day free. Did they want to meet him at his house? He’d be delighted to entertain an FBI agent and her consultant—they should reach his house in Tempe about the same time.
Anna assured him that would be lovely.
“He didn’t ask what it was about,” Anna observed after hanging up.
“Could be a crime groupie,” said Leslie. “Lots of people are. Could be he is bored or lonely or anything. No speculation until after we talk to him.”
“FBI policy?”
“My policy. Assumptions drive an interview away from interesting places.”
“All right,” Anna said. “We’ll go talk to the professor.”
Leslie pulled up to a house that had been built in the fifties. Evidently they had beaten the professor there. Leslie did not obey speed limits as well as Anna. She arrived fifteen minutes earlier than the car’s navigation system’s estimate.
The house was large and most notable because it was not built in the Southwest adobe style Anna’s eyes were getting used to. Nor was the yard xeriscaped with the conscientious water conservation she saw everywhere. Green grass covered the very small front area and huge old trees surrounded the house. Likely the shade from the trees was how the grass survived summers here.
A Volvo, older but in pristine condition, purred into the driveway and disgorged an athletic man with a military-short cut that managed to tone down his bright red hair. He shut the door and took his time looking at them. Anna returned the favor. He looked a little younger than someone who had been five in 1978.
He walked toward them slowly and said, “Can I help you, ladies?”
“Professor Vaughn?” asked Leslie.
He shook his head. “No. Who are you? Why are you looking for Alex?”
The roar of an engine distracted them and a big truck pulled into the driveway beside the Volvo. The truck was painted black with bright pink flames and jacked up high enough it wallowed when it turned.
The door popped open and a mad scientist hopped out, looking very out of place in the redneck vehicle.
“It’s okay, love,” he called out. “If you answered your cell phone I’d have updated you.”
The red-haired man turned to the professor, tilted his head, and said, “I don’t talk while I’m driving. And you shouldn’t call while you are driving, Bluetooth or no. I don’t want to get that phone call.”
The mad scientist nodded, kissed the big man on the cheek, and patted his shoulder. “I’m Alex Vaughn and this bulldog is my partner, Darin Richards of the Phoenix Police Department. He worries, that’s his job. Dare, these are the FBI, they want to talk to me.”
Darin’s head jerked first to his partner and then to the two women. His eyes narrowed. “ID,” he said.
Leslie showed him her badge and he examined it. He frowned and said, “I don’t know you. I work with the local FBI office a lot.”
“They brought me out especially for this case,” Leslie said.
He looked at Anna, and she raised both hands. “Don’t look at me, I’m just a consultant.”
“And you are here to speak with Alex.”
“With Dr. Vaughn,” Leslie said. “Yes.”
“Dare,” said the mad scientist. “It’s okay.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, without agreeing at all. “Why are you here?”
“We have to do this on the lawn?” asked Leslie, not losing her smile.
“Dare,” said Alex gently. “What are they going to do? Shoot me? Let’s go in and have some coffee and talk.” He looked at Leslie. “I have a stalker, a former student. She quite often calls in complaints and we have police officers come to investigate strange noises, screaming, shots fired. You name it. The Tempe PD knows her, but occasionally she gets one through to a rookie. The fire department was here last week at two in the morning because she reported a fire. I guess she got tired of not getting a response.”
“We are definitely not here because someone called in a complaint,” Leslie said. “We’d like to interview you about an attempted kidnapping—yours—that happened in June of 1978.”
Both men’s faces went blank with surprise.
Darin recovered first. “You never told me you were kidnapped. Freaking damn it, Alex. You’d have been six in ’78. June. You’d have been five.”
“Attempted.” Dr. Vaughn sounded shell-shocked. “I don’t think the police even believed me. My dad installed a security system and my mom fed the dog steak every day for a week.”
“No one believed in fairies back then,” Anna said. “We’re all clapping our hands for Tinker Bell now, though. We have a missing child who lives four blocks from where