Moving Target (30 page)

There was no answer.

She ventured as far as the dining room door and opened the gate, allowing the dogs into the kitchen. Just inside the dining room, she almost stepped in a mess that one of the dogs had left on the floor. LeAnne rounded on them. “You bad dogs,” she exclaimed. “What have you done!”

Knowing they were both in trouble for what one of them had done, the dogs shut up at once. That was when LeAnne noticed how quiet the house was. Her mother was more than slightly hard of hearing and always had the radio blaring out country music at full volume from one end of the house to the other. There was no music playing.

“Mom,” LeAnne called again. She went back to the kitchen and checked Phyllis’s purse. Her phone was there, tucked in the outside pocket. So were her car keys. Wherever LeAnne’s mother had gone, she was most likely on foot.

Grumbling under her breath, LeAnne armed herself with a fistful of paper towels and returned to the dining room to clean up the mess while the dogs watched her warily from the sidelines. It turned out that pile wasn’t the only dog-related problem in the house. In the living room, she found the chewed remains of her beloved jade plant. Grown from leaves from her grandmother’s plant, it was the only potted plant of any kind that LeAnne Tucker had managed to keep alive, and she had carefully moved it from Phoenix to Austin when she and the boys left Arizona. Now the plant’s stem stood utterly denuded while remains of the chewed leaves lay scattered around the room. “You bad, bad dogs!” she screeched. “Bad, bad, bad!”

Duke and Duchess slunk away together. It was only while LeAnne was cleaning up the second disaster that she began to worry. She remembered her mother telling her that Duke, a rescue, was afflicted
with a serious case of separation anxiety; that was why she had brought Duke and Duchess along rather than leaving them in a kennel or with a dog sitter. It was also why the dogs rode in the car with Phyllis when she drove back and forth to the hospital from San Leandro.

If Phyllis had been gone long enough for the two dogs, or even one of them, to get into this amount of mischief, she must have been out of the house for some time. So where was she? What had become of her?

By the time LeAnne had cleaned up the living room, she was no longer thinking about eating a sandwich. She located the dogs’ leashes, put them on, and took them out for a walk. Then she loaded the dogs into the Taurus and spent half an hour driving up and down the streets of the neighborhood.

When there was no sign of her mother anywhere, she went back to the house, where she pulled her mother’s phone out of her purse. There were no clues. The last outgoing call on Phyllis’s phone was to LeAnne as was the last incoming call. Even more worried, LeAnne phoned the high school and had them call Thad to the office to speak with her, but he was no help, and neither was Connor. Neither of the boys could shed any light on their grandmother’s plans or whereabouts.

LeAnne’s next call was 911, where the emergency operator was less than helpful. How old was her mother? Seventy-two. Was she in good health? Yes. Did she have any mental deficits? No. Had LeAnne checked with local hospitals to see if she might have been taken to an emergency room and admitted as a patient? No. Right now what she wanted to do was place a missing persons report.

“That’s not possible,” the operator told her. “You’ve already told me that your mother is an adult in good mental health. The San Leandro Police Department doesn’t accept missing persons reports until after an adult has been out of contact for at least forty-eight hours. You’ll need to call back then.”

Fighting off panic, LeAnne called all five hospitals in San Leandro. No dice. It was only then, almost three hours after arriving home to find
her mother missing, that LeAnne Tucker broke down and called Sister Anselm.

“The cops won’t even talk to me about this,” she sobbed into the phone. “The emergency dispatcher said it’s too soon to try calling them in, so what do I do in the meantime? If this is related to that threat, what are we supposed to do about it if the police won’t lift a hand? The card said whoever it was would be in touch. Has anyone tried to contact Lance?”

“Not that I know of,” Sister Anselm said. “At least I haven’t seen anyone come through here. Let me get in touch with Mr. Simpson and see if he has any suggestions. I’ll get right back to you.”

While she waited for Sister Anselm to call back, LeAnne took the dogs and went to collect Connor and Thad from school. Thad was annoyed because he didn’t want to miss basketball practice while Connor was overjoyed to ride in the backseat with Duke and Duchess. Back at the house, Thad slammed off into his bedroom, while Connor parked himself and the dogs in the family room to watch
Scooby-Doo!
. When Sister Anselm called, seemingly an eternity later, LeAnne took the call in her bedroom.

“Sorry,” Sister Anselm said. “For some reason, Mr. Simpson’s phone went to straight to voice mail. There’s at least a seven-hour time difference between here and Zurich, so he may have turned off his phone overnight. I sent him an e-mail and a text. I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear anything.” There was a pause. “Wait. I’m hearing from him now.”

LeAnne waited. Eventually, Sister Anselm came back on the line. “He can’t use his phone right now, but he’ll send you a text.”

LeAnne sat on the edge of her bed, feeling helpless and clinging to her phone like a lifeline. Soon the text came in.

Sister Anselm says your mother is missing and that the 911 operator wouldn’t take the report. Did you speak to anyone about the earlier threat?

LeAnne stared at the screen and flushed with guilty embarrassment before she replied, fumbling with clumsy fingers on the screen.

No. I wanted to have a sandwich before I tried talking to them. That’s when I discovered Mom was gone. I got both boys from school. They’re here with me. I don’t know what to do.

The reply from B. Simpson was almost instantaneous. He was obviously far better at texting than she was.

Is there any sign of a break-in?

No.

Do you have any contacts with the San Leandro Police Department—anyone you could turn to without going through the official dispatch line?

LeAnne thought about that. At last she remembered the business card that had been hidden in among her bills. Detective Richard Hernandez.

Maybe. I’ll go check.

Slipping the phone in her pocket, she hurried out to the kitchen. Naturally, her mother had emptied the trash between the time LeAnne had thrown out the business card and the time she had disappeared. LeAnne went out through the back door and opened the garbage bin. She had to dig past the doggy-bomb layer before she found that morning’s trash.

Moments later, she replied:

Got it. Name and phone numbers. Detective Richard Hernandez. But why would he help me? He’s the guy who arrested Lance originally.

Again, B. Simpson responded within seconds.

For the same reason I’m helping. Maybe we both think Lance got hosed. Call him, and send me his numbers. I can’t call him right now, but I’ll be in touch with both of you in an hour or so, once I clear up a few things.

LeAnne sent the detective’s three listed numbers. Then she studied the card again. It was late in the day. It was possible the detective was at work, but it seemed more likely that he’d be at home. Squaring her shoulders, she dialed the cell phone number for the detective Phyllis Rogers had called “a nice man.”

As the phone started ringing, LeAnne crossed her fingers and hoped.

“Detective Hernandez,” he answered.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” she began. “I’m LeAnne Tucker.”

“Lance’s mother,” he said.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Is something wrong?” the detective asked. “He hasn’t taken a turn for the worse, has he?”

“It’s something else,” she said, feeling her throat constrict. “It’s about my mother. She’s missing.”

“The nice woman who’s been bringing Thad to practice?”

Obviously, “nice” was the operant word here.

“Yes,” LeAnne said. “That’s the one.”

“Have you called it in?”

“I tried to, but the person I talked to said no one would take a report because Mom’s only been gone a couple of hours. The thing is, she came here to look after my boys, and she never would have missed picking them up after school. She wouldn’t have gone off and left her dogs behind, either. We believe that a threat to our family was sent to
Lance’s room at the hospital in Austin last night. This situation may be related to that.”

“What kind of threat?”

“Someone sent Lance a bouquet of flowers without saying who sent them. In the envelope, there was a photo of my mother and of my younger son, Connor, Lance’s little brother. They were getting into my mom’s car, and the photo was taken on our street here in San Leandro. The message that came with it said, ‘We know where they live.’ ”

“Did you mention any of that to the dispatcher?”

“I tried, but she didn’t exactly listen.”

“I’ll listen,” Richard Hernandez said. “I’ll be right there.”

“Do you need the address?”

“No,” he said. “I remember where you live. I’ve been there before, remember?”

The phone call ended. LeAnne was standing with the phone in one hand and the business card in the other when Connor came into the kitchen. “I’m hungry,” he said. “When’s dinner?”

She rummaged through the fridge, found bread, butter, and cheese, and whipped out a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches. Connor and Thad were hunched over the table eating when the doorbell rang.

LeAnne had a moment of déjà vu. There was that other time she had opened the front door to find Detective Richard Hernandez standing on her front porch, holding up his badge and ID. That had been the worst day of her life. She had stood in stricken silence as Lance had been handcuffed and hustled into the back of a waiting patrol car.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the memory aside and swung the door open. This time when she saw Detective Hernandez standing there, she was beyond grateful.

“Any sign of your mother?” he asked.

LeAnne shook her head. “Not yet.”

“May I come in?”

“Please,” she said. “And thank you for coming.”

I
t was snowing when they got to White Plains, not so much that they couldn’t leave after clearing customs and refueling, but enough that the aircraft had to be de-iced before takeoff. In the airport lounge, Ali overheard someone tell the pilot that it was a good thing they were scheduled to fly out soon, because the overnight snow was expected to turn into a blizzard by morning.

For most of the time they were on the ground, B. was on his phone. Ali left her phone turned off and in her purse. Her mother would be provoked by her daughter’s long silence, but with her cloned phone out there somewhere, that seemed to be the best idea.

“Okay,” B. said when they’d reboarded the plane and were waiting for the de-icing. “We’ll be flying directly to San Leandro rather than Austin.”

“Still no word on the missing grandma?” Ali asked.

“Not so far,” B. said. “I’ve been on the phone with Detective Hernandez of the San Leandro Police Department. He’s the guy LeAnne called in to help. He says that since there’s no sign of a struggle at the house, and since Phyllis Rogers isn’t considered an ‘at risk’ adult, his hands are tied. San Leandro PD is sticking to their original forty-eight-hour requirement.”

“In other words,” Ali said, “if it is to be, it’s up to us?”

“That’s right. Without other feet on the ground, ours had better be.”

“What about Sister Anselm?” Ali objected. “If LeAnne isn’t in Austin, and if we’re not going to Austin, shouldn’t we have someone there at the hospital with her?”

“Funny you should ask,” B. said. “I put that very question to Bishop Gillespie. He has a friend in Dallas, Father Michael McLaughlin, a retired priest who also happens to be a former Navy SEAL. He’s already on his way. I called Sister Anselm and let her know that backup is coming.”

Ali laughed. “I guess we can stop worrying about her, but what about Lance? How’s he coping with the idea that his grandmother is missing?”

“He’s in a state, convinced that whatever happened to her is all his fault.”

“No one has contacted him or made any demands for her safe return?”

“Not yet, at least not as far as Sister Anselm knows. She said a boy from San Leandro High who was in Austin today for a conference of some kind came by the hospital and dropped off a gift and a get-well card. The gift was a computer. What makes that interesting is the kid who did it is Andrew Garfield.”

“That’s intriguing,” Ali said, supplying some of the information she’d gleaned from her research. “He’s the co-captain of the science team and, as near as I can tell, he’s the school superintendent’s son.”

“That makes sense,” B. said. “The card was signed by all the kids in the computer club, and that’s who sent the computer.”

“I’m not buying that,” Ali said. “The computer club exists under the aegis of the school system whose server Lance Tucker hacked. I can’t imagine anyone in the district would approve spending that kind of money on someone with Lance’s public track record. No faculty adviser in his right mind would let the kids get away with that, certainly not one who wanted to keep his job.”