The Courage Tree

“You know,” Rebecca said slowly, and Joe noticed for the first time that she had a slight drawl to her speech. She was leaning against the van, her toddler in her arms and a look of amusement on her face. “That Alison is quite a character,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past her just to decide Holly and Sophie didn’t have enough fun at camp and take them off to some amusement park or something. What amusement parks are there between here and there?” She looked at her husband. “Where’s that Water World place?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Gloria insisted before Steve could respond. “Even if she wanted to, she’d know better than that.”

“That’s right,” Charlotte added. “I mean, Alison can be crazy and everything, but she knew we were going out tonight, and she would have come straight home. Plus, it doesn’t make any sense at all that we can’t get her on her phone. That’s what’s really freaking me out. No matter where she is, she has that phone on.”

“Well, batteries run out and phones break,” Sergeant Loomis said calmly. Charlotte was annoying him, Joe thought, but to the man’s credit, he was doing his best not to let it show.

“Could they have been kidnapped?” Janine spoke up, and only then did Joe realize how quiet she had become during this whole discussion. “I mean, by someone other than Alison?

“If they’re not back in a few hours, and if we have no reports of an accident, that’s something we’ll need to consider,” Loomis said. “Whether it be by Alison Dunn or someone else.”

“Please consider it now,” Janine said, a tremor in her voice. “Just in case that’s what happened. We can’t waste any time.”

“Right now,” the sergeant said, “I want to talk with each of you individually.” He pointed to Janine. “You first, Mrs. Donohue.”

“Are we suspects?” Steve asked, and only then did that thought occur to Joe. The parents were the first to fall under suspicion when a child disappeared. And too much of the time, they were guilty. He suddenly saw Steve and Rebecca Kraft with new eyes. They were a little too cheerful about this whole thing. A little too cavalier.

“I just want to see what information each of you has,” Loomis said. “Separately, you might remember something…be able to think of something that’s evading you now. And I’ll need to get more identifying information from you on the missing girls.”

Janine looked flustered. “Could you start with someone else?” she asked. “I need to call my parents first. I spoke to them earlier. They must really be worried by now.”

Joe touched her arm. “I’ll call them,” he said. She would hate dealing with Donna and Frank about this, and he didn’t blame her.

“Thanks.” Janine nodded, looking away from him. She was having trouble meeting his eyes tonight, he thought. She knew he blamed her for this, no matter how kindly he acted toward her now.

He watched her walk over to one of the police cars with Sergeant Loomis, then turned to Paula. “Be right back,” he said.

In the front seat of his car, he dialed the number for the Ayr Creek mansion on his cell phone, hoping Frank would answer. Neither of Janine’s parents would handle this news well, but Frank would be the calmer of the two.

“Hello?” It was Donna’s voice on the line.

“It’s Joe, Mom,” he said. He could see Janine sitting in the police car, the doors open to catch the faint breeze.

“Joe! I just tried to call you,” Donna said. “Do you know where Sophie and Janine are? Janine called hours ago to see if Sophie got dropped off here, but she hadn’t, and then I figured maybe they stopped at your house. Although I thought you were coming over—”

“Hold on, Mom,” he interrupted, then hesitated, not sure how to tell her. “I’m with Janine at the parking lot where Sophie and her Brownie troop were due to arrive. Some of the girls are back, but the car Sophie was riding in hasn’t shown up yet.”

Donna didn’t speak for a moment. “I thought they were supposed to arrive at three. That’s what Janine said.”

“Yes.”

“And they haven’t gotten there yet? It’s nearly seven-thirty!”

“I know, Mom.” He’d never stopped calling Donna “Mom.” When he and Janine split up, he’d tried to go back to addressing his ex-in-laws as Donna and Frank, but they had pleaded with him to continue calling them Mom and Dad. He’d been relieved. They were the only parents he had.

“We’ve contacted the police,” he informed her. “They’re looking for the car. They think maybe it had a breakdown or something.” It was a lie, but what else could he say?

“I told Janine not to send her.” Donna was already in tears, and Joe could hear Frank’s deep voice in the background asking her what was wrong. “Sophie hasn’t ever been away for an afternoon, much less at a camp a thousand miles away.”

“It wasn’t that far,” Joe said, although he certainly shared her concern. “I can hear Frank there,” he said. “Can you put him on?”

There was some fumbling with the phone, then Frank’s voice came on the line.

“What’s going on?” he asked, and Joe repeated what he’d told Donna.

“Janine isn’t a clear thinker these days,” Frank said. “She’s gone back to that crazy girl she used to be, all of a sudden. After this, I want you to go to court and get more say over what happens to Sophie, all right? Get veto power.”

Joe was already thinking of taking that step. “Well, for right now, we just need to get through this situation,” he said.

“Do you think this has to do with the gardener?” Donna had gotten on the extension.

Joe was confused, but only for a moment. “Lucas Trowell?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe he knew Sophie was due back, and he kidnapped her and the other girl, or—”

“No, Mom, I don’t think he’d go to those lengths.”

“You don’t really know him,” Donna asserted. “You don’t see how he’s always looking at the cottage, watching for Sophie to come out. He hardly does any work, just bosses the fellas under him around. He tries to get close to Janine to get her to trust him, and—”

“I know you don’t like him, Mom, but let’s not get into this now, okay?” Joe was no fan of Lucas’s, either, but it seemed unlikely that he’d had anything to do with Sophie’s disappearance.

“I’m always afraid that Janine will turn her back one day,” Donna continued, “just for a second, and Lucas Trowell will make off with Sophie. You hear about that happening all the time. It’s always the gardener or the handyman or someone who works nearby.”

It seemed far-fetched, but maybe Donna had a point. “I’ll ask one of the cops to take a drive by Lucas’s house just to make sure he’s there and that there’s nothing fishy going on, okay?” he offered.

He saw Janine step out of the police car. Although it was not yet dark out, the parking lot lights came on, and Janine stood uncertainly in the glow of one of them for a moment before walking toward the white van. There was a fragility about her that Joe had never noticed before. Not even during all those days and nights in the hospital, standing at Sophie’s bedside, wondering if she would live or die. A moment later, Sergeant Loomis got out of the car himself and waved to Joe.

“I’ve got to go,” he said to Donna.

“Should we come over there?” Donna asked.

“No, you sit tight. We’ll call the second we know anything.”

He passed Janine as he walked toward the police car.

“You okay?” he asked her.

She nodded, unsmiling, and he knew she was anything but okay.

“Too hot in there,” Loomis said, as Joe approached the police car. He wiped his damp forehead with a handkerchief. “Let’s stand out here and talk.”

Joe leaned against the closed door of the car, while Loomis asked him the predictable questions. Where had Joe been that day? What was his relationship with Sophie like? With Janine?

“Your ex-wife says you strongly disapprove of the medical treatment your daughter is receiving.”

“Yes, I do,” Joe said. “But I haven’t kidnapped her and taken her to the Mayo Clinic, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“And you didn’t want her to go to this camp, either,” Loomis continued. “How badly do you want to prove your ex-wife wrong about her decision to send your daughter there?”

Joe’s temper was rising, and he wondered if that was Loomis’s intent. “I would never use my daughter that way,” he said, working to keep his voice calm.

Loomis asked him a few more questions, about where he worked, about his relationship with Paula. Finally, he sighed and looked toward the clot of people a dozen yards or so away from where he was standing with Joe.

“Do you have any gut feeling about this?” he asked, once he’d seem to run out of questions. “Any instinctive sense of what’s going on here?”

Joe thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “I just spoke with my in-laws. Sophie’s grandparents. They have some concerns about their gardener. Sophie and Janine live on their property, so the gardener knows them. My in-laws think he’s a little too interested in Sophie, and they’re worried he might have something to do with this. I told them I’d pass that along to you, in case you wanted to swing by his house and just make sure he’s there…and that Sophie isn’t.”

“What do you think?”

“I think the guy’s maybe a bit more interested in little girls than he should be, but I frankly doubt he has anything to do with this.”

“Do you know his address?”

“It’s on Canter Trail. Over near Wolf Trap. I’m not sure of the number, though. It’s a small ranch sort of house. A rambler. Brick. But he actually lives in the wooded lot behind the house, up in a tree house, and—”

“Are you talking about that Trowell fellow?” Loomis looked interested.

“You know him?” Joe felt a flash of fear. Why would the police know Lucas? Could he really be the pedophile Donna and Frank feared him to be?

“No, not personally,” Loomis said. “I just know that he lives there. Everyone knows about the guy in the tree house.”

“Can you check to see if he has a record?” Joe asked. “His first name is Lucas.”

“Will do. And I’ll have someone swing by there.”

“Thanks.”

It was dark by the time Sergeant Loomis had finished his questioning of everyone in the group. He stood beneath one of the parking lot lights and drew them all together again with a wave of his arms.

“All right,” he said. “That’s it for tonight. You—”

“That’s it?” Joe asked. “What are you going to do? Who’s out looking for them?”

“Look, Mr. Donohue,” Loomis said. “We’re not miracle workers. We’ve got a situation here of some travelers not reaching their destination. They’ve covered about a hundred miles, through several counties, in a blue Honda Accord, not exactly the rarest car on the road, and we don’t have a clue if they might have taken off in another direction altogether or if they stopped at a rest stop and took naps on a picnic table or if they were kidnapped by someone or decided to stop to eat, or who knows? So there’s not much for us to go on right now. We’ll do all we can. We’ll have the patrol cars along the route keep a lookout for them. Not much else we can do tonight.”

“What about talking to people in shops or restaurants along the way?” Paula asked.

“Most departments don’t have the manpower to do that, ma’am. At least not at this point in the investigation. So for now, you should all go home and stick close to your phones tonight.”

Go home? Joe could not imagine being able to go home. He looked at Janine and knew she was thinking the same thing.

He moved next to her. “Let’s drive up to the camp,” he said. “Follow the route they would have taken.”

“We’ve already got that covered.” Loomis had heard him. “There’s no need for you to—”

“I want to,” Janine insisted.

“And we’re staying right here,” Rebecca said. “In case they’ve just been delayed somehow and are on their way back.”

The police officer sighed. “Most of you have cell phones. I’ve got all your numbers. Let’s make sure you’ve all got each other’s.”

Holly’s parents had no cell phone, but Paula said she would stay with them so that they could use hers. Joe was grateful to Paula for not suggesting she join Janine and himself on their drive. She knew he’d want this time alone with Janine.

They exchanged phone numbers with everyone, and he and Janine got into his car. Once they were on the road, Janine began to cry. She wept softly, her face toward the window, and he pulled the car to the side of Beulah Road and turned off the ignition.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, his hand on her shoulder.

She turned to him. The light from the street lamp lit her hazel eyes and settled in one tear that slipped down her cheek. “I’m sorry, Joe,” she said. “I’m so sorry I sent her.”

He bit his tongue against an angry retort. “You couldn’t have known this would happen,” he managed to say instead. He reached over and pulled her into his arms, felt her melt there in the comfort of his touch, and he knew without a doubt that he wanted her to be his wife again.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lucas turned his head from his computer and listened. Far below the tree house, something was moving. It was not unusual to hear sounds at night on this deeply wooded lot. There was the steady June buzz of cicadas and crickets, and the leaf rustling of raccoons and possums and an occasional deer. But this was the unmistakable heavy crunching footsteps of a man. Lucas held very still, listening.

“Mr. Trowell?” A male voice called to him from somewhere below.

Lucas quickly logged off the Internet. He left his small study, reaching in his pocket for the key to the room, and he carefully locked the door and pocketed the key before walking through the living room to the front door. Opening the door, he stepped onto the deck and leaned over the railing, slipping into the blinding glare from a flashlight.

“Yes?” he called, lifting his hand to block the glare.

The flashlight was instantly turned off. “Sorry,” the man said. He was now illuminated by the deck light, which fell in a soft glow over the trees and cast shadows through the woods. The light bounced off the badge on the man’s uniform, sending an icicle of fear up Lucas’s spine.

Damn.

“Are you Lucas Trowell?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Lucas said, wondering if the county would send a policeman on a Sunday evening to tell him his house was out of code in yet another way. The county was never quite sure what to do about his tree house.

“Can I come up there for a minute?” the officer asked.

“Sure.” Lucas leaned over the railing again to point to the broad trunk of the oak tree beneath his house. “Can you see the steps? They’re around the back of the oak.”

“Right. I see them.”

Lucas listened as the man climbed the stairs, cringing at the squeaking sound a couple of them made. They were not rotted or anything like that, but he knew he should fix them, anyway. He had so little time these days to get work done on the house, though.

He didn’t like the anxiety he felt as the policeman neared the top of the stairs. Did everyone feel a pang of guilt when a cop wanted to see them? Did everyone’s mind race, searching for the reason for the visit? Or did that happen only to a person with something to hide?

The policeman joined Lucas on the deck. He was a young guy—very young—blond and blue-eyed, and he was grinning. Lucas’s anxiety dropped a notch.

“Totally cool,” the cop said. “I’ve always wanted to see this place. Everyone talks about it, but I don’t know anyone who’s seen it up close.”

“What can I do for you?” Lucas asked.

“Do you actually live up here?” The cop was not ready to get down to business, and Lucas wondered if his banter was intentional. Was he trying to throw him off guard? “Or do you just come up to get away from the house every once in while?” He looked toward the small, nondescript brick rambler, dark at the edge of the woods.

“I live up here as much as is reasonable,” Lucas said. “I store things in the house, and I cook in the house. I don’t like to keep food up here. I think I’d have a bug problem. The trees go through the house, and I have a steady stream of ants and spiders as it is. We’re living harmoniously at the moment, but I wouldn’t want to encourage any more of them to visit.”

“Any chance I can see inside?” the officer asked.

“In a minute,” Lucas said. He’d had enough of the game playing. “First, though, tell me why you’re here.”

“Yes. Sure.” The young man looked embarrassed, and Lucas relaxed to see that the cop’s interest had, in all likelihood, been genuine and not some ruse to get him to open up. He’d been seduced by the trees. It was usually that way. People lost themselves up here. They forgot about everything else in the world, at least for a moment. “I’m Officer Russo,” he said. “You work over at the Ayr Creek estate, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, the little girl who lives there…”

“Sophie.” He felt his heartbeat quicken, but carefully kept his face impassive.

“Sophie. Right. She was away at a camp this weekend and she was due back at Meadowlark Gardens at three, but she and one of the other girls and their leader never showed up. So I’m talking to people who know her to see if they might have any information.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you saying the rest of the girls are back?”

“Right. They showed up on time, but they were riding in a separate vehicle.”

“Maybe Sophie’s ride got a late start?” Lucas offered.

“No. The other leader saw them take off ahead of her.”

He felt a sort of panic rise up in his chest. “Could they have been in an accident or—”

“We’re checking on all of that,” Russo said. “So far, they’ve just fallen off the map.”

“Well, I was aware that Sophie was going away for the weekend,” Lucas said. “I don’t know any more than that. I’m not even sure where she went.” That was a lie—and probably an unnecessary one—but he felt the need to play dumb to this cop when it came to Sophie.

“Have you been here all day?” Russo asked.

“Most of it,” he said.

“And when you weren’t here, where were you?”

“What are you getting at?” Lucas asked.

“Just routine questions,” Russo assured him.

“I took a drive to Great Falls to see a friend around one or so. I was back here by three-thirty.”

“Could your friend verify that information for me?”

Lucas sighed. He should have lied. “Do you think I have something to do with this?” he asked. “With Sophie being late?”

“We’re just checking out everyone who has any relationship to Ayr Creek,” Russo said easily.

Everyone with a relationship to Ayr Creek, Lucas wondered, or just the gardener Frank and Donna Snyder distrusted around their granddaughter?

“My friend could verify it, but I’d rather not put him in that position,” he said. That would make things very messy.

“All right, I think we can hold off on that for the moment,” Russo said. “Now can I have that tour?” He looked up at the second tier of the house. “How many trees is this thing resting on?” he asked.

“It’s built between four, actually,” Lucas said. “This one’s a white oak.” He pointed to the tree supporting the deck. “That second level is built on a shag bark hickory, and, it’s hard to see from here, but there’s another oak and a tulip poplar doing the rest of the work.”

Russo stomped his foot on the deck. “Feels sturdy enough,” he observed.

“Oh, sure,” Lucas said, as he opened the front door and led the officer inside. “On a really windy day, though, the whole contraption sways in the wind, and I start to wonder if I’m out of my mind to live up here. Other than that, it’s pretty secure.”

“Holy…” Russo exclaimed, as they walked into the living room.

It was the usual reaction Lucas got when he brought someone inside. The trunk of the hickory cut through the room. The floor was tongue-and-groove fir, the walls, shiplap paneling. Huge windows and healthy houseplants were everywhere. A sofa was built in along one side of the room, and three captain’s chairs provided the rest of the seating.

“This is something else,” Russo said. “I wish my wife would let me do something like this in our backyard. We have the trees for it, I think.”

Lucas switched on the light for the back deck, so that Russo could see the treetops through the windows.

“Unreal,” Russo said. “And you even have electricity. What do you do in the winter?”

Lucas pointed to the baseboard heaters. “I have heat,” he said, “and everything’s insulated.”

“Man, oh man.” Russo shook his head. “So, show me the rest. Where’s the bedroom?”

“Up here.” Lucas pointed to the covered stairway leading to the second tier. He climbed up ahead of Russo and opened the door to the bedroom.

Russo walked past him into the room. He glanced at the double platform bed and the dresser. An air-conditioning unit, unattractive but necessary, was in the bedroom window. “It must be great to sleep up here,” he said, opening the small closet at one end of the room and peering inside, and Lucas knew this was not merely a tour to satisfy Russo’s curiosity about his house.

“Ready to go down again?” Lucas was getting impatient.

“Sure.” Russo pointed to the blue splint on Lucas’s left wrist. “You must have carpal tunnel syndrome, huh?”

“That’s right.” Lucas said. He’d blamed the splint on carpal tunnel so often that it was beginning to feel like the truth.

“My wife has that,” Russo said, as Lucas led him down the stairs and into the living room again. “She got it from her computer job.”

Lucas tried to usher Russo toward the front door again, but the officer had noticed the locked door at the rear of the living room.

“What’s in there?” he asked.

“My study,” Lucas said.

“I’d like to see it.”

“It just has my computer and printer and some books,” Lucas said, walking toward the door. He reached in his pocket for the key. “I keep it locked in case any kids decide to come up here. I don’t want them to make off with my equipment.”

His heart thudded in his throat as he tried to remember how he’d left the study. Was there anything in clear view that might tweak the cop’s suspicions? He couldn’t remember. Thank God he’d thought to log off the Internet.

He opened the door about ten inches, enough so that Russo could see inside without actually stepping into the room.

“Nice,” Russo said, peering in, nodding. “Hey, I like that screen saver.”

Lucas followed his gaze to the baobab tree on the screen of his monitor. “Thanks,” he said.

Russo drew back from the door, showing no interest in the narrow closet with the louvered doors, and Lucas felt the muscles in his neck release. He was home free now—at least as far as the tree house tour went.

But Sophie was missing. He wanted to ask if they had any clues as to what might have happened to her, but he didn’t dare appear too interested. “Sophie’s mother must be very upset,” he said, hoping that would prompt Russo to tell him where Janine was.

“Yes. Everyone’s pretty shaken up.”

“Maybe they just got lost coming back,” Lucas suggested.

“Not five and a half hours worth of getting lost,” Russo said. “Highly unlikely.”

“I know she’s been sick. Could that have something to do with it?”

“We don’t know,” the officer admitted.

“Well, I sure hope she’s okay.” Lucas worked at the indifference in his voice as he walked Russo out the front door and onto the deck again. “Good luck trying to find her.”

“Right,” Russo said. “I have your phone number. I’ll be in touch if we need to talk with that friend of yours.”

Lucas listened as the officer descended the stairs and watched as he disappeared into the darkening woods. Then he looked through the treetops toward Ayr Creek, a couple of miles from his house. What was going on over there right now? Was Janine there, waiting and upset? Was Joe with her?

Sophie didn’t like the dark. He recalled the evening she’d been up here in the tree house, playing a game with him and Janine in the living room, when the power went out. It had gone out all over the neighborhood, and the still darkness was a glorious wonder up here in the trees. But Sophie had been panic-stricken, clinging to Janine until he’d lit several candles, enough to let them see one another’s faces. Wherever Sophie was now, he hoped she had light, and for the first time the seriousness of the situation sunk in. Sophie had been due to arrive at three. It was now nearly nine. There could be no simple reason for that much of a delay.