Cockatiels at Seven Read online

  “You might want to talk to the woman who moved into her old house,” I said. “I don’t usually think of myself as a very menacing presence, but she was afraid to open her door to me at first. I had to use Timmy to lull her suspicions, and I get the idea some pretty unsavory characters have turned up there looking for Karen.”

  The chief scribbled some more.

  “Just how do you know Ms. Walker?” he asked.

  “She was one of the first friends I made when I came to town,” I said. “The first who wasn’t really Michael’s friend. And I got the feeling all of them were a little wary of me.”

  “Wary?” the chief repeated. I had to smile, because the word rather accurately described his usual attitude toward me.

  “Well, they didn’t know how long I’d be around—we were just dating then. And most of them were faculty or faculty spouses, and sometimes the college gets a little suffocating, you know?”

  He nodded.

  “I met her when I went by the college accounting department to drop off some form Michael kept forgetting to turn in,” I went on. “Karen works there. At least she did work there. We started talking, and hit it off. She invited me for coffee. She helped me find my way around. Let me use guest passes to her gym until I found I was spending so much time down here that I might as well join myself. We did yoga classes there together at first, but after a while, we began drifting apart.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “No,” I said. “We had common interests, but not a lot of them. And of course, that was about the time she met Jasper. Her husband. Ex-husband now, I gather. I guess if there was any one thing you could call a reason, it would be Jasper.”

  “You didn’t like Jasper?”

  “Not really,” I said. “And it was mutual. That does have a cooling effect on a friendship, you know, when she says ‘Isn’t he wonderful!’ and you have a hard time saying anything more than ‘If you say so.’ And I hadn’t heard that they broke up. Maybe she was afraid I’d say ‘I told you so.’”

  “So you haven’t seen Mr. Walker recently either?”

  I shook my head.

  “You have no idea what he did?”

  “Do you mean did for a living, or are we talking about something in particular he did that brought him to your attention?”

  He looked over his glasses at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be nosy. He did some kind of tech work. I think Karen met him when he fixed her computer. Look, something’s happened to Karen, hasn’t it? I can understand now why she wasn’t answering her phone, but she’s not answering her cell phone either, and that’s a bad sign.”

  The chief frowned for a moment.

  “Try calling her again,” he said.

  I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Karen’s number. I could hear her phone ringing in stereo—from my own cell phone, and from a nearby cruiser.

  “Chief,” one of the officers called. “The cell phone we found—”

  “Just ignore it,” the chief called back. “You can hang up now,” he said to me.

  I ended the call. The ringing in the cruiser stopped. We looked at each other for a long few seconds.

  “Now let’s go over what happened yesterday,” he said. “In detail.”

  I winced. Chief Burke’s appetite for details usually far exceeded my ability to remember them. This could take a while. I hoped Sammy was up to the job of entertaining Timmy for that long.

  Nine

  It was nearly eleven by the time Chief Burke finally let me leave, and even then I suspected he was only taking pity on Sammy and the other officers who’d been keeping Timmy busy. And he gave me no hint of what was really going on—surely that many police wouldn’t turn out for a simple burglary. Even more frustrating, from the questions he’d asked he was clearly assuming that Karen was involved in something illegal. I found myself fuming. Yes, there were a lot of small-time drug dealers and petty criminals living at the College Arms, but there were also a few impoverished grad students and honest, hardworking, but badly paid people. Like single mothers whose husbands skipped out on them and weren’t paying any child support, which I suspected was what had happened to Karen. And all the chief could do was ask about her known associates.

  And was he looking for her? Looking for her effectively, that is? He seemed to be assuming she was a suspect, or at least what the media call a “person of interest.” And while I didn’t know much about police procedure, I suspected the way you looked for a person in jeopardy might be radically different from the way you hunted down a suspect.

  Still fuming, I drove over to the campus, trying to stay patient while explaining to Timmy every few minutes that no, I couldn’t turn on the siren because my car didn’t have one. I found a semi-legal parking space a couple of blocks from the college administration building, liberated Timmy from the durance vile of his car seat, and slung the heavyweight diaper bag over my shoulder.

  I thought of telling Timmy that we were going to Mommy’s office, but decided maybe that was a bad idea. I’d had a home address for Karen that was two years out of date—what if my information on where Karen worked was equally obsolete? After all, she hadn’t put her work number in Timmy’s instruction manual. Did that mean she no longer worked at the college, or that she hadn’t expected to be at the college during Timmy’s stay with me, or perhaps that she didn’t want me calling the college for some reason?

  I was relieved to note, as we headed up the steps toward the administration building, that Timmy seemed to recognize the place, and pulled at my hand. That had to be a good sign. Surely Timmy didn’t have enough short-term memory to recall the place unless Karen still worked there or at least had until very recently.

  We strolled into the administration building. It was quieter than I’d ever seen it, but then I didn’t recall ever having a reason to go there before the school year began. I ran into the occasional staff or faculty member strolling calmly through the halls. No one I actually knew, but we all nodded pleasantly, even the ones whose faces I didn’t recall seeing around the town and campus for the last several years. After all, my presence here three weeks before the start of classes proved we were on the same team—staff, faculty, and their families. I wasn’t one of the hordes of students and parents who would come swarming in after Labor Day, briefly and predictably overwhelming all the administration offices with their forms and questions.

  I headed for the office where Karen had been working when I met her. Thanks to Timmy, I didn’t have any trouble finding my way—all I had to do was keep a good grip on his hand. He knew the way. Better and better.

  I knew from previous visits—like the one on which I’d first met her—that Karen sat at one of four vintage metal desks in a big room whose walls were lined with battered beige four-drawer file cabinets. And right inside the door, if they hadn’t rearranged things, two cafeteria tables, placed end to end, served as a makeshift counter piled high with stacks and boxes of forms, all printed on the pale blue copier paper the Caerphilly College administration used to distinguish its official forms from lesser documents. I wasn’t sure if I should just march in and ask for Karen or pretend to be looking for some form or other. I’d play it by ear.

  I pushed open a door marked FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. Just as I’d remembered it, except that the file cabinets had multiplied so they not only lined the walls but served as low dividers between the desks. But the counter was there, and they’d even put out a couple of folding chairs so people could sit down to fill out forms. Now all I had to do was—

  “Mommy!” Timmy shouted, and pulled himself out of my grip to duck under the tables and race toward the back of the room.

  My heart gave a brief lurch of relief—she was all right! And then I realized that he hadn’t seen Karen. He was heading for her desk.

  “Oh, my God, it’s Timmy!” someone exclaimed. I glanced over to see that the speaker was seated at one of the closer desks. Had been seated at the desk. Now s
he had jumped up and was frantically trying to clear everything off the top of her desk into her already crowded drawers.

  It was Sandie, the tchotchke lady. Karen and I had laughed and shaken our heads over her during some of our lunches. Every square inch of Sandie’s desk that wasn’t covered with papers was filled with tiny breakable ornaments: bud vases, glass or china figurines of dogs and cats and fawns, tiny china frames with babies’ pictures in them, snow globes, porcelain thimbles, miniature teapots and who knew what else. It was a veritable museum of things that should not be left within a mile of Timmy’s busy little hands. I’d have thought the top of the desk was safe, but Sandie probably had more experience with Timmy than I did.

  Luckily, Timmy ignored all the temptations on Sandie’s desk and headed straight for Karen’s. I was expecting a temper tantrum when he didn’t find her there, but instead, he climbed up into her desk chair and sat there, clutching Kiki and his sippy cup, twirling the chair slightly, and looking expectant.

  “Karen promised she wouldn’t bring him in here again,” Sandie fussed, as she continued clearing things off her desk. I knew how she felt; I’d spent most of the previous evening doing the same deck clearing at home. “She knows how he disrupts our operations.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Karen didn’t tell me that—I guess she was in a hurry when she dropped him off. Is she here?”

  “No,” Sandie said. She paused in her tidying and looked up. “And let me tell you, Nadine is pretty burned up about that. If you know where she—”

  “Sandra?” Sandie flinched slightly and returned to her tidying, so I deduced that the speaker meant her. I turned to see a tall, elegant woman in a gray suit standing in a doorway that led to an inner office. Nadine, I presumed.

  “Hi,” I said, in a deliberately light and cheerful tone. “I’m looking for Karen.”

  “Karen’s not here,” Nadine said. “And I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we cannot permit a toddler to stay in the office. Too disruptive.”

  She frowned slightly at Timmy, who was actually behaving quite well. He was turning Karen’s desk chair around in slow circles, and yes, he was pushing against the desk and the file cabinets with his feet to do so, but they looked as if they had survived far worse abuse. For Timmy, he was being positively angelic.

  Of course, perhaps Nadine had met him before in another mood.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll take him right out again. I must have gotten my signals crossed about where I was supposed to drop him off. She’s not in today?”

  “No.” Nadine said. I waited, hoping she’d say something else, but she simply stood there, looking forbidding, with that faint frown on her face. Sandie was trying very hard to be invisible.

  “Damn,” I said. “Well, I’ll get Timmy out of your hair. Could I give you a message in case you see her?”

  “Perhaps you could write your message down,” Nadine said, looking down her nose at me. “And leave it on her desk.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to look abashed. Actually, that was just what I was hoping she’d say. I’d spotted a sheaf of pink “While-you-were-out” slips spread out across Karen’s desk.

  I made my way through the forest of file cabinets to Karen’s desk, ostentatiously pulling out my notebook as I did, and flipping to a clean page. Nadine walked over to one of the other empty desks and picked up a paper. It wasn’t lost on me that from her new position she could keep an eye on me.

  “Can I sit down, Timmy?” I asked. Timmy obligingly slid off the chair and crawled under the desk, where he began rummaging through various boxes and papers.

  I took a moment to glance at the photos on Karen’s desk. Several of Timmy at various ages, and one family group, with Karen and Jasper holding the infant Timmy. At least I assumed it was Jasper—Karen had covered the man’s head by sticking a square cut from a yellow Post-it note to the glass.

  I flipped up the sticky note—yes, that was the Jasper I remembered. Tall and angular, with long, straight brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Decent looking, if you overlooked a slightly weak chin. And I’d always thought his smile looked a little forced.

  I shook my head, dropped the tab back over his face, swung myself around with my back to Nadine, and began writing. I pretended to tap my left hand on the desk while I was writing, though what I was actually doing was flicking the “While-you-were-out” notes aside, one by one, so I could jot down all the names, numbers, and messages. Most of them were written in a round, loopy handwriting and initialed with an S, except for one that was written in a handwriting so tiny that you could have fit an entire short story on the small sheet of paper, and yet so precise I had no trouble reading it. Nadine, I suspected.

  When I’d finished copying the names and numbers, I glanced under the desk.

  “What are you doing, Timmy?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said. He was almost telling the truth. He was just sitting under the desk, clutching Kiki and gently poking at my ankles with his foot. But as I bent down, pretending to check on him, I turned the notebook page I’d been writing in so I’d have a clean sheet.

  “We’re leaving in a second,” I said. I quickly scribbled a note to Karen:

  Karen—hi! Dropped by with Timmy. Please call me to let me know where I should bring him.

  I added my home and cell phone numbers and underlined the word “please” several times. Then I ripped the sheet out of the spiral notebook and set it on top of the “While-you-were-out” notes.

  “Okay, Timmy,” I said. “Mommy’s not here yet. We’ll come back later when she’s here.”

  Nadine frowned and opened her mouth, then closed it again, apparently realizing that any mention of a return visit was only intended to expedite Timmy’s exit. She returned to the door of her office to watch us go.

  “Sorry,” I said, glancing down as we passed Sandie’s now denuded desk.

  Sandie’s back was to Nadine. She didn’t move her head, or smile, but she made some sort of frantic, incomprehensible gesture with her hands. I paused.

  “Do you need any help putting stuff back on your desk?” I said.

  “No thanks,” she said, looking up and still gesturing. As a mime, she was a dismal failure. If she was trying to tell me something, it wasn’t working. Maybe she wasn’t signaling. Maybe she was just having some kind of stress-induced arm spasms.

  I gave up trying to interpret her signals and reached down to take Timmy’s hand. He shifted his sippy cup into his other hand to take mine and its top fell off, spilling the tiny amount of milk that he hadn’t finished—maybe a tablespoon’s worth.

  “Oh, no!” Sandie whispered. A little melodramatically, if you asked me. It was milk, not blood.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I stooped down and began mopping at the spill with a tissues from my purse. “Do you have any paper towels? Because I could run to the ladies room if—”

  “This is one of the reasons we cannot allow children here,” Nadine said. She squatted down and began to spray Windex on the remnants of the spill and mop around with giant wads of paper towel. “Apart from the potential damage to the facility, it constitutes a serious safety hazard.”

  Damage to the facility? The floor was linoleum. And yes, spills could be a safety hazard, but so was knocking people down in your haste to clean up spills. My ribs still smarted where she’d elbowed me out of the way.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said aloud. “I’ll take him away right now.”

  Nadine didn’t answer. By this time, she’d sprayed Windex on an area at least five times larger than the original spill, and showed no signs of slowing down. I grabbed Timmy’s hand, made sure his sippy cup was upright, and tiptoed out.

  Outside in the hall, I stopped to adjust the Velcro on one of Timmy’s shoes. It didn’t really need adjusting, but it put me out of Nadine’s sight and still visible to Sandie. I was hoping Sandie would notice me, and wondering if I should try to contact her to find out why she was signaling me so urgently. Should I
call her up? Lie in wait until Nadine left and then return?

  At first, Sandie didn’t see me—presumably because she was focusing on Nadine’s cleanup efforts. I could tell when Nadine had finished because Sandie relaxed slightly, took a deep breath, and glanced out the doorway as if contemplating escape. She saw me crouching outside and luckily she got the hint.

  “Nadine, I’m going over to the cafeteria as soon as I finish this batch of receipts,” she said. “Can I bring you back something?”

  Apart from the initial no, I didn’t quite catch Nadine’s answer, but the tone of polite contempt came through loud and clear. No campus cafeteria food for her. I stood up and turned to leave. Probably time to fuel up Timmy again. We’d head for the cafeteria, too.

  As we passed the open doorway, I glanced in to see that Nadine had decorated the site of Timmy’s spill with one of those yellow CAUTION! WET FLOORS! signs that cleaning staffs use. Sandie looked up, saw me looking at the sign, and rolled her eyes.

  Ten

  I did my best to talk Timmy into grilled chicken and broccoli for lunch, but he held out for hamburger and French fries. I gave up. Let Karen guide him back onto the path of responsible nutrition when she showed up again.

  “Make that two burger platters,” I told the student behind the counter. “With a lot of lettuce and tomato on the side.”

  I even figured out a way to get Timmy to eat the lettuce, by stuffing one leaf sideways into my mouth and waggling it up and down while I chewed on the other end and gradually sucked the whole thing into my mouth. It was messy and a little gross, but Timmy was charmed, and while imitating me, he finished off all his lettuce and the balance of mine. That counted as one serving of fruits and vegetables, right? Perhaps I could figure out something equally entertaining to do with the tomato slices. Then again, Timmy seemed to consider French fries mainly as a vehicle for conveying vast quantities of ketchup from his plate to his mouth. He often loaded one French fry three or four times before it disintegrated to the point that he couldn’t reload it with ketchup and reluctantly ate it. Surely a quarter bottle of ketchup would count as another serving, wouldn’t it?