Broken Lullaby. Pamela Tracy

Justin argued.

      “I’ll keep him with me,” Eric promised.

      Everyone looked at Mary.

      “Mom?”

      “I—”

      “Mom?” Justin spoke firmly, reminding Mary that while at eleven he wasn’t grown up, he wasn’t a baby anymore, either.

      “You can start with the shed,” Eric advised. “There’s even a root cellar. Maybe she’s down there.”

      “Looked there already,” Mitch said.

      “Mom, I really want to do this!”

      Returning to Arizona was definitely a mistake. She was already losing control of her son, her emotions, her life.

      “You’re not to go out of sight of this cabin and you’re to check in with Uncle Eric every 20 minutes.” Mary glared at Eric. “If anything happens to my son, we don’t need to worry about changing the caseworker’s mind. Got it?”

      “Got it.” Eric nodded.

      “Yes!” Justin jogged from the room as if he knew right where to go and what to do. Mary walked to the cabin’s door and watched her son start circling the shed, mimicking the Santos brother who walked a few feet ahead of him.

      “I’ll keep an eye on him, ma’am,” the brother called out to her.

      Ma’am? A cop was calling her ma’am?

      “That’s Rico, the youngest Santos brother. He’s a rookie.” Ruth sat on the couch and opened a backpack. She withdrew a blue notebook and started writing. After a page or two, she looked up and said, “Mary, in just a minute we’ll head back to town. Mitch, you want to tag along?”

      He nodded and stepped back outside. Mary watched. At first, she thought he’d be reaching for his phone again. Instead he joined Justin and Rico at the shed. They opened the door, stepped inside and disappeared.

      Mary looked at her brother, looked at the almost empty cabin and shook her head. “Everything’s changing, again.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Did you sell the antiques?” It surprised her how much she wanted, how much she needed, to see them again. Her grandfather’s big, bulky furniture had overpowered the room, dwarfing her grandmother’s old treadle sewing machine and hat rack. Now everything was gone, even the amateurish paintings. Eric obviously hadn’t needed much. The furniture in the room now looked like motel castoffs.

      “Antiques?” Eric looked at her. “When I moved in, the place was pretty much empty except for mice.”

      Mary circled the room. “There was an armoire here. I remember Eddie got mad because it was so heavy, we couldn’t move it.” She turned to the next wall. “An antique gun cabinet hung there. Eddie loved it. Go figure. Upstairs there was a four-poster bed, scratched up but with plenty of charm. And,” suddenly her eyes darkened, “there was a dining room table here by the front window. I used to sit at it and piece together baby quilts while I was pregnant with Justin. I must have made twenty. I’d work in the evening and watch the sun set.”

      “None of that was here when I arrived,” Eric said.

      When they’d moved, Mary had only taken what was theirs. She’d carefully covered everything else. A quick tour of the rest of the house, upstairs and down, showed that the other rooms had also been stripped.

      They returned to the main room and Mary asked, “What was here when you moved in?”

      “Dirt and mice.”

      Mary looked around. “Where’d this furniture come from?”

      “We hit a few garage sales last week and found a few things.” He glanced over at his wife. “Ruth really doesn’t like spending time here.”

      Mary felt a little more understanding. Ruth probably never would attend a family gathering at this cabin. Her first husband’s body had been discovered a year ago, in the shed, by Eric. Hard to shake a memory like that. To give her credit, this morning Ruth hadn’t even blinked at being here. The need to find the missing children had proved more important than personal discomfort.

      Mitch returned and sat down on the couch. Justin, who was now following Mitch for some reason, plopped down next to him. A cloud of dust enveloped them both, but only Justin coughed.

      Mary walked closer and peered down. In the world’s smallest, neatest handwriting, Ruth created a timeline starting with Mary’s arrival at the car lot this morning, continuing with Mary’s decision to allow Alma to escape and ending with the search of the cabin and surrounding area.

      “I went to the lawyer’s office before the used car lot. We ate at a fast food restaurant. I bought a coffee at a convenience store. Do you want to add all that? Would you like to know where we threw our trash, where we used the facilities? Where we spit out our used chewing gum? Where we—”

      “No,” Ruth said before Mary could work up the energy for a full-fledged rant.

      Well, Ruth deserved one because it hadn’t escaped Mary’s notice that her name was prominent in Ruth’s notes. Once again, through no fault of her own, she was involved in a situation beyond her control.

      And once again, she’d put Justin at risk.

      FOUR

      “Looks like you’re stuck with me.” Mitch stood next to Mary on the front porch and watched Ruth’s cruiser disappear.

      Mary didn’t looked pleased. “I wonder what’s happening.”

      “Probably something with the kidnapping. Look, I’m going to run to my cabin, grab some stuff, then I’ll come back down and take you to the car lot. I’m going anyway, and it will take some time to unhitch your U-Haul.”

      When they could no longer see the dust from the cruiser, Mary turned to face the shed and murmured a half-hearted, “Okay.”

      He hurried, making it up the path to his cabin in just a few minutes. He grabbed his car keys and the folder that had had Alma’s picture in it, and rushed out the door to his car. Arriving back at Eric’s cabin, he tried not to appear rushed. It didn’t matter. No one noticed. Mary was at the shed door issuing dire warnings to Justin about what he could and could not do while she was gone.

      Then, Mary turned and issued dire warnings to Eric. The best part? Eric soon had the same deer-in-the-headlight look Justin had.

      What a woman.

      When Mitch helped Mary into the car he figured driving her was a win-win-win situation. One, he got to sit next to a beautiful woman. And maybe he’d be able to shake his tongue-tied schoolboy feelings. Two, witnesses often remembered more details when in a relaxed environment like a car. The girl Mary called Alma might be more than a lead in the missing baby case. She might also be a missing piece from Mitch’s previous case, and he hated loose ends. Three, he was getting away from the cabin, away from his melancholy musings, away from feeling useless. In truth, being on the fringe of a case was better than having no case at all.

      Still, far from opening up, Mary sat beside him in silence as they drove back toward Gila City. The most she’d said was something about hoping that everything went well because if it didn’t, she and her son would be sleeping on mattresses tonight since nothing would get unpacked before dark.

      He recognized the bluster. She was worried about Justin, worried about Alma, mad at herself for sending the girl into the desert.

      “They’ll find her. Quit worrying,” he advised.

      “I’m mad at myself,” she said after a few minutes. “It’s just second nature to do any and all things to avoid the police. I wasn’t even thinking when I told that girl to scoot.” Her voice softened. “I wasn’t thinking that I was sending her into a desert with three-digit temperatures