Amelia, who was passing by the small phone room, paused outside the door.
"Sometime between last night and this morning." Joseph made his voice calm, perhaps to counter the panic rising in me. "According to Trent, Patrick was gone from his bed when Emily went to awaken him."
"He got outside the house unnoticed? Adrian didn't set the alarm?"
"If he did, someone turned it off. Trent said there was no forced entry."
I turned my back on Amelia, whose mouth moved as if she were silently repeating my words, trying to milk their full meaning.
"Did they-did they check the pond? Did they look for signs of-" I couldn't complete the thought. "Did they look for some sign of him there?"
"Yes. Trent said they have looked everywhere on the estate."
"The empty houses and the hayloft? The pool, the orangerie-" "Everywhere on Mason's Choice."
"The old barn, the beach, the cemetery, the docks-" I couldn't stop thinking of places that were full of danger for a child like Patrick.
"Everywhere, Katie."
"Trent told you this?"
"He left here about twenty minutes ago. Adrian sent him as his envoy. He thought you might be staying with me.
I glanced over my shoulder at Amelia. There was a door to the room, but it was propped open by an iron doorstop. "Excuse me a moment," I said to Joseph. "Amelia, would it be all right if I moved that doorstop and closed the door?"
"No need," she said cheerfully. "There's only me here."
"I understand, but this is a private conversation."
"Oh. I wasn't really listening." She moved on, walking rather slowly.
"What do the police think?" I asked Joseph, keeping my voice low. "Adrian did call the police."
"No, not yet."
"What is he waiting for!" I exclaimed. But, of course, I knew why he hadn't contacted the authorities and why he would put if off as long as possible. "He suspects someone in his family removed Patrick."
"Katie, I don't like telling you this, but Trent came here because Adrian suspected you."
"Me! Why would I do such a stupid thing?"
"Revenge," Joseph suggested. "Anger at being fired."
"But it makes no sense," I argued. "It would confuse and upset Patrick and, in the end, where would it get me?"
"You keep believing that Adrian is as rational and compassionate as you," Joseph replied.
"Perhaps. I need some time to think. Are you going to the shop?"
"I was just about to depart."
"I'll meet you there in a half hour," I told him.
As soon as I hung up, I punehed in the numbers for Adrian's cell phone. I reached his voice mail and left a message saying I knew nothing about Patrick's disappearance and could be reached for a limited time at the antique shop, leaving that number as well as Amelia's. I saw no point in speaking to anyone else in the household. I didn't trust Emily to keep a clear head and relate accurate information; as for the others, I didn't trust them at all.
Finally, I called Sam's home. I thought I was calm and collected, but as soon as I heard Mrs. Koscinski's voice, I felt the moisture in the corners of my eyes. She said Sam had gone on an errand. "He received your message last night and has been trying to find you, Kate. Is everything all right?"
"Yes." My voice shook. "No."
She waited patiently till I found the words to tell her that Patrick was missing.
"Why don't you come here and wait for Sam," she said. "He should be back soon. Come over and I'll fix you some breakfast."
"Thank you, no."
"A cup of tea," she offered. "Tea or coffee or juice."
I blinked back the tears. It was tempting to run to her, sit in her kitchen, drink her tea, and have a good cry, but I wasn't that kind of girl. At least, I hadn't been till now.
"Thank you, but another friend is expecting me," I said, then gave her the name and number of the bed-and-breakfast. "I'll try to call back. It's Sam's playoff game tonight, isn't it? I know he has to get ready for that," "First, he has. to know you are safe," she said. "If he could talk to you, Kate, he'd feel better. If he saw you, he'd feel more assured. Me too."
"I–I'll be in touch," I said, and hung up. It was bad enough to fall for a guy, without liking his mother, too.
I grabbed my coat and headed out, glad for the long walk to the shop on High Street. The stiff March breeze blowing up from the water helped clear my head. It seemed to me there were two possibilities: Patrick had run away, or he had been abducted.
If he had run away, where would he have gone? A seven-year-old couldn't walk far and would head for a place familiar to him. I remembered when I was eight and had run away from home-all the way to our next-door neighbor. Perhaps Patrick was just beyond the estate boundaries. Perhaps he had tried to walk to school; given the tension and fighting at home, school may have become a safe haven for him.
It seemed odd, however, that no one had spotted a young child walking alone and questioned the situation, though he could have fallen asleep beneath some bushes, somewhere out of sight. When I got to the shop I'd leave another message for Sam, asking him to gather a group of friends and search the area around the estate as well as the route between the estate and school.
If Patrick had been kidnapped, it had to be by someone who had easy access to him, someone on the estate who could silently remove him from the house. Had the anger and envy within the family finally boiled over? It seemed absurd for any of them to think they could get away with harming Patrick, but then, murder had happened before at Mason's Choice and no member of the family had been charged. I refused to think about that possibility-Patrick had to be alive. I made myself focus on the question of where he might have been taken.
The Eastern Shore, with its large rural stretches, had a million places to hide a child. If Robyn had done it, someone she knew through the horse business might have a barn or shed, some isolated building that could be easily secured. If Brook, a friend might have his own place now and hide Patrick there. I didn't know where to begin if Mrs. Hopewell had taken things into her own hands; I couldn't imagine her having friends or family. If Trent had done it? It came to me when I turned onto High Street: Why not the Queen Victoria, the hotel where his friend, Margery, was manager?
I mentioned this as soon as I saw Joseph, who was standing before a table of hardware, preparing to work on a lamp.
He shook his head. "Too many people would recognize Trent and would wonder why Patrick was with him."
"Not if he showed up at three A.M.," I argued, "wrapped in a winter scarf, hidden under a hat, and carrying a sleeping child bundled against the cold. He could have sedated Patrick and brought him in a back entrance with the help of Margery."
Joseph played with the lamp's switch, then sorted
2 through his tools. His deliberate movements calmed me. "Trent is too cautious to take risks like that."
"It's unlike him," I admitted. "He isn't first on my list, but it won't hurt to check the hotel while I figure out where else to look."
After leaving another message with Sam's mother about searching the area between Mason's Choice and Patrick's school, I paged through the shop's phone book, then rang up the Queen Vic.