurts,” she replied.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure it does,” the paramedic replied. “But
don’t worry we’ll be at the emergency room in just a minute.”
“Oh, goodie,” Mary muttered.
“That’s my girl,” Mike chuckled. “Miss Mary Sunshine.”