The Orange Cat and Other Cainsville Tales (Cainsville 3.5)

Nope, not a real investigator. At all. Which means I can't help you. Sorry.

Krista didn't return my smile. She just stood there, stone-faced, waiting for me to finish. I'd seen that expression many times, on Gabriel's face. I knew what it portended, and sweat broke out along my hairline.

"We don't have any private investigators," Krista said. "Not here. Not anywhere near here."

"But we have the police," Jeanne said. "Who are--"

"Useless," Krista said. "Less than useless. They act like I put Maggie down and forgot where I left her, and she'll come back when she's ready. She's a three-month-old baby. Who disappeared from her crib in the middle of the night. Maybe that happens a lot wherever you guys are from, but it doesn't happen here."

"It doesn't happen anywhere," Laurel said as she brought out the teacup and plate. "That's why the police are investigating. They really are, Krista."

"By questioning me? My mom? Owen? We didn't take her, but we're the ones they keep asking."

Which meant the police really were doing their job. Babies don't disappear from their beds. Kidnapping like that is so rare that the police had moved straight to the far more common scenario--a tragedy that her family was covering by pretending she'd been snatched in the night.

"I want to hire you," Krista said.

"These people are on vacation, child," Jeanne said. "They are going to feel terrible telling you no, but they can't stay. They have jobs waiting at home."

"A few hours," she said. "That's all I can afford and all I want." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. "The going rate for a private investigator is about fifty dollars an hour. I'll double that as vacation-rate pay. I have four hundred."

Laurel winced. "Krista, I know--"

"No, you don't." Krista turned to the other girl, her voice still calm. "I'm sorry, Laurel, but you don't. I hear what people are saying. That maybe it's for the best. I didn't want to get pregnant. I didn't want a baby. Totally true. But then I had Maggie. I want her. Whatever it takes, I want my daughter back."

"Of course you do, child," Jeanne said. "We know how much you loved that baby, and we're all trying to figure out what happened. But hiring this young lady--"

"--is what I want." Krista held out the money. "Just do whatever you can in four hours. I don't expect you to find her. I just want a clue, a lead. Something."

Yes, I wanted to help this girl. But I didn't want to give her hope because that's almost certainly how this would end. Hope and disappointment. Yet Ricky had heard a baby in the forest. That was a possibility we could check easily, and it'd be wrong to ignore it.

"Tell me how it happened," I said.

> Seven - Liv

I couldn't have scripted a better "stolen by fairies" story than the one Krista told us. It was almost too perfect, which worried me. I looked at this young woman, so obviously grief-stricken, and I didn't want to think she might have had anything to do with her baby's disappearance. It would seem she didn't, if she wanted to hire me. But that's actually a common ploy. What better way to say, "I didn't do it" than to hire an investigator or offer a reward? A nineteen-year-old hardly seemed likely to come up with such a scheme, but I'd been misled too often lately to trust my gut.

As Krista said, baby Maggie was only three months old. Too young to even roll herself over. Krista put her down at eight o'clock after a feeding and a bedtime story. Maggie fussed a bit, but Krista had a fifteen-minute rule--she wouldn't check until Maggie fussed longer than that. She hadn't.

Her next feeding had been scheduled for eleven. When Krista went in before bed, Maggie's room seemed stuffy, and Krista cracked open a window. Maggie was soundly asleep, so following her pediatrician's advice, Krista didn't wake her and just set the alarm for a one o'clock feeding. The alarm went off. Krista went in and found the window wide open and the baby gone, along with her blankets.

A perfect fairy-napping tale, right down to the open window. Also a perfect baby-napping story. If you had to imagine how a child might disappear from her home, this would be it. Too perfect meant suspicious, which meant, like the police, I had to take a closer look at the family.

Krista Lyons. Nineteen years old. A single mother, living at home with her single mother. I suppose that's why people whispered it might not be such a bad thing if Maggie disappeared. Thoughtless and cruel words, but maybe, to them, the baby's disappearance was the best solution to a cycle of teen motherhood. It didn't help that Krista appeared to have broken from that cycle already. She'd gone to community college right out of high school and had been studying to be a lab tech.

Last summer, she came home to work at the inn and had a fling with a guy she'd known in high school. Nothing serious--it seemed as if she'd hooked up with Owen Parr precisely because it wouldn't amount to anything serious. He was a decent guy, part of the crowd she'd hung around with, now working at his dad's garage. They'd used protection--she assured me of that. When she learned of the pregnancy, she considered terminating it but decided--along with her mother and Owen's family--to have the baby, keep it and stay home for a year before returning to school.

"I am going back to school," she said. "That's always been the plan. Mom will move to Sydney with me in the fall and look after Maggie. We've been making it work. All of us. I didn't plan to get pregnant, but when I did, I made my choice. As soon as I had Maggie, I knew it was the right one. If it hadn't been, I'd have given her to Owen's family. They'd said they'd take her. I could still do that, which is why there'd be no reason for me to do whatever the police think I've done."

The situation reminded me of Ricky's own birth. An accidental pregnancy between two mature young adults who made carefully considered choices with the support of their family. As with Ricky's parents, Krista and Owen's romantic relationship hadn't lasted, but the co-parenting one had. Owen's family helped out financially and took the baby two or three days a week.

I didn't take Krista's money. I told her I hadn't decided whether there was anything I could do, and I'd check in tomorrow. Once she'd left Jeanne's place, I said, "That's Krista's version. I need an unbiased second opinion. I'm not going to ask you guys for it. That isn't fair. Who in town might give me another viewpoint? Maybe someone who agrees with the direction the police are looking--at the possibility something happened to Maggie, either intentionally or accidentally."

"You won't find anyone voting intentional," Laurel said. "Krista and Owen grew up here. No one has a bad thing to say about either of them. In a town this size, if you've got something to hide, you'd better move away. We all know who drinks too much, who knocks their kids around, who goes to church on Sunday with their fingers crossed. No one says any of that about the Lyons or the Parrs."

"You said no one would vote intentional. Accidental, though?"

"We've all thought it. Who wouldn't? Sure, there are people who think a passing tourist stole her. Or fairies did. Or aliens. But most of us know that kidnapping is almost as improbable as fairies and aliens. This isn't one of those cases you hear about where young parents mistreat or neglect a baby to death. Maggie was fine. Happy and healthy. But accidents happen. Babies get dropped. Or suffocate from a toy left in a crib. Could that have happened, and Krista freaked out and made up the kidnapping story? Maybe. She'd regret it right away, but by then the damage would be done, and if she told the truth, people would think she killed her daughter and lied to cover it up."