Page 22 of The Summer Guests

Maggie thought about Luther, scared and shaken, sitting at her kitchen table. Luther, who’d always been there for her, always ready to help, whether it was pulling her truck out of a snowbank or lumbering to her rescue when she’d dodged an assassin’s bullets this past winter. During their years as neighbors, Luther had demonstrated his loyalty again and again. Now it was her turn.

“I’m afraid we already are involved,” said Maggie. “Whether you like it or not.”

Chapter 10

Jo

Jo pulled up in Luther Yount’s driveway, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment, thinking about how she’d approach this. Connecting with kids had never been her strong suit. She’d dealt with too many wayward teenagers, reckless because of their immature brains and surging hormones and the general stupidity of youth. Too often, her warnings to straighten up fell on deaf ears, which led to the predictable consequences: smashed cars, broken bones, shocked parents who could not believe their Johnny would do such a thing. Jo herself had never gone through any such wayward phase, and she had little patience for kids who did.

Callie Yount was not one of them. The girl was homeschooled, and her most frequent companions were of the four-legged kind, not the sort of bad influence that can lead a girl astray. It was Callie’s innocence that now posed a problem for Jo: How to sensitively question a girl whose closest relative—in fact, her only living relative—was a suspect in a probable abduction?

She climbed out of the cruiser and caught a whiff of farm smells: Manure. Hay. The scent of sun-warmed fields of clover and timothy. Luther’s cabin, which he’d built himself, was modest but sturdy, designed with an engineer’s eye to withstand heavy snowfalls and icestorms. She’d visited the house this past winter, and she remembered it as dusty and cluttered with books and hanging bundles of herbs. On that visit, Luther had not been particularly welcoming; she doubted he’d be any friendlier this time.

She knocked on the door and Luther appeared, wearing his usual scowl and baggy overalls. At once he stepped out of the house, closing the door behind him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Yount,” she said. “I’m here to—”

“You finished with my truck? Can I have it back?”

“It’s still at the state lab.”

“I have a farm to run, and I need it. How long’s it going to be there?”

“As long as it takes. I’m not here about your truck. I’d like to speak to your granddaughter.”

He glanced back at the closed door, then at Jo. Said, softly: “Why?”

“She spent the morning with Zoe. Maybe Callie knows something or heard something that could help us.”

“If you talk to my granddaughter, someone else has to be there. It can’t be just you.”

“Of course. That’s standard procedure when we question children.”

“Then I can stay?”

After a pause, Jo nodded. “You can stay.”

He opened the door, waved her in. “She’s doing her homework.”

On this beautiful afternoon, homework was the last thing most teenagers would want to be doing. Certainly not the excruciating-looking homework that Jo saw spread out across the kitchen table where Callie was sitting. The textbook,Introduction to Calculus, lay open to a page filled with incomprehensible symbols. Who on earth made a fourteen-year-old kid study calculus on a summer’s day?

An engineering professor. That’s who.

Callie saw Jo and immediately put down her pencil. “Did you find her?”

“No. Not yet. That’s why I need to talk to you.” Jo pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, facing the girl. “Tell me about your morning with Zoe, beginning to end. Everything she said. Everything you remember.”

“Maggie already asked me about it.”

“Maggie? When?”

Luther said, “Hours ago. Right after she got back from Maiden Pond.”

“I told her everything I could remember,” said Callie. “She and her friends are going to find Zoe.”

“She and her friends are not police officers.”

Luther grunted. “Maybe they should be.”

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