When Did We Lose Harriet? (11 page)

Finally Joe Riddley said in exasperation, “Jake, I never
was
in ancient Greece.”

At the look on Jake’s face, Glenna and I laughed so hard we cried.

We cried on our way to the hospital, too. That’s how worry and grieving wear you out. Not just by day-after-day exhaustion, but by sudden catches and claws at memory just when you’ve managed to forget.

At the window of my house…I
noticed among the young men, a
youth who lacked judgment.
Proverbs 7:6-7

Jake was worn out from trying to act brave about his upcoming surgery, so I was ready to go home early. Glenna insisted on staying at the hospital all night, but first she wanted to put on something she’d doze in more comfortably. I didn’t try to convince her to stay home. I’d have done the same for Joe Riddley.

As we drove up to the house, she remarked, “It’s just as well my car won’t be here. Jake had my keys on his ring, too, and he may well have left something in his glove compartment with our address on it.” Realizing what she’d said, she gave me a stricken look. “Oh, Clara, they’ll have his house keys, too. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

“Don’t worry,” I told her a lot more firmly than I felt. “The doors both have chains, and I’ll put chairs under the knobs. I’ll be fine.” I hoped it was true.

We flipped on more lights than two women needed, but it made us feel better. Then Glenna shut all the blinds and insisted that we hide the money right away. “We won’t want to fool with going by the bank in the morning, and I don’t want to be worried about it.”

Hiding money is a lot harder than it sounds. Every hiding place one of us found looked to the other like the first place any halfway intelligent burglar would look. Finally, I spied Glenna’s ironing basket under the sewing machine. Jake always jokes that putting something in that ironing basket is like flushing it down the toilet. In self-defense, he started ironing most of his own clothes the second year they were married. Mama was scandalized, but I was filled with admiration for Glenna.

In the bottom of the basket I found Jake’s old khaki fishing pants. Shoving the envelope down one leg, I crumpled the pants up a bit and shoved them under all the skirts, blouses, and tablecloths Glenna planned to get around to ironing one day.

When the phone rang, Glenna answered. “Hey, Joe Riddley!…Yes, he’ll have it first thing tomorrow morning. The doctor is real optimistic…Aren’t you sweet! And Clara has been so much help to us.”

He asked a question, and because Glenna could not lie, she admitted, “Well, I’ve been there most of the day, but Clara was out a few times trying to track somebody down.”

I managed to pinch her before she told him the somebody was a missing child, but that bloodhound nose of his had already scented trouble.

“Put her on,” he growled. “Who were you trying to track down, Little Bit?”

“Just somebody whose things I found this morning, and wanted to return.”

“What kind of things?”

It was no use lying. He always could tell. “Papers and some money.”

He was onto me like a mosquito onto a bare midriff. “A check?”

“Well, no, it was cash.” I frowned at Glenna, who smiled apologetically.

“How much?”

“Oh, three thousand dollars. Listen, honey, I need to say good-bye to Glenna before she leaves for the night.”

It didn’t work. He yelled so loud I had to hold the phone as far away as I could reach, and he was still clear as a bell. “You been carrying around three thousand dollars? After you’d already been robbed once? Of all the tomfool things! How long did it take you to find the owner?”

He’d find out eventually. “I haven’t yet, but don’t worry. I’m taking the money to her family tomorrow, and I’ve found a real good hiding place.”

When I told him where it was, he snorted. “Well, Little Bit, let’s just hope you don’t get a burglar who needs fishing pants.”

It was barely nine o’clock, but after Glenna left, I decided to go straight to bed. It seemed like a year since I’d arrived the night before. Had I really never heard of Harriet Lawson then?

Almost as soon as my head touched the pillow, I was asleep.

The brown-haired toddler clung to the gate and shook it with all her might, but the latch held firm. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

The slight figure on the sidewalk, little more than a child herself, scarcely checked her step. She wasn’t going back. No way! No more diapers, no more sticky, messy feedings. No more crying all night.

She gave herself a shake of relief and determination and strode off down the hill, the child’s wails propelling
her faster and faster toward the bus stop. Reaching into her duffel bag, she put on earphones and tuned in her private music, loud. When the bus arrived, she climbed aboard without a backward look.

Still the brown-haired toddler clung to the gate. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

I woke gasping, bathed in sweat, my heart pounding so hard I both heard and felt it in my ears. The dream had been so real that the baby’s wails still echoed in my head.

I knew I wouldn’t go right back to sleep, so I turned on the bedside lamp and took out a mystery novel I’d bought to read during all those long free evenings I’d expected to have in Albuquerque. I hoped it wouldn’t be too scary, for in spite of what I’d told Glenna, I felt just a tad uneasy.

Flipping on the radio, I twirled the dial until I found a classical station to wrap me in a cocoon of Chopin. I managed to concentrate pretty well. After I’d read a bit, though, I got hot. I’d forgotten to turn down the thermostat out in the hall.

Jake and Glenna are more concerned with conserving energy than with being comfortable, so in the summer they keep their air conditioner far too high. When I’m there, I often creep out at night to turn it back a few degrees so I can sleep. I usually put it back before they wake up. And if you think that’s dirty, you need to know that at my house, Jake lowers the thermostat in winter. He’s even been known to go home without turning it back up, so Joe Riddley and I go around for several days shivering and thinking we are coming down with something before we figure out what’s the matter.

I was halfway across my room headed for the hall when, above the music, I heard a small crash. I froze and listened intently. It wasn’t followed by anything. “Must
have been an unbalanced dish in the drain,” I told myself firmly, opening the bedroom door.

“Scritch, scritch, scritch.” The noise was so soft I could almost be imagining it.

I drew back. If it was mice, they could carry away the entire kitchen so long as they didn’t come my way.

Then the noise changed to a soft “chunk, chunk, chunk.”

That must be a whopping big mouse.

Nobody has ever given me a medal for bravery, and I loathe stories in which a supposedly intelligent heroine walks straight into danger. I was certain, however, that we were being visited by a rodent of some kind. It seemed too slight for a burglar. Besides, Glenna and Jake have an open chimney, and from time to time squirrels fall down. I expected to find one feasting on tomato peelings in the wastebasket.

“It can’t be a person,” I reassured myself aloud. “This house has dead bolts and burglar bars, and I’ve wedged a chair under each outside doorknob. Nobody could get in.”

The den was so dark, though, that I decided to take the longer way through the living and dining rooms, where streetlights glimmered through the windows. I was so busy creeping that I failed to notice a dining room chair Glenna had pulled out earlier to set her purse on. I ran straight into the chair, toppling it with a crash.

The noise stopped.

The sunporch door slammed.

Feet pounded down the empty drive.

I ran to a front window and pulled back the blind. A shadow ran parallel to the drive in the darker shadow of Jake’s tall redtips. All I got was a glimpse when it reached the street. I wouldn’t have been willing to swear, but under a dark cap, I thought his hair was white.

I turned on the kitchen light. What I saw made me collapse onto the telephone chair in a breathless heap.

Before Jake glassed in the porch, the back door and one window opened onto it. Instead of moving the back door, he only put a glass storm door to the outside, leaving both the door with the dead bolt and the window still opening into the kitchen. When Glenna—who was helping him by painting trim—accidentally painted the kitchen window shut, Jake assured her, “That’s fine. We won’t need to open that window anymore, anyway.” When he added burglar bars to the house, because that window was so securely stuck and its panes were so small, he’d not bothered to put bars on it.

My recent intruder had pried open the sunporch door, found the back door dead bolted, and tried the window. He’d broken a pane to unlock it—that was the small crash I’d heard—then, when he found it stuck, tried to chip it open with a pair of scissors Glenna had conveniently left out there in a mending basket. He must have been jabbing at the seal with the closed scissors when I disturbed him.

I shook like a pompom at the Georgia-Florida game. “Dear God!” I whispered over and over. “Oh, dear God!”

If Ricky Dodd was the intruder, I’d certainly brought it on myself. “Bragging about having Harriet’s money, and flat out insisting he take Jake’s name and phone number,” I scolded myself. “Anybody could get the address from the phone book. MacLaren Yarbrough, you’re about as dumb as they come.” As early as it still was, with no cars in the drive and no lights showing, he may well have concluded nobody was home.

With trembling fingers I dialed 911. When the operator answered, though, I just couldn’t face another police interrogation that day. If the would-be burglar left prints, they weren’t going anywhere before morning. “Never mind,” I said. “It can wait.” I didn’t care what she thought.

I knew I’d never get back to sleep. At first I couldn’t even make myself lie down. I was shivering so hard I finally wrapped up in an old wool afghan I found on my closet shelf, but it did little to warm me. The chill seeped out of my bones.

Finally, still wrapped in the afghan, I lay down and tugged both the sheet and the bedspread over me. A second later I sat straight up, horrified.

That broken pane was too small to get through, but it was just what anybody with a key would need. If the boys who stole Jake’s car came calling now, they could reach through the hole, take off the chain, shove away the chair, unlock the door, and walk right in.

I went to the kitchen and put every pot and pan I could find on the seat of that chair and around its legs. That wouldn’t keep anybody from moving it, but they’d make a heck of a racket if they did. I went back for the afghan and stretched out on Glenna’s Duncan Phyfe living room sofa. If I couldn’t sleep, I could at least lie down.

Thoroughly frightened and miserable, I waited for dawn.

A cheerful look brings joy to the
heart, and good news gives health
to the bones.
Proverbs 15:30

The brown-haired child looked up the long length of him. “How long will you be gone, Daddy?”

“A while.” He spoke uneasily. “My new job is far away. But Granny will look after you. Be a good girl, now. You hear me?”

“Will you be back for my birthday?”

“I don’t know, honey, but you listen to what your granny tells you. I don’t want her calling to say you’ve been bad. Okay?”

“Can’t I come, too?” Her big brown eyes pleaded. He looked away.

“Sorry, honey. You’ll be better off with Granny. ‘Bye.” He bent and gave her one rough, quick hug, then ran lightly down the steps. “Thanks, Ma,” he called over one shoulder, “I’ll make it up to you.” He jumped into the shiny blue car. A woman with yellow hair was waiting with the motor running.

The brown-haired child ran to the gate and climbed onto the board at the bottom. She swung and watched, watched and swung, until his car was out of sight.

“Clara? Clara! Open the door! I can’t get in!”

Glenna rattled the front door and called again. “Clara!” As I struggled up through the cobwebs of my dreams to let her in, memories of the night before landed on my chest in one heavy pounce. I staggered to the door to let in Glenna and the dawn.

She gave the afghan and the dented pillow on the couch a puzzled frown. “Why were you sleeping out here?”

“I had a bit of trouble last night. But first, how’s Jake?”

“He’s going down at eight, they said. I came back now so we can get a bite to eat and get right back over there. What kind of trouble?”

“I’ll show you.” As I led her to the kitchen, I peered at my watch. Half-past six. I couldn’t brag that I was getting much more sleep in Montgomery than I had in Albuquerque.

When Glenna saw the broken window and heard what happened, she went white. “Oh, Clara, what if you hadn’t heard him? You could have been killed—or worse!”

“Oh, I don’t think he came to kill anybody,” I said more briskly than I felt. “I think it was that awful Ricky after Harriet’s money. He probably thought there was nobody home. We’ll need to call the police sometime today—I was just too tired last night.”

“I’ll call Carter Duggins, my cousin. He’s a policeman.”

I should have known Glenna would have a cousin who was a policeman. She has so many cousins in that neck of the woods that Mama told Jake on his wedding day, “You be nice to everybody you meet in Montgomery County, Jacob, until you find out how they’re related to Glenna.”

While she called, I rummaged in her closet looking for something else I could wear, but a skinny five-nine and a pleasingly plump five-three can’t share much. I finally put on a bright figured Sunday dress of my own, with a pleated skirt I always hope makes me look slimmer. As long as I was wearing the dress, I went ahead and put on the big red earrings and necklace and the red pumps I usually wear with it. If I looked like I was waiting for church school to start as soon as surgery was over, so be it.

“What did Carter say?” I asked as we sat down to breakfast in the dining room. Neither of us could stand to eat on the sunporch that morning.

“He promised to come over right away to check for fingerprints.”

“But we’ve got to get to the hospital!”

Glenna nodded and placidly buttered toast. “I told him that. I said I’d leave him a key under the back doormat.” I wondered if Montgomery police had a policy about using doormat keys to enter the scene of a burglary.

We stayed with Jake until he went down, then spent a while in the hospital chapel. I hoped her prayers were more coherent than mine. Whenever I tried to frame a sentence, it invariably came out
Please, God, please, God, please!
Finally Glenna rose and touched my hand. “That’s all we can do. Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”

If you have spent a morning waiting for someone you love to come through surgery, I don’t have to tell you about it. If you haven’t, I won’t. That’s one experience there is no need to rehearse.

I read my mystery novel and drank so much coffee I was considering going down to the hospital kitchen to teach them how to make it. The novel was good so long as I could keep my eyes on the page. As soon as I looked up and remembered where I was, I had a hard time breathing.

Sometime that morning I remembered to call the acting school in Atlanta again. They’d never heard of Harriet Lawson and didn’t think they had a fifteen-year-old there under another name, but would check their records and call me back.

They couldn’t call me back. Jake and Glenna not only don’t have a cordless phone, they don’t have an answering machine. If you want to figure out what to give somebody for Christmas, live in their house a few days. I told the acting school I’d call back later.

After an eternity or two, the surgeon came looking for us, beaming from ear to ear. “All done and done good.”

Glenna’s gray eyes shone and her hands trembled with joy. “He’s going to be all right?” I hadn’t seen her look like that since her wedding day.

“I think he’s going to be fine. His color and signs are real good. But he’s going to be in recovery most of the afternoon, sleeping it off. Why don’t you all go home and get some rest, then come on back this evening when he’s awake?”

We left feeling like two women who’d been run over by a Mack truck, slung in a pit, then suddenly and miraculously healed, and shown a sunlit open door.

“I think I could fly to the car if I tried,” I told Glenna.

“I think I could just fly on home.” She flung her arms around me and nearly cracked my ribs. “Oh, Clara, he’s going to be all right! He’s going to be all right.”

At the house, we found a solemn little man in gray coveralls calmly reglazing the back window. “Officer Dug-gins called me,” he told us. “Told me to fix this window and your back door and change all your locks.”

Glenna thanked him, fixed all of us a glass of tea, and started making bread. “Sit down and rest,” I urged her.

“I couldn’t sit still right now, Clara. I feel like going dancing or something.” She waltzed across her kitchen
floor. Glenna? Waltzing? My baby brother must have more to him than I ever suspected.

After the man left, we had a bite to eat and stretched out for a while. I soon heard Glenna moving about in her room. “I can’t rest,” she protested. If it had been Joe Riddley, I would have felt the same.

“How about if we go to Western Union to get the money Joe Riddley is supposed to have sent me,” I suggested, “then go to the mall and get me something to wear?”

“Oh, honey, let’s do! I might buy a celebration dress of my own.”

Joe Riddley had been more generous than I’d ever expected. I bought two skirts, three tops, a casual navy pantsuit, and a pair of navy flats with a pocketbook to match. Glenna splurged and bought not one but two very pretty dresses. “Even when you don’t like shopping—and heaven knows I don’t,” I told her as we loaded our bags into the trunk, “it sure does occupy your mind.”

But as soon as Glenna started the engine, she confessed, “I keep wanting to go on back over to the hospital, Clara. I know he’s sleeping, but I’d like to be there.”

“Why don’t you go, then? If you’ll give me a list, I’ll stay home and call people to report on Jake. I can also answer the phone, do a load or two of wash, and maybe even hit your famous ironing basket. Come back to supper—I’ll fix us a terrific Ain’t-God-Wonderful dinner.”

She’d barely left when the phone rang. The caller was male and sounded too young to be a police officer. He started out like the family member he is. “Cuddin’ Glenna? It’s Carter.”

“Hello, Carter. This is MacLaren, Jake’s sister. Glenna’s at the hospital—”

“Hey, Miss MacLaren! Jake’s told me a lot about you. How’s he doing?”

I didn’t waste time asking what Jake had told him. Jake’s opinion of my occasional involvement in little problems around Hopemore has never been high, and he’d probably told Carter all about them. “He’s doing real well, so far, but keep him in your prayers.”

“Yessum, I sure will. Listen, give Glenna a message for me. Tell her we dusted the windowsill for prints, but whoever it was didn’t leave any. I called a glazier—”

“He’s come and gone. Thanks, Carter. You didn’t find any shoe prints beside the drive, did you?”

“No, ma’am. Why do you ask?”

“Because I saw the man run down the driveway.”

“You
saw
the perpetrator? Why the dickens didn’t you call the police right then?”

I sighed. “It’s a long story. For one thing, I was worn out, and I thought I recognized him. If so, I know where to find him if he left any prints.”

“We didn’t find any prints at all. Sorry. But we got some blood smears where he cut himself, so if you’ll tell me where to find him, we can try for a match.”

I gave him Ricky’s name and where he lived, then added, “Carter, could you do me two big favors?”

“Why, yes, ma’am, if I can. What do you need?”

“First, I drove Jake’s car yesterday without his permission, and it got stolen.”

“Whooee! You are in big trouble.”

“Not yet. Jake doesn’t know. But I’m not sure the people down at the police station appreciate how much danger I’ll be in if that car isn’t back before he gets home. If you have any pull, could you stir them up a little?”

“It’s not my department, and I don’t have any pull at all, but I’ll try. What else?”

“Could you look through the records for the past six weeks to see if an unidentified fifteen-year-old female has been found anywhere in the Montgomery area—either dead or injured? A woman I was talking to has a niece
missing, but her husband is a stubborn old Bama grad who refuses to file a missing persons report. She’s real worried.” He sounded like the nice kind of young man who would not refuse a woman in distress.

“I can look, ma’am, but it may take awhile. We’re pretty swamped right now. The family really needs to file a missing persons report, you know.”

“You find somebody, and they will,” I promised grimly.

By the end of that afternoon, I was prowling the house as restless as a cat in a carrier. I called the acting school in Atlanta and got the news I’d expected: Harriet was not and had never been there. I tried to call Dee to see if I could come out in a day or two to take her the money, but nobody answered. I couldn’t read or find anything worth watching on TV, and it was too hot for a walk. I had just decided to call Lewis Henly to see if he’d learned anything from the girls at the center, when Josheba called me. “How’s your brother doing?”

When I told her, she heaved a huge sigh of relief. “That’s good. I tell you, Mac, all I’ve been able to think about all day was your brother’s surgery and Harriet.” She paused, then asked, “Did you call that place in Atlanta?”

“Yes. She isn’t there. I’ve also asked the police to check for bodies or accident victims.” That meant I had to tell her about the break-in, as well.

“Ricky!” Josheba exclaimed before I was halfway through.

“I think so, too. I just hope he won’t try again.”

“You need a gun, lady.”

Her concern warmed me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken to someone as quickly as I had Josheba—which was odd, considering I’d never had a
black friend (as opposed to acquaintance) before. However, I couldn’t agree to her suggestion.

“Not on your life, Josheba. I’d rather face my Maker having been shot than having shot somebody else. Besides, I’d probably wind up shooting myself. The police have promised to request a patrol on the street for the next few days, though, and sent a man by to fix the damage and change our locks.”

“Got any more ideas what we can do about Harriet?”

“I’ve decided to take the money out to her aunt’s and let them worry about her. I don’t have time to look for her right now. The only thing I thought I’d do first was call Lewis to see if the girls knew anything.”

“I already called him,” Josheba admitted a bit sheepishly. “He said Kateisha didn’t show up today, and none of the other kids remember the last time they saw Harriet. One thought Harriet might have gone to see her mother.”

“That’s the third time we’ve heard that. I wonder if her other aunt—her mother’s sister—would know?” I closed my eyes and tried to hear Nora saying the name the day before. “Eunice Crawley. She lives up in Chisholm. I think I’ll give her a call.”

We both searched our phone books, but neither of us could find her.

“Why don’t I run by the library and get her address from the city directory?” Josheba offered. “Then, if you have time, we could drive up there.”

I checked my watch. It was half past four. Glenna wasn’t coming home until seven, and Eunice Crawley would probably be home from work by the time we got there.

“If you’re working on a sainthood merit badge,” I agreed.