FOUR

Sam slowly turned the coffee mug Trula had handed him so that he could read whatever was written on it, but didn’t want to appear obvious.

IN EVERY REAL MAN IS A CHILD WHO WANTS TO PLAY. NIETZSCHE

Well, yeah. Who doesn’t know that?

“We have orange-pecan muffins this morning,” Trula was saying. “Help yourself. I’m assuming you already had a decent breakfast?”

“Oh, sure.” He nodded, then met her questioning eyes from across the room, and felt compelled to tell the truth. “Well, actually, I had a donut I picked up when I got my coffee at that convenience place across the street from the motel.”

She appeared to look him over, as if to assess him somehow. “Sit down and I’ll make you some eggs.”

“Oh, no. Don’t bother. You don’t have to…” He protested, but there was that stare again. Trula pointed to the kitchen table, a farmhouse-style affair of planked oak with a banquette that wrapped around two sides to form an L.

Sam sat. He was still sitting when Mallory came through the back door.

“We’re having eggs this morning,” Trula told her without turning around.

“What kind?” Mallory placed her handbag on the table and smiled at Sam.

“Brown organic ones.” Trula’s sarcasm was unveiled.

“I know that.” Mallory rolled her eyes and turned to Sam. She stage-whispered, “That’s all Trula buys. There should be a sign over the front door: Abandon hope of ever eating junk food again, all ye who enter here.”

“Very funny,” Trula muttered.

“Junk food is not food.” A small dark-skinned girl of perhaps four or five appeared in the kitchen doorway. “It will make you fat and give you headaches and make your teeth soft.”

“You tell them, Chloe.” Trula smiled broadly as the girl skipped into the kitchen. “Child is smarter than most of the adults I know.”

“Chloe, this is Sam,” Mallory said. “He’s going to work with us starting today.”

“Hello, Sam.” The child approached the table solemnly, as if she, too, were sizing him up.

“Hello, Chloe,” he returned the greeting, and wondered who she belonged to.

“Do you eat junk food?” She climbed onto a chair opposite him and studied him with large brown eyes.

“Sometimes.” He nodded and tried to look contrite.

“Trula won’t let you have bad food here. She only makes good things to eat and makes everyone eat it, even if it’s something you don’t like,” Chloe confided and Mallory choked back a laugh.

“What did I make you eat that you didn’t like?” Trula turned to ask.

“Chard,” Chloe answered without hesitation, “and Brussels sprouts.”

“Chloe is Emme Caldwell’s daughter,” Mallory explained. “When Emme has to go out of town, Trula keeps her company.”

“Chloe keeps me company,” Trula corrected. “She’s my sous chef and number one baking apprentice.”

Chloe nodded and thanked Trula for the glass of milk the woman placed before her. She took a sip, then told Sam, “Me and my mommy are going to live in the house out back ’cause we can’t find one we like. Trula’s having people clean it while Mommy’s away. She went with Robert and Susanna to help look for Robert’s missing baby. Someone stoled him.”

Trula looked over Chloe’s head to Sam to explain. “There’s a carriage house on the grounds that has been unoccupied for who knows how long-at least since Robert’s owned the property-but it’s still in pretty good shape. We decided to spruce it up a bit so that Emme and Chloe could live closer to Emme’s work, and so that when Emme isn’t here, Chloe can stay with me. I’m hoping that it will be in move-in condition by the time they get back from this trip. That motel stay was too long for a child.”

“And I couldn’t have my kitty there,” Chloe added.

“Where is Foxy this morning?” Mallory asked.

“I let her out earlier,” Trula replied. “Chloe, do you want to go see if you can find Foxy while I finish making breakfast?”

“Uh-huh.” Chloe jumped off the chair and sprinted out the back door.

Trula closed the door behind her, then turned to Sam and said, “You’ll hear this soon enough, I suppose, so I might as well tell you right up front. Emme adopted Chloe as a newborn from a woman who was in prison for selling narcotics and who was killed there shortly after Chloe was born. Chloe’s father is-there’s no nice way to put this-a Mexican drug lord. A few months ago, he decided he wanted her-she’s his only child-so he put out a reward for whoever brought her to him in Mexico.”

“That’s pretty scary. Who’s the father?” Sam asked.

“His name is Anthony Navarro,” Mallory told him.

“Navarro is her father?” Sam frowned. As a former FBI agent, he knew the name well. “He’s real bad news.”

“So we hear. Emme was hoping Chloe would be safe here, but a few weeks ago, someone gave Navarro a tip that they were here in Conroy. He sent someone to look for her. Only the quick thinking of a member of Father Kevin’s parish saved Chloe from possibly being whisked away to sunny Mexico. We think the threat has been deterred for now, but who knows?” Mallory shrugged.

“We’re hoping that he’s looking elsewhere,” Trula added. “But none of us are willing to take any chances.”

“Navarro is definitely not one to mess with,” Sam told them.

Trula’s chin set solidly with reserve and she began to crack eggs into a bowl with a bit more vehemence than Sam suspected might be necessary. “No one is taking that child from her mother.”

“What Trula means is that no one is taking that child from Trula.” Mallory added. “She and Chloe are like best buds now. I pity the fool who tries to abduct that girl now. Hence the move onto the grounds here.”

Trula sniffed. “It was Robert’s idea.”

“After you planted it,” Mallory noted.

“Emme works long hours. Someone needs to watch Chloe when she comes home from school,” Trula countered.

“She could have hired a babysitter,” Mallory pointed out.

Trula fixed her with a glare, and Mallory smiled as if she’d been expecting the reaction.

“We all agreed that Chloe has to be protected,” Mallory told Sam. “And we all agreed there’s no safer place for her than here. She goes to all-day preschool at Our Lady of Angels so Kevin keeps an eye on her there, and Robert has beefed up security here at the house as well.”

“Which he needed to do anyway,” Trula said. “This big house and all these acres of grounds-for a while all he had was a puny little alarm system. Now, I’m not one to be paranoid, but when you’re Robert Magellan, you need to take some precautions. I’m glad he finally hired some guards and had the fencing and the alarms upgraded like I’ve been telling him to do for the past two years. I hate to think badly of my fellow man, but ever since Beth and Ian disappeared, and we didn’t know if they’d been abducted…” She shivered.

“How’s the search going?” Sam asked.

“It’s going,” Mallory replied. “No news. I’m thinking it’s going to take some creative thinking on their part to find that boy.”

“It was creative thinking on Susanna’s part that found the car in the first place,” Trula reminded her. “If Robert didn’t need her to run his life, he could hire her to work on cases. She’d make a crack detective.”

Sam watched Mallory open a cupboard and sort through a shelf of mugs until she found one that apparently pleased her. She filled it with coffee and returned to the table where she sat and added cream and sweetener. He craned his neck to read the writing on the mug. ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.

What, he wondered, was up with all the mugs?

“You met Susanna Jones last week as you were leaving. She’s been Robert’s personal assistant since before he even had his own company. Since the police put the case on the back burner, Susanna spent nearly every weekend traveling the route Robert’s wife would have taken to get back home from her sister’s in Western Pennsylvania. She took every side road, every mountain road, every hill and valley between here and Pittsburgh, until she found the place where Beth’s car had gone off the road and down the side of a mountain into a ravine where it couldn’t be seen from the road.” Mallory shook her head. “That’s determination.”