Twenty-Eight

“What can I do for you?” he asked. He sounded tired. Was he really tired, or just trying to discourage me from bothering him?

“I was just over at Nadine Hanrahan’s,” I said. “Did you know she’s leaving town?”

“No,” he said. Rather guardedly. “Should I be concerned about that?”

“Did you also know that her two-million-dollar mansion, which she certainly did not purchase on her college salary, is completely empty? No furniture, no pictures, not even any boxes?”

A pause.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “And you know this because . . .?”

“I peeked in all her windows while waiting for her to come home.”

“And then when she came home, she told you she was leaving.”

“No, I decided I didn’t want to talk with her after all, so I hid, and I overheard her arranging to stop her mail indefinitely and have a car pick her up at six p.m. tonight to take her to the airport.”

Silence on the other end, and then a sigh.

“Thank you,” he said. “I think. Why don’t you try to stay out of trouble for the rest of the day, and let us take care of Ms. Hanrahan?”

“Roger,” I said. He hung up.

I wondered if I should have mentioned the last phone call. To someone named Duke. There was nothing innately wrong with the name Duke, was there? So why did I keep picturing a hulking thug Nadine had hired to do something sinister and unspeakable?

My overactive imagination plus my dislike of Nadine, I decided. So even though the call raised my hackles, probably just as well I hadn’t mentioned it. No sense letting Chief Burke think I was totally irrational and paranoid.

I hurried back to the playground, and was relieved to see that Timmy was still happily climbing up the ladder into the tallest cabin and then sliding down one of the slides.

Rose Noire looked a little the worse for wear, though. She was sitting on a platform near the top of the log cabin structure with her feet over the side and her head and arms leaning over the railing. I’d have thought she was unconscious, except that her head moved slightly to follow Timmy as he ran across her field of vision.

“Auntie Meg!” Timmy shouted, when he saw me. He swooped down the slide and ran toward me, arms outstretched. When he reached me, he grabbed onto my legs, with both hands, almost knocking me down.

“Come watch me slide, Auntie Meg!” he pleaded.

“There you are,” Rose Noire said. “We were just going to look for you.”

We stayed at the playground for a little while, letting Timmy wear himself out on all the slides and swings and climbs. I let Rose Noire do the running around at ground level while I perched at the top of one of the playground structures, in a sort of lookout post, shouting encouragement to Timmy as needed and flipping through the classified sections of the bird and pet magazines I’d picked up at the bookstore on our way.