if you need it.” Diane put the card on the table and pushed it forward.
Juliet picked up the card and turned it over in her hand. She stared at it for a long time before she spoke.
“I’ve been having dreams again,” she said, still staring at the card. “They stopped for several years and now they’ve started again. That’s why I couldn’t cope with Ms. Lester tonight.” She looked up at Diane. “I don’t remember much about my early childhood. I only know what I’ve been told and what I looked up in the newspapers. I was kidnapped when I was seven and left for dead in a culvert. I think all my problems stem from that—even if I don’t remember it.” She put the card in her purse.
Diane was stunned. It was several moments before she could speak. “Juliet,” she said finally, “I don’t know what to say. Was your kidnapper caught?”
Juliet shook her head. “No.”
“You only saw a therapist in college? Not sooner?”
“Since I couldn’t remember, my parents didn’t want the memories dredged up. They thought it best if the experience remained buried. My mother died a year later and my father remarried. My father and my grandmother told me I had nightmares because I felt guilty for being disobedient and ‘got myself snatched,’ as my grandmother used to say. She told me that if I was obedient, the dreams would stop. My stepmother thought the cure was summer camp. A benign cure, but I was never able to pull off being a happy camper.”
No wonder she’s skittish and prefers solitude, thought Diane. I would be too if I had been through that as a child. The knowledge made Whitney Lester’s behavior all the more appalling.
“I’m sorry,” said Diane. “Life must be very difficult for you. If I can help, I will.”
“You gave me a job. Do you know how many times I lost jobs in the interview stage? That’s why this job is so important to me. I’d never jeopardize it by stealing. I’ve never stolen anything. I’m not a thief.”
Diane was glad they had dinner. It helped her understand a lot of things about Juliet. She offered her a lift home, but Juliet said she drove to the museum and her car was parked in the lot. Diane left a tip on the table and the two of them walked out together. The hostess nodded to Diane on the way out. She knew to send the tab to Diane’s office. Diane found that arrangement easier than arguing with the few guests who insisted on paying their own way. The matter was a nonissue if they weren’t presented with a bill.
The restaurant was about to close and there were few cars in the parking lot. Diane noticed that one of the streetlights was out. It was the one near her car. She stopped, wary. Juliet apparently sensed the change in Diane’s demeanor, for she slowed and stiffened. Diane reached for Juliet’s arm.
“Let’s go back in,” she whispered.
Juliet didn’t ask why, she turned on her heel, but as Diane reached for her phone to speed dial the security desk in the museum she saw a man stand up from behind her car. He had a baseball bat and he was walking toward her. Diane turned to run, but another man was coming up behind. Juliet gave a cry and sank to the ground.
Chapter 17
Diane wanted to run—she thought she could make it to the museum—but she couldn’t leave Juliet crumpled on the ground. She hurriedly dialed museum Security as the men approached. She frantically tried to think of some defense. As with Blake Stanton, the young carjacker with the gun, she had only words with which to defend herself. These men weren’t going to be as easy as Blake was.
“Stop where you are and back off,” she said.
She must have sounded pathetic to the huge men wielding baseball bats. Her thumb pressed the keys on her phone and she heard Security answer. As she brought it to her mouth she yelled.
“Front parking lot now!”
The men advanced, bats ready to strike. Before they got to her, the headlights from an approaching car shone on all of them. The two men stopped for only a moment; then one started to take a swing at Diane. She ducked when the car’s siren blasted and the blue light flashed. It was a police car. Thank God, she thought, as the men took off running across the parking lot, the police car in