Track 9

“If I Could Turn Back Time”

Present Day

As soon as I arrive home from Eden, I get a message that makes my heart jump. A witness whose name I dug up from a decades-old Washington Times article wants to talk. I grab a quick bite, then FaceTime her on my iPad.

A low-angle shot of an elderly woman appears. She pushes her frameless glasses up her nose. A collection of at least six cuckoo clocks on the wall behind her peal at the same time.

“Hello, Mrs. Parkes.” I wave. “Thank you so much for meeting me. I really appreciate your time.”

She leans forward, I’m guessing to get closer to the speaker. “It’s my pleasure, dear. So clever of you to find me.”

I chuckle. It wasn’t really, but I don’t want to diminish her opinion of me so early in the conversation. The article said she was a dental assistant and the mother of twins. All I had to do was check out some ancestry websites and cross-check them with Facebook. Mrs. Parkes’s profile was wide open for all to see.

“Mrs. Parkes, I know it was such a long time ago,” I begin. The clocks behind her stop cuckooing. “But can you cast your mind back to the day Jane Flanagan went missing?”

“To be honest with you, dear, I’m not sure if I can help.” Her glasses slide down again, revealing cloudy blue eyes and a deep furrow of uncertainty between her sparse brows.

“You never know. Sometimes details that don’t seem important at the time can actually turn a case around.” I check notes I’d taken from Wikipedia. “Okay, so you and your kids were at the Children’s Playground in Georgetown?”

“That’s right. We lived on 31st Street, and I worked close by. I used to take my twins to that playground every day. Of course, after the kidnapping, never again.” She grimaces.

“Very wise.” I nod. “On the day of the kidnapping, did you see Jane at the playground?”

“Oh yes,” she says. “My Ruby was about to go down the slippery slide, but she was stopped by the Secret Service so Jane could have a turn first.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t go over well with Ruby.”

“Believe me, normally she’d stomp and pout. That day? Those agents terrified her into submission. There were six of them, I remember that. And a nanny.” She gives a wry smile. “But I was the one who stomped and pouted. I marched over and gave them all a piece of my mind. Out of earshot of the children, of course.”

“What did you say to them?”

Chin raised, her face takes on a look of defiance. “That everyone, no matter how rich or powerful, needs to wait their turn. Or something like that. I might have used a cuss word or two.”

She takes off her errant glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Mrs. Parkes?”

Not looking at the camera, she shakes her head. When she lifts her face again, it’s marked with what I can only describe as shame. “It just dawned on me that if I hadn’t gotten a bee in my bonnet about the pushy agents, they wouldn’t have been distracted, and that little girl might be here today.”

“It’s not your fault, Mrs. Parkes,” I say softly, crossing over into the role of amateur counselor instead of amateur investigative journalist. “The person or people who stole Jane away from her family already planned it. This is on them, not you. You can’t beat yourself up over it. As far as the agents are concerned, they thought letting Jane go down the slide first was part of their job, too. No disrespect to you, they would have been focused on her, not your kids. They’re pros.”

She puts her glasses on again. “You’re kind to say that, dear. I suppose you’re right.”

I peek at my notes to get back on track. “Mrs. Parkes, did anyone ever question you? The police? Secret Service?”

“Apart from the reporter who accosted me on the way to work the next morning… Nobody.” She shakes her curly gray head. “I neglected to tell you one detail. My girls and I left the park right after I argued with the agents. Little Jane and the entourage were getting ready to leave.”

I sit up. “Did you see anything unusual? Maybe a car or delivery van that looked out of place? Or a person you’d never come across in the neighborhood before?”

“No…” She scratches her head. “I remember trying to calm my girls down because we were leaving earlier than planned. There was a lot of stomping and pouting and screaming then.”

In the background, I hear two women yell in unison, “Mother!”

“Some things never change.” Mrs. Parkes laughs, then turns thoughtful. She drums her fingers on her cheek.

“Mrs. Parkes?”

“Excuse me, dear. I’m just thinking about something now that you’ve mentioned a van.” She closes her eyes as if casting her mind back to the day. “There was a van driver waiting to parallel-park a block away from the playground. The writing on the van kinda jumped out at me.”

“What did it say?”

“DC Medical Supplies…or Suppliers.”

“What was so special about that?”

“I worked as a dental assistant. The office manager had been complaining nonstop about inferior masks from our regular supplier. She was threatening to break a contract with them.” She frowns in concentration. “There was a logo of sorts. Come to think of it, almost like four moon phases all in a row underneath the writing on the side panels.”

“Very, very good.” I lean forward, my Spidey senses piqued. What do moon phases have to do with medical supplies? Was it bad graphic design, or something more? “Was there a phone number or address painted on the van?”

“Yes, just a phone number. I even wrote it down and gave it to the office manager much later.” Mrs. Parkes purses her lips. “Donna never liked me. And she disliked me even more when it turned out the number wasn’t connected.”

“That’s…interesting,” I say slowly. In my notes, I write fake phone number on getaway van?

“Of course, I might have written it down incorrectly in the first place.”

Deep in thought, I tap the pen to my lips. I take a breath and try to channel Mom. What else would she ask an interview subject at this point? I snap my fingers as an obvious question pops into my mind. “Did you get a look at the license plate?”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t think of it at the time. Too busy writing down the phone number and wrangling the twins.”

“No problem,” I say. “What about the make and model of the van?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I grew up in a family of car fanatics. It was a gray 1980 Ford Econoline. My brother could tell you the paint code without looking it up if he were with us today.” She kisses her hand and touches the air.

“That’s excellent, Mrs. Parkes.”

She nods while covering a yawn. “Do you have all the information you need, dear?”

“Yes, thank you very much.”

While I’m bummed Mrs. Parkes wasn’t able to pinpoint a kidnapper or a person of interest, her account did give me more info to work with. There had to be a confluence of events that resulted in Jane’s disappearance, and to find that connecting thread, I have to unpick them one stitch at a time.