The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) Read Free Page B

bad things for Tasha’s grandparents or bad things from her past. If it were the grandparents, someone would have been trying to reach
us
, not her. Which meant this might be the other.
    “Hello?” I used my “Dr. Rue” voice, the one I had been practicing to use on undergraduates. The one I used setting limits with my foster teen.
    “I thought I was calling Natasha Oeschle.” It was a woman on the other end of the line. An adult, not a kid, and she sounded breathless.
    I kept my tone professorial. “Who’s calling, please?”
    “You must be her foster mother. I’m Nelly Penobscott. Tasha fostered with me when she was twelve, and we’ve always kept in touch.”
    “I see.” When she was twelve, Natasha had been making skin flicks for two years. Her mother’s drug issues meant she
had
briefly been in the care of the state, but I didn’t trust this caller. Lance had moved to stand behind me, and I twisted the phone so he could hear, too.
    “Yes. I don’t have much time. I know what she’s been through, and I’m glad you’re protective of her. I have a message, and you can deliver it or not.”
    “And what message is that?” I had dropped from professor to ice queen.
    “When she was here, there were these twins, Sara and William. They went to live with an aunt and uncle in Muscogen County about the same time as Tasha went to her grandparents out there. Only now they’re back in care, and the little boy’s gone missing. They’re mounting a house-to-house search, and I thought maybe Tasha would want to help. They’ve bumped into her a couple of times. William knows her, and maybe he’d come out for her. If he’s only hiding. He’s
got to be
only hiding.” Her voice shook, as if she was begging me to make this missing child be a hidden one, not something worse. “You can call the sheriff’s department if you think I’m lying.”
    I didn’t speak. Not initially. My recent experience with liars and deception was too raw to accept her words at face value. And yet, the conversation was punctuated by bursts of another voice in the background, like she was being hurried along to come help with something. Her urgency seemed so real. “I’ll talk to Natasha,” I finally said, “and I’ll call the sheriff’s department.
They
will be able to tell us where to meet.”
If this is real. If you aren’t calling from some rented phone trying to lure my foster daughter into danger herself, under the pretext of a rescue mission. If June isn’t about to come back around and bite us in August.
    I hung up the phone. “What do you want to do?” I asked Lance.
    “You wake up Natasha,” he said. “I’ll wake up Officer Carmichael.”
    Over the course of the investigation in June, we had become friends with a deputy, a junior detective, at the county sheriff’s office, and he could be trusted to give us honest information, even if we dragged him out of bed from a sound sleep.
    Lance got out his own phone and started dialing while I walked down to Natasha’s room. I knocked. She didn’t answer. “Natasha?” I knocked again.
    “G’way, Gram. I’m sleeping.”
    “It’s Noel. I need to talk to you about something.”
    A pause, then, “Yeah, I think I’m up.”
    Natasha’s meds knocked her out soundly and fast. Although she was allowed to stay up until midnight on these last few summer nights before school began, she was often in bed by ten-thirty or eleven. As soon as she surrendered her phone, she powered down. Right now, it was going on toward one in the morning.
    As soon as I said Nelly Penobscott’s name, though, she leapt out of bed and started pacing. “Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”
    “For all I know, she’s one of those crazy people.” I didn’t finish the thought. I didn’t need to. Lance and I had been lured by Gert’s murderous twin Gretchen to try to find and rescue Natasha at the primate center. Gretchen showed up at our wedding, looking enough like Gert, and projecting