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Vanished!






 

Mrs. Reed’s home was a handsome, two-story brick located just on the edge of the city and Nancy could see that the warm, friendly greeting of Mrs. Reed’s big collie helped Jennifer to feel better.

“Why don’t you and Brewster go and explore the backyard? ” Mrs. Reed suggested to the little girl. “His ball is out there somewhere and he dearly loves to chase it. I’m afraid I’ve been so busy getting ready for Frontier Days, I’ve been neglecting him.”

Once Jennifer was out of earshot, Nancy turned to her hostess. “What do you think I should do, Mrs. Reed? ” she asked. “Should I call Mrs. Peterson? ”

" I think so. But why don’t you call me Grace? Mrs. Reed is much too formal, since we’re all going to be living here together.”

Nancy smiled. “Thank you, Grace, ” she said, excusing herself to the telephone, which sat on a small table in one comer of the room. Her conversation with Mrs. Peterson lasted several minutes, but when it finally ended, Nancy hung up with a long sigh.

“What’d she say? ” Ned asked when Nancy joined him and Mrs. Reed again.

“Just that there have been no messages from Jennifer’s mother since we left River Heights. Mrs. Peterson is terribly upset about everything, and she apologized profusely for any inconvenience she may have caused us—”

“Nonsense, ” Mrs. Reed said, “and I hope you assured her not to worry.”

“Oh, I did, ” Nancy replied.

“Now, why don’t I call the police? ” the woman suggested.

“It’s really very kind of you to get involved like this.” Nancy sighed. “I just never dreamed that her mother wouldn’t be waiting for her. Mrs. Peterson seemed so sure.”

“Jennifer didn’t.” Ned broke into the conversation for the first time.

“What do you mean? ” Nancy asked, surprised.

“Well, we were talking while you were reading and apparently Jennifer never spoke to her mother when she called for her to come home. She was a little hurt to think that her mother didn’t even want to talk to her.”

“That is strange, ” Nancy observed. “Do you suppose it could have been some terrible practical joke? ”

“Surely Mrs. Peterson wouldn’t have been fooled, ” Ned said. “She seemed like a very conscientious housemother to Jennifer.”

“That’s true, ” Nancy agreed, but her thoughts strayed for a moment to the two young men she’d noticed at the airport. They had certainly seemed interested in Jennifer. But if they’d been sent by her mother, why hadn’t they approached the girl? It was really very confusing.

“I’ll call the police, ” Mrs. Reed repeated forcefully, heading for the telephone. “Meantime, Nancy, why don’t you pour some lemonade for us? And there are fresh-baked cookies in the ceramic pumpkin in the kitchen. The lemonade is in the refrigerator. I left everything ready for us. I knew you’d need some refreshments after your long flight.” She smiled. “We can have them on the table out back—with Jennifer.”

Nancy hurried over to give the woman a hug. “Thank you, Mrs. … Grace, ” she whispered.

Ned returned from checking on Jennifer and Brewster and asked, “Shall I take the suitcases to our rooms? If you’ll tell me where you want us...

Grace looked around. “I almost forgot that, ” she admitted. “You’ll be in the room at the end of that hall, Ned.” She pointed. “Nancy and Jennifer can share the front bedroom upstairs. The first door to the right at the top of the stairs.”

“Don’t be too long, ” Nancy teased, “or Jennifer and I will eat all the cookies.”

Grace joined Nancy just as she finished filling the glasses and was taking cookies from the huge pumpkin cookie jar. She was frowning.

“Dave Hill is going to check into it, ” she said, “but he didn’t sound too hopeful. Everyone is so busy during the rodeo.”

“What about Jennifer? ” Nancy asked. “They won’t take her away, will they? ”

Grace smiled. “I told Dave he could count on me to take care of her till her mother is found.” Nancy sighed. “I just hope that is soon, ” she said.

“Where do you think we should start looking? ” Ned asked, joining them in time to take the tray that Nancy had filled.

“I think we should drive by the Buckman house, ” Nancy suggested. “I noticed the address when I was trying to call her from the airport.”

“I thought you said the phone was disconnected, ” Ned reminded her.

“Maybe she’s just returned from somewhere and hasn’t had the phone turned on, ” Nancy countered. “Or her neighbors might be able to tell us something.”

“That’s a good thought, ” Grace agreed. “I don’t really watch my neighbors, but I usually know when they’re called out of town or something.”

The romp with Brewster seemed to have made Jennifer feel much better. As soon as she finished a glass of lemonade and several cookies, she was quite content to settle on the floor in front of the television set, one arm around the collie’s furry neck. Nancy and Ned left her there under Grace’s watchful eye, while they borrowed her small coupe and drove into Cheyenne, seeking the address from the phone book.

When they finally found the street, Nancy felt her hopes ebbing. The house was a small, attractive one, but the lawn was shaggy and brown from lack of care and the windows had the blind look of drawn shades.

“It doesn’t seem very promising, does it? ” Ned observed.

Nancy shook her head. “I guess we’d better try the house, though, ” she said. “And maybe peek in the garage windows, see if there’s a car parked there.”

“You try the door, I’ll check the garage, ” Ned agreed, as they got out of the car, “but if she is living here, she definitely needs some yard work done.”

“Maybe she isn’t able to do it, ” Nancy reminded him. “She was in an accident, you know.”

Ned nodded, then left her, walking around the side of the house to the garage. Nancy hurried to the front door, noticing as she did that there were several bits of junk mail in the mailbox. The doorbell echoed emptily behind the white-painted door and, after several tries, she gave up and went to see if Ned was having any luck.

“There’s a car in there, ” Ned told her when they met at the corner of the house. “I can’t see it very well, but it looks like a fairly new one.” “Then she has been here, ” Nancy said, brightening.

“Or someone has, ” Ned corrected. “She could have rented the garage, you know. People sometimes do if they don’t have a car of their own.”

Nancy sighed and acknowledged that he might be right. “You take the neighboring houses to the east and I’ll take the ones to the west, ” she said. “That way it won’t take so long to find out if anyone has seen Mrs. Buckman.” It took longer than Nancy had expected and the results were dismal. Most of the neighbors seemed suspicious of Nancy’s questions and reluctant to discuss the owner of the house. It was

only when she tried the cottage directly across the street that she got some answers.

“Lorna was here for a few days early in the week, ” the tired-looking woman told Nancy. “I was real surprised to see her, if you want to know the truth. I thought she might sell the place after the accident, but I suppose with a child to raise and everything...”

“You haven’t seen her today? ” Nancy asked. The woman shook her head. “Not for two or three days. I expect she left town to get away from the rodeo crowds. A lot of people do, you know. Folks come here from all over just to see the rodeo and the local people leave just to avoid it.” She laughed without humor. “Guess that’s human nature.”

“Do you have any idea where she might go? ” Nancy pressed. “It’s really very urgent that I get in touch with her.”

“What do you want with her? ” The eyes were suddenly hostile.

“It has to do with her little girl, ” Nancy explained. “Do you know anyone Mrs. Buckman might have gone to visit or who might know where she is? ”

The woman considered for several minutes, then shook her head. “I only know Lorna to say hello and good-bye to, that’s all, and I didn’t even do that much this time. Just waved out the window at her. She could be just about anywhere and nobody in this neighborhood would know it.”

“Well, if she should happen to come back, could you give her a message for me? ” Nancy asked, sure even as she spoke that her mission was hopeless. “Could you give her my name and phone number and ask her to call me right away? ”

The woman didn’t look particularly eager, but after a few moments’ thought, she nodded reluctantly. “If I happen to see her, ” she said, “I guess I could do that much.”

Nancy wrote her name and Grace’s phone number on a piece of paper from her purse, then thanked the woman and returned to the car. An equally discouraged-looking Ned was waiting for her. “Any luck? ” he asked.

Nancy shook her head. “She was there the first of the week, but no one seems to know where she went or why.”

Ned nodded. “No one I talked to even knew she was here. It’s not a friendly neighborhood.”

Nancy started to get into the car, then stopped as a blue automobile came along the street. “It might not be friendly, ” she observed, “but it certainly is curious.”

“What do you mean? ” Ned asked.

“Unless I’m very mistaken, that’s not the first time I’ve seen that car, ” Nancy told him, squinting against the sun, though it did no good. She couldn’t see the person or people inside, not with the shiny sun shades pulled down over the windows and the sun glinting on the front windshield. She also missed getting the license plate number as the car quickly rounded the corner.

“Maybe they know where Lorna Buckman is, ” Ned said in a serious tone, as Nancy hurriedly started the car. But before they reached the end of the road, the blue automobile had vanished into the heavy flow of traffic on a nearby street.

Nancy sighed. “What am I going to tell Jennifer? ” she asked, well aware that Ned couldn’t answer that question any more than she could. There were times when being a detective was very discouraging.

 






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