Thanksgiving by the Sea Read online

Alyson glanced at Trevor and then back at me. “So how hot was that makeout session last night?”

  I was sure I blushed. I wanted to tell Alyson to mind her own business, although I supposed her business and mine were the same business, but Trevor was standing right next to me, so I simply sent her a dirty look as she disappeared.

  “Did she find anything?” Trevor asked.

  I filled him in. “I’m going to call Woody and suggest he come by and take a closer look at both offices and then you and I can go to lunch.”

  “Sounds good. I’m starving.”

  Woody promised to head over to the office building and have another look around. He did bring up the fact that a shell casing had been found on the roof, to which I responded that the casing could have been left there as a decoy. It would have been pretty sloppy of the shooter to leave a casing behind that might be traced back to him, and the man who shot Bryson had done so with such accuracy that it appeared he was a professional sniper. Woody agreed with my assessment after we chatted a while and assured me that he would look into things.

  Once that was accomplished, Trevor and I piled into his truck for lunch and a drive down the coast. As crazy as our idea might be to investigate the shootings and to enjoy what was left of our impromptu vacation, that was exactly what I intended to do.

  “It looks like there might be a storm gathering on the horizon,” Trevor glanced out toward the sea.

  Dark clouds were gathering in the distance in spite of the beautiful morning we’d started the day with. “I wonder if we are going to get rain. I didn’t notice rain in the forecast, but I wouldn’t be surprised to get some. It seems as if has been a relatively dry fall.”

  “I guess we might end up with some rain, but it is just as likely the clouds will hang around offshore and never come any closer than they are. Do you still want seafood for lunch?”

  “Anything is fine. I know our original plan has been altered somewhat.”

  “Since we are heading south, there is that cute little place on the water where I took you when we went antiquing that day.”

  I nodded. “That sounds perfect. I’ve been meaning to get back there, but so far, it hasn’t worked out. We could even stop by the Antique Barn. I wouldn’t mind looking around a bit. I still want to find a pair of bedside tables to go with the dresser I bought the last time we were there.”

  “I wouldn’t mind stopping.” Trevor placed his hand over mine.

  I wondered if we should talk about what happened last night or if it would be better to pretend that the electricity between us wasn’t powerful enough to blow a circuit. Opting for easy and casual, I made a comment about the fall colors and the late start to the change of seasons this year.

  Lunch was delicious. I opted for a seafood salad, and Trevor went for clam chowder in a bread bowl. We shared a piece of cheesecake while we discussed the upcoming holiday season and our plans for the next six weeks or so. It felt good to be making plans to do fun and silly things like visiting Santa’s Village and eating corndogs at the Christmas Carnival. When I’d lived in New York, I’d enjoyed the decorations, and I always stopped to watch the ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, but I’m pretty sure I never ate a single corndog or rode a single carousel the entire time I lived there. I was looking forward to enjoying the sort of fun I engaged in during the long-ago Christmases Trevor, Mac, and I had spent together.

  “So should we head to the Antique Barn?” Trevor asked after we’d paid the bill and returned to his truck.

  “Hang on. I have a missed call from Woody.”

  “Did he leave a message?”

  I switched over to my voicemail. “He did.” I listened to it.

  “What’s up? You’re frowning,” Trevor said.

  “It’s Aspen. The eight-year-old who is in foster care as a result of being taken from her parents. She ran away. I guess she was last seen by her foster parents on Thursday evening. I’m going to call Woody and see if he has additional information.”

  According to Woody, the last time Aspen was seen was Thursday evening when she went up to her room after dinner. She’d been angry and prickly since she’d been at the foster home, so her foster parents decided to give her some space. When her foster mother went up to her room on Friday morning to wake her, she wasn’t there. They hadn’t heard her leave, but they did find that some of Aspen’s clothing as well as the money from her foster mother’s purse were missing. The police in the town where the foster family lives have been looking for her ever since. When Woody called to check in on her, he was given an update. Apparently, there was a call from the house phone where Aspen had been living to Trinity’s cell on the day Trinity was shot. No one knows what the two talked about, but less than three hours later, Trinity was in a coma and Aspen had been seen for the last time.

  “Wow, I hope she is okay,” Trevor said.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “What have they done to find her?”

  “They’ve interviewed her mother as well as her older brother, who is living in the group home. Both of whom say they have not heard from her. The father is still being detained for taking his children from school without permission. The police officer who responded to the call from the foster parents has apparently been talking to other family members, including the uncle her father was trying to drop his children off with. At this point, no one knows where she is.” I answered.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Trevor asked.

  Pursing my lips, I slowly shook my head. “I don’t know. I feel like Trinity gave me her name for a reason. We know that Trinity and Aspen spoke on the day Trinity was shot. I suppose it is possible that Trinity had made plans to meet up with Aspen or maybe Aspen had called to let her know that she was taking off unless she was returned to her parents, or perhaps the foster parents were cruel to her and Aspen was calling her social worker to complain. It seems obvious to me that Trinity is concerned about the girl. We really do need to find her. I’m just not sure how to go about doing so.”

  “Maybe her older brother has an idea where she might go. If the police officer in charge of looking for Aspen has spoken to him and he denied knowing anything, and it was the police who helped to break up his family, chances are he doesn’t trust them. Maybe Woody can arrange for us to talk to the child. It might not do any good, but I wouldn’t think it could hurt,” Trevor suggested.

  “It’s worth a try. I’ll call Woody and see if he can set it up.”

  ******

  The group home Billy was living in seemed nice in an institutional sort of way. The house was large and laid out to provide most of the kids with at least a small amount of personal space, and the yard was large enough to play in. The bedrooms were small, but the common area with a television and game table was fairly large, as were the kitchen and dining area. The only full-time residents were the kids who lived there, as the staff came in shifts that rotated each day.

  We elected to meet with Billy outside even though there was a chill to the air. Since it was Saturday, the kids were home from school, and the interior of the house was crowded and loud. We settled in at a picnic table on the back deck and introduced ourselves. I could see that all of Billy’s shields were up from the moment he was sent out to speak to us.

  “I guess someone has already been by to speak to you about Aspen,” I started off. “And I know you told the officer you didn’t know where she was or where she might be headed. And I realize you don’t know us so have no reason to believe anything we say, but I promise you we only want to help. We are afraid that Aspen could be in danger and we want to help find her before she is hurt. We need you to help us with that.”

  The boy narrowed his eyes but didn’t speak.

  “I’m sure you are worried about Aspen as well,” Trevor jumped in. “And I bet you wish you had someone you could trust to help find her. Am I right?”

  The boy didn’t look up or respond.

  “I know you are angry with the police for taking you away
from your family and detaining your father when he was just trying to help you find a better solution than foster care. And I don’t blame you a bit. But this isn’t about helping the police, this is about helping Aspen,” I added.

  “How can you help?” he asked, rage evident in his voice.

  “Amanda here is a superhero,” Trevor said.

  The boy glanced at me. I could see that he was interested.

  “She knows things and can even read minds,” he elaborated.

  “Prove it.”

  Trevor looked at me. I nodded. “We’ll send Amanda away, so she doesn’t hear our plan, and then we’ll call her back.”

  “Okay.”

  Standing, I walked across the yard. Once I was out of earshot, I called to Alyson. She must have been lurking and knew what was going on since once she appeared, she simply said, “I’m on it” and then disappeared. After a moment, Trevor called me back.

  Alyson appeared. “Billy has a frog named Homer. One of the other kids let him go, and Billy is really upset. There is a large frog under the rock near the oak tree. I’m not sure that frog is Billy’s frog, but it seems likely.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I headed back to Billy and Trevor.

  “Billy has a pet we discussed while you were across the yard. He wants to know if you know what sort of pet he is and what his name is.” Trevor asked.

  “Billy’s pet is a frog named Homer,” I answered. “He is lost, and I think…” I walked over to the tree and lifted the rock, praying the whole time that the frog would be there and that it would be the right frog, “this is where he has been hiding.”

  Billy smiled. “Homer.” He ran over and picked up the frog.

  Thank you, I sent a mental thanks to Alyson, God, the universe, and any and all otherworld powers that may have actually led me to the one thing that would get Billy to trust me.

  Billy looked at me. “You really are a superhero. Can you find Aspen?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to try. With your help, of course. Do you have any idea where she might have gone or where she might be headed?”

  “I don’t know for sure where Aspen went, but we do have a place we’d go when we needed to hide.”

  “Hide? Hide from who?”

  “Just people. I don’t want to talk about it, and it doesn’t matter. Before I show you where the secret spot is, I need to know what you are going to do with Aspen. I’m not going to tell you where she might be just so you can send her back to the same place she went to so much trouble to escape from.”

  I glanced at Trevor. He shrugged. I supposed once we tracked Aspen down, sending her back was exactly what would happen. “Is there someone you and Aspen could stay with? Someone who the people from child services might trust to watch out for you.”

  “My uncle.”

  “The uncle who lives in Utah?”

  Billy nodded.

  “That might be a long term solution, but I don’t think it will work out in the short term. Do you have any relatives living here in the area?” I asked.

  Billy slowly shook his head.

  “Okay. Let me make a couple of phone calls.”

  It took some doing, but eventually, I was able to convince Woody to pull some strings so that both Billy and Aspen could stay with me at least until a permanent solution could be found for all four children. He needed time to call in some favors and make this happen, so in the short term, I got him to agree to allow Billy, Trevor, and me to look for Aspen free and clear of any promise or expectation that we would turn her over to him or anyone in child services once we found her. He mumbled something about losing his job, but eventually, he agreed that he would not ask about our success in finding the girl, thereby putting us all in a difficult situation until he had worked out the details.

  Once I’d spoken to Woody, I explained the plan to Billy. I don’t think he believed we could help, but after Woody managed to get the group home to turn Billy over to us for a twenty-four-hour visit, I think he started to believe we were actually on his side.

  After having worked with both law enforcement and child services, I knew that the men and women who’d committed their lives to protect the children really did have their best interest at heart. Yes, at times the red tape mucked things up, but generally speaking, if a good alternative was offered, the folks who oversaw such things did what they could to make whatever was in the best interest of the child work out.

  Billy led us to a trail near the home he’d shared with his family. He told us to park on the street, and then he led us through the woods to the beach. We walked down the beach a bit until we came to a small opening in the bluff. “Wait here,” he said. “If Aspen is here, she will be scared if she sees you.”

  Trevor and I agreed to wait while Billy disappeared inside the crevice, which I assumed connected to the cave system that existed in the area.

  “Do you really think an eight-year-old could make it all the way over here from the foster home where she was staying?” Trevor asked.

  “She did have money, and from what I’ve heard, these kids are pretty street smart, having been on their own so much.”

  “I guess.”

  I looked around the area to see if anyone was nearby, but the place looked to be deserted. “I just hope we can figure out a way to get all four of them back together. I haven’t made up my mind about the parents yet. Based on what Woody said, it sounds as if Trinity really tried to help the parents do what they needed to do to keep their children, but they chose to ignore her counsel. Maybe the kids would be better off with the uncle or maybe with someone else.”

  “I guess that is up to the courts to figure out.”

  Billy squeezed back through the crack. A young girl who I assumed was Aspen followed behind him.

  “I’m so glad you are okay,” I smiled gently at the girl whose pigtails hung to the side as she stared intently at the ground. Her clothes were filthy, and her eyes looked much too large in her thin face. My heart really went out to her.

  “Are you going to take me back?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “No, I’m not going to take you back. I’m not sure what is going to happen in the long run, but right now Trevor and I are going to take both of you to my house. I arranged for you to stay with me until we can figure this out.”

  Aspen looked terrified. Billy took her hand in his. “It’s okay. Amanda is a superhero. She’ll help us stay together.”

  Lord did I hope that was true.

  Chapter 6

  Of course, once my mom realized there were children in the house, she took them under her wing and started clucking after them like the protective mama hen she was. Both Billy and Aspen were thrilled to see that the house not only had two dogs but a cat as well. I knew their stay with us would be temporary, but I wanted to be sure that they’d be comfortable while they were here. We gave them something to eat, and then I texted Woody to let him know that the children were with us and had settled in for the time being. He texted back and said that he had gotten permission for both Billy and Aspen to stay with us until Monday when the new social worker could officially look into things.

  Placing foster kids with people who were not related to the child, and had not been certified by child services was not the norm, but Woody managed to convince social services that returning them to the homes they’d been in would most likely result in one or both running away, so it was agreed they could stay with us until something else was worked out.

  Once I’d settled Billy and Aspen with my mom, I decided to go back to the hospital to assure Trinity that we’d found Aspen and that she was being taken care of. I wasn’t sure she’d hear me, but in the event she could, I really wanted her to know that her sacrifice in momentarily dying had done what she hoped the clue she provided to me would do.

  Woody had called ahead to clear the way for me to visit, but this time when I arrived with Trevor on my heels, Trinity’s sister, Carmen, was there.

  “How is she doing?” I a
sked Carmen.

  “The same. She seems to be resting comfortably, but she still hasn’t regained consciousness. After the scare this morning, I’m just happy she is still alive. The nurse said you were sitting with her when she crashed. Do you have any idea what happened?”

  “Not specifically. I was sitting with her, trying to get a reading in the event she knows who shot her. When she crashed, I picked up the word aspen. I did some research and found out that one of the kids in her caseload is named Aspen. She’d recently been put into the foster care system and had run away. Aspen had called Trinity shortly before she was shot. I suspect your sister knew she was in trouble and tried to reach out to me. I’m actually here now to let your sister know I heard her and that I was able to help Aspen. In fact, she is staying with me at my home until we can work things out next week.”

  “Do you think that trying to reach out to you is what caused her heart to stop?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly.

  “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t sit with her any longer. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I lost her.”

  “I understand your concern, and of course, I will honor your wish. I would like to tell her I found Aspen and that she is safe. I don’t know if she can hear me, but in the event she can, I think she will want to know.”

  “Okay. I guess that will be fine.”

  I left the hospital not knowing whether or not Trinity had heard me, but I did feel good about the fact that between the two of us we’d found Aspen and made sure she was safe and that her needs were being heard and considered. Part of me really wanted to try to connect again in the event Trinity had more to tell me, but I understood where Carmen was coming from. If it was my sister’s life on the line, I wouldn’t want to do anything to put it at risk either.

  “So where to now?” Trevor asked once we’d left the hospital.

  “I guess let’s stop off at the store and pick up some kid food and then go back to the house and help mom out.” I slid into the passenger seat of the truck. “I’m sorry. This isn’t working out to be the staycation we hoped for after our actual vacation fell apart.”