In Broad Daylight

The very thought ate away at her. She should have realized something was wrong. There was no earthly reason why, but somehow, her instincts should have told her that something was wrong.

She might as well tell him before he found out on his own. “It was my wastepaper basket.”

Her student, her wastepaper basket. Dax looked at the woman with deepening interest. It seemed too simple, but then, most criminals were not the masterminds that so frequently populated the more intriguing mysteries and action movies. Wanting to race, he still took it one step at a time.

Facing her, his back blocking out Harwood, he asked, “Were you in the room at the time?”

She could almost sense what he was thinking. Brenda took a breath and shook her head. “No. The class and I were giving a tour to Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley—”

She saw the good-looking detective’s eyes narrow just a little, as if he was filtering in this new information. “Who?”

“Parents of a prospective new student,” Harwood explained, moving so that Dax could see him. The man looked none-too-happy about being ignored. “It’s done all the time.”

That didn’t sound quite right to him. In his experience, teachers were all too happy to escape from their classroom for a few minutes, leaving a slightly more mature child in charge of the class for the duration of their absence.

“Taking your whole class out?” Dax asked in disbelief, waiting to be corrected.

No such correction came. “It’s to show how well-behaved our students are,” Harwood told him. “We’re quite proud of that.”

The detective still didn’t look as if he believed them. Brenda felt a spark of resentment building. She knew he was just doing his job, but she couldn’t help feeling that he was wasting precious time with these trivial details.

“The students each take turns telling the parents about the different activities we have here at Harwood.” She enumerated some of the highlights. “There’s a little theater group, an art room, things the regular schools cut back on.”

His face never changed expression as he listened to her description. She liked the shorter detective better, she thought. At least Detective Brown looked compassionate.

“And where was Annie during this show-and-tell process?” the suspicious detective asked.

In her mind’s eye, she could see the little girl. Annie had begun at the head of the group but with each step taken, she kept drifting toward the rear of the line. Strangers always affected her that way; made her even shyer than she was.

“She was hanging back.”

The poker face remained. “And you didn’t coax her forward?”

Was that suspicion she heard in his voice? Did he actually think she’d do anything to harm any of the children, especially Annie? Just what kind of a monster did he think she was? Fueled by guilt, it took effort to bank down her anger. “I was just about to do that when the alarm went off.”

“And then what?”

She’d heard the alarm just as they’d left the art room. She remembered feeling a sense of panic. The idea of a fire spreading through the school had always horrified her. Because of that, she had been the one to suggest to Matthew that they double the amount of fire drills performed. “And then I made sure that I got my class outside the building.”

Dax deliberately moved into her space, crowding her. “You didn’t stop to count heads?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, not until we were all outside the building.”

“And then you counted heads.”

Brenda could feel her temper unraveling as guilt danced around it. She should have kept Annie with her. But she could remember how painful it was at times not to be able to just shrink away, to hang back. Annie had been making progress, opening up a little, but there’d been a relapse in the last few days and she’d been trying to get at the source of it without much success.

So she’d tried not to push too hard and then this had happened.

Brenda raised her chin up as if she were silently showing him she was up to any challenge he was throwing her way.

His sister did that move, Dax thought. Just before she lit into him.

“Yes,” the teacher responded between clenched teeth, “then I counted heads.”

Nathan looked up from the notes he was taking. “When you saw she was missing, what did you do?”

There had been no hesitation on her part. “I ran back into the building.”

As if he felt he had to vouch for her actions, Harwood interjected, “One of the firefighters attempted to stop her, but she went right around him.”

Nathan smiled at her before resuming his notes. “Brave lady.”

Stubborn would have been the way he’d have put it, Dax thought. He was well-acquainted with stubborn. His family, especially the female portion of it, had a patent on the emotion.

Brenda shrugged off the praise. Bravery had nothing to do with it.

“I had no idea where the fire was or how bad it was. I was just worried that Annie might have run back to the classroom.” She saw the silent question in the taller detective’s eyes and explained. “She has this stuffed animal she keeps in her desk, a rabbit.” It had taken more than a week of coaxing before Annie had told her about the rabbit. It had been a gift from her father and she clung to it whenever she missed him and wanted him close. “I thought she might have gone back for it.”

Dax never took his eyes from her face. “But she didn’t?”

Brenda shook her head. “She wasn’t there.”

“Was the rabbit?”

The question caught her short. “I didn’t think to check.” There had been a fireman in the room. He’d just finished putting out the fire and there was water everywhere. Water, smoke, but no Annie. “Why, was that important?”

At this point, until things were ruled out, everything was important. “It might be. If it’s missing, then she either took it herself, or someone who knew about her attachment to it took the rabbit to try to use it to lure her away.” He paused for a moment as the words sank in, trying not to allow the distress he saw in the woman’s eyes to get to him. He couldn’t afford to have his sympathies, or anything else, get in the way so that it impaired his judgment. “Where are these Kingsleys now?” he asked.

Harwood stepped in to field the question. “They left soon after the alarm went off, right after we evacuated the building. Said they’d be back when things were calmer.” His tone told Dax that the man didn’t hold out much hope that they would return.

He looked from Brenda to Harwood. “And they left together.”

“Yes,” Harwood answered.

Dax shifted his eyes toward the woman. “Were they together all the time?”

Brenda thought for a moment, but her mind still felt as if it was wrapped up in cotton batting. Some events were sharp, others that took place almost at the same time were hazy.

“I think so.” She bit her lip, hating this, hating the fact that she felt so shaky. She looked at him helplessly. “I’m not sure.”

Dax’s expression remained stony. “Think about it,” he advised.

All right, she wasn’t imagining it. He did suspect her. But why? Because the fire had started in her room? Because Annie was her student? Or because he was one of those gung ho policemen who wanted to clear his caseload and it didn’t matter to him if he had the right person or not?

Either way, she wasn’t about to let this continue. If he suspected her, he wouldn’t take anything she said at face value and that could only impede finding Annie.

Shutting down the host of emotions bouncing wildly around inside of her, Brenda raised her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “Are you inferring that I had something to do with this?”

Dax took the opportunity to play along with the lead she gave him. “Did you?”

Thinking he suspected her was one thing, having him almost come out and say it was another. The reality of it cut through her like a saber, drawing blood and indignation.

“No! I would never—”

He raised his hand, silencing her with a single motion. He had no time for theatrics. For the time being, he’d buy into her innocence.

“Then let’s continue.” Dax turned toward Harwood. The man’s complexion was almost ashen. The headline Teacher Involved in Student’s Kidnapping had probably flashed through the headmaster’s mind, Dax mused. “And you’re sure she’s not around anywhere. Did someone check the other classrooms?”

Had his suspicions clogged his ears? “I already checked the other classrooms—” Brenda began. That was why the police had been called in to begin with.

“But not everywhere,” Nathan gently pointed out.

Dax thought of his own unruly elementary school experience. There were coat rooms and closets and a basement that probably ran the length of the school. A kid could hide anywhere. He had on more than one occasion. The sixth-grade coat room was where he’d stolen his first kiss from Amanda Jackson.

Brenda blew out a breath. “No, not everywhere,” she agreed.

“The students are all returning to their rooms,” Harwood pointed out. Had the door to his office been opened, the sound of shuffling feet would have been evident. “The teachers would notice someone who didn’t belong in their room. We keep the class sizes quite small.”

“Besides,” Brenda felt compelled to insist again, defending the little girl who couldn’t defend herself, “Annie wouldn’t do that. Annie was just beginning to come out of her shell, she wouldn’t deliberately run off or hide.”

“Shell?” Dax left the word hanging in the air, waiting for her to elaborate.

Oh Annie, I hope you’re not too scared. Brenda struggled not to let her empathy get the better of her. Annie had to be so frightened right now.

“Annie was—is,” she amended because the condition still held the little girl fast, “painfully shy, insecure. She’s an only child. Her father’s the film director Simon Tyler and her mother is an actress, or was. Rebecca Allen-Tyler. Supposedly, she’s retired now, but she’s still always off somewhere, away from Annie. They both usually are.” She knew that Simon was in Europe, directing a movie and Annie’s mother was somewhere in New York, on a shopping spree and visiting friends. Annie had shared that with her just this morning.

He wasn’t familiar with the woman’s name, but he did recognize the girl’s father. Dax didn’t know much about movies, leaving that to the film enthusiasts in the family. However, even he knew who Simon Tyler was. Anyone who ever walked into a blockbuster movie in the last ten years was familiar with Simon Tyler. His name appeared above only the highest moneymakers.

“So who takes care of her?” he asked Brenda, since she seemed to be the expert here.

An image of Annie, her eyes huge and sad, flashed through her mind. “The housekeeper for the most part,” Brenda told him.

Dax studied her again, trying to view her as an integral part of the scenario instead of quite possibly the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. “You seem to know a lot about her. You take that much of an interest in all your students?”

There it was again, that suspicion. She knew he was doing his job, but she didn’t have to like it. “Yes, I do. But Annie is special.”

“Special how?” Dax prodded.

“She’s very intelligent,” Harwood said. It was evident that he disliked being ignored.

Nathan flipped to yet another clean page. “Doogie Howser intelligent?”

Dax looked at his partner as if the latter had just lapsed into a foreign language. “Who?”

Nathan gave him a patronizing grin. TV trivia was the one area that he had covered while Dax wandered through it like a newborn babe. “I’ll explain it in the car,” Nathan promised.

“Gifted,” Brenda explained for his benefit. “And yes, I think she was.”

She didn’t add that she related to the little girl on almost all levels. Annie felt isolated from her parents and so had she. But in her own case, it was a physically and verbally abusive father who had caused the chasm that existed between she and her parents.

Until she left both of them, her mother had been no help, no buffer against her father’s volatile temper. Two days before her ninth birthday, she’d come home to find a note from her mother in the kitchen, addressed to her. The note said that she couldn’t take it any longer and that she was leaving in search of what she knew had to be a better life.

The memory shivered up and down her spine now, all these years later. Her father had beaten her when she’d told him the contents of the note.

At eighteen, she’d taken her mother’s cue and left home for good, marrying Wade York not because she was in love with him, but because she loved him for being everything her father was not. Eventually, she’d come to learn that loving someone for lack of certain qualities wasn’t enough. After seven years of trying, she and Wade had drifted apart.

In addition to the feeling of isolation, she’d related to the shy, withdrawn girl with the golden hair on another plane. Annie had been tested at near genius level, the same level that she herself had attained. In her case, there had been no one to push her; no one to help her make use of her potential; no teacher who had seen the spark. She’d been left on her own to discover it, finally enrolling in college while her husband, a marine, was shipped from one end of the globe to the other.

Brenda was determined that Annie was not going to fall by the wayside as she had.

But now Annie was missing. And it was her fault. She’d failed the girl.

Dax stepped back to open the door leading out of Harwood’s office. “Why don’t we go back to your classroom?”

“All right.” She squared her shoulders and pushing past him, she took the lead.

Once out in the hallway, Harwood was quick to catch up to her. “No one blames you for this, Brenda,” he said in a hushed tone.

Her anger, directed against both the brash detective and herself, softened slightly as she turned toward the man who had been nothing but kind to her. The man who, she knew if she’d give him a chance, would have been ready and eager to be more to her than just the man who signed her paychecks.

But despite the fact that he was a highly educated headmaster and Wade had been a marine who’d entered the service before he’d graduated high school, Matthew Harwood was too much like Wade for her. The fact that he was also her employer gave her an excuse to be tender to him, softening the blow. Harwood was sensitive and kind, but she wanted to make it on her own now.

If she wasn’t strong enough for one, how could she ever hope to be strong enough for two?

She paused before her classroom before turning the doorknob. Dax could see the tension skimming up and down her back. Apprehension? Guilt? It was still too soon to tell.

The classroom was empty.

The children who normally occupied it had temporarily been moved to the school library until the smell of smoke could be eradicated from the room.

As if of like mind, Dax and Nathan went straight to the wastepaper basket beside the desk.

Knowing they probably preferred to have her hang back, Brenda still joined them. Even looking at the basket, burnt and misshapen, the fact that the fire had started here still amazed her. She was so careful. How could this have happened? The metal container was completely blackened, as was the side of the desk closest to the basket.

“Looks like this is the only place the fire damaged,” Harwood noted.

Nathan looked around and nodded. “Lucky.”

“Controlled,” Dax countered. He raised his eyes to Brenda. “Whoever set this did it after the alarm went off.”

Why was he looking at her like that? Did he expect her to suddenly fall to her knees and confess? “How can you tell?” Brenda asked.

He’d already made the calculations. “Because it took the firefighters less than ten minutes to get here. Ten minutes would have been enough time for the fire to have spread throughout the whole room if it had started first. The alarm was tripped and the firefighters were already on their way when the fire was set. Someone wanted to be sure that no one was hurt during all this.” Dax paused as he looked at her. “Do you have any matches in the classroom?”

So much for thinking she was being paranoid. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

There was no smoking allowed on the premises. Besides, he doubted if she was a smoker. There were no nicotine stains between her middle and index fingers and her teeth were blazing white. Which begged the question, “Why?”

“We have a science project going.” She gestured toward the cone-shaped papier mâché structure sitting in the middle of a table in the far corner. It looked like a child’s version of a tropical island. “The children and I are making a volcano.”

Plausible, he thought, nodding. “Can I see the matches?”

Nerves were skittering through her as she opened the top drawer to her desk. She didn’t know whether to be furious or to search for the name of a good lawyer. Reaching for the box where she kept her matches, she stopped.

“They’re not here.” There wasn’t much to move around in the drawer, but she went through the motions with no success. “I keep them in a metal box, but it’s not in here.”

The taller of the two detectives said nothing, only nodded, but by now she was convinced that he thought she was involved in this more than just peripherally. Closer scrutiny into her life might only convince him of the fact. Recently widowed, her finances were not in the best of shape. Maybe he’d think that she decided to supplement it by ransoming Annie.

The very thought moved a cold shiver up and down her spine. The nausea that she had been struggling to keep at bay threatened to overpower her.

She blew out an annoyed breath as she slammed the drawer shut harder than she’d intended. “Look, I can take a lie-detector test.”

Guilty people didn’t usually volunteer to do that—unless they were very, very good, Dax thought. Lie detectors were not infallible and had been known to be fooled. Still, he decided to pass—for now. “That won’t be necessary.”

She surprised him by not grasping at the truce he offered her. “I think it is just to get that look out of your eyes. I want you to understand that I love Annie Tyler, maybe because no one else seems to, but I think that she is a wonderful little girl who has been given a raw deal from the day she was born.”

He decided to play devil’s advocate just to see her reaction. “Having parents who can buy you anything you want doesn’t seem like such a raw deal to me.”

“Anything but their time,” she pointed out evenly.

He looked at her with renewed interest. Not all kidnappings were about ransoms. Sometimes children were taken because the kidnapper thought they were rescuing the child from an unhappy life. “Maybe you could give her a better life.”

“I know I could—” Brenda stopped abruptly. “I didn’t take Annie. I wouldn’t traumatize her like that. Besides, I was right out there in plain sight all the time,” she pointed out.

That didn’t constitute an ironclad alibi. “Accomplices aren’t unheard of.”

She’d had just about enough of this. “Detective Cavanaugh, I want a lie-detector test,” she repeated. “I insist.”

“We’ll see what we can do to accommodate you later,” Dax told her before turning toward Harwood. “Right now, I’d like to talk to some of the other teachers, see if they saw anything. And while you’re at it, I’d like the address and phone number of those prospective parents Mrs. York was showing around.”

“Of course,” Harwood agreed quickly. “It’s in my office. I’ll go back and get it. Mrs. York can help you with the other teachers.”

Right now, Dax thought, Mrs. York looked as if she’d rather hand his head to him on a platter.

Chapter 3

“You really suspect her?”

Nathan was leaning back against the desk at the front of the room, his attention diverted toward Brenda York. He glanced at his partner. To his left a stocky, pleasant-faced teacher was leading a gaggle of second-graders out of the art room, which had been set aside to conduct questioning.

Dax was looking at Annie Tyler’s teacher from across the room. She was saying something to one of the kids who looked concerned. The boy smiled at her and nodded. She had a way about her, he thought. Made people trust her. Put them at their ease.

And at her mercy?

He glanced at his partner. “We’re supposed to suspect everyone, Nathan, you know that.”

Nathan gave a little shrug. His small pad inside his jacket pocket rustled against his shirt. The pages, thick with notes, were no longer smooth. “Yeah, but she seems so upset about it.”

Dax smiled. “You always did have a weakness for blondes.” He turned toward his partner. “The woman had access. By her own admission, she knows the little girl inside and out, that means she’d know exactly how to handle her.”

Shaking his head, Nathan frowned. “What’s her motive?”

She moved like poetry, Dax thought. Flowing into every step. Confident, yet incredibly feminine.

Abruptly, he wiped the thought from his mind, telling himself he had to get out more. Dax shoved his hands into his pockets. “Money’s always a good motive. Most people can’t have enough of it.”

“So you do suspect her.”

Dax shrugged. He was thinking out loud, but he and Nathan had that kind of relationship. Half-formed thoughts could be voiced in safety.

“My gut tells me no, my training tells me to hold off any final judgments.”

As he watched the woman stop to comfort one of the last children in the line, Nathan sighed. “If I were single, my gut would be telling me a whole lot of other things besides hold off.”

Dax laughed but made no comment. Precisely because his gut, or whatever part of him that was instrumental in allowing attraction to set in, was telling him a great deal, none of which included the phrase “hold off.” If being a cop, a good cop, wasn’t so ingrained in him, he might have followed through on one of any number of instincts.

As it was, he felt something stirring within him, something beyond the enormous sexual pull that kept harassing him. Harassing him because it couldn’t go anywhere. She was part of a case. And she was married.

She was also human. He saw the strain on her face before she locked it away.

Leaving Nathan behind him, he crossed to her. “You looked tired. Why don’t you take a break?”

The sound of the detective’s voice coming from behind her startled Brenda. She’d been allowing her mind to wander for a second. And grasp onto some awful scenarios. Regaining control over her emotions, she turned around to face him.

“That won’t help Annie.”

The sincerity he heard in her voice crept through the layers of steeliness he’d imposed around himself whenever he was working. He had to admit she impressed him. Someone else in her position would have been looking to distance themselves from the police as they covered their own tail. But she didn’t. Her concern was completely centered on the missing child.

“You know, about that lie detector test—”

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and she raised her chin again, as if bracing herself for a further confrontation. “Anytime, Detective.”

Anytime.

If he’d had the luxury right now, he would have allowed his thoughts free rein in a fantasy. But he didn’t have that luxury. What he had was a missing child.

Dax looked into her eyes. Nothing there made him doubt his decision. “I think we can skip it. The department doesn’t like having its time wasted.”

Was she finally allowed to get off the hook—or was he just toying with her? The thought that he suspected her of being involved in the kidnapping made her furious, never mind that logically, she knew it was his job to suspect everyone.

Brenda measured her words out slowly. “Then you finally believe that I didn’t have anything to do with this?”

He knew he was stepping outside the lines, but they paid him for going with instincts, and his professional one told him exactly what Nathan’s told him. That Brenda York wasn’t involved in this.