Courage Tree (5 page)

She was right, and he nodded. “I’ll try,” he said.

The parking lot at Meadowlark Gardens was nearly empty, except for the bustle of activity in the corner nearest the road. Joe followed Janine’s car across the lot and parked between the white van and a police car. Scanning the small group of people, he tried to find a skinny, little red-haired girl among them, hoping Sophie had arrived safely during Janine’s trip to Reston.

But Sophie was not there, and Joe and Paula got out of the car and followed Janine into the circle of people.

“Any news?” Janine asked a tall woman, who shook her head, then looked at Joe.

“You’re Sophie’s dad?” The woman reached her hand toward him and he shook it quickly, as if he didn’t want to touch her for too long. He was angry with her, too. Angry with anyone even remotely responsible for putting Sophie in harm’s way.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m Gloria Moss. Sophie’s troop leader.”

“What’s going on?” He heard the impatient, officious tone to his voice and felt Paula’s steadying hand on his arm once again.

“Sergeant Loomis just arrived,” Gloria said, pointing in the direction of a large black man in uniform. He was talking with a young male officer, who used his hands as he spoke, cutting the air with them, while the big man listened.

Gloria introduced Joe, Paula and Janine to Holly’s parents, Rebecca and Steve Kraft, who had apparently arrived only minutes earlier in a large, midnight-blue Suburban. Everyone had questions for one another, but no one had the answers, and they stood waiting uncertainly by the white van, while the sergeant spoke to someone on the phone. Joe wanted to walk over to him and tell him to hurry up and do something, but he knew that was not going to help.

A Honda sped into the parking lot, giving all of them a hope-filled start until they realized that the car was silver. It came to a stop near the fence, and a young woman jumped out.

“I’m Charlotte,” she called as she ran toward them. “Alison’s roommate. Did anyone hear from her yet?

“No,” Janine said. “You haven’t heard anything, either?”

Charlotte shook her head. She looked about twenty years old, with shoulder-length blond hair and tiny glasses perched atop her button nose. Within seconds, Joe knew she was the sort of young woman who could make any event into a disaster.

“This is
terrible
,” she said repeatedly. “Alison would never be this late without a good reason. We’re supposed to go out tonight.”

“Well, the police are working on it,” Gloria said, although she looked uncertain as she glanced in the direction of the sergeant and young officer. Gloria wore her tension and worry in her face. She couldn’t have been more than his and Janine’s
age, thirty-five, Joe thought, yet her forehead was creased with deep horizontal lines and her mouth was tight, her lips narrow.

Janine, on the other hand, carried her worry as she always did, with a calm resolve that made her face impassive and hard to read. How often he’d seen that face across Sophie’s hospital bed or while waiting for news from one doctor or another. She would fall apart later, he knew, when she was alone. But for now, there was little outward sign of the anguish he knew she was feeling.

Holly’s parents were another matter altogether. Steve and Rebecca Kraft wore wide, optimistic smiles, as though they dealt with this sort of thing all the time and refused to let it get them down. They were an older couple, somewhere in their mid-forties, he guessed, with the look of well-aged hippies. Steve wore his graying hair in a pony tail; Rebecca’s mousy-brown hair fell to her shoulders from a center part. Two of their seven children were with them—one a young boy, barely a toddler, the other a sour-looking six-year-old named Treat. “Everything will work out all right,” Rebecca said to Joe and Janine as she bounced the toddler in her arms. “It always does. We’ve been through this sort of thing so many times, we’re used to it.”

Their optimism was catching. Or at least Joe
tried
to catch it as he listened to them tell tales about their older children’s misadventures. He felt like the young, green father next to Steve’s and Rebecca’s soothing voices of experience.

Finally, Sergeant Loomis approached them, gathering them together with a sweep of his big arms. Joe stood between Janine and Paula in front of the white van, listening to Loomis’s deep, booming voice.

“The police agencies between here and the Scout camp have been alerted to notify us of any accidents along that route,” he said. “So far, there are no reports of any accidents involving a car like Ms. Dunn’s. Of course, it’s possible that they are simply lost.”

“She has the best sense of direction,” Charlotte offered.
“Whenever we’re in Georgetown or D.C., she’s the one who can find her way around when the rest of us are totally lost. Except she also likes to take shortcuts, and sometimes they turn out to be more like longcuts.”

“They’re four hours late,” Joe said. The words gave reality to the facts, and he licked his dry lips. “That’s pretty damned lost if that’s what happened.”

“Now, it’s possible they just stopped to rest or to eat somewhere,” Sergeant Loomis suggested. “Maybe they got sidetracked by an event or an attraction of some sort and didn’t realize everyone would be worried by their late arrival.”

“Alison would’ve called me if she was going to be late,” Charlotte said. She was literally wringing her hands, and Joe couldn’t take his eyes off the way her knuckles whitened, then pinked up again, each time she passed one hand over the other. “Something is very, very wrong.”

“I’m guessing it’s one of those two options,” Sergeant Loomis seemed deaf to Charlotte’s remarks. “But we do need to entertain other possibilities.”

“Weren’t some hikers murdered in that area recently?” Charlotte asked, and everyone turned to look at her in a horrified silence.

“Let’s not expect the worst, okay?” Loomis said, in a firm, kind voice.

“Is she right, though?” Gloria asked. “Was someone recently murdered near the camp?”

“Not recently, and not really near the camp,” Loomis said. “It was last fall on the Appalachian Trail. A couple of women were found. And it’s not worth thinking about.”

At least not yet.
Joe could hear the unspoken phrase at the end of the sergeant’s sentence.

“Is there a chance Alison Dunn might have taken off with the two girls?” Loomis looked from Gloria to Charlotte and back again. “I’m not saying that’s what happened, but we need to look at every possibility.”

“That’s crazy,” Charlotte actually laughed. “Why would she? Alison would never do anything like that.”

“Was she acting at all out of the ordinary as she was getting ready to give the two girls a ride?” Loomis asked Gloria.

Gloria shook her head. “No, and that just wouldn’t make sense, Officer. Alison’s very responsible. I know she has the reputation of being a little bit…ditzy…but that’s just her fun-loving side. She would never do what you’re suggesting.”

Joe could hear Janine breathing next to him. Long, ragged-sounding breaths, and every few seconds or so, her gaze would leave the sergeant and turn in the direction of the parking lot entrance. He didn’t blame her. He, too, expected Alison and his daughter to arrive any moment and put an end to this silly exercise in worry. The light was just beginning to fade, edging toward dusk. Soon it would be dark.

“You know,” Rebecca said slowly, and Joe noticed for the first time that she had a slight drawl to her speech. She was leaning against the van, her toddler in her arms and a look of amusement on her face. “That Alison is quite a character,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past her just to decide Holly and Sophie didn’t have enough fun at camp and take them off to some amusement park or something. What amusement parks are there between here and there?” She looked at her husband. “Where’s that Water World place?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Gloria insisted before Steve could respond. “Even if she wanted to, she’d know better than that.”

“That’s right,” Charlotte added. “I mean, Alison can be crazy and everything, but she knew we were going out tonight, and she would have come straight home. Plus, it doesn’t make any sense at all that we can’t get her on her phone. That’s what’s really freaking me out. No matter where she is, she has that phone on.”

“Well, batteries run out and phones break,” Sergeant Loomis said calmly. Charlotte was annoying him, Joe thought, but to the man’s credit, he was doing his best not to let it show.

“Could they have been kidnapped?” Janine spoke up, and only then did Joe realize how quiet she had become during this whole discussion. “I mean, by someone other than Alison?

“If they’re not back in a few hours, and if we have no reports of an accident, that’s something we’ll need to consider,” Loomis said. “Whether it be by Alison Dunn or someone else.”

“Please consider it now,” Janine said, a tremor in her voice. “Just in case that’s what happened. We can’t waste any time.”

“Right now,” the sergeant said, “I want to talk with each of you individually.” He pointed to Janine. “You first, Mrs. Donohue.”

“Are we suspects?” Steve asked, and only then did that thought occur to Joe. The parents were the first to fall under suspicion when a child disappeared. And too much of the time, they were guilty. He suddenly saw Steve and Rebecca Kraft with new eyes. They were a little too cheerful about this whole thing. A little too cavalier.

“I just want to see what information each of you has,” Loomis said. “Separately, you might remember something…be able to think of something that’s evading you now. And I’ll need to get more identifying information from you on the missing girls.”

Janine looked flustered. “Could you start with someone else?” she asked. “I need to call my parents first. I spoke to them earlier. They must really be worried by now.”

Joe touched her arm. “I’ll call them,” he said. She would hate dealing with Donna and Frank about this, and he didn’t blame her.

“Thanks.” Janine nodded, looking away from him. She was having trouble meeting his eyes tonight, he thought. She knew he blamed her for this, no matter how kindly he acted toward her now.

He watched her walk over to one of the police cars with
Sergeant Loomis, then turned to Paula. “Be right back,” he said.

In the front seat of his car, he dialed the number for the Ayr Creek mansion on his cell phone, hoping Frank would answer. Neither of Janine’s parents would handle this news well, but Frank would be the calmer of the two.

“Hello?” It was Donna’s voice on the line.

“It’s Joe, Mom,” he said. He could see Janine sitting in the police car, the doors open to catch the faint breeze.

“Joe! I just tried to call you,” Donna said. “Do you know where Sophie and Janine are? Janine called hours ago to see if Sophie got dropped off here, but she hadn’t, and then I figured maybe they stopped at your house. Although I thought you were coming over—”

“Hold on, Mom,” he interrupted, then hesitated, not sure how to tell her. “I’m with Janine at the parking lot where Sophie and her Brownie troop were due to arrive. Some of the girls are back, but the car Sophie was riding in hasn’t shown up yet.”

Donna didn’t speak for a moment. “I thought they were supposed to arrive at three. That’s what Janine said.”

“Yes.”

“And they haven’t gotten there yet? It’s nearly seven-thirty!”

“I know, Mom.” He’d never stopped calling Donna “Mom.” When he and Janine split up, he’d tried to go back to addressing his ex-in-laws as Donna and Frank, but they had pleaded with him to continue calling them Mom and Dad. He’d been relieved. They were the only parents he had.

“We’ve contacted the police,” he informed her. “They’re looking for the car. They think maybe it had a breakdown or something.” It was a lie, but what else could he say?

“I told Janine not to send her.” Donna was already in tears, and Joe could hear Frank’s deep voice in the background asking her what was wrong. “Sophie hasn’t ever been away for an afternoon, much less at a camp a thousand miles away.”

“It wasn’t that far,” Joe said, although he certainly shared her concern. “I can hear Frank there,” he said. “Can you put him on?”

There was some fumbling with the phone, then Frank’s voice came on the line.

“What’s going on?” he asked, and Joe repeated what he’d told Donna.

“Janine isn’t a clear thinker these days,” Frank said. “She’s gone back to that crazy girl she used to be, all of a sudden. After this, I want you to go to court and get more say over what happens to Sophie, all right? Get veto power.”

Joe was already thinking of taking that step. “Well, for right now, we just need to get through this situation,” he said.

“Do you think this has to do with the gardener?” Donna had gotten on the extension.

Joe was confused, but only for a moment. “Lucas Trowell?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe he knew Sophie was due back, and he kidnapped her and the other girl, or—”

“No, Mom, I don’t think he’d go to those lengths.”

“You don’t really know him,” Donna asserted. “You don’t see how he’s always looking at the cottage, watching for Sophie to come out. He hardly does any work, just bosses the fellas under him around. He tries to get close to Janine to get her to trust him, and—”