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“You’re the one who stopped those men from taking Eve? Thank you.”
Nan Tremain put out her hand. Women didn’t usually initiate the ritual. It told me she had more self-assurance than most, despite the softness of her heart-shaped face and the lacy trim of the blouse collar peeking out of her coat. The firmness of her handshake confirmed it.
“I’m glad I stuck my nose in. I realize you’ve had an awful scare, and probably want to be left alone right now, but I need to talk to you.”
“I can’t. Not now. Eve’s been brave as anything, but after what she’s been through, and the police asking questions—”
“It’s important.” I hesitated. “It’s about Eve’s father.”
I didn’t like to say it in front of the girl, but it was the only card I had to play right now.
“About Gil? What—?” Nan’s gaze sharpened. “You’re not suggesting he had something to do with this!”
Pulling away from her mother’s embrace, Eve looked from one of us to the other. Her expression had grown anxious.
“Mom... police come to see you when something’s happened to someone!”
“I’m not the police,” I soothed. “Mr. Collingswood hired me.”
Her mother moistened her lips.
“I guess you’d better come inside.”
Their front room was a pretty place. The sofa was done in sturdy, cotton-like fabric with big blue flowers that stood up like chenille. Lighter blue throw pillows snuggled into its corners. Tremain’s former wife didn’t stop there, however. She continued through toward the kitchen.
“Oh, my!” She came to an abrupt halt at the threshold. The police had been thoughtful enough to return the table and chairs to upright positions. It didn’t hide the shattered remains of gaily colored dishes or white trails where contents of the broken sugar bowl had been spread by struggling feet or rusty stains that hadn’t come from rust on the linoleum by the back door.
“I-I broke the creamer and sugar, Mom.” Eve fought a sob. “I turned the table over to get away and—”
“Shhh. Shhh. It’s all right.” Nan cradled her daughter against her and looked at me over her head. Her eyes flicked toward the stains.
“Is that... did you...?”
“Yes. Why don’t we sit in the front room? Could I make you some tea?” That and gin-and-tonic exhausted my recipe file, but it seemed right to offer.
“Thank you, no. Mona next door poured so much tea down us I don’t think I could face another drop.”
We settled ourselves in the room with the cheery blue sofa. Mother and daughter sat on it side by side, both with right knee crossed over the left, both with hands clasped around their crossed legs. I took a seat facing them. Between us was a braided rug with splashes of blue and yellow.
“I think it might be best if I talked to you alone, Mrs. Tremain.”
“No!” The word tore not just from Eve’s throat but from her heart. “If something’s happened to Dad, I want to hear!”
Unclasping her hands, Nan slid an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.
“We’re a team, the two of us. We’ve had to be.” Her voice shook slightly. “Eve’s sensible. She’s very close to her father. She needs to know.”
“All right, then. You’re right, Eve. Something has happened. Your dad hasn’t shown up for work, and I’m trying to find him. But before I tell you what I know, you need to tell me every scrap and word you remember about those men breaking into your house. It could help me — and him.”
Once she started thinking about it, she might fall apart. This was my guarantee she’d not only tell me, but would make her best effort. As the girl had proved when she rolled from her chair and upset the table to elude her captor, she was no dummy. She frowned in thought and sat up straighter.
“Mom works in the afternoon, so we lock the doors when we leave and I let myself in after school and lock up again. I’m not supposed to answer the phone or go to the door, so I don’t.”
Her mother smiled at her faintly and smoothed the girl’s hair.
“Today... well, first the phone rang. Then a little while after that, the doorbell rang. When I didn’t answer, they knocked really loud, like to make sure I could hear. I didn’t know what to make of that. The knocking. Usually it’s a salesman, or a store delivering something. They just ring the bell and wait a minute, then go on.
“I was in the kitchen getting a glass of milk when it happened. I waited a minute to make sure whoever it was had gone. Then I put the milk bottle back in the fridge and was going to go to my room. Only before I got out of the kitchen, there was this sound. Not big, but... and then all at once I felt a draft and knew the door had opened, and turned, and - and there they were!
“The one in front, the one with the space between his teeth—” She tapped in illustration. “—he said, ‘Hello, sweetheart. Don’t be afraid. Your dad sent us.’”
“You’re sure he called you ‘sweetheart’? He didn’t use your name?”
“No.” She frowned. “No. But when you came in, you did. I remember wondering about it, because I’d never met you.”
The fact they hadn’t used her name didn’t tell me nearly as much as the fact they hadn’t asked where her mother was. It told me they knew her schedule, maybe even had been watching the house.
“Anyway, they said that part about Dad sending them. They told me he had an important meeting with President Roosevelt and wanted to say good-by before he left — in case he wasn’t back by Christmas.
“My dad’s awfully smart, and I knew he was working on something important, but somehow it smelled fishy. I said I didn’t remember seeing them at C&S Signals — that probably wasn’t smart, but I was scared, with them right there in the house. The one with the gap in his teeth laughed and told me it was because they were from the F.B.I.
“I said, oh, okay, but I had to call my mom first so she wouldn’t worry if she called to check on me and I didn’t answer. That’s when the other one grabbed me. I started to scream, but he smacked me so hard not much got out. I kicked and tried to bite him, but he held me and they tied up my hands. Every time I tried to scream, they hit me again.
“Then one of them pushed me back on the table and said fine, if I wanted it rough, he’d show me rough. He grabbed my blouse and — and—”
Her voice broke. Her eyes welled with tears.
“Oh, Evie. Baby doll!” Her mother’s face had gone ashen. She held her now weeping child against her shoulder. “You didn’t tell the policemen that part. Did-did the man do something else to you?”
“Of course he did something, Mom!” Eve pushed free and glared, making the parent who loved her an innocent target of rage and pain. “He shoved — He shoved—” Eve gagged.
My stomach sank. Nan Tremain’s must be even lower.
“He shoved the smelly old dishrag into my mouth!”
A humpback clock ticked on the mantle. Her mother slumped with relief. I leaned back wondering whether the poor woman felt the same impulse toward hysterical laughter that I was fighting.
“You’re pretty brave. Lots of girls would have fallen apart,” I said to give Nan a chance to recover. “Can you tell me what happened next?”
Eve took a crumpled hanky from the pocket of her jumper and blew her nose.
“Then you came in, I guess. Only I didn’t know who you were, or if you were with them.” She turned to her mother, all misdirected anger gone. “One of them shot at her, Mom! I saw his gun. She had one too. Then there was lots of shooting. That’s when I upset the table. And I think I just squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them, everybody was gone. So I hid.”
She gulped in breath and faced me with as stern a look as an eleven year old could muster.
“Now it’s your turn.”