Vanishing Acts (3 page)

Chapter 4
A Nightmare at Soccer Tryouts

B
y the time eighth-period science rolled around, Madison had started to get the hang of junior high. She'd figured out where her classes were, where the seventh graders hung out, and where the eighth graders ruled. But she still hadn't seen Ann, and she was convinced that something bad had happened to her.

When you grow up in a house where a call from prison in the middle of the night is not an odd occurrence, and murder weapons are discussed over cornflakes, you tend to think the worst. And Madison was thinking the worst when she slid into a random seat in her eighth-period science class. She was so preoccupied with imagining ghastly scenarios that she only half heard the teacher drone on about how great science class was going to be—something she ordinarily would have been excited about.

“Hey,” a voice whispered, “you okay?”

She looked up. The boy sitting next to her was tall and gangly with clear green eyes, a smattering of freckles across his nose, and ginger-colored hair that spiked in places and was pressed flat in others.

“I guess,” she whispered back, not wanting to attract attention.

“What word is always spelled incorrectly?” he said. Madison was thrown off. She began cycling through words in her head, puzzled.

“Um, I don't know,” she said quietly.

“Incorrectly!” he whispered. Madison was stunned for a moment and then, against her will, let out a giggle and rolled her eyes.

The teacher stopped talking and stared at Madison.

“I hope I'm not interfering with your tête-à-tête, Miss . . . ?”

“Uh, Madison. Madison Kincaid,” she answered, feeling her face turn tomato red.

“And your gentleman friend is?”

“Jake Stephenson, sir,” the boy answered.

“Well, Miss Kincaid and Mr. Stephenson, do I have your permission to continue?”

“Sorry,” Madison mumbled. Ann was temporarily forgotten. This really wasn't the way she wanted to end her first day in junior high.

As soon as science was over, Madison got up to hurry to the girls' locker room to change for soccer tryouts. As she walked out of the science class, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“This is for you,” the red-headed boy said as he handed her a folded piece of paper. Madison quickly opened the sheet. It was a goofy cartoon of the science teacher yelling at them. Madison grinned and looked up, but the cute red-haired boy was gone.

That was really weird, Madison thought. And it was confusing. Why had . . . she couldn't remember his name because she'd been too embarrassed by the teacher when the boy had said it. Did he want to be friends? Madison had never had a good friend who was a boy. Oh well, this was no time to think about something like that—she had to concentrate on soccer.

As soon as Madison got into the locker room, she pulled on her shirt, shorts, shin guards, socks, and cleats. Walking out to the soccer field, she couldn't help but notice that Ann was not among the girls trying out for the team.

“So you weren't nervous about junior high, you were worried about soccer tryouts.”

Madison turned and found the same boy standing next to her, dressed in soccer gear.

“Oh, hi . . .”

“Jake. Sorry I didn't get a chance to introduce myself formally.”

Madison liked Jake's southern accent, and he certainly had better manners than the boys at Lewis and Clark Elementary.

She found herself blushing. “I'm Madison.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Thanks for the drawing.”

“No problem.”

“And I wasn't worried about school or soccer tryouts.”

“Not concerned about soccer tryouts, huh? You must be pretty good,” Jake said, smiling.

“I'm not amazing,” Madison answered, embarrassed and blushing for the third time that day. “But I can kick a ball. I just don't want to be stuck on the bench this year.”

“You'll do fine.”

“What I'm really worried about is Ann. She's my best friend and I haven't seen her all day. We've been teammates since we were five years old, and she would never miss soccer tryouts.”

“I'm sure she'll show up,” Jake said, looking concerned. Madison thought he was about to say more when he suddenly got distracted by something that was happening on the field. “It looks like tryouts are starting. I've got to go. Good luck.”

Madison joined a group gathered around the girls' coach. Coach Davis was tall and gaunt with shoulder-length ash blond hair and a pale complexion. She was wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt, and she bounced a soccer ball in the palm of her hand as she spoke.

“Hello, ladies. Welcome to tryouts for the best junior high soccer team in the city. I see a lot of familiar faces. Good to see you back, Marci,” Coach said, smiling at the eighth grader who had taunted Madison at lunch. “You ready to help our team win the city tournament again? Hey there, Ashley, Jennifer—good to see members of our winning team back for more.

“I also see a lot of new faces. I hope you're good—because our team is excellent and we won't take just anybody. I want to see great soccer today. Let's start so I can see what you're made of.”

Coach Davis had the girls run laps before starting their drills. Then she led them to one end of the soccer field and made them jog in place. Every few seconds she called “Left!” and the girls had to reach down to the grass with their left hand. Then she'd call “Right!” then “High knees!” Starting to work up a sweat, Madison looked around to see who was keeping up and who was lagging. This was the first soccer tryout she'd ever done without Ann to trade glances with.

For the next drill, Coach Davis got the girls in a line, told one of the eighth graders to guard the goal, then walked to the eighteen-yard box. The girl at the front of the line had to dribble twenty-five yards and pass the ball to the coach. The coach would then redirect the ball to the left or right and the girl would have to shoot the ball “one-touch” at the goal. It was her turn. Madison took a breath and focused. Her pass went straight to the coach. Then she timed the coach's pass perfectly, striking the ball with the laces of her cleats. She watched it sail past the goalkeeper to the upper corner of the goal. Madison wanted to shoot her hands into the air and shout, “Goal,” but she knew better than to show off when she was trying to make the team, so she jogged away with her heart beating rapidly. Her eyes were down, but she could sense Marci glaring at her.

After a quick water break, Coach Davis set up teams for a scrimmage on a small patch of field outlined by bright orange cones. Marci was part of the five-girl team to which Madison was assigned. The goals were marked by more cones about four feet apart. A ball sat in the center of the field. When the coach blew her whistle, Madison raced toward the ball. She was almost to it when someone slammed into her side and she went flying. When she looked up, Marci was kicking the ball through the goal. Then Marci turned, looked straight at Madison, who was still sprawled on the ground, and smirked.

“Great hustle, Marci,” Coach Davis shouted.

Madison got up and brushed herself off. She was angry but couldn't give Marci the satisfaction of showing it.

“Good goal,” she shouted instead.

Coach Davis mixed up the teams and Madison found herself facing Marci. When the whistle blew, she gritted her teeth and got to the ball first. Marci charged at her. Madison faked left. Marci committed and Madison shifted to the right, running around Marci. She was getting set to take her shot on goal when one of Marci's friends threw an elbow, catching Madison in the eye. On the turf again, Madison looked over at the coach, but she was bent over her clipboard making notes. Choking back her fury, Madison decided that the best revenge would be making the team. She would show Marci and her friends that she could take everything they threw at her and
still
outplay them!

The rest of the scrimmage was a blur. Marci and her buddies harassed Madison whenever they got the chance, but Madison did not end up on the ground again. She scored twice before the whistle blew and it was time for a break.

After a few more drills, the coach signaled the end of the tryouts and the exhausted girls jogged back into the center circle and dropped to the grass.

“Great job, ladies, great job!” Coach Davis said. “I saw a lot of skill out there today, and I know we're going to have another championship team. I'll post the list of those of you who made the team on my office door tomorrow morning at eight a.m. Not everyone will make the team. Don't be discouraged if you're not on the list. Keep playing. I can give you the names of a few great soccer clubs where you'll be able to practice your skills and hopefully make the team next year.”

Madison got up and brushed the grass off her legs. Club soccer! No way. She started to walk away. Then she remembered Ann. She ran over to the coach.

“Excuse me, Coach Davis? Is this the only time that people can try out? Like, if a girl missed it? Do they have a chance of making the team?”

“This is the only tryout, honey. The club teams take players all year. But serious players should have shown up today.”

This wasn't good, Madison thought as she walked to the locker room. Ann couldn't play club soccer! She and Madison had been on the same team forever. They
had
to be teammates!

Chapter 5
The Shelby Case

W
alking to her father's law office after practice, Madison imagined terrible things happening to Marci. Maybe she would be kicked off the team or break her leg. Yeah, that would be best. She would break her leg and have to sit on the bench and watch Madison score the winning goal in the championship game. Then Madison shook the thought away, feeling guilty. No leg-breaking. But someday Madison would show everyone how she could play.

Portland is a small city. The tallest buildings are no more than thirty stories high, and there are very few of those; and the city blocks are short. Kincaid and Kirk, her father's law firm, was in the heart of downtown. Madison covered the ten blocks from The Grove to her father's office quickly, not stopping to look at the shops along the way.

The law firm's waiting room was decorated with oil paintings of French country scenes. Two comfortable armchairs flanked a burgundy leather couch, and magazines were stacked on end tables between the chairs and the couch. Walking to the dark-wood receptionist's desk, Madison saw Peggy Welles finish a phone call. Peggy was seventy years old and gray haired and had been working as Hamilton Kincaid's receptionist since long before Madison was born. She was the closest thing Madison had to a grandmother. When Madison was younger, it wasn't unusual for Peggy to pick her up at school and take her to soccer practice or the law office, since Hamilton was frequently in court, at the jail, or knee deep in work at two-thirty in the afternoon.

“Is this Madison Kincaid, the junior high school student?” Peggy asked with a wide smile. “How was your first day?”

“Okay.”

Peggy took a gander at Madison's black eye and bruises, but she didn't freak out because she knew they were run-of-the-mill injuries for athletes.

“I take it you had soccer tryouts after school.”

Madison nodded.

“I'm going to go get you some ice.”

Peggy returned two minutes later and handed Madison a Baggie of ice and a towel.

“Thanks.”

“Think you made the team?”

“I hope so. I'll find out tomorrow.”

“Are you worried?”

“Not about soccer. I've had bigger things on my mind. I'm worried something might have happened to Ann. She might even have been kidnapped.”

“Oh, really?” Peggy said, fighting hard to keep from smiling. This was not the first time Madison had decided that one of her friends had met a horrible fate.

“I haven't heard from her since she left for Europe, I didn't see her in school today, and she wasn't at soccer tryouts. She hasn't missed tryouts, practice, or a game since we were five!”

“Have you tried calling her?” Peggy asked.

“I've left tons of messages on her cell. And her Facebook page is way out of date. Becca, Jessi, and Lacey haven't heard from her either. Something awful must have happened. I'm sure she got some strange European illness and is in a hospital in Lithuania or she was kidnapped by—”

“I'm sure she wasn't kidnapped,” Peggy said reassuringly. “There's probably a simple explanation for why she missed school.”

Peggy was echoing what Madison's friends were saying, but Madison's instincts were telling her something completely different.

“Is Dad in?” Madison asked, wanting to change the subject.

“He's in his office.”

“See you later.”

Madison walked down the hall. The door to Hamilton's office was open, and she rapped her knuckles on the jamb to get his attention. Hamilton's office was as disorganized as his clothes. Papers were stacked seemingly at random on his desk, more papers stuck out from between the covers of the law reports that filled his bookshelves, and case files were spread across parts of the floor. Madison was always amazed at how such a sloppy person could be so organized in court. More than once, her father had astonished her when he broke down a witness with a razor-sharp cross-examination or cited a case, chapter and verse, from memory when he was arguing a legal point to a judge.

Hamilton didn't look up from his work when Madison knocked. To Madison it seemed that most dads would be dying to hear about their only child's first day at school. Some days Madison felt like Hamilton didn't even know she existed. She knocked again, harder.

Hamilton looked up, confused. “Hey, honey,” he said, after registering it was Madison knocking. He didn't seem to notice her black eye. Inwardly, Madison sighed.

“Hey, Dad. How's the new case going?”

“It's coming along.”

“Did you find out if Mrs. Shelby was my second-grade teacher?”

Hamilton sighed and rubbed his eyes. “She probably is, honey. She taught at your old school.”

Madison was silent, crestfallen. Poor Mrs. Shelby. “I've never known someone who was murdered before.”

“We aren't sure if she was murdered,” Hamilton reminded her.

“So they haven't found the body?”

“No.”

“In Max Stone's
The Spy Vanishes
, the missing CIA agent was hit on the head and got amnesia. Maybe Mrs. Shelby is wandering around and doesn't know who she is.”

“I guess that's possible.”

“Has the crime lab tested the blood on the knife yet? Maybe it's not Mrs. Shelby's.”

“Maybe, but the crime lab says that the blood on the knife is Ruth Shelby's blood type.”

Madison frowned. Then she cheered up. “Don't a lot of people have the same blood type? Aren't there, like, only five, and most people have the main one?”

“Actually, there are four blood types,” Hamilton said. “O, A, B, and AB, and they can be positive or negative. Mrs. Shelby is a B negative, which is the second rarest kind, and so is the blood on the knife. A little less than two percent of the population has that blood type.”

“Two percent? That doesn't sound like that many.”

“Well, yes and no. There are around three hundred million people in the US, so two percent of three hundred million is six million people.”

“Wow, so it could be almost anyone's blood on that knife.”

Hamilton laughed. “I wish you were on all my juries.”

“Maybe someone with her same blood type came in and kidnapped her!”

Hamilton rolled his eyes, but kindly. “In a few weeks, when we get the result of the DNA test, we'll know if the blood is definitely Mrs. Shelby's.”

“DNA tests take that long?”

“Yeah.”

“And they really work?”

“They do. Only one percent of our DNA is different, person to person.”

“So my DNA is ninety-nine percent the same as the president's or a movie star's?”

“Yup, but one percent is different enough,” Hamilton said. “The police take a sample of the blood found at a crime scene and a sample of the blood of the victim. If that one percent matches, they have proof that the blood is the victim's blood, in this case Mrs. Shelby's. They also can test if the blood is the suspect's in the same way. The test is pretty accurate. The risk of matching a person's DNA incorrectly is one in a hundred billion if the test is done properly.”

“If the police don't have Mrs. Shelby's body, what will they use to match her DNA with the DNA found in the blood?” Madison knew she was peppering her father with questions, but she was fascinated and wanted answers.

“They searched the Shelbys' house, and the forensic experts would probably have found hair or some other fluid that can be used for a match. When you live somewhere, you leave your DNA all over—hairs from your head, eyelashes, snot on the Kleenex you always forget to throw out.”

“Yuck! And I do not leave my tissues all over! On TV they always take strands of hair from a hairbrush. That sounds easiest.”

“That's true, but I didn't see a hairbrush listed on the evidence sheet attached to the search warrant, so they must be using something else.”

“Well, if we find Mrs. Shelby alive we won't need DNA or hairbrushes. Has Mark Shelby said if he knows where his wife went?”

“Madison, you know better than to ask that. A lawyer can't reveal what a client tells him in confidence. But enough about the case,” Hamilton said, ending the conversation. “I have work to do, and you must, too. Why don't you start your homework in your office?”

Madison was frustrated that her dad had shot her down, and even more frustrated that he forgot to ask about her first day at school and soccer tryouts and that she hadn't gotten a chance to tell him about Ann. The Shelby case was absorbing him completely. Madison wished she knew a way for Hamilton to be as interested in her as he was in his cases.

Walking down the hall and through the file room, Madison came to the small, closet-sized room that had
Madison Kincaid
written on a plaque on the door. She had done homework in this office since she was little, but today she didn't start on her assignments right away. With her best friend and her second-grade teacher both missing, how could she think about math homework? She sat down at her desk and pulled out two legal pads, writing
Ann
at the top of one and
Shelby
at the top of the other. Maybe if Madison helped her dad solve the Shelby case, he would pay a little attention to her. She would finish her homework. Then she would crack both cases.

Madison's office wasn't very far from the reception area. With the door open, she could hear people talking, though she couldn't always make out what they were saying. Madison started on an essay for English class. She'd been working on it for half an hour when she heard Peggy ask her father about his visit to the jail to talk to Mark Shelby. Madison knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but she couldn't help herself. She got up and crept as quietly as she could into the file room, where the conversation between Peggy and her father would be easier to hear.

“How is Mr. Shelby holding up?” Peggy asked.

“He's never been in jail before, and he's scared. Murder is the only charge where you don't automatically get bail, but I've scheduled a bail hearing for Friday and I think I have a good chance of getting him out.”

Friday was a scheduled teacher-training day, and there would be no school. Perfect, Madison thought.

“What does he say happened?” asked Peggy, who was covered by the attorney-client privilege because she was Hamilton's employee. Unfortunately for Madison, the attorney-client privilege did not cover twelve-year-old volunteer file clerks.

“Exactly what the police reports say he told the detectives. He claims he forgot about his wedding anniversary and planned a golf outing with his friends. His wife was furious when she saw him getting ready to leave, and they had an argument. He says he was angry when he left and his wife was very much alive.”

“Do you believe him?” Peggy asked.

“Yes, but . . . ”

“But what?” Peggy pressed.

“I think he's hiding something. I just don't know what it is. But there's something he's not telling me. I have my investigator looking into it. There's something about his story that just doesn't add up.”

Madison heard Hamilton move toward the door. She scurried back into her office and pretended to be engrossed in her work in case he looked in on her. But she wasn't thinking about her essay. She was thinking about Mark Shelby, and she was wondering what he was hiding from her father.