Sterling scowled. “That’s good, but why? Your father couldn’t have predicted we’d run into this trouble.”

  “Well. No.” I bit my lip. “But, umm, we thought Truman hearing his last name might make him think of his mother. So we haven’t used it. You know, so we wouldn’t upset him.”

  Wow. Sterling actually bought it. “We’re registering him at the Lake School as Truman Baxter,” he told me. “He is your nephew, after all.”

  “After all,” I squeaked.

  Sterling smiled. “Ms. Lopez has a new teacher’s aide today.”

  I blinked. “A cop?”

  A state trooper to be more exact. Deputy P.T. Dent had volunteered for the assignment, but all the kids know P.T., so Sterling assigned a female officer from Montpelier instead.

  “Officer Riley won’t dress like this.” He tapped his uniform. “And not to be sexist, but she fits the stereotype of a teacher’s aide for little kids.”

  “Not to be sexist, but is she tough?”

  “Trust me, Lynette Riley packs a big punch.” Sterling pointed to the house again and said he’d like to take one other precaution. “May I look through Truman’s things?”

  I told him to knock himself out. “But the little guy has nothing the bad guys would want.”

  “Not that you know of. I can get a warrant if you’d be more comfortable.”

  I said that wouldn’t be necessary and promised my father would cooperate also, and Sterling promised he’d concentrate only on Truman’s stuff.

  “I’m not looking for anything of yours or your father’s,” he said. “You two are the most upstanding and honest citizens I know.”

  Let’s just say, I laughed hysterically.

  Chapter 15

  “Are we in trouble?” Truman asked. “What did the policeman want?

  “Oh. Umm.” I cringed at my father. “Captain Sterling heard about Evadeen Deyo’s trouble with Commissioner Dingle, and umm, he used to work with Commissioner Dingle.” I nodded. “The captain was giving me some pointers.”

  The kid scowled. “Committer Dingle is pretend.”

  Well. Yeah.

  “Cassie needs to brush her teeth before school,” Dad tried.

  “And then we need to get going.” I tossed Truman my car keys and told him to go strap himself in.

  He left, and Dad looked me up and down. “He didn’t arrest you.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” I said and explained the plan—Sterling would be back the minute I left. “Do whatever he says, Dad. Cooperate.”

  “I’m not Evadeen Deyo, girl. Of course, I’ll cooperate.”

  ***

  I’m guessing even a kid person would have trouble explaining to Truman why he was switching schools. And since the drive from Leftside Lane to the Lake School takes about four minutes, let’s just agree I did a terrible job.

  I did at least mention our one-room schoolhouse has a fantastic reputation. “Vermont keeps records,” I said. “Every single child who ever attended our little Lake School has graduated from high school. Isn’t that amazing?”

  Truman frowned into the rearview mirror. Evidently high school graduation rates weren’t high on his list of concerns.

  I soldiered on and told him Ms. Lopez was really nice, then pointed ahead to the kids running around the playground. “Look how much fun everyone’s having,” I said. “I bet they’re playing tag or something.”

  The kid gave me an eye-roll in the rearview mirror, I parked the car, and we climbed out. I waved to all the children, and Prissy Ott actually waved back. Prissy is no normal kid—she likes me. And I like Prissy, probably because she acts like an adult.

  She came over to greet us and zeroed in on Truman. “My name is Priscilla Ott,” she told him. “But my friends call me Prissy. Pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand, and poor Truman must have thought he had landed on Whoozit.

  “This is Truman,” I said and nudged him to shake Prissy’s hand. “Truman’s five years old, just like you,” I added, and they both dropped their hands.

  “I’m five and a half,” Truman reminded me.

  “And I’m five and three-quarters,” Prissy said.

  I don’t think Truman understood the three-quarters concept, but Prissy sure did. She was explaining their vast age disparity when Ms. Lopez and the woman I assumed was Ms. Riley, her new teacher’s aide, joined us. They welcomed Truman and assured him he’d fit right in.

  “All our kindergartners are new to the Lake School,” Ms. Lopez said. “School only started last month.”

  “And guess what, Truman?” Ms. Riley tapped her chest. “I’m new today, too. So let’s be pals.”

  “There are five of us kindergartners,” Prissy chimed in. “Shall I introduce you to the others?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but simply took the kid’s exceedingly startled hand and led him away.

  Ms. Lopez shook her head. “That child has more authority than I do,” she said and stepped away toward the playground.

  I looked at Ms. Riley. “Captain Sterling sent you?” I asked, and she promised me, with almost as much authority as Prissy Ott, that Truman would be safe.

  ***

  I tried to rush off to work, but rushing on Vermont roads is a fantasy even more far-fetched than a Chance Dooley story. Route 19 hadn’t lost any of its hills and curves since the day before, and also as expected, I had to stop at the Hooper farm for the usual cow-crossing exercise.

  I’m guessing Mr. Hooper’s Holsteins get more exercise than the flying cows of Flickle. They spend half their day crossing Route 19 from the south pasture to the north pasture, and the other half going south again. And almost always they’re hiking one way or the other during my daily commute.

  Most days I put my Honda into park, wave to Mr. Hooper, who stands smack in the middle of the highway holding up traffic, and try to convince my impatient self the cow-crossing routine is charming and bucolic. But that day something far from charming caught my attention. That day I noticed the skid marks and the strip of patched fencing to my right.

  I thought about that while I watched three or four heifers mosey by. Then I cut the engine and got out.

  ***

  “Yoo-hoo.” I waved. “Do you have a minute, Mr. Hooper?”

  Trust me, he had several. I ducked between two heifers to stand by his side, held out my hand, and introduced myself.

  He took off his work gloves and we shook. “Marlon Hooper,” he said, but a typical stoic Vermonter, he didn’t ask why I’d decided to stand in the middle of the highway with him and his cows.

  “I live at Lake Bess,” I told him. “Near Oden Poquette’s farm.”

  “How are Rose and Ruby these day—” He gasped and his face lit up in recognition. “Cassie Baxter,” he said, and a few cows mooed. “The Cassie Baxter. From Lake Bess.”

  I shrugged modestly, and Mr. Hooper turned to his herd.

  “Hey, girls. This here’s the dead redhead-pajama incident lady.” He pointed, and some of the girls turned their massive heads to check me out. “What can I do for you, Miss Baxter?”

  I pointed to the sad fence and asked about Sunday.

  “Don’t tell me you’re tied up in that mess, too?” he asked.

  I said I’d been staying in touch with the state troopers, which wasn’t a lie, and Mr. Hooper’s the one who mentioned Captain Sterling by name.

  “He questioned you?” I asked. “Because you saw what happened?”

  “I didn’t see it, but I heard it.” The farmer lowered his head. “It was something terrible, miss. All them screams, and the girls mooing and mooing.”

  The cow before us stopped to demonstrate.

  Mr. Hooper slapped her tail end. “Move along, Isabella.” Isabella did so, and the farmer indicated his south pasture. “I run down here as fast as my feet could carry me, but there weren’t much I could do.”

  “The driver was dead,” I said, and we both stared at the skid marks.

  “Poor lady.” He sighed in what I’m guessing was an uncharacteristic way and continued, “The older boy was unconscious, and the little boy was just dangling, upside down in his car seat.” Mr. Hooper flapped his gloves to demonstrate, and I got a strong whiff of—let’s just say, I made a mental note to wash my hands when I got to work.

  “What did you do then?” I asked.

  He hadn’t tried to move either of the boys for fear of hurting them, and instead had run up to the farmhouse to call 911.

  He pulled a cell phone from his overalls pocket. “Grandson give it to me,” he said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t bother carrying it. These things are useless, if you ask me.”

  I asked how long it had taken for help to arrive, and learned that Ginger Graham and her ambulance had gotten there “right quick.”

  “The girls wanted to help, too,” he added. “They come right up to that car, mooing and mooing, and nuzzling me and Ginger, and the other lady.” The farmer looked at me. “The girls understood it was a tragedy. I know they did.”

  I agreed that animals know more than we give them credit for. “But what other lady?” I asked. “Another paramedic? A cop?”

  “Nope,” he said. “But she does work for the sheriff. I reckon I don’t remember her name.”

  I reckon I almost stumbled into a cow.

  Chapter 16

  I got to work, washed my hands twenty times, and called Sarah.

  “You were there!” I said.

  “There where?”

  “The Hooper farm.” I shoved my chair aside and cleared a path for pacing behind my desk. “At the scene of the crime!”

  “Didn’t I mention that?”

  “No! You didn’t mention that.”

  “Come on, Cassie. I know I told you Ginger Graham called me.”

  “Maybe,” I mumbled. I paced three steps. “But you never told me how quickly you got involved.”

  “Duh. ASAP, and it’s a good thing, too. Truman needed me.”

  I turned and paced three more steps.

  “Ginger was sure Truman was okay physically,” Sarah was saying. “But he still needed to go to the hospital and get checked.”

  I stopped. “You took him? What about an ambulance?”

  “Ginger didn’t want him in an ambulance with Ryan. And we sure as hell didn’t want him with his mother.”

  I gave up on pacing and sat down. “You should have told me this earlier, Sarah. And what about this morning?”

  “I called you, didn’t I?”

  “After—I repeat, after—you’d been sneaking around on Maple Street. Looking for un-girlie sheets, my foot.”

  “Sterling bought it.”

  “Well, I’m not.” I snarled at the stacks of exams on my desk. “It’s a school day, and you have three kids. You had better things to do at the crack of dawn.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You were snooping.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sooo?” I said impatiently. “What did you see?”

  First of all, she’d seen a Hilleville cop. “I couldn’t believe they were there at that ungodly hour,” she said. “I was hoping to avoid them.”

  “And he just let you in the house, no questions asked?”

  Sarah snorted. “Not quite. I used my bitchy voice and told him I was there on Sheriff Hawthorn’s orders. No one argues with me when I use my bitchy voice.”

  “You always use your bitchy voice.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, what a mess. Except for one floor lamp in the living room, everything was turned upside down. It was almost impossible not to trip over stuff.”

  “What?” I sat up straight. “You saw the mess and actually kept snooping?”

  “Duh. But don’t you dare tell Sterling I did anything more than open the door and call him. I could lose my job.”

  “Sarah! You tampered with evidence?”

  “No, but don’t you dare tell Sterling.”

  I took a few deep breaths. “He thinks Truman might be in danger.”

  Sarah sputtered a colorful word.

  “My sentiments exactly,” I said and explained the new school arrangements.

  “Who’s the bodyguard?” she demanded.

  “Someone Sterling picked out.” I shook my head. “Why did you tell me he was there to arrest me this morning? I acted incredibly weird.”

  “You are incredibly weird. And I didn’t tell you that. You hung up on me mid-sentence.”

  I blinked. “Maybe.”

  “So?” she asked. “What did Sterling say about the ransacking? What’s the inside scoop?”

  “I have no idea. I have no idea about anything.” I reminded Sarah I was Judy Tripp’s supposed cousin, yet I didn’t even know it wasn’t her house.

  “So?”

  “So tell me about her,” I said. “What I should know?”

  A true shocker, Sarah Bliss cooperated. She explained that Judy and Truman had moved from their apartment into her grandmother’s house the previous spring, when Mrs. Abernathy relocated to the Hilleville House.

  “That’s one reason the place seemed so creepy this morning,” she said. “Judy used to keep it neat as a pin.”

  Apparently Mrs. Abernathy had let things go, but Judy had spent the entire summer cleaning, tidying, and organizing.

  “She practically drowned in old paperwork,” Sarah said. “Her grandmother saved every receipt—groceries, you name it—for decades. Judy went through everything, piece by piece.”

  Which reminded me. I stood up to find the exams I needed for class and asked what would happen to the house now that Judy was gone. Sarah assumed it would go to Truman.

  “You guys can live there if you want.”

  “Hello.” I spoke into filing cabinet drawer I was rifling through. “He’s not staying with me that long.”

  “You start a college fund yet?”

  I found the tests and slammed the drawer shut. “We’re talking about Judy, remember? What about her job?”

  “What about it? She was a boring civil servant—a secretary.”

  “Nothing to get herself killed over?”

  “Nada, and you know what?” Sarah asked. “I bet this wasn’t about Judy at all. This was about Ryan Webb and his rich parents. I bet someone wanted to hurt the Webbs.”

  I scowled. “Then why did they ransack Judy’s house?” I glanced out the window and noticed groups of students walking from building to building between class periods. I needed to get going also. “I wonder if Captain Sterling found anything at my house?” I said. “He searched the place after I left for work.”

  “You let him do that? Did he have a warrant?”

  “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Yeah, right. Did he find anything?”

  I assumed not since I hadn’t heard from him.

  “When you do hear, keep me in the loop, babe.”

  “Tell you what, babe.” I balanced the stack of exams in one arm and grabbed my purse. “I’ll keep you as up to date as you’ve been keeping me. How’s that?”

  Sarah offered another colorful word and hung up.

  ***

  Way back when my day began—back before I knew about the ransacking, before I realized Truman needed a bodyguard, before I learned Sarah had been at the scene of the crime, and before I’d spent three hours giving exams to a bunch of students more interested in complaining about my tests than taking my tests—way back then, I’d planned on calling Fanny Baumgarten.

  Fanny had been one of my strongest supporters the previous summer, but more pertinent to the current situation, she was the sole teacher at the Lake School for decades. If anyone knew anything about kindergartners, it was good old Fanny.

  And Fanny really is old. She’s eighty-five, and due to macular degeneration, she’s blind as a bat. Her phrase, not mine.

  I dropped the new to-be-graded exams onto the old to-be-graded exams on my desk and picked up the phone.

  “You?” Fanny asked. “Sarah chose you to take the child?”

  “Why is everyone so surprised by that?”

  “I’m surprised Sarah was so insightful. You’ll be an excellent guardian—kind and sensible.”

  Sensible? Okay, so maybe Fanny thinks a little too highly of me.

  “I’m not much of a kid person,” I told her.

  “Hogwash. You have so much energy. Perfect for a five-year old.”

  “Truman’s five and a half.”

  She chuckled. “Children that age are quite proud of that half year, aren’t they? But now, I am a bit concerned about this kidnapping business, Cassie.”

  “You and me, both.”

  “And you say Ryan Webb was in the car? The Webbs must be beside themselves.”

  I scowled. “You know them?”

  Fanny’s answer was a firm yes. “Eleanor and Edward are both so civic minded,” she said. “And Eleanor does so much for senior citizens of the area.”

  Fanny told me Eleanor Webb was the activities director at the Hilleville Senior Center. “Volunteer or not, she works tirelessly, as she does for the Hilleville House. She’s on the board of direct—” Fanny gasped. “Oh, no! Poor Iris.”

  “Who?”

  “Iris Abernathy lives at the Hilleville House.”

  I sat up straight. “You know Judy’s grandmother?” I asked, but why was I surprised? Fanny Baumgarten and Iris Abernathy would be about the same age, and Hanahan County has never been a big place.

  Fanny told me she’d never met Truman, and hadn’t seen Judy in years, but she’d known Iris for decades. “We were schoolgirls together. She was Iris Eskew back then, before she married Georgie Abernathy.”

  I thought about the family tree. “Georgie and Iris were Judy’s father’s parents?”

  “Correct.” Fanny sighed. “Poor Iris is clearer on her childhood, than she is about what happened last week. And she’s most clear about what all is happening in Oz.”

  “But back to this Eskew famil—”

  “A group of us more able-bodied old folks make a point of visiting the Hilleville House every week to see our friends,” Fanny continued. “Betty Fitkin drives, and Cornelius Souter, Howard Bapp, and I tag along to spread good cheer.”

  I reminded myself patience is a virtue and listened to Fanny reminisce about several of her friends at the Hilleville House.