dontravis.com
blog post #304
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| Courtesy of Pixabay |
A change of pace this week. An action piece. Sorry if it
runs a little long.
*****
MUDDY
TOES
Samantha sat in the grass
joyfully wiggling her toes in the mud puddle beneath a leaky water spigot. She
giggled, anticipating the mock horror her mother would display when she squealed,
“Sammy, you’re not a three-year-old girl, you’re a three-year-old piggy!”
“Four,” Sammy always replied,
holding up her fingers with a pudgy thumb folded into her palm.”
Her mother would laugh. “Not
yet, but soon.” Then she would set Sammy on the counter beside the sink and
immerse her feet in warm soapy water where the black mud always magically
floated away, leaving her toes clean and pink. Then her mommy always tugged on
each one, saying, Piggy, piggy, piggy.
Now as she splashed her feet
in the muddy puddle, a shadow fell over her. She twisted around, expecting to
see her mother standing there with hands on hips. Instead, it was someone else.
Frightened, Samantha scrambled to her feet and raced for the house.
She made it to the front
porch.
Detective Sandra Winston
stared at the small, muddy puddle beneath a water spout in the foundation of
the red brick ranch style house. While her partner questioned Rick and Mary
Harcaster, the child’s frantic parents, inside, Sandy wanted to inspect the
scene of the crime… if that’s what it was. She could easily imagine the girl
sitting in the grass where her small bottom made a slight impression in the
grass. Petite brown leather sandals sat neatly side-by-side nearby. Marks from the
child’s bare heels were clearly visible near the side of the puddle. She could
almost hear Samantha’s happy, musical laughter as she gleefully enjoyed a
“no-no.”
Sandy saw where the child had stood,
her wet feet slipping just a little in the grass before she bolted for safety.
Tiny muddy footprints indicated she made it to the front porch. Then the prints
stopped. Stopped where the girl was snatched.
“Will there be a ransom demand, do you think?”
Detective Tom Bales asked as he came out of the house. Tom had been Sandy’s partner
for the past year.
“Father’s a lawyer. Good house
in a good neighborhood. And everybody thinks lawyers are rich. Good chance.”
“Let’s hope so,” he said with
feeling.
After the crime scene unit
arrived and chased them out of the front yard, they canvassed the neighbors who
confirmed that Sammy’s mother was neither careless nor negligent. She checked
on her child regularly when Samantha played in their gated front yard. One
elderly man had noticed a black car pulling away from the curb near the
Harcaster house. A phone call confirmed the father had been at work in his law
firm downtown.
That task completed, they returned
to the house to console the frightened family. A technician was in the kitchen
rigging the house phone so that they could listen to and record any incoming
calls… just in case. Another took fingerprints from the parents for elimination
purposes.
Eventually, the other officers
completed their tasks and departed, including the crime scene unit. Sandy and
Tom remained behind to control the situation in case a ransom call was
received. The phone rang twice, almost sending Sammy’s mother into a panic, but
both were routine calls from family and friends.
As the day stretched on, the
Harcasters became more difficult to bolster. Mary took to her bed with a
headache. Rick tried to do business from the den phone’s second line, but he
soon gave that up to sit and stare at the telephone.
Midafternoon, the crime scene
commander called Sandy on her cell phone. They’d found numerous prints or
partial prints on the front gate, most of which were probably friends and
neighbors. But one traced back to someone with a record. Sandy wrote down the
information carefully before facing the others in the den, including Mary
Harcaster who came out of the bedroom as if summoned by the chime of Sandy’s
cell phone.
She stared at the expectant
faces before her. “Do either of you know a William B. Robbins? Is he a client
of yours, Mr. Harcaster?”
The lawyer’s mouth dropped
open and his wife let out a shriek, clutching at a chair back to keep from
collapsing.
“That’s my ex-husband!” she
wailed. “But… but he’s in prison.”
“Apparently not. They found
his prints on your gate.”
“He escaped?” Harcaster asked.
“He’s been released.”
“That can't be! The prosecutor promised
they’d notify us before he was released,” Mary said.
“Then somebody dropped the
ball. He was paroled six weeks ago. At least, he was sent to a halfway house on
the west side of town.”
“Oh, my God! My little girl,”
the mother wailed.
Sandy drew a deep breath. “Mrs.
Harcaster, I have to ask a delicate question. Is Samantha William Robbins’
daughter?”
She gasped aloud. “Good Lord,
no! B-but he thinks he is.”
“Explain, please,” Tom said.
Mary made an obvious effort to
steady herself. “I met Bill at a Ted talk. He seemed nice. You know, ambitious.
Motivated. I got swept up in the public persona of Bill Robbins before I
learned who the real Bill Robbins was. We were married less than a year before
he was arrested by the FBI for bank fraud. I was pregnant at the time, but I
had a miscarriage during his trial.”
Rick took up the tale. “I knew
Mary from way back. During the long period from Bill’s arrest to trial, I
helped keep up her morale.”
“Were you William Robbins’
attorney?” Tom asked.
“Absolutely not! I was just a
family friend. Anyway, Mary and I grew close. When we learned Mary was pregnant
again, she divorced Bill and married me. Whether it’s a case of self-delusion
or not, he insisted that Samantha is his child. The letters from the prison
where he was incarcerated got wilder.”
“Threatening?” Sandy asked.
“Not exactly, but he claimed
he had a right to see his child. To be in her life. He wanted Mary to bring her
for a visit. She rejected his request, and the letters grew stronger. That’s
when the prosecutor promised to notify us in advance of any
change in Bill’s status.”
Continued next week.
*****
Does
a crazed ex-con have little Sammy? Will he harm her or ask for a ransom? Next
week will tell.
Please
get a copy of my latest book, The Lovely
Pines, and give me feedback on
the novel. If you do read the book, please post a review on Amazon. Each one
helps.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
If
you would like to drop me a line, my personal links follow:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/donald.travis.982
Twitter:
@dontravis3
Here
are some buy links to the Lovely Pines,
which (as noted) was released on August 28:
Abaddon’s
Locusts is scheduled for release on January 22, 2019, and The Voxlightner Scandal is coming along.
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
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