Читать книгу The Poisoned Pen - E. Joan Sims - Страница 4

Chapter Two

Cassie and I raced side by side down the walk. She reached the porch door first, slamming it open for the both of us.

“Gran! Are you all right?” she cried.

Mother was holding the portable phone in a limp hand. Her face was almost as white as the pearls around her slender neck.

“Mother,” I gasped. “What in the world?”

“That charming little girl—Nell Jane Bradley—the one who brought us the thank you card—she has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” I whispered in a hoarse voice. “Where?”

“Don’t be a goose, Paisley!” answered Mother, her voice sharp with worry. “If we knew that, then the child wouldn’t be missing!”

My stomach was doing flip-flops—ham and cheese pastries churned around and around in a sea of peppercorn acid. I had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting, and the sour aftertaste made me even more nauseous.

“You okay, Mom? You look a little green around the gills.”

“I…I’m fine. It’s just that….”

I made it to the sink in the nick of time.

“Cassandra, don’t stand there with your mouth open. Hand your mother a damp towel. I’ll make some tea.”

“Tell me more, Mother,” I asked, after my second soothing sip of Earl Grey.

“Very well. If you don’t ask any more silly questions.”

I bit my tongue and let her continue in her own roundabout way.

“I was talking to Mavis. Well, actually, I was trying to get out of talking to Mavis, when the phone made that annoying beeping sound.”

“Call waiting,” I prompted.

“Yes! Well, you know how I feel about that rude bit of business.”

“Yes, Gran. We know you never answer ‘call waiting’,” sighed Cassie. “That’s why I never have a date.”

“Yeah, right!” I laughed weakly, eager to throw off my sense of foreboding. We also knew that my daughter was so particular where men were concerned that even Prince Charming would have to submit a resume.

“Well, it is rude,” insisted Mother. “But this time it was unrelenting and I had to answer to put a stop to it. One of the soccer mothers was on the other line. She said that Nell Jane never returned from delivering the card to us. The others waited for a few minutes, then went to look for her. When the search turned up nothing, they called for help. The woman wanted to warn us that the police and the emergency medical crew would be using our driveway to get back to the field where the children were playing.”

At that moment we heard the swift crunch of gravel as Chief Andy Joiner’s police cruiser and two more like it raced up the drive and down pass the carriage house towards the lane. They were followed closely by the ambulance and the Lakeland County EMS.

“Well, thanks for the warning, Mother,” I said, sarcastically. “It’s a good thing Watson wasn’t in the driveway!” Watson was my bilious green Jeep Cherokee—my pride and joy.

“Or Aggie!” Cassie added. “She would have been squashed! By the way, where is Aggie? I haven’t seen her for hours.”

Agatha Christie, Aggie for short, was Cassie’s ill-tempered Lhasa Apso. The dog was almost four years old now, but she hadn’t mellowed one little bit with age. In fact, she was even more evil than the benighted day Cassie when picked her out from the rest of her littermates and brought her to live with us. The dog was cute—of that there could be no doubt. She was white and soft, and as fuzzy as a cotton ball; but she didn’t like being touched, moved, nudged, or reprimanded. She had bitten me each and every time I had done any one of the above.

Aggie could usually be found in the middle of my bed on my favorite down pillow. Cassie knew that, but I reminded her, anyway.

“We all have to make sure our own little chicks are okay,” said Mother with a sad smile, as she watched Cassie rush off to my bedroom. “Maybe I’ll call your sister tonight. We haven’t talked for two weeks.”

“Right!” I laughed—glad for the sound and feel of it. “She could have gotten married and divorced at least twice in two weeks.”

“Paisley! Don’t be so unpleasant. You should rejoice that Velvet appears to have finally found happiness.”

“Found it again, you mean! Let’s see—is Harry Mason Biddle III, Velvet’s number four, or number five? I can’t keep them straight. I hope she can.”

Mother secretly agreed with me, I was almost positive, but she never liked to show even a whit of favoritism. She changed the subject without batting an eyelash.

“Are you going back in the field, dear?”

“I was considering it, but I don’t want to get in the way of the police.”

“I think you should, Paisley. Perhaps you could help with the children. Take them something to eat, or….”

“Just a minute, Mother! The kids are still back there? Why in the blue-eyed world haven’t they gone home? Aren’t their parents worried sick?”

“The woman who called me said Andy Joiner wanted everyone to stay exactly where they were until he got there.”

I didn’t want to go. I didn’t even want to think about it. When Cassie was small I used to wake up in the wee small hours, sweating and terrified that she had gone missing like her father.

“I’ll go,” I sighed. “Do you have some sweet tea or lemonade in the fridge? That might help. And maybe some cookies.”

Mother smiled and patted my hand. “Yes, dear. I’ll have everything ready in a minute. Perhaps Cassie would like to keep you company. You two make a good team.”

I found Cassie curled up on my bed with the nasty little puppy asleep in her arms. She was crying softly into the dog’s furry neck.

“Oh, darling, don’t cry! They’ll find her.” I lay down next to her and stroked her hair. Aggie raised her sleepy head and bared her upper teeth. I got out of the way a second before she lunged and snapped—missing my fingers by barely an inch. Cassie stopped crying and began to laugh.

“Oh, Mom!” she gasped. “You should have seen the look on your face!”

“Damn, damn, and double damn! That rotten little beast!”

“Mom!”

“Okay,” I sighed. “If it makes you happy—the stinking little….”

“Mom….”

“Okay,” I smiled. “She can bite me anytime.” Nevertheless, I placed the other pillow carefully between me and Aggie before I sat back down. “Gran is fixing some tea and cookies for me to take to the soccer kiddies and their moms. Want to go with?”

“Sure,” she smiled, wiping away the tears.

“Bad memories, Cassie?” I asked, unsure as to how far I should go.

“Yeah. You know—Daddy and everything.” She looked out the big bay window, watching the fireflies dance in the deepening twilight before she continued. “I was always so afraid that you would vanish the same way he did,” she said in a voice hoarse with more unshed tears.

“Looks like each of us was afraid of the same thing. We should have had this little talk long before now. It might have saved us both a lot of sleepless nights.” I squeezed her hand as I made a promise. “I love you, kitten, and I’ll never, ever, go anywhere without leaving you a forwarding address.” I started to hug her, but Aggie gave another deep, throaty, warning growl so I settled for a big, noisy, kiss in the air instead. “Ready to go play Clara Barton?”

“Clara Barton…now, don’t tell me. She’s the femme fatale with the famous lips who starred in the early silent films. Right?”

“Cassie, Clara Barton was….”

“No! Let me guess. You’re always pulling these old movie stars out of a hat. You have to give me time to think. Westerns? Was she in that western with Harry Cooper?”