“Looks like the police beat the fire brigade,” Paul murmured into my hair as a two-toned blue Anne Arundel County police car sped up the drive. It was followed by a second patrol car, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Seconds later a ladder truck from Eastport wheeled up the drive and, hot on its tail, the three-thousand-gallon water supply tanker engine the county keeps at the city’s Forest Drive facility.
Paul kissed my hair, then released me to lope down the steps and speak to the officer. The officer, in turn, jogged down the drive to consult with the firemen, several of whom had already dismounted from their trucks dressed in full fire-fighting regalia. After a few moments the driver of the tanker engine removed his fire hat and set it on the seat of the vehicle, then accompanied Paul and the police officers up the drive, zeroing in on me as if they knew I was the guilty party who had called in the false alarm.
“I’m sorry,” I said before anyone could admonish me. “It’s my ten-month-old grandson who’s missing. Pulling the alarm was the only way I could think of to flush everyone out of the building so we could search for him.” I was already feeling a twinge of regret for all the man-hours I wasted when a white and yellow EMS vehicle pulled in next to the ladder truck, adding to the blockade, and my vague sense of remorse. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
One of the policemen stepped forward. “We’ve met before, Mrs. Ives. I’m Ron Powers, and this is Officer Will Dunham and Captain Tom May of the Annapolis Fire Department.”
“Of course, I remember you,” I said, extending my hand. The last time I’d seen Officer Powers, he’d rescued me from a wrecked van after some crooks had taken me and my friend, Naddie Bromley, on a high-speed chase up Interstate 97. I recognized the serious gray eyes, but Powers had shaved his mustache since we’d said good-bye to one another in the emergency room after the crash, and somewhere along the way his chin had acquired a half-inch scar that only emphasized the resolute squareness of his jaw.
“So, there’s no fire.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No fire.”
Powers turned to Captain May. “The ladder and the tanker can head back, Tom, but we may need an EMT, so ask them to stick around, will you? Is there someplace inside where we can talk?” he asked, addressing Paul rather than me.
“They have a conference room.”
“That would be fine.”
As I led the officers into Paradiso, Powers asked, “You said it’s your grandson who is missing. Are you his caretaker?”
“No, my daughter and her husband run this spa. Timmy disappeared from the day care center when my daughter stepped out of the room for a minute.”
Disappeared. I couldn’t bring myself to use the word taken. Even then, as irrational as it seemed, I must have harbored some small hope that Timmy had escaped from his playpen, crawled off on some private infant adventure, and would be found napping quietly behind a curtain, say, or nestled comfortably in a pile of towels. But it was going on an hour past his feeding time, in which case Timmy-never one to pass up a meal-would most certainly have been howling from whatever hidey hole he’d gotten himself into.
“Has anyone been in the day care center since your daughter found the child missing?”
“No, just me. Emily…” I started to explain about Emily being called away to the loading dock, but what would that have accomplished? Making lame excuses for my daughter wouldn’t bring Timmy back. I lowered my eyes to avoid Ron Powers’s unblinking, uncompromising gaze. Don’t these people read the newspaper? Watch television? His eyes were accusing. Never leave a child unattended. Never!
“Would you like to see it?” I asked.
Powers nodded, then turned to Paul. “Mr. Ives, while your wife takes me to the day care center, will you show Officer Dunham to the conference room, then locate the child’s parents and have them meet me there in, say, ten minutes?”
Reluctantly, or so it seemed to me, Paul released my hand. His lips brushed my cheek. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I think so, Paul. I’m doing something, at least. That helps a little.”
Two minutes later I wasn’t so sure. I escorted Officer Powers to Puddle Ducks, but once there, I found I couldn’t go in. Even though the lights were on and the afternoon sun streamed through the French doors, the nursery seemed dark, the cheerful murals making a mockery of the playpen, its vast emptiness burning like a hole in the center of the room.
Officer Powers produced latex gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. He circled Timmy’s playpen, bent at the waist and peered into it, but didn’t touch anything. “Is that Timmy’s toy?” he asked, pointing a latex finger at Lamby.
“Yes. He won’t go to sleep without…” I paused, too choked up to continue. I turned my head away, concentrated on the painting of Jemima Puddle Duck, and fought back my tears. Dear God, let us find Timmy. Let him sleep in his own crib tonight, with Lamby by his side.
Powers crossed over to the French doors. “Were these doors locked?”
“I don’t know. They were closed, though. I’m sure of that.”
Powers straightened. “They aren’t locked now.”
Did I imagine it, or was there disapproval in his tone, an unspoken but they should have been?
“Does Spa Paradiso have a Code Adam in place?” Powers asked as he gazed through the windows to the patio and the woods beyond.
“Code Adam?” It wasn’t until I said the words aloud that it occurred to me what they meant. Code Adam. Adam had to stand for Adam Walsh. “Is it named for that child who was abducted in Florida?”
“Right.”
Six-year-old Adam Walsh had been found murdered. Every parent’s nightmare, a horror too terrible to contemplate. “What exactly is a Code Adam?”
“Best thing ever to come out of Wal-Mart,” Powers explained as he opened the door to the supply closet and peered in. “Now more and more stores are following their example. When a customer reports a missing kid to a store employee, they get a description and broadcast a Code Adam over the P.A. Everything stops while they look for the kid, and employees monitor all the exits to keep the kid from leaving the store.” He shut the door firmly. “A Code Adam foiled a kidnapping out at the Barnes & Noble in Harbour Center last month,” he added.
“I think that’s what I had in mind when I reached for the handle on the fire alarm,” I said, not the least bit apologetically. “I know the contractor has installed the equipment and the wiring for a P.A. system in the spa, but I don’t think they’ve finished with it yet.”
Officer Powers’s index finger swung in an arc from one corner of the room to the other, pointing out a pair of surveillance cameras that I hadn’t noticed before. “Are those working?”
My heart, quite literally, skipped a beat. If someone had snatched Timmy from his playpen, what a godsend those cameras would be! But I didn’t hold out much hope of that. The same outfit that installed the public address system was supposed to be installing the monitoring station for the surveillance cameras, and as late as last week, Dante had told me they had been waiting for parts.
“I don’t know, Officer Powers. You’ll have to ask my son-in-law.”
Powers grunted, then circled the room once again, more slowly this time, checking out the furniture and the toys and the games while the second hand on the clock ticked relentlessly on. It was maddening how slowly the man was moving.
“We’ll need to seal off this room until the evidence technicians can get here,” he said at long last. “Can this door be locked?”
“Emily has a key.”
“Good. Why don’t you go get it, then. I’ll wait here until you get back.”