The Orange Cat & other Cainsville tales (9 page)

Laurel headed for the house. The young woman—Krista—stayed standing.

“This is Krista,” Jeanne said. “She works at the inn where you’re staying. You won’t see her there, though. She’s taking some time off.” Which was a discreet way of confirming this was the mother of the missing baby.

Krista looked at Ricky. “You’re a private investigator.”

“Uh, no. Sorry.” His gaze cut to me, too briefly for her to notice.

“Mr. Bates overheard you in the tavern,” Krista said. “He said it was the blond couple with the motorcycle. You were talking about investigating.”

“That’d be me,” I said. “I wouldn’t say I’m a PI, though. I don’t have my license yet. I work for a lawyer and just started a month ago. My first job out of college. Sorry,
second
job. First was waitressing.”

Nope, not a real investigator. At all. Which means I can’t help you. Sorry.

Krista didn’t return my smile. She just stood there, stone-faced, waiting for me to finish. I’d seen that expression many times, on Gabriel’s face. I knew what it portended, and sweat broke out along my hairline.

“We don’t have any private investigators,” Krista said. “Not here. Not anywhere near here.”

“But we have the police,” Jeanne said. “Who are—”

“Useless,” Krista said. “Less than useless. They act like I put Maggie down and forgot where I left her, and she’ll come back when she’s ready. She’s a three-month-old baby. Who disappeared from her crib in the middle of the night. Maybe that happens a lot wherever you guys are from, but it doesn’t happen here.”

“It doesn’t happen
anywhere
,” Laurel said as she brought out the teacup and plate. “That’s why the police are investigating. They really are, Krista.”

“By questioning me? My mom? Owen? We didn’t take her, but we’re the ones they keep asking.”

Which meant the police really were doing their job. Babies
don’t
disappear from their beds. Kidnapping like that is so rare that the police had moved straight to the far more common scenario—a tragedy that her family was covering by pretending she’d been snatched in the night.

“I want to hire you,” Krista said.

“These people are on vacation, child,” Jeanne said. “They are going to feel terrible telling you no, but they can’t stay. They have jobs waiting at home.”

“A few hours,” she said. “That’s all I can afford and all I want.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “The going rate for a private investigator is about fifty dollars an hour. I’ll double that as vacation-rate pay. I have four hundred.”

Laurel winced. “Krista, I know—”

“No, you don’t.” Krista turned to the other girl, her voice still calm. “I’m sorry, Laurel, but you don’t. I hear what people are saying. That maybe it’s for the best. I didn’t want to get pregnant. I didn’t want a baby. Totally true. But then I had Maggie. I want
her
. Whatever it takes, I want my daughter back.”

“Of course you do, child,” Jeanne said. “We know how much you loved that baby, and we’re all trying to figure out what happened. But hiring this young lady—”

“—is what I want.” Krista held out the money. “Just do whatever you can in four hours. I don’t expect you to find her. I just want a clue, a lead.
Something
.”

Yes, I wanted to help this girl. But I didn’t want to give her hope because that’s almost certainly how this would end. Hope and disappointment. Yet Ricky
had
heard a baby in the forest. That was a possibility we could check easily, and it’d be wrong to ignore it.

“Tell me how it happened,” I said.

Seven - Liv

I couldn’t have scripted a better “stolen by fairies” story than the one Krista told us. It was almost too perfect, which worried me. I looked at this young woman, so obviously grief-stricken, and I didn’t want to think she might have had anything to do with her baby’s disappearance. It would seem she didn’t, if she wanted to hire me. But that’s actually a common ploy. What better way to say, “I didn’t do it” than to hire an investigator or offer a reward? A nineteen-year-old hardly seemed likely to come up with such a scheme, but I’d been misled too often lately to trust my gut.

As Krista said, baby Maggie was only three months old. Too young to even roll herself over. Krista put her down at eight o’clock after a feeding and a bedtime story. Maggie fussed a bit, but Krista had a fifteen-minute rule—she wouldn’t check until Maggie fussed longer than that. She hadn’t.

Her next feeding had been scheduled for eleven. When Krista went in before bed, Maggie’s room seemed stuffy, and Krista cracked open a window. Maggie was soundly asleep, so following her pediatrician’s advice, Krista didn’t wake her and just set the alarm for a one o’clock feeding. The alarm went off. Krista went in and found the window wide open and the baby gone, along with her blankets.

A perfect fairy-napping tale, right down to the open window. Also a perfect
baby
-napping story. If you had to imagine how a child might disappear from her home, this would be it. Too perfect meant suspicious, which meant, like the police, I had to take a closer look at the family.

Krista Lyons. Nineteen years old. A single mother, living at home with
her
single mother. I suppose that’s why people whispered it might not be such a bad thing if Maggie disappeared. Thoughtless and cruel words, but maybe, to them, the baby’s disappearance was the best solution to a cycle of teen motherhood. It didn’t help that Krista appeared to have broken from that cycle already. She’d gone to community college right out of high school and had been studying to be a lab tech.

Last summer, she came home to work at the inn and had a fling with a guy she’d known in high school. Nothing serious—it seemed as if she’d hooked up with Owen Parr precisely because it wouldn’t amount to anything serious. He was a decent guy, part of the crowd she’d hung around with, now working at his dad’s garage. They’d used protection—she assured me of that. When she learned of the pregnancy, she considered terminating it but decided—along with her mother and Owen’s family—to have the baby, keep it and stay home for a year before returning to school.

“I
am
going back to school,” she said. “That’s always been the plan. Mom will move to Sydney with me in the fall and look after Maggie. We’ve been making it work. All of us. I didn’t plan to get pregnant, but when I did, I made my choice. As soon as I had Maggie, I knew it was the right one. If it hadn’t been, I’d have given her to Owen’s family. They’d said they’d take her. I could still do that, which is why there’d be no reason for me to do whatever the police think I’ve done.”

The situation reminded me of Ricky’s own birth. An accidental pregnancy between two mature young adults who made carefully considered choices with the support of their family. As with Ricky’s parents, Krista and Owen’s romantic relationship hadn’t lasted, but the co-parenting one had. Owen’s family helped out financially and took the baby two or three days a week.

I didn’t take Krista’s money. I told her I hadn’t decided whether there was anything I could do, and I’d check in tomorrow. Once she’d left Jeanne’s place, I said, “That’s Krista’s version. I need an unbiased second opinion. I’m not going to ask you guys for it. That isn’t fair. Who in town might give me another viewpoint? Maybe someone who agrees with the direction the police are looking—at the possibility something happened to Maggie, either intentionally or accidentally.”

“You won’t find anyone voting intentional,” Laurel said. “Krista and Owen grew up here. No one has a bad thing to say about either of them. In a town this size, if you’ve got something to hide, you’d better move away. We all know who drinks too much, who knocks their kids around, who goes to church on Sunday with their fingers crossed. No one says any of that about the Lyons or the Parrs.”

“You said no one would vote intentional. Accidental, though?”

“We’ve all thought it. Who wouldn’t? Sure, there are people who think a passing tourist stole her. Or fairies did. Or aliens. But most of us know that kidnapping is almost as improbable as fairies and aliens. This isn’t one of those cases you hear about where young parents mistreat or neglect a baby to death. Maggie was fine. Happy and healthy. But accidents happen. Babies get dropped. Or suffocate from a toy left in a crib. Could that have happened, and Krista freaked out and made up the kidnapping story? Maybe. She’d regret it right away, but by then the damage would be done, and if she told the truth, people would think she killed her daughter and lied to cover it up.”

“Do you think that’s what happened here?”

“I hope not. For everyone’s sake.”

#

We couldn’t follow up on Maggie’s disappearance until morning, so we pursued the only lead we could—the cries Ricky had heard at the swimming hole. I texted Gabriel before we left, asking if he’d found any evidence of actual fae baby snatching. He didn’t respond right away, so we climbed on the bike and headed up the highway.

When we reached the trailhead, I had a text from Gabriel, who said Patrick swore fae didn’t kidnap babies. Well, not beyond the changeling switcheroo that we already knew about. I texted back asking if it was possible they’d take a child with fae blood if they thought the parents weren’t suitable and there was no way to switch in such a small community.

He didn’t respond. That was just Gabriel being efficient—silence meaning “I’m on it.” We were nearing the swimming hole when he texted saying he was talking to Patrick, and it would be easier to speak directly—he had a few things to discuss.

I tried to call, but I was out of the service area. Ricky and I walked back about a quarter mile, and I could see the signal blinking in and out, but my calls weren’t going through. A follow-up text stayed in my thread, unsent.

“Maybe I should tell him to just talk to Rose,” I said to Ricky as we walked.

“Rose’s area of expertise is folklore. You need Patrick for the real stuff. Which you know. The problem is that you don’t like Gabriel dealing with Patrick when you’re not there to protect him.”

“It’s not—”

“You aren’t trying to protect Gabriel from the possibility Patrick would harm him—he never would. You’re not even trying to protect him from finding out Patrick is his father. I honestly think Gabriel won’t give a shit, but that’s not the point. You don’t like Patrick forging a relationship with Gabriel. You don’t think he has the right.”

“Which is none of my business.”

“I never said that. Patrick fucked up. Big time. He’s like the deadbeat dad who swans back in after his son’s grown and can’t expect anything. It’s a shitty thing to do. That’s what you’re protecting Gabriel from.”

“I would tell him who Patrick really is. But after the Gwynn thing . . .”

“I don’t blame you. Like I said, I don’t think Gabriel will care, so for now, let it ride. Patrick might want a relationship; Gabriel wants a resource. He’ll take what he needs and nothing more.”

“You’re right.”

“Love hearing those words.” He looked around the forest. “And I’d better get them from you now because I have a feeling this excursion will end with the opposite conclusion, at least when it comes to babies in the forest. The more I think about it—”

“Don’t second-guess. I know you aren’t sure what you heard. You
may
have heard a baby, in a spot where we definitely encountered fae, and the baby was snatched in classic fairy-napping style. We can’t ignore that.”

I listened to the forest. A few minutes ago, there’d been critters scurrying across the ground and the hesitant hoot of an owl, still considering whether it was too early to come out. Now I heard only the creak of boughs and the rustle of leaves. Beyond the forest, twilight had barely begun to fall. In here, it was dark with shadow, the sun’s last rays barely penetrating the thick canopy. We’d left the trail, following our own tracks from earlier.

When we reached the swimming hole, we headed up the incline to where I’d stripped on the rock.

He planted himself in his former spot and pointed left. “It came from over there.”

“I remember you looking that way,” I said. “I thought I really needed to step up my game if your attention wandered while I was stripping.”

“Nah, my attention wandered
because
you were stripping. A baby suggested we weren’t alone.”

“But that’s all you heard.”

“It only lasted a couple of seconds. One of those sounds where at first you’re sure what you heard, but when you don’t hear it again, you start coming up with alternative explanations. I figured it must have been a bird or an animal.”

“Stay there and close your eyes.”

“You aren’t going to strip and jump off the rocks again, are you?”

“Later. For now, we’re working on auditory-recollection cues.”

He shut his eyes. I scampered behind a bush ten feet to his left and said, “Wa-wa-wa.”

“Is that supposed to be a baby? Or Charlie Brown adults?”

“Work with me.”

“Do it again.”

I did, and he said, “It was farther away.”

I took up position under a tree and tried again.

“Better,” he said. “But head left.”

I followed his directions. As I backed up, I was making my baby noises when I tripped and crashed ass-first into a thicket. Twisting to rise, I saw that the grass had been flattened, as if a fawn had lain here.

“You okay?” Ricky called.

“Just clumsy.”

“Well, the direction sounds right.”

I looked at the thicket again and thought of a whole other kind of baby animal nestled in it. I took out my penlight to shine over the inside of the thicket. There, caught on a bramble, I found threads. Pale yellow ones. Like the kind that might be used for a baby blanket.

I called Ricky over and told him what I’d found. He crouched outside the thicket. When I saw he was looking at the ground, I shone my penlight there to see a footprint. A bare humanoid footprint.

I took the yellow threads and folded them into a piece of notepaper. As I was doing that, Ricky’s gaze swung toward the rock over the swimming hole.

“Hear something?” I whispered.

His lips compressed. I knew the look. He hadn’t necessarily seen or heard anything, but detected it with another sense, one that made him far less comfortable saying yes.