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We. As if they’d somehow misplaced the child. Was the little girl given to pranks? To disappearing from sight, only to watch from a secret hiding place as pandemonium ensued? Was this a bid for attention? So many of these kids hardly cohabited with their parents at all and were desperate for attention.
“I’m sorry, you are…?” Nathan was asking the blonde before he could.
“Brenda York.” Brenda put out her hand. When Dax took it, he thought it felt icy. As if she was worried. Or afraid. “I teach first grade.
His own first grade teacher had been a Mrs. Flack, a short, squat woman with bottle-orange hair. She’d favored shapeless smocks, sensible dark brown shoes and smelled of peppermint because she always seemed to be sucking on the candy, something her students, unfairly he thought, weren’t allowed to do. Had Mrs. Flack looked remotely like Brenda York, he might have discovered the pleasure of learning a lot earlier than in high school.
“This way,” Harwood directed, pointing toward the front entrance.
Behind them, the last of the firefighters were getting onto a truck. The first truck had already pulled away. The din that had been humming since before their arrival was gradually fading into the warm May air. It amazed Dax how quickly order was restored. Each and every student seemed aware that it was time to go back to the world they had vacated for such a brief amount of time. The excitement of the fire, real or imagined, was over. The teachers had obviously done their level best to keep the news of the possible abduction from spreading and reaching any young ears.
Dax glanced over his shoulder, watching the students as they resumed a tight formation before they literally marched back into the building.
Hushed whispers hummed in the air like june bugs, all, he guessed, centering around his and Nathan’s recent arrival. He returned one child’s gaze and smiled before turning back around.
His eyes met Brenda’s completely by accident. Hers were a deep crystal blue. Intense, shining like two blue lights, they seemed to penetrate his very soul. He could have sworn there was some kind of electrical shock that had gone through him.
She lowered her eyes and turned back away.
Dax felt like a survivor of a train wreck who hadn’t been aware that the train had even gone off course until the impact had hit.
Behind him, Nathan stood up on his toes. “One step at a time, buddy, one step at a time.”
He gave Nathan a dirty look. Nathan gave him a knowing one.
They entered the building. The floors were polished to a high sheen, but were amazingly non-slippery. Lawsuits obviously were the scourge of even a place like Harwood. Well-cared for wooden doors lined both sides of the corridor like timeless, learned sentries. The headmaster brought them to the far end of the hall.
“We can talk in here,” Harwood was saying.
Opening a door, he led them into a somber room whose walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books. The only break in the decor were two windows that somehow managed to filter out the light and allowed only gloom into the medium-sized room, and the door which seemed to shyly claim a space amid massive bookshelves.
Once the door was closed behind them, all noise, soft or otherwise, from the outside world ceased to exist. For a moment, the only sounds evident were the individual breaths that they took.
It was a room designed for intimidation, Dax thought. Any kid who was called in here was already scared out of his or her mind. He exchanged looks with Nathan and could tell that the same thought had crossed his partner’s mind as well.
Rather than stand with them, the headmaster took his place behind the massive desk; whether to demarcate his position or to keep himself separated from the situation, Dax didn’t know, but it came across as a definite power play of some sort.
The teacher, he noted, remained with him and his partner. Joining ranks? Or infiltrating the enemy?
She smelled of jasmine, or maybe gardenias. He never could get things like flowers straight. To him, a flower was a flower. But the scent, well, that was pretty unnerving right now.
For the first time in his life, he wished he had a cold, or some kind of allergy that would have blocked his nasal capacity. He found the scent seductive.
Just like the woman.
Brenda York appeared agitated, he noted. Was that natural concern on her part? Or was there something else at play here? He had too little input to go on and his gut was otherwise occupied, giving him no clue.
The thing that sometimes bothered him about his chosen way of life was that he could never look at anything simply. Everything had two sides and, like as not, multi-layers that usually needed unraveling. It made simplicity a thing of the past and an unattainable dream these days.
Harwood cleared his throat. But right now, Dax was more interested in what Brenda York had to say. He turned toward her, the action blocking out the headmaster.
“Are you the one who first noticed she was missing?” Dax asked her.
She still couldn’t believe any of this was happening. It was like a nightmare, a horrible, horrible nightmare and she was waiting to wake up. Except that she was already awake.
Calm, you have to stay calm. You can’t help Annie if you’re not calm.
She realized she was clenching her hands at her sides, digging her nails into her palms. She forced herself to open them. “Yes.”
The single word sounded tortured to Dax. An act? The truth? For the time being, he gave her the benefit of the doubt as he began to ask his questions. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nathan take out his pad. Nathan believed in writing everything down. As for him, he kept all the notes in his head. He’d always had that ability, to go into the recesses of his mind and pluck out whatever tiny fact he needed whenever he needed it.
He watched her face, looking for any telltale sign that might give him a clue as to what she was thinking, what she was really feeling. “Are you sure she’s missing? Maybe she wandered in with another group of kids. I saw a lot of activity going on when we pulled up—”
This time, Harwood was the one who cut in. “Our children are taught discipline from the very first day they come to Harwood Academy,” he informed Dax with alacrity. “They do not wander.”
Dax couldn’t tell if the man was taking offense on behalf of his students, or if he felt that anything other than perfect behavior reflected badly on him.
In complete control of the situation, Dax lifted a shoulder and carelessly let it fall again. “Yeah, but kids are still kids. There’s all this noise and excitement going on, firefighters, trucks, ambulances—”
“Ambulance,” Harwood corrected automatically. “There was only one.”
Dax inclined his head. The man was a stickler, he thought. Possibly a little obsessive. He was grateful that his parents hadn’t had the money to send him to a private school.
“Ambulance,” he allowed. “With all this confusion, she might have taken the opportunity to duck out on you and get in with one of her friends.”
If only, Brenda thought. If only.
But she’d searched the area, asking all the children who might have seen her if they had. Each time, she’d gotten a shake of the head in response. The tiny mouse of a child, who reminded her so much of herself at that age, was nowhere to be found.
“That’s just it,” Brenda told him, her voice growing a little more firm with every word she uttered, “Annie doesn’t really have any friends.”
There was a glimmer of pain in her eyes as she told him that. Dax couldn’t help wondering if it was genuine, or if he’d been confronted with a very good actress. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time a kidnapper had tried to put something over on him.
And until proven otherwise, he had to think of her that way. As someone who might somehow be involved in the kidnapping, if that was what it actually was. After all, Annie Tyler was last seen in her care.
Glancing at Nathan before continuing, Dax crossed his arms before him. A full moment went by before he spoke again. Time, his father had told him early in his career, was both their friend and their enemy. The more time that went by, the less likely a missing child was to be found. But if you gave a guilty person who wasn’t a hardened criminal enough time, they tended to say or do something to incriminate themselves.
Dax studied the blond woman before him, trying not to notice that, even though she was wearing a lavender two-piece suit, the killer figure she possessed was more than evident. He motioned her toward a seat, but she shook her head, obviously preferring to stand.
Or refusing to be placed in the position of having someone stand over her.
He placed himself so that he could easily look at both her and the headmaster. “All right, Mrs. York, why don’t you tell us exactly what happened. And start at the beginning. Before the fire trucks.” He watched her chest rise as she take in a deep breath. Steeling himself off, he forced his eyes to her face. “Take your time,” he counseled quietly. “And don’t leave anything out.”
Chapter 2
Her mind felt as if it were completely jumbled up, with all the thoughts glued together in one giant ball. Brenda strove to peel apart the layers, arranging the events of the last hour in their proper sequence.
Because she didn’t begin immediately, Dax fired a question at her. Patience, when it came to cases, had never been his strong suit. The few times he had been assigned to a stakeout, he had all but climbed up one side of the wall and down the other.
“Let’s begin with the fire.” He pinned her with a look. “Was there an actual fire?” He hadn’t smelled any smoke entering the building, but something or someone had to have set off the alarm.
As if riding to her rescue, Harwood drew himself up behind his desk.
“Yes, there was,” he cut in. “A small one.” He glanced at Brenda before adding, “The fire chief told me that some papers in a wastepaper basket had caught fire. They used one of our fire extinguishers to put it out. It turned out simpler that way.”
Dax exchanged looks with Nathan. Wastepaper baskets didn’t just spontaneously combust. “That sounds as if it might have been deliberately set.” His gaze swept over Brenda before returning to the headmaster. “Are any of your kids budding pyromaniacs or overly fascinated with matches?”
Brenda’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “No!” she snapped. Some of her pupils were starved for attention and might on occasion act out, but they were five-and six-years-old and that kind of behavior was only normal.
Harwood was sputtering indignantly. “I assure you that my school—”
Dax waved his hand in a downward motion, as if banking down their protests.
“Just a question,” he told them mildly, although he had posed it to see both of their reactions. The woman was protective while the headmaster came off as concerned about his school’s reputation. “Would anyone else have set the fire?”
Nathan raised an eyebrow, looking up from the notes he was religiously scribbling down. “You’re thinking maybe it was a diversion?”
Dax nodded.
So had she, the moment she’d overheard the fire chief telling Matthew Harwood that the origin of the fire had been found in her wastepaper basket. A diversion to take attention away from the fact that Annie Tyler was being stolen.
The very thought ate away at her. She should have realized something was wrong. There was no earthly reason why, but somehow, her instincts should have told her that something was wrong.
She might as well tell him before he found out on his own. “It was my wastepaper basket.”
Her student, her wastepaper basket. Dax looked at the woman with deepening interest. It seemed too simple, but then, most criminals were not the masterminds that so frequently populated the more intriguing mysteries and action movies. Wanting to race, he still took it one step at a time.
Facing her, his back blocking out Harwood, he asked, “Were you in the room at the time?”
She could almost sense what he was thinking. Brenda took a breath and shook her head. “No. The class and I were giving a tour to Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley—”
She saw the good-looking detective’s eyes narrow just a little, as if he was filtering in this new information. “Who?”
“Parents of a prospective new student,” Harwood explained, moving so that Dax could see him. The man looked none-too-happy about being ignored. “It’s done all the time.”
That didn’t sound quite right to him. In his experience, teachers were all too happy to escape from their classroom for a few minutes, leaving a slightly more mature child in charge of the class for the duration of their absence.
“Taking your whole class out?” Dax asked in disbelief, waiting to be corrected.
No such correction came. “It’s to show how well-behaved our students are,” Harwood told him. “We’re quite proud of that.”
The detective still didn’t look as if he believed them. Brenda felt a spark of resentment building. She knew he was just doing his job, but she couldn’t help feeling that he was wasting precious time with these trivial details.
“The students each take turns telling the parents about the different activities we have here at Harwood.” She enumerated some of the highlights. “There’s a little theater group, an art room, things the regular schools cut back on.”
His face never changed expression as he listened to her description. She liked the shorter detective better, she thought. At least Detective Brown looked compassionate.
“And where was Annie during this show-and-tell process?” the suspicious detective asked.
In her mind’s eye, she could see the little girl. Annie had begun at the head of the group but with each step taken, she kept drifting toward the rear of the line. Strangers always affected her that way; made her even shyer than she was.
“She was hanging back.”
The poker face remained. “And you didn’t coax her forward?”
Was that suspicion she heard in his voice? Did he actually think she’d do anything to harm any of the children, especially Annie? Just what kind of a monster did he think she was? Fueled by guilt, it took effort to bank down her anger. “I was just about to do that when the alarm went off.”
“And then what?”
She’d heard the alarm just as they’d left the art room. She remembered feeling a sense of panic. The idea of a fire spreading through the school had always horrified her. Because of that, she had been the one to suggest to Matthew that they double the amount of fire drills performed. “And then I made sure that I got my class outside the building.”
Dax deliberately moved into her space, crowding her. “You didn’t stop to count heads?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No, not until we were all outside the building.”
“And then you counted heads.”
Brenda could feel her temper unraveling as guilt danced around it. She should have kept Annie with her. But she could remember how painful it was at times not to be able to just shrink away, to hang back. Annie had been making progress, opening up a little, but there’d been a relapse in the last few days and she’d been trying to get at the source of it without much success.
So she’d tried not to push too hard and then this had happened.
Brenda raised her chin up as if she were silently showing him she was up to any challenge he was throwing her way.
His sister did that move, Dax thought. Just before she lit into him.
“Yes,” the teacher responded between clenched teeth, “then I counted heads.”
Nathan looked up from the notes he was taking. “When you saw she was missing, what did you do?”
There had been no hesitation on her part. “I ran back into the building.”
As if he felt he had to vouch for her actions, Harwood interjected, “One of the firefighters attempted to stop her, but she went right around him.”
Nathan smiled at her before resuming his notes. “Brave lady.”
Stubborn would have been the way he’d have put it, Dax thought. He was well-acquainted with stubborn. His family, especially the female portion of it, had a patent on the emotion.
Brenda shrugged off the praise. Bravery had nothing to do with it.
“I had no idea where the fire was or how bad it was. I was just worried that Annie might have run back to the classroom.” She saw the silent question in the taller detective’s eyes and explained. “She has this stuffed animal she keeps in her desk, a rabbit.” It had taken more than a week of coaxing before Annie had told her about the rabbit. It had been a gift from her father and she clung to it whenever she missed him and wanted him close. “I thought she might have gone back for it.”
Dax never took his eyes from her face. “But she didn’t?”
Brenda shook her head. “She wasn’t there.”
“Was the rabbit?”
The question caught her short. “I didn’t think to check.” There had been a fireman in the room. He’d just finished putting out the fire and there was water everywhere. Water, smoke, but no Annie. “Why, was that important?”
