asked.
"I mean nobody answers when I call their place. Checked with the neighbors, and they said Duncan's mom quit her job at the mill and went to work somewhere else. None of them seemed to know where. Hadn't seen either of them for a couple of days."
"What about his father?"
"He's not in the picture," the policeman said. "As soon as we locate them, I'll get back to you on this. Meanwhile, I'd stay close to home if I were you.
"By the way," he added, "Chief McBride went back to that place where you said the rope was tied and found fiber strands embedded in the tree bark. It's not much, but at least it's something to go on."
When the phone rang just after breakfast, I hoped it was Rusty or his uncle calling to tell me they'd arrested whoever was making my life miserable, but it was Tess Estes phoning to let me know Mamie was up to having a visitor if it still suited me to come. I told her I'd be there in a couple of hours, and had started out the door when I remembered it might be a good thing to let Vesta know where I was going. There wasn't room in the doghouse for Mildred and me both.
"I don't suppose you've heard from her," I said.
"Not so much as a mumblin' word," my grandmother told me. "And how is your head this morning?"
"Got a lot of straight yellow hair on the outside and not much in the inside," I said. "Other than that, it's okay."
"Ha. Ha." She didn't sound amused. "If that's the best you can come up with, you do need to take it easy today. And just why are driving to Charlotte?"
"I'm going to see Mamie Estes," I told her.
"Who?"
"Mamie Estes. The last of the Mystic Six."
"Oh. Mama always spoke of her as Mamie Trammell," my grandmother said. "You don't mean she's still alive?"
"A hundred and two," I told her. "And every minute counts. Gotta run!"
But before I left, I telephoned the Better Health Clinic and left a message for Dr. Ivey. "Just tell him I called to let him know I'm okay," I told the receptionist.
"If you'll hold a minute, I think I can chase him down for you," she said.
"No, that's all right. Thanks. I'm fine, really. All patched up."
If we spoke on the phone, Harrison Ivey might ask me out. Or maybe he wouldn't, and I wasn't sure which bothered me more. But I couldn't deny that I was attracted to him. The thing that puzzled me the most, I think, was that he wasn't one bit like Jarvis.
Augusta seemed unusually quiet during the drive to Charlotte, but I was reassured by her company, especially after what happened the day before. I tried not to think about where I might have ended up if Augusta hadn't warned me to jump, but I found myself glancing in the rearview mirror every few minutes to see if I recognized the car behind us.
"I don't think we need to worry any more about the idiot who tied that rope across the road," I said, more to myself than to Augusta. "Paddington Bear seems to think it was a local delinquent who's done this kind of thing before."
"Paddington Bear?" Augusta was concentrating on the traffic in the other lane and didn't look at me.
"Officer Echols. He said the boy wasn't in school yesterday, and they haven't been able to locate him."
The angel spoke softly. "Vigilance, faith, and determination—they will see us through."
"Glad to hear it. Those are powerful words. Who said them?"
"I can't remember," Augusta said with a perfectly straight face. "But I think it might have been me."
The Esteses lived in a blue Cape Cod with white trim in an older part of Charlotte, and Tess Estes, a plump, graying woman who looked like she should be on the cover of a Mother Goose book, met me at the door. She wore an apron that read, PAYTHECOOK… FORGET THE KISSES! and a smudge of cocoa on her chin.
"You're just in time! Come join us in the kitchen. Coffee's hot, and I've a batch of molasses cookies ready to come out of the oven."
"It smells wonderful in here!" I trailed happily after her past a living room furnished with overstuffed chintz and velvet Victorian, through a dining room featuring Danish Modern, and into an Early American kitchen, where a child-size old woman sat at a table sprinkling unbaked cookies with red sugar.
"We're trying to